“The Venetian concert doesn’t start for another hour but there’s a lecture down the hall and to the right, thank you for coming.”

“Thanks, I can’t wait to see what its like.”  Hearing the word lecture makes me cringe, but why not explore a little, it might not be too bad. Onward we head through a hall and on the right is a wall of scarlet-red, velvet-covered chairs, on the left we peer through the stone pillars at a moderate size choir of men and women practicing for the performance. Their voices are like honey to my ears the layers of the flawless basses, baritones, tenors, altos, and sopranos entering and exiting the musical entourage creates a beautiful exhilarating sound to both mind and spirit. There is a sense of the supernatural, while bright childhood memories resurface, and peace consumes my soul.

Jacqueline and I walk into the lecture room and notice that it looks more like a renascence lounge filled with intricately detailed furniture, two hand-carved conference tables and toward the back is a coffee table with inlaid wood surrounded by two white plush couches. With such a small comfortable setting, I begin to wonder if this will be more of a discussion rather than a lecture. As the people accumulate, a number of elaborately carved chairs begin to migrate around the coffee table; nothing in this church seems to be substandard in art or quality. A plump British man with a short pointed nose, dimpled checks, and excitable brown eyes to match his short dark hair enters the room. A steady silence sweeps the room as he sits and begins to speak with a light British accent,

“Hello I am Michael Gowing and I am the music director of VOX. I think you will find that the music is very accurate and true toward the original performances given in San Marco, and I believe you should know that this music is written for a very exclusive listening audience because of its extreme difficulty to sing and the extent to which it will be sung. When you go back to the early 1400’s all the way through to the late 1600’s you find many great artists emerging in synchronized timing and some of the greatest religious vocal music was produced. You will notice that in the 1400’s music was much slower to be produced; this was an unfortunate result of the poor music printing system. You had to have every note individually printed and the cost was far greater because of its skillful requirements. In the mid-fifteen hundreds though, music seemingly began to explode because of the new music printing ability to create a sheet of music with only one impression. Another thing you will notice in earlier music is that there is a lot of transcriptions and polyphonic borrowing, at this point it was considered honorable to have your music adapted by another artist. The way an artist used polyphonic borrowing was by keeping most of the melodic line and reworking the layers to have his own fingerprint added to the music. If you are wondering what caused us to get to this point of complete originality and copyright protection I believe it is because of Beethoven, he became known for his vast number of original works and introduced it on a completely new level of complexity. After people realized the potential in being original, they sized it and have lead to the current restriction on sharing music amongst artists.” Michael now asks us if we have any questions and we begin to discuss the histories of renascence music and he stars to give life stories from Venice and San Marco, Italy. As the discussion closes, Jacqueline stands up and we head toward the sanctuary prepared historically, mentally, and emotionally.

We both notice the amazing acoustic architecture of the church allowing a much richer sound without microphones and speakers. As the lights dim and the choir begins to sing my surroundings fade away providing only as external mental stimuli for the beautiful world taking flight inside my imagination. During this moment in time, nothing matters except for the raging thoughts and imagery leading from one memory and dream to the next. Something inside of me feels as if it has been found and reconnected, it seems like the memories of even my ancient ancestors are passing through my mind as my eyes begin to water with happiness now assured that I am in the presence of God.