The Grand Budapest Hotel

Plane travel, as anyone can tell you, is onerous. (It is really quite convenient, of course, and somewhat miraculous, that we can cross the Atlantic in a matter of hours THROUGH THE AIR! But I will set aside this optimistic view, as I wish to complain. Or, as one says in German, ich will mich beschweren.) One must either be foolish and improvident and spring for business class — which gets you to the same place at the same time for many hundred dollars more — or ride in steerage, which always feels to me like descending into the bowels of the galley in Ben-Hur where the slaves are rowing to the beat of the drum. The slaves in Ben-Hur, at least, had no wailing infants to contend with. Sing, O Muse, of the multifarious unpleasant sounds that babies make! The periodic waaaa waaa waaaaa, the sort of gurgling hiccup, the high-pitched, sustained eeeeeee.

But don't let me bore you, dear reader, with my travails on the plane. What I really meant to write about was the movie I saw whilst crossing the Atlantic, coming back from Vienna: The Grand Budapest Hotel. Ten minutes into the film I was certain that I would want to watch it again. Perhaps this is partly for sentimental reasons: the story takes place in a fictional Mitteleuropean nation, "once the seat of an empire", that, over the course of the twentieth century, goes from decadence to fascism to communism to post-communism. (The titular hotel is depicted in the thirties as a gorgeous jugendstil palace; by the sixties its gaudy façade has been replaced with depressing concrete. It's finely-observed details like this that make the film especially satisfying to anyone who has traveled in those parts of the world where this happened.) The dialogue, while not composed of sentences that people actually say, was charming, perhaps because of the excellent performances, by Ralph Fiennes and F. Murray Abraham in particular. (Certain writers have instantly recognizable dialogue that irritates me to no end because it is merely how the writer himself speaks. I find Aaron Sorkin to be especially bothersome in this regard.)

The movie is written and directed by Wes Anderson, whose works generally inspire passionate intensity of feeling, either positive or negative. The chief charge leveled against him is that his films are excessively twee. I cannot say whether this is a fair assessment, as the only movie of his I have previously seen is Fantastic Mr Fox, which I found to be a fun adaptation of the Dahl book, and not unduly precious. In any case, I have a high tolerance for whimsy. The real issue, of course, is whether Anderson's films are entirely style without any substance, and whether that is bad. To be certain, they are highly stylized — but we can't condemn a movie simply because it isn't verismo. Looking at the other arts as an instrumental musician — and thus a producer of art that cannot make explicit reference to anything — I am very reluctant to pan a film simply because it is so stylized as to be non-referential. Must a movie make us think about other things? Why can't a movie simply be an exercise in making a movie, as skillfully as possible? I found The Grand Budapest Hotel to be a well-made movie, with fine actors, a carefully-realized setting, and a compelling story. Does one need anything more from a film?

The Hildebrandt Organ, Naumburg

Today we made the trek out from Leipzig to Naumburg, to play the Hildebrandt Organ there. The weather being unseasonably warm for this part of the world, the trip was unpleasant: today is Pentecost Monday, which I understand is a public holiday in Germany, so trains were full of vacationers returning home after the holiday weekend. (I am, at least, appreciative that Germans are generally quiet when using mass transit.) But despite the oppressive heat and crowded trains, it was well worth it. Indeed, to describe the experience of playing Bach on this instrument so closely linked to the master requires hyperbole. Let me skip that and merely describe. It exceeds in size and variety all other Hildebrandt or Silbermann instruments. So far as we know, it is the one surviving instrument that most closely accords with Bach's ideas about organ design. Every stop on the instrument, I thought, was beautiful. (Other organists in the group largely agreed, though some considered some of the Rückpositiv stops to be less pretty. I have found that Rückpositiv and Brustwerk stops, if present, must be assessed generously by the organist at the console, for they always sound better out in the room.) It seems almost too obvious to say, that every stop on an organ should be beautiful, but in fact that is hardly ever the case: builders include mediocre stops, or even ugly stops, so that they might be combined to make better sounds — if that makes sense! But let us not consider other organs, at the moment. The stops on today's organ were each extraordinary alone, yet also worked well together. (Worthy of special mention are the 8' Hohl-floete on the Oberwerk, the 8' Spitz-floete, and the full Cornets found on both divisions. But I could listen to even just a single 8' Principal all day.)

I should admit that I find organ scholarship, and most Baroque scholarship in general, to be far too Bach-centric. We cannot see all music as merely prefiguring or echoing Bach; this is a disservice to countless composers of great talent. (Perhaps Buxtehude, Walther, and Krebs have suffered the most in this way.) In the same way, we cannot praise the Hildebrandt Organ of Naumburg merely because Bach inspected it and said it was very good. (Besides, he almost certainly had a conflict of interest due to his friendship with Zacharias Hildebrandt.) But it is remarkable, nonetheless, that such an instrument has survived, and it is probably not coïncidental that it happens to be so very special. Peter Williams notes that "Alas, it is simply not true that fine organs are inextricably related to fine music; many times over the centuries organs have been 'better' than the music they were built to play[.]" But we see in this Hildebrandt, I think, an extraordinary affinity between the finest of composers and — surely — one of the finest organs in the world.

(Oh, and, like many important instruments over here, there is a guestbook for organist visitors to sign. There are, of course, many big names in it, with observations and thanks. Perhaps my favorite was that of Thiemo Janssen, the organist at the Ludgerikirche in Norden, with its magnificent Schnitger: "Herr Schnitger grüßt Herr Hildebrandt." Isn't that cute?)

Lady Day

One benefit of winter's continued presence here, in the desolate heart of this North American continent, is that, now that we've had a week off for Spring Break, one can immediately distinguish between the tanned, crazed, oversexed, overliquored, improvident hedonists (who spent the last week in brighter climes) and the God-fearing, upstanding, abstemious, frugal and very pale Puritans, surely God's Elect (who didn't have the money to traipse off to Texas or Mexico or Florida or a similar place of higher crime rates and insufficient government regulation). I, for one, appreciate the convenience of being able to distinguish between the two at a glance. It certainly saves the time and effort of getting to know people.

The weather makes it difficult to believe that Lady Day is already upon us. (For some reason I am reminded of the O'Hara poem "The Day Lady Died", though that was in July. And Billie Holiday has no connection to the Theotokos, so far as I am aware.) I am continually astonished — indeed, my mouth must be perpetually agape — that the Church does not make terribly much of the Feast of the Annunciation. Why, it seems to me that it should be a bigger celebration than Christmas, don't you think? Babies are born with some regularity; while Jesus's birth was a good thing (I suppose), a birth is a rather ordinary event, in the grand scheme of things. But the very beginning of the Incarnation? Well. It just seems a bit more unusual. The Nicene Creed (or, if we're to be pedantic — and when have we ever turned up the chance to be pedantic? — the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) emphasizes the Incarnation, and indeed, that's the spot in the Creed where one kneels (or, if one is Episcopalian, bows, or looks around confusedly, or does nothing whatsoëver; I believe all options are encouraged in Episcopal rubrics).

For obvious reasons the Annunciation is one of the most popular images in Christian Art. There is an extraordinary variety of very good paintings, woodcuts, windows, sculptures, et alia that depict the moment. I am very fond of Dürer's (as always), and Fra Angelico's, but my current favorite is the version of Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Parhelion

Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
Not separated with the racking clouds,
But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky.
See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,
As if they vow'd some league inviolable:
Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.
In this the heaven figures some event.

Henry VI, Part III: Act 2, Scene 1

Today, whilst driving to classes in Iowa City, I spied a prominent sun dog, which is the sort of term one couldn't possibly make up. (The second element in the term is attributed in some sources to Norfolk, where it may have been a corruption of dag, ultimately from the Norse.) I have chosen to take this as a good omen for the semester. Or, more accurately, the past week suggested that this will be a good semester, and I am coöpting an unrelated meteorological phenomenon as confirmation of that fact.

This semester, you see, I have finally gotten an apartment in Iowa City. The chief benefit of this is that I no longer need drive two hours every school day. In what must be a sure sign that I am a raving socialist, I find that I greatly prefer mass transit. It is remarkable how a thing like driving, that we think nothing of, can so effectively make life unpleasant. No other activity exposes us to a greater swath of the American public than does driving; driving, therefore, is the chief reminder (and an unwelcome one) of how horrible most people are. I suspect that one reason why I enjoy traveling to Europe so very much is that I never have to drive there.

But don't let me ramble on about such things. I am looking forward to my classes this semester, too. Of the three — Seventeenth-century music, a seminar on Max Reger and Karl Straube, and Counterpoint before 1600 — I find the last the most promising, as I have a well-documented interest in Renaissance polyphony.