Lamentable really. Yes, really - not unlike that pun.
Friday played out against a soundtrack that included the Tenebrae of Good Friday sung by the monks of the Abbey of St. Peter, Solesmes. These are the monks I heard when I first heard recordings of Gregorian Chant. This was some years (nay decades, in truth) ago.
The french "ue" sound in the word "Sanctus", or the phrase "sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper", remains with me to this day.
Saturday brought the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis - sung by the Tallis Scholars.
Two and a half-hours of Easter Vigil liturgy brought Saturday to a close and today was to have begun with Handel's Messiah - but we had a five-and-a-half hour power outage instead. Personally I prefer music.
We couldn't even leave, for anywhere some distance away, as the car was imprisoned in the garage. There is something delicious about the irony there - for a long time our garage was packed too full of boxes from the work done on our home to allow us to garage the car. Now, when the car fits with much room to spare - we can't get at it.
Power being restored, sorry - the Latin of the Gregorian Chant does that to me sometimes, we left for a late Easter Sunday brunch.
When we returned there was still time for the Messiah. The recording is from the 250th anniversary performance in Dublin; the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields orchestra and chorus. I was there for the performance.
While some of the reviewers on Amazon suggest that this is not a good performance, I was there. They know nothing.
While it is impossible to reproduce the dynamics of a live performance, the main music system we have does a mighty job.
All one can say, fitting for the day, is Hallelujah!
