18 May 2006

Rouen jour 2

We arrived bright and early in the morning at the Église Abbatiale Saint Ouen to play its magnificent 4-manual Cavaillé-Coll organ (1890) and chuckled at the "orgue et trompette" concert flyers slapped across the exterior restoration scaffolds. Our payback came abruptly when little old Madame Marie-André Morrisset-Balier informed us that we could not play after all due to an "unexpected" (planned) event in the church. She and her trumpeter, however, would perform for us.

Fortunately Joris talked her into a little playing time, and Johan opened with Franck's tumultuous Chorale No. 2, which truly demonstrated the power of that instrument to blow us all away.

"Ça manque un peu de sérénité," was Madame's flabbergasting response.

Fortunately Joris also had the keys to the chapel of the Hôpital, which in itself seemed a medieval village dotted incongruously with 70's and sleek modern buildings. I had never seen an organ with a pedalboard quite so much like a computer keyboard, but Nicolas de Grigny's Livre d'Orgue came miraculously to life in Joris' hands, and the acoustics were perfectly balanced. Wannes went wild and played well past lunchtime while Iris and I wandered contemplatively and hungrily about. Coming upon a dusty latched door, I undid the lock and found myself midway up a forgotten staircase. Pieces of the ceiling lay on the steps near the top, and at the end of the stairs I came to a dark room filled with shadows and debris, but alas, I had no flashlight.

Everything in the center of Rouen seems to be crumbling and neglected. It makes for excellent medieval spelunking photography. (My specializations seem to be getting increasingly narrow...)

After a lunch for which I barely managed to find a remotely vegetarian platter, we came to the peculiarly-named Église St. Thomas de Cantorbéry (why must the French insist on inventing their own spellings?) in Mont-Saint-Aignan to play its restored mean-tone Renaissance organ. I squeezed in a lot of campanology reading and found an old donation slot hidden behind the 'new' organ staircase. It was a lovely instrument, but hearing bright reeds for several hours left my ears dissatisfied. Surely early composers wrote for softer stops!

That night we had dinner in a festive turquoise and orange restaurant hung with fishing nets and new-age artwork and staffed by a pretty blonde in patterned tights and neon pink sneakers. As we impatiently awaited food or bread or anything to sustain us, Joris recounted Madame's response to his last concert there: Why did you play so fast?

"Why did you listen so slow?" was Gary's suggested reply. Apparently Duruflé got miffed after a concert at a music critic who commented that one of the pieces was nice but too long. "No," he replied, looking down at the man, "You're too short."

I ordered the seafood salad and was confronted with quite possibly the largest salad I had ever seen in my life -- et en France! Unwisely, I partook of half a glass of the white wine that was going around and found myself swaying side to side with eyes closed after dinner. The friendly waitress asked if I wanted to take a nap in the back room. Do they really have a cot for such purposes?!

There was a little emergency when we returned to our extravagantly manned Etap Hotel Rouen centre Rive Gauche. The check-in machine refused to give us the room reserved for the ladies. Wannes offered to "sacrifice" himself by giving us his single room, but the question of what had happened to our belongings still remained. Had they checked the room out to another customer?

Finally Marie-Noëlle had had enough and hit the emergency call button. Sure enough, it called a hotel employee and not the fire department, and we got a code with which to reserve the room another night. When we finally went in and put down our things, Iris and Marie-Noëlle rushed out laughing tensely for a smoke.

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