Heavens above... Holy Trinity church at Blythburgh, Suffolk
Tim Ashley wrote on the blog at the beginning of this week about the strange trickiness of concerts - that even the most miraculous of performances can be undone by the sheer mundaneness of many purpose-built venues. I was at the concert he was talking about, also attempting to crash through the Matthew Passion's multiple chorales (quite approximately in my case, because by the time I arrived they'd long since run out of hymn sheets). And, much as it feels wrong to admit that the building held things back, I think I agree with him. Despite some wonderful singing, it did.
But if venues can limit music, they can also exalt it. Luckily I'm far removed from the airport-style atmosphere of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I'm up in Aldeburgh in Suffolk for the Easter festival, a kind of boutique warm-up to the main festivities in June. Appropriately for the season, the three main events are solidly religious: a selection of German passiontide music today, Bach's St John Passion this evening (one Passion is never enough, really, is it?) and, tomorrow night, a tour through some of the most spine-tingling music from the glory days of the Sistine Chapel. Heaven-sent stuff, whatever one happens to believe in.
This afternoon's concert took place in the nearby Holy Trinity, Blythburgh - one of the perfect parish churches around here that billow up from the landscape like ships in full sail. Also, it turns out, a pitch-perfect musical venue, not simply because of the way it sounds but because of the way it looks. It's difficult to talk about English churches without feeling like you're turning into a shabbier version of John Betjeman, but this one deserves an attempt. The paint has long since faded from the wood, most of the stained glass has gone, but what's left is plain, unadorned beauty, a 15th-century study in stone, space and light.
Would the musical experience have been the same in a modern concert hall? Perhaps. But I can't think of many venues where the audience is watched over by a flock of late medieval angels suspended from the rafters. Nor can I think of many places where, as the last sighs of Arvo Pärt's Stabat Mater sank into the earth, there followed not just the silence of 400 people holding their breath but a glorious peal of birdsong.
