July 2 – Mainz, GerTany. Ok, today we try again. Our first stop was St. Peter's Church. What, another church, you say? Sorry, I can't get enough of them. They are so different and sometimes you get a pleasant surprise, like we did here at St. Peter's. As we walked inside I saw a large group of young people standing in the front of the sanctuary. At first I thought it was a student group posing for a picture. But then they started singing. Awesome!! Then the orchestra of young people that I hadn't seen seated on the floor in front of the singers started playing. Fantastic!! It was the chamber choir and orchestra made up from the students at the Mariaward Girl's School and the Willigis Episcopal Gymnasium (High School). They are truly first rate.
The conductor was working on phrasing with the choir and the orchestra. First the choir would sing a section until they got it right. Then the orchestra would play that same section until he got what he wanted. At that point the two would be put together until they were synchronized the way he wanted. He would then give them a little speech, in German of course and they would sing and play the section one last time. The acoustics of the church are great and the sound they produced was truly extraordinary. They also had some older soloists that sang certain portions. It was a joy to sit and listen to these young students sing and play. I could have stayed until rehearsal was over but touring pressure was building up.
They are performing Puccini's Messa de Gloria. He composed this mass as his graduation exercise and it was first performed in 1880. There's a great recording of it with José Carreras as the tenor. There are exerpts from it on YouTube if you want to hear some. This is the one I like best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2zUm9MAqKw
As for the church itself, Saint Peter's is another Rococo structure but not as ornate as the Augustine Church. Still lots of gold and white this time with dark blue and rose. Unlike Augustine, which was largely undamaged by WWII, Peter's suffered significant damage. All the frescos had to be redone except a small one in the entry.
From St. Peter's we headed toward the Gutenberg only to run into yet another, bet you thought I was going to say church. You'd be wrong but not by much. We passed by Joseph's Chapel. It was warm and we'd been walking a while so we ducked in to see it. It's a very small octagon shaped structure that's one story tall, although it is a tall story. Inside there's very little decoration. There's a nice carved altar with the crucifixion scene in the center and statues of four saints, two on either side. There are modern paintings of the four evangelists, two on each side of the entry. Once again each identifiable by the symbol included in the painting. The paintings are so stylized that they almost appear to be icons, but it's a Roman Catholic chapel so it's just that they're icon-like.
Next we ran into the Saint Quintin Church. It had to be completely rebuilt after WWII and it's quite a stark place inside and out. The chalk inscription from Three Kings Day or Epiphany was still on the door, 20*C+M+B*13. The digits are the year separated by the initials of the Three Kings, Magi if you like, who visited Jesus after following his star. Can you name them? Don't worry if you can't. They aren't named in the Bible and the names we use are just traditional, Melchior, a Persian scholar; Caspar, an Indian scholar and Balthazar an Arabian scholar. The ethnicities of the three are definitely imaginary. This is a big holiday in Germany, Poland, Austria and Spain as well as some other parts of Europe. Inside the only truly ornate thing was the pulpit, dark wood, decorated in gold and adorned with pure white sculptures of the evangelists and angels. Truly a nice object.
From there it was back to the market square. This time it was full of vendors, mostly fruit and vegetables. It was a colorful scene as we headed across the square to the Gutenberg Museum. This is a fantastic place. It shows the changes in manuscript production from hand lettering, to wood cuts, to intaglio and etching and then to printing with moveable type. They have examples of all types of printing, equipment and developments throughout the years. They have a special room that's actually a vault and the most valuable books are in there. Several of the first Gutenberg Bibles, plus a few hand written Bibles from the same timeframe. It's fantastic. No photos allowed so you'll have to go yourself to see it. Actually there are more Gutenberg Bibles in the USA than here in Europe. They're pretty much geographically distributed so no matter where you live there's one pretty close, New York, California, Texas and Washington DC all have at least one.
Right on the square outside the museum there's a very colorful flower garden and the large bench in the courtyard is a carving of a book. I loved the place.
When we left the museum the market had been dismantled and the city had two small street sweepers doing circles around the square to clean up. Very efficient. A great day for me because I love books. Diana seemed to like the museum as much as I did.
We spent a lot of time in the museum and it was a pleasant walk out of Old Town to a place where we could catch the bus back to the hotel. Then we have to prepare for our train trip tomorrow.
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