In Piccadilly in the West end of London
there sits a church called St James and most Mondays they hold free lunchtime
concerts. I went yesterday and marveled at the coming together of so many
cultural wonders.
The church itself was built under the direction of one of England’s most
celebrated architects Sir Christopher Wren, who also built St Paul’s Cathedral.
It was built in 1684 in the Renaissance Baroque style, using classical
proportions and motifs, the interior unlike the older gothic is open and
uncluttered anticipating the style of the enlightenment. Adorning the altar is
the most wonderful, exuberant carving of fruit and flowers by the greatest name
in woodcarving Grinling Gibbons.
There was a grand piano in the transept,
in front of the pews, a beautiful, no expense spared piano, a black piano with
a burr walnut interior. The pianist, a man at the height of the mastery of his instrument,
having played at the Albert Hall publicly at the tender age of ten. He
communicated his art with unerring confidence and feeling, playing the music
composed by perhaps the greatest of all European musical talents, JS Bach and
then followed by preludes and fugues written by Clara Schuman and then Robert
Schuman’s Fantasy in C.
How sublime this amalgam! It was not made
by decree of any god nor chance but by pulling together these pinnacles of
artistic achievement of architecture,
woodcarving, piano making, musical composition and the artistry of the
performer. This little slice of heaven was made by human endeavour and will
outlast those grubby dreams of religious cults and their false promises.
It is only experiences like this which
could give substance to the dreamer’s lies of a perfect heaven. I’ll settle for
the reality now and forego the dream.
