The summer of culture begins . . . with music

Tuesday, 26 June

The Cultural Olympiad began last Thursday. We didn't leap out at the starting gate, but we edged in the next day with a concert from the programme offered by this year's Spitalfields Festival. The Spitalfields Festival was founded decades ago to save Nicholas Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields when it was derelict and in real danger of being demolished despite its beauty and historic importance. Christ Church is now in the pristine condition of when it was built nearly 300 years ago.

A few years ago, when Christ Church was closed for building works, the Festival began to hold concerts at the nearby St Leonard's Church, Shoreditch. The current church is only a few year's younger than Spitalfields, designed by another important Georgian architect George Dance the Elder (architecture seems to be a popular family business in England), but there has been a church on the site since Saxon times. According to Wikipedia's entry, Shoreditch was an important centre of Elizabethan theatre, where the first two playhouses were built in 1576 and 1577, so the church has burials and memorials to many famous 16th century pioneers of London's theatre including the Burbages, James who built the first theatre, and employed Shakespeare as a playwright, and his son Richard who starred in many of Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare plays a big role in the Cultural Olympiad. Over the summer 37 international Shakespeare companies will be performing all the plays at the reproduction Globe Theatre. So you can hear Shakespeare in Korean (Midsummer Night's Dream), Georgian (As You Like It), Japanese (Cymbeline), Turkish (Antony and Cleopatra), and many other languages. The BBC has produced four of the history plays for TV transmission. Simon Schama is explaining their importance in a TV series. I tried watching one, but I find Schama so patronising and smug, I'm always at a loss as to why he seems to be everywhere these days. There will also be a big exhibition on Shakespeare at the British Museum.  I have been enjoying the podcast of a BBC Radio Four series done by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, on Shakespeare and his times using artifacts from the Museum. Note to self: stomach Schama and listen to MacGregor's remaining podcast episodes to learn important things about Shakespeare, his time, and his plays.

Back to Shoreditch Church, Friday night, Spitalfields Festival, and a terrific concert by Florilegium, a period instrument group, and a chorus of Bolivian young adults. At about the same time Hawksmoor began working as Christopher Wren's clerk in the 1670s, the Jesuits arrived in Bolivia to convert the native population to Christianity. They established ten missions with the idea of using music to attract converts. They brought along copies of music written in Venice by Corelli, Vivaldi, and Locatelli among others to serve as templates for local musicians to compose suitable work for the missions. The Jesuits were expelled a hundred years later, but the extensive music archives have survived and grown over the centuries. Florilegium's director began exploring Bolivian Baroque ten years ago, founded the choir, and has toured with them for several years. The concert was a mix of Bolivian composers and music brought from Venice in the Bolivian archives.

Now that Spitalfields church is sorted, I hope the Festival will be donating some funding for repair and repainting at Shoreditch too. The venue deserves better than the peeling paint pilasters flanking the altar.

A few nights later we moved on to the City of London Festival for a concert at the other end of the music continuum, Berlioz's Requiem with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis with a chorus of thousands, well maybe just hundreds, but no one fell asleep during the 90 minutes of  the programme. To top it off we were in St Paul's Cathedral seated under the dome where the famous Whispering Gallery Effect must have been batting the sound back and forth and around like the players at Wimbledon. Then when the horns began blaring from the upper galleries in the transepts the quadraphonic sound circa 1837 is complete. Bob said, if you are going to listen to bombast, it may as well be great bombast. Sitting in St Paul's was a plus too. I haven't been in a very long time, and having an hour and a half to look at the grisaille paintings and lovely mosaics that decorate the dome was a treat.
The grisaille paintings were done by Sir James Thornhill, the most famous painter of interiors for Christopher Wren's projects. The mosaics were not done until the late 19th century however.

This is the painting I was facing, and even after 90 minutes I had no clue to what story it was relating.

Fortunately the website I borrowed this image from has an explanation (and much more). St Paul was shipwrecked off Malta, and when a serpent crawled out of the wreckage, he grabbed it, and did not die, so the locals recognised him as a god (Acts 27).

According to the programme notes, the Requiem was commissioned by the French government in 1837 to commemorate King Louis-Philippe's escape from an assassination attempt on the anniversary of the July Revolution. I boldfaced "escape" because like me you may think a Requiem would be more appropriate for a king who had not escaped an assassination. Go figure. Viva La France and all. As for Louis-Philippe or the July Revolution, I haven't a clue. I have more than enough trouble keeping English
monarchs and uprisings straight to even make a stab at French history.