Unexpectedly a Dream Comes True!

Cultural Activity # 2

Organ Concert at the Saint-Roch Cathedral

Remember I showed you this Cathedral yesterday and told you you would see it again?  Well here it is! This church is just a few streets from the Louvre and was on our Grands Boulevard's walks.

  The organ in this church has pipes that date back to 1644, and is as elegant and ornate as any I've seen.  During the French Revolution nearly half the pipes were taken by Bonaparte's troops and melted down for spoons, but many of the original pipes survive today.  This afternoon there was a recital  that included pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Vierne.  What a treat! 

And it just kept getting better....

After the concert we got to wind our way up these stairs to the top of the Cathedral and see the organ up close!

Even the stop pulls were elegant

Look at the wood in those pedals!  The picture doesn't do it justice, the flash makes everything so harsh.

This is my friend Melissa, she studies organ at BYU and was my partner in crime for the day.  We were in heaven!!  Look at the woodwork here.  The wood is so smoothed with age it made you drool.

Jim, I know the light is pretty bad in this picture, but I'm including it to try to give you a sense for where the organ is situated.  The keyboard you can see is tucked into the back wall of the cathedral, and the bench, and wall of wood to my right are the back of the lower rack of pipes you can see when you look up from the outside.  The organ is tucked in-between the two banks of pipes.  I cannot imagine what it would sound like to be sitting right in the middle of the pipes and playing!!!  

The Cathedral from the organ balcony

Me sitting at the keyboard

The pipes from right underneath them.

More pipes

And then it got really fun!  Melissa and I had lingered for a minute and suddenly realized we were the only ones up there and so we couldn't help ourselves, and we started really snooping around.  

Imagine creeping around the top of a cathedral alone...awesome!!  We found the interior pipe cabinet, turned back the wooden pegs holding the doors closed and just nosed around the guts of the organ.  The next several pictures are ones I took by just sticking my camera inside and snapping pictures, figuring my flash would illuminate what was difficult to see otherwise...and it worked!

I don't even know what this really is, but it was all hooked together in the most intricate way

More pipes that just go up and up

Bellows on the interior....

And then we discovered the side rooms and we actually opened these little doors and went in.  I really should have take more pictures so you could appreciate this!  But these bellows are taller then me.

Notice the boards coming out at the bottom, these are where the bellows used to be manually pumped by a person standing on them and marching them up and down.

Another bellows room that was locked, but it had a key hole!

What a satisfying afternoon.  Melissa and I couldn't stop smiling, we felt like we'd hit the jackpot!

Oh, and the music was great also, I especially liked Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement. 

A perfect Sunday!!