Inside The Sound of Music

[jbuck919]

You must watch this. Julie Andrews, looking great at 79, but that is only the beginning. You can also find an episode of Oprah that reunites the entire family, including Christopher Plummer. Also, mandatory trivia moment. The Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg is the oldest house of religious women in the world. It goes back to the eighth century and has never been supressed.


http://www.oprah.com/own-oprahshow/for- ... reunites_1

[Belle]

I couldn't get it to work in Australia. Was your use of the word "supressed" a Freudian slip?

[jbuck919]

I couldn't get it to work in Australia. Was your use of the word "supressed" a Freudian slip?

No, though I misspelled it, it is quite technical. It means that an order or a house of religious is closed down for ecclesiastical or political reasons. The entire Jesuit order, to which the current pope belongs, was suppressed for a very long time. In Salzburg there is an abbey of monks, St. Peter's that more or less corresponds to the Nonnberg. They were suppressed by the Nazis after the Anschluss, but the Nazis never touched the Nonnberg.

[jserraglio]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dN9iqOb368

[Belle]

Thanks for posting the link! I've been to Salzburg many times, the last time just to catch a bus to Bad Ischl. The Viennese refer to Salzburg as a "theme park"!! Quite true too. Reminded me of Strasbourg and Venice - both places very 'theme park' altogether.

[jbuck919]

Thanks for posting the link! I've been to Salzburg many times, the last time just to catch a bus to Bad Ischl. The Viennese refer to Salzburg as a "theme park"!! Quite true too. Reminded me of Strasbourg and Venice - both places very 'theme park' altogether.

Venice as you probably know is seriously depopulated. It only has about 250,000 residents, even though its archbishop is always a cardinal and holds the title (unique in Italy) of patriarch. Pope John XXIII was patriarch of Venice. The city is almost entirely a museum. What I don't know is why the famous Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan and her husband moved there. I'm sure there are decent restaurants, but it is not one of the cities in Italy that are famous for their cuisine. Now I'm drifting, but Marcella was not born a cook. She was trained as a chemist. She learned to cook for her husband and then wrote those marvelous cookbooks, which BTW she wrote in Italian and had her husband translate for her.

As for Strasbourg, its cathedral has one of the great Baroque organs of the world, built by Andreas Silbermann, who knew Bach.

[Belle]

Of course, the Nostre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg is significant. Pity about the largely rundown surroundings. That's what happens when you turn places into museums for tourists and I'm betting there isn't much of a sense of local community in those cities either.

Most of those European cathedrals are visible symbols of the relics of Christianity in the western world, sad to say. The Austrians don't have cathedrals on that scale, except for Stephansdom, and they're generally kept in much better condition. Chartres was devastatingly neglected, with thugs sitting on its steps outside doing drugs and engaging in crime. Yes, that sent a powerful message to us about modern France!!

[jserraglio]

Europe has effectively of late kept Christianity at bay.

[jbuck919]

Of course, the Nostre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg is significant. Pity about the largely rundown surroundings. That's what happens when you turn places into museums for tourists and I'm betting there isn't much of a sense of local community in those cities either.

Most of those European cathedrals are visible symbols of the relics of Christianity in the western world, sad to say. The Austrians don't have cathedrals on that scale, except for Stephansdom, and they're generally kept in much better condition. Chartres was devastatingly neglected, with thugs sitting on its steps outside doing drugs and engaging in crime. Yes, that sent a powerful message to us about modern France!!

You are not the first person I have heard say that the great French Gothic cathedrals are a filthy mess. A case can be made that the collection of Gothic cathedrals and other major churches around Europe (and incidentally, the so-called National Cathedral in the US is also truly Gothic and not neo-Gothic) are the greatest artistic/architectural achievement of all time. To neglect them is a crime. It is irrelevant that France or any other country is now only nominally Christian. One does not let a national treasure decay.

[Belle]

Of course, the Nostre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg is significant. Pity about the largely rundown surroundings. That's what happens when you turn places into museums for tourists and I'm betting there isn't much of a sense of local community in those cities either.

Most of those European cathedrals are visible symbols of the relics of Christianity in the western world, sad to say. The Austrians don't have cathedrals on that scale, except for Stephansdom, and they're generally kept in much better condition. Chartres was devastatingly neglected, with thugs sitting on its steps outside doing drugs and engaging in crime. Yes, that sent a powerful message to us about modern France!!

You are not the first person I have heard say that the great French Gothic cathedrals are a filthy mess. A case can be made that the collection of Gothic cathedrals and other major churches around Europe (and incidentally, the so-called National Cathedral in the US is also truly Gothic and not neo-Gothic) are the greatest artistic/architectural achievement of all time. To neglect them is a crime. It is irrelevant that France or any other country is now only nominally Christian. One does not let a national treasure decay.

Lovely to read your sympathetic comments. Our music group had a young organist from our local Christ Church Cathedral with us last week discussing and playing (on CD) the organ music of Mendelssohn. I didn't know this repertoire, but the young musician (37y/o) has played in many European and English cathedrals, which includes Nostre Dame, Paris. I asked him how many people were interested in the organ and organ music from the younger generation and he said 'very few'. We talked after the lecture was over and everybody had left. I must say it was a total pleasure and apparently his passion for Mendelssohn isn't shared by everybody. In fact, he said he'd had a discussion with pianist Roger Woodward who'd turned up his nose at Mendelssohn's keyboard music!! Even "Lieder ohne Werte", believe it or not. Such charming works! But our young organist described listening to various pieces by Mendelssohn's organ works saying some of them were 'naive' and that he quickly bored with them, whilst others were the work of a mature genius. For the life of me I couldn't 'hear' the romanticism in some of the Preludes and Fugues or in the Organ Sonatas. Mendelssohn composed them because of commissions from publishers, apparently.

Did Mendelssohn convert to Catholicism or the Lutheran Church? I'm confused.

What a rich irony that the philanthropic wealthy Jewish extended Mendelssohn family came into the possession of many manuscripts of the work of J.S. Bach which they had bought and subsequently disseminated. Imagine; a German Jewish family as custodians of the highest German baroque art music.