Europe In These Times: A Church of Clouds
Europe In These Times is a series of posts by the American Catholic freelance writer Kevin Duffy, detailing his encounters—sometimes sought out, other times not—with the rich religious heritage of the European continent.
Salzburg, Austria, 11 June 2021
If only for the change in temperature, it was refreshing to walk into the Kollegienkirche on that June day in Salzburg. While the coolness was the first thing to be noticed, though, one was immediately thereafter struck by the all-encompassing whiteness of the interior, the emptiness of the place (not a pew or chair in sight in a church of cathedral-like proportions), the clouds and angels emerging—all in white like the rest of the space—from the walls and ceiling of the apse enclosing the sanctuary and altarpiece, and the music, slow and soaring and Latin, more voices than one could count in all vocal ranges, lifting towards those clouds at the far end from the entry.
My wife, the more artistically inclined partner in our marriage, began to cry a little, as she does occasionally when overwhelmed by beauty, and we walked slowly forward toward the circle of speakers from which the music emanated. Forty in all, the speakers each corresponded to a voice contributing to the composition, so that to walk around the inside of their circular arrangement was to experience a series of different sound combinations. Situated under the dome of main vault, the positioning of the speaker circle allowed one to look out to all sides, but also up toward the light coming in through the windows high above. By the church’s own description, “The Kollegienkirche is consecrated to Mary as the Immaculate Conception….Its center is exactly under the dome, where heaven and earth connect, the vertical and horizontal energy of the room. Whoever stands there can feel it”—an assertion that, perhaps true on any day, was made all the more so by the music that literally surrounded us.
That musical arrangement—in terms of the placement of the speakers in this way—was an art installation titled “The Forty Part Motet”, a work of Canadian artist Janet Cardiff that has been displayed all over the world. The song itself was entitled Spem in Alium (“Hope in Another”), the work of sixteenth century English composer Thomas Tallis, who remained both a Catholic and a musician of the royal court from the reign of Henry VIII to that of Elizabeth I. It appeared in the Kollegienkirche—as the name implies, the church of the University of Salzburg—throughout June, making our last-minute decision to take a train from our home in Stuttgart to spend that particular weekend in the city a fortuitous one.
Art plays on memory in its own way, at its best leaving one with a question, or a thought that cannot be completed, that is failed by words; and so it was with this experience, this day, this lingering sentiment now (and perhaps for a long time) occupying my consciousness: the musical work of a sixteenth century English composer, sung in Latin, arranged by a Canadian artist and placed in the cool white space of an Austrian house of worship, being heard by an itinerant American—art and faith crossing boundaries and centuries; forty parts coming together to make one beautiful song—one beautiful experience—in a church of clouds. A most Catholic of convergences: the many particulars participating in the one universal, an ever-present beauty made manifest by the work of so many human hands.
