Heather MacLaughlin Garbes, founder and artistic director of Mägi Ensemble, a choral group in Seattle, and she, like many academics, enlarged my world. Mark's, or can sweet science reaffirm my faith in the one true god of entropy and nothingness? I called an academic to find out. Why would a heathen like me find such pleasure in music that seems so firmly rooted in a Christian tradition? To get the most out of it, do I need to buy into that tradition, or is there a secular out? Was I actually having a spiritual moment in St. Something about the combination of the architecture, the fellowship, and the music gave me a little peek into the ineffable.īut, like all things I automatically like, I began to question my affection. It was the first time I'd ever accessed the spiritual by way of some religious practice.
In that moment I discovered the singular pleasure of imagining the sound waves of interwoven human voices soaring up the timber pillars that support the church's vaulted ceilings and bouncing around the reredos and the rose window as all that glass blushed pink, then orange, and then dark blue as the sun sank behind the Olympics. the all-male chorus shuffled into the room quietly, their robes ruffling behind them, and opened their books and began to sing. My friend and I got there around 9 p.m., and at precisely 9:30 p.m.
"People like it," said Maria Coldwell of St. When they finally got the space back, the church added a few administrative buildings and, later on, a glass and steel screen (called a reredos) behind the altar, but basically kept the minimalist look.
Early drawings of the church reveal plans for a neo-Gothic cathedral crowned with pinnacles, but budget slashes related to the Great Depression forced the team to use bare concrete instead, before financial issues halted construction altogether in 1931. Mark's looks the way it does because the original construction is technically unfinished. We went together one Sunday-admittedly a little stoned-and lay out on a blanket near the altar (a surprising but common practice among regulars) and looked up at the spare concrete walls. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, a performance she occasionally attends, which happens every Sunday evening. When I confessed my newfound love of choral music to one of my friends, she told me about the Compline Service at St. I'm not religious, I don't read Latin, I didn't grow up with a love of group singing, but, for some reason, as an adult, whenever I hear classical choral music, my senses feel sharpened and soothed at the same time. What is it about choral music that makes me feel like a ball of sound-light is breaking out of my chest, piercing my loneliness with the pure power of its melodic force? Why does a soprano's voice seem to clean the air of impurities? How do I explain the visceral thrill I experience when I hear a tenor's high F note ripple through a soprano's steel-beam E as the whole chorus joins for the first time in the Voices of Ascension's version of Josquin des Prez's "Ave Maria"? The overflowing tenor, the power of all four vocal ranges straining to sing the Latin word for "solemn" in the most joyous, melodic way possible, seems to acknowledge the intensity of the struggle to enjoy life despite the fact that every ounce of joy obscures a pound of pain.
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