We slept well and woke up as the sun rose, the air still and clear, promising decent weather. After a leisurely breakfast, we took the Post Bus up into the Toggenenberg Valley to Wildhaus (birth place of Huydrich Zwingli, radical Swiss 16th century church reformer), and on to the village of Alt Sankt Johannes, where a Catholic church with former convent building attached (now turned into apartments) stands next to the Reformed Church, with a beautiful herb garden and quirky water scuplture between them.
From here we took the chair lift half way up the south side face of the mountain to join a walking trail going east along the contours through alpine pasture and forest with views north across the valley of the mountain range crowned by the Säntis peak, with its panoramic restaurant at 3,000m+, topped by a tall TV relay mast. Throughout the afternoon, clouds came and went from the high peaks, making every view different. The reason we'd come up here to walk was not just the scenery however.
The trail is punctuated with a series of artistic installations of devices making different sounds when a user interacts with them. Several use a wide range of cowbells and chimes struck or shaken by different mechanisms. Animal bells in alpine pastureland is one of the most evocative mountain sounds, but here, the listener rings the bells, and they are placed, sometimes very close and other times away at a height for different effect. Our favourite was a see-saw fitted with a xylophone along which a ball rolled as it tipped. It gives a new understanding to the phrase 'playing music'.
There are several other sound making devices as well - including a rotating cylinder covered with metal strings with a movable bow attached, so that it can be made to play notes and overtones at different frequencies simultaneously. An awesome ethereal sound. ('Awesome' is word I now rarely use since hearing it exhausted of meaning in Canadian common parlance.) This installation was housed in part of a working barn. We rode a bicycle tethered to a device whirling a hollow tube around, its pitch varying with the rate of pedalling, and a played with sphere composed of large metal disks like cymbals, that could be struck together or separately to make huge resonant metallic sounds.
There was a suite of hollow metal bowls, each containing a metal ball. When rotated, the balls made the bowls sing. Our friends told us that similar singing bowls are traditionally used to accompany yodellers. Strange to say, but before we reached this place, we came across of group of mainly young women, standing by a drinking trough, singing a folk song. Later we heard them testing the acoustic of the landscape, singing out from a grass promonotory - what else could you expect to find here in the Alps but a group attending a yodelling course!
This sound trail - Klangweg in German, is the creative idea of a local musician. He now has several collaborators making suitable sound installations for this environment and sponsorship to develop a music centre for the Toggental. Apart from birdsong and running water, this is such a quiet environment, far from roads railways, airlanes and factories. This enhances the beauty and pleasure of listening. It makes attentiveness easier. The naturally produced sounds of the installations fit beautifully into the setting. It's inspirational. I wonder if it's unique? It's certainly a special feature of local tourism summer and winter.
From here we took the chair lift half way up the south side face of the mountain to join a walking trail going east along the contours through alpine pasture and forest with views north across the valley of the mountain range crowned by the Säntis peak, with its panoramic restaurant at 3,000m+, topped by a tall TV relay mast. Throughout the afternoon, clouds came and went from the high peaks, making every view different. The reason we'd come up here to walk was not just the scenery however.
The trail is punctuated with a series of artistic installations of devices making different sounds when a user interacts with them. Several use a wide range of cowbells and chimes struck or shaken by different mechanisms. Animal bells in alpine pastureland is one of the most evocative mountain sounds, but here, the listener rings the bells, and they are placed, sometimes very close and other times away at a height for different effect. Our favourite was a see-saw fitted with a xylophone along which a ball rolled as it tipped. It gives a new understanding to the phrase 'playing music'.
There are several other sound making devices as well - including a rotating cylinder covered with metal strings with a movable bow attached, so that it can be made to play notes and overtones at different frequencies simultaneously. An awesome ethereal sound. ('Awesome' is word I now rarely use since hearing it exhausted of meaning in Canadian common parlance.) This installation was housed in part of a working barn. We rode a bicycle tethered to a device whirling a hollow tube around, its pitch varying with the rate of pedalling, and a played with sphere composed of large metal disks like cymbals, that could be struck together or separately to make huge resonant metallic sounds.
There was a suite of hollow metal bowls, each containing a metal ball. When rotated, the balls made the bowls sing. Our friends told us that similar singing bowls are traditionally used to accompany yodellers. Strange to say, but before we reached this place, we came across of group of mainly young women, standing by a drinking trough, singing a folk song. Later we heard them testing the acoustic of the landscape, singing out from a grass promonotory - what else could you expect to find here in the Alps but a group attending a yodelling course!
This sound trail - Klangweg in German, is the creative idea of a local musician. He now has several collaborators making suitable sound installations for this environment and sponsorship to develop a music centre for the Toggental. Apart from birdsong and running water, this is such a quiet environment, far from roads railways, airlanes and factories. This enhances the beauty and pleasure of listening. It makes attentiveness easier. The naturally produced sounds of the installations fit beautifully into the setting. It's inspirational. I wonder if it's unique? It's certainly a special feature of local tourism summer and winter.
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