A church, candlelight and Vivaldi

I've chosen a picture of the church as the opener to this story and I'm not sure that it needs any explanation. Such a splendid building, rearing up into the night; cool stone; majestic; an edifice that has stood and stood and stood but also a human place which has housed people to worship and pronounce their faith. This also makes it a place of music, the raised voices of the congregation along with the powerful pipes of the organ lifting their conjoined notes to the rafters! It will be filled with music again this night, although in a slightly different guise.

It is appropriate, I feel, that I am here due to a Christmas gift. This night, a string quartet called Quattro are playing a candlelit concert under the elevated arches of a Gothic church, its pews filled with music lovers come to enjoy The Four Seasons by Vivaldi.

I think a lot of the movements from this are instantly recognisable to the listener, used as they are in film and advertisements the world over. There is a danger in becoming complacent about the beauty of the composition, I think. You hear a tune, you know a tune but do you really experience a tune? I think you need to drill down through its familiarity to listen, to truly focus on its component parts: to the trills and the cadences and the nuances and its rise and fall.

That was what this night was all about. Listening, immersing oneself completely in the music. It was a big church but an intimate venue. The strings and the vigour required to make them sing was evident to all. Watching the musicians earnestly take their bows, nodding their heads with the power of the music they are producing, their arms moving like pistons - it is like magic, like something is being conjured before you, especially in the rising harmonies and the synchronicity of the different strands of the melody melding and bobbing and soothing. And the energy! The shift from slow and trilling to fast, persistent strands was beyond the words I have to describe! Some of the lead violin's parts were so fast that I could barely believe that someone was able to produce such a sound at such a speed without flaw.

It was a glorious experience.

I have found more and more that classical music is becoming my music of choice. I find it more pure somehow and it calms me. I also think that it hearkens to a time where the Arts were more valued or at least that's the impression I get anyway and I am drawn to that idea. As we live in a world where more and more we can rely on artificial intelligence to help us manufacture the world we want, I find that I look to the craft, to the endeavour, to effort and determination as a contrast to the ease that we all seek from technology. I feel the allure of concentrating on something and taking the time to savour rather than rushing to complete. I also crave the silence to enjoy it as I want to, one dedicated thing at a time.

I want to focus. I want to be uninterrupted. I want to indulge. I want to take time and use it rather than fritter it away and I want to lay that time out in front of me and see it stretch out like a vast, uncharted horizon to fill with tasks and activities. I want to use my hands. I want to use my brain.

I envied the musicians their craft. More than that, I was grateful that they allowed me to soar with them as the music reached into the very core of me and made me feel lighter, lifted, joyous and appreciative. I lead a very privileged life and it warms me that I have freedom to choose to do things like this without limit. This night of music allowed me to revel in the warmth of that freedom.

I'm not a religious person. I don't feel God in the preachings of man at all nor when I enter a church. However, there was a reverence to this evening that permeated me, that touched me. I even found myself crying at one point which shocked me. I had given myself up completely to the music in that instant. I embarrassedly brushed the tear away but felt proud that I could be moved. It was a sign of my humanity, nothing more.

But I felt that if ever God can manifest himself in man (or woman), it is in the beauty that man produces. Not in the spouting of vitriol to suppress or control or vacuous promises or telling you what you should or shouldn't do to live a godly life but in this: a gathering of folk to take small marks on a page and a shaped item made of wood and strings and the acoustics of an old stone building and combine them to create something sublime.

I reckon God approved of his house being used tonight for a concert, not a service. It was just as much a night of worship for all that is good as any mass for the faith holders.

I will end this by urging you to listen to the recording that I've embedded. Take time and marvel at the music. You don't have to be in a church with candles to appreciate it. I'm listening to it as I write this and I'm in a kitchen which desperately needs tidying but it's lifting my spirit regardless.

Summer and Winter are my favourite Vivaldi seasons - which are yours?

Listen to it. This is what being human is all about. It's not about power; control; domination. It's about looking at what we can achieve and what is beautiful about that.

Let's soar, not suppress.

And with that in mind, I'd like to add this screenshot of a comment underneath Vivaldi's recording on YouTube:

Really made me laugh. Thanks, @wuffysgarage!