Katwijk; Organ recital

On Friday night I went to an organ recital in Katwijk. When I entered the church – and I was rather late – the organist was still tuning the pipes. This is most unusual. However, organ pipes, and especially the reeds, are very sensitive to weather changes and sudden changes in temperature. Friday was a peculiar day. It was very hot in the morning, around 30 degrees centigrade, no wind, sun, in fact summer! Around 3 o'clock in the afternoon the weather changed dramatically. It started raining and the temperature dropped 10-14 degrees in two hours time. So very quickly the organ was totally out of tune. As the music required the use of reeds, the recital could not start till the reeds had been tuned! This is Holland for you!

         The church boasts a big pipe organ, suitable for French organ music of composers such as Pierne, Vierne (who incidentally died at the console of the organ of the Notre Dame and fell off the bench at the end of an organ recital), Saint-Saëns, Widor. Most of those composers cum organists lived in Paris and wrote their compositions for the big churches there, the Notre Dame, the St. Sulpice, the Saint Clotilde, the Madeleine. They have the acoustics needed for those compositions, which often require the plenum, the full organ stops. The organ in Katwijk, which has all the required stops for those French organ compositions, is far too big for the Nieuwe Kerk which it was built for. The church, built as a protestant church, is almost a square, like a hall. It hasn't got a nave, choir and aisles, nor a place for an altar. The performing organist, Ben van Oosten, chose an exclusively French programme:

Louis Marchand (1669-1732),
Grand dialogue in C major from Troisième Livre d'Orgue (1696)

Louis Vierne (1870-1937),
Fifth Symphony in a minor, opus 47 (1923/24) (five movements)

        

Ben Oosten is very well-known, and although he tried to adapt his choice of stops to the available space, the sound seemed to burst through the walls and blow up the roof. I have heard such music in the dark and cavernous St. Sulpice in Paris, and there it sounded wonderful as the pillars, the vaults and the space in general soaked up the sound and gave it a mysterious quality. Not so in Katwijk! I thought it would burst my ear drums. But there is a snag. The loss of hearing in one of my ears due to a virus infection, has left me virtually with mono sound. I still hear the very high and the very low bass sounds, but the mid-register has gone. This means that I have a loss of depth. You could compare it to the inability to see depth if one is blind in one eye. Just after I partially lost my hearing, I could only listen to soft and very melodious music. Loud music was just noise, and all the pleasure had gone out of it. It couldn't move me. Gradually this has improved a bit. Interestingly the other day I reread  Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sachs. He describes several case of musicians and music lovers, who lost hearing in one ear. They were absolutely shattered and appalled by the effect this had on their enjoyment of music. Composers doubted if they would ever be able again to compose anything. Conductors doubted if they could hear the subtleties they are supposed to hear and so might no longer be able to do their job properly. It generally is a loss which fills people who are affected with sadness and sometimes despair. This was quite a consolation to me. I thought I had just imagined it. Another phenomenon is that it is no longer possible to hear from which direction the sound comes. So having just one functioning ear has many implications. The latter was also noted by Oliver Sachs as a big handicap. However, the brain is amazing, for in most cases the brain compensates gradually for the disfunctional ear and somehow or other brings back this enjoyment of music and fills in the scale of sounds one has lost. As far as the ability to judge the direction the sound comes from, that can't be repaired. However, turning one's head quickly around seems to help and people seem to do this almost automatically.

         Sachs also has very interesting things to say about perfect pitch. Apparently a very high percentage of people born with poor vision or born blind, seems to have perfect pitch. Unfortunately I am not one of them, although I have always compensated my poor eyesight with my sharp ears! It was quite a shock to lose part of my hearing as well, especially as music and singing forms an important part of my life.