jamestkirk wrote:beautiful, SF!! Great building too. Is it near you?
Here is an organ that is used often...the famous Kotzschmar Organ in Portland, Maine's Merrill Auditorium. 6,800 pipes.
Not as impressive but still pretty amazing in concert, and beautiful to see. I saw the Lon Chaney silent classic "Phantom of the Opera" accompanied by this organ (on Halloween)....fun stuff!
You get an idea of the size with those distant shots and that seemingly small organ console in the foreground of the wall of pipes. It rocks the joint when going full tilt!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVJhYbNlC0M
This Portland Maine organ is wonderful too. I fully enjoyed the video
Thanks!
These organs are complex instruments and simultaneously wonderful impressive pieces of Art. The sound always seems to transport me to Renascence times. I always admired churches and although not being regular I have to say that I was given a catholic formation by my fathers. The church I attended in my early years had a modest organ but the guy that was playing was (for me) gifted and it was really delightful to listen.
I always try to go to churches in the places I visit. I was already lucky enough to visit several cathedrals althoug many I still miss. My list already includes: Notre Dame in Paris, Catedral Metropolitana in Brasília, the Toulouse Cathedral, Fatima in Portugal
There are loads of churches in Portugal. Loads. Impressive monuments of faith. It's hard to criticize this devotion even considering the enormous spending of so human efforts and country resources. The answer is Faith. What keeps us alive and struggling. Faith in the form of religion, either already formatted and being transmited to us while children or either in personal inner beliefs we develop all through our lives. Faith fills the empty spaces and gives us hope. Faith moves the world.
Convento of Mafra is an impressive, huge monastery. Its just 30Km away from my home. It was build with the immense resources brought to Portugal in the XVIII century after the discovery of gold (huge amounts) in Brazil, then our colony. Today many portuguese say that most of this resources were spent in these religion monuments or in expensive luxury goods bought in other european countries (Flandres and Italy, mainly). I guess it was always our problem: our elites were always mainly stupid and futile people. Quite rarely the immense resources from our colonies were invested in mainland to develop a competent economy.
Illustrating this, our great poet, Fernando Pessoa wrote about our great historical figure, Prince Henry (named
Infante, a great man, a visionary that initiated our XV centuries sea discoveries):
THE INFANTE
God wills, the man dreams, and the work is born.
God did that the earth should be all one,
That what the sea might join be now not torn.
He hallowed you. Foam-unveiling, you went.
And the white orle from isle to continent lit
Up, running on and on to the world's end,
And suddenly Earth was seen total, out
From the profound azure arising, round.
Who hallowed you created you Portuguese.
To the sea and to us you were His call.
The Sea grew whole, the Empire shook to pieces.
Lord, what lacks is to make whole Portugal!
