There were thirty of us at the St John's Eucharist this morning including retired former Chaplain Arthur Siddall, Adele's predecessor as Archdeacon. He came for a week's walking in the mountains with a group of friends who also accompanied him to church. I was told to expect no organist, as the usual one is not available, but we did have an organist, one who's new to Montreux, from Portugal. I think it was his first experience at sight reading English hymns, but he acquitted himself well.
All church mail comes to the Chaplain's mailbox, on the wall outside the front door. I collected two letters in the Saturday delivery and assigned them to the relevant in-tray at the back of the church. To the delight of everyone, one turned out to be confirmation of payment of a grant towards survey fees for the organ restoration project. The other was a formal commitment to awarding a grant of CHF200,000 from the Loterie Suisse Romande for the organ restoration. It's an excellent Victorian instrument, worth preserving. The church has a third of the funds it needs to achieve their goal of CHF750,000. It's worth the effort, as there are still many excellent organists around keen to perform on church organs. Fortunately this is well understood in Switzerland.
There are many people in churches today who prefer electronic organs if not altogether different musical accompaniments to the liturgy. It's all to easy to regard classical wind organs as obstacles to progress in putting on services using more popular and contemporary music. There's no reason why other instruments can't be used, separately from, or together with the organ, though sadly fewer churches seem willing to make an effort to develop their music resources for the liturgy.
I spent many years in different ministries doing just this, leading singing unaccompanied, or with guitar getting people to relax and enjoy singing. I've always been happy to sing a Mass in traditional style, and to sing with a liturgical choir, something I've enjoyed doing here. I value the richness of traditional forms, both musically and textually, and prefer them to popular choruses and hymnody, though in the end, all that counts in any setting, is to enable people to enter more deeply into prayer and worship. The last century has seen remarkable developments in modern choral liturgical music, with a remarkable capacity to evoke transcendence. Much of it is hard to apply in a parish context, but hopefully it will be influential on the worship ethos in the long term. So much of the canon of contemporary worship songs are fine for generating a sense of fellowship, but far less adequate for lifting heart and mind into the sacred space of the Beyond.
When the congregation had departed, the church wardens showed me around the church boiler room where an oil fired plant delivers heat separately to both church and house. As it's becoming cooler at night now, it's good to know how the system works in case adjustments are needed to keep the house comfortably warm. I heard that a plan is underway to provide a communal heating system for public buildings and local residents in Territet. A wood fired industrial plant, will, I believe, circulate hot water for central heating throughout the commune. It's not going to result in money savings, but rather emissions savings, as hundreds of less than efficient individual heating units are taken out of service. It's similar to the arrangement in Baulmes where my friend Valdo was Pastor until he retired a couple of years ago.
Taking of Valdo, after church I drove out to Aigle for a reunion with him and his wife Ann-Lise, in their new apartment with a view of the town's vineyards. It was such a delight to see them again after five years, during which so much has happened, not only retirement, but also the arrival of grandchildren. Their new place is just perfect for the two of them, and they love their new location, surrounded by mountains and vineyard slopes.
They have given up their car, and now enjoy total travel freedom with a CFF abonnement generale, giving them the liberty of travel on trains, buses and lake ferries across Switzerland with only a few exceptions. Aigle has a main line station with frequent main line express and local services. There are also two mountain railways, both of which run, like trams from the station through different streets out into the country, either side of the valley behind the town. One ascends to Les Diablerets and the other to Leysin. It's a train lovers paradise.
We conversed excitedly in French throughout the delicious lunch Ann-Lise prepared, and savoured a bottle of Valeyres Pino-Gamay rouge, from the vignoble of a parishoner back in Baulmes. A real treasure of a wine. Then Valdo took me out to see the old town centre, and we went to the Chateau, set in the midst of vineyards full of grapes nearly ready for harvesting. The vendange will be early this year because of the extra heat of the summer. One winery already has its large grape harvesting buckets out of storage, and parked them outside the property, ready for the weeks of intense work which lie ahead. I'd love to be here and witness that, but alas it's unlikely.
Valdo pointed out how the clos du vignoble (vineyard fields) on the valley floor are surrounded by stone walls, which is rather unusual. It may signify ancient patterns of terroir ownership, but may serve a practical purpose. To call these fields a clos, implies linguistically an enclosure, after all. In many agricultural places hedges and walls have been done away with in the interests of efficiency of operation, and this has not always been beneficial to the environment. Machine harvesting may be quite undesirable in this area, because the quality and variety of the grapes requires a human eye and hand above all.
The Chateau was erected in the 13th-14th century under the Dukes of Haute Savoie. The warlords of the Canton of Berne annexed the area and brought it into the expanding Swiss Confederation in the fifteenth century, the first francophone area to join. It was rebuilt and became a regional seat of government, in the Canton of Berne before being passed on for other use, and eventually made part of the Canton of Vaud. A programme of restoration after neglect led to the place being turned into a Musée du Vin.
It's well stocked with local wine making artifacts to exhibit, and displays engagingly a narrative of the winemaking process, with an introduction to oenological science, tasting and the immense range of labelling artwork involved in marketing the variety of finished products over the past century. This alone was a fascinating treat which alone would reward hours of detailed study, as it says a lot about a culture which is highly aware of the value of its offer to a changing world.
It was a memorable couple of hours and despite the dull weather I harvested some lovely photos of the place and its surroundings. You can find the pictures here.
We returned to the apartment for a cup of tea, and then I left for Territet accompanied by warnings of traffic delays due to an autoroute accident. The ordinary road was unaffected by this however, and I was soon passing the Chateau de Chillon and joining there a slow moving queue of cars entering or passing through Montreux, so the last kilometre took ten minutes, as it normally does in the evening at weekends, with people returning home from the mountains. What a lovely day!
I spent many years in different ministries doing just this, leading singing unaccompanied, or with guitar getting people to relax and enjoy singing. I've always been happy to sing a Mass in traditional style, and to sing with a liturgical choir, something I've enjoyed doing here. I value the richness of traditional forms, both musically and textually, and prefer them to popular choruses and hymnody, though in the end, all that counts in any setting, is to enable people to enter more deeply into prayer and worship. The last century has seen remarkable developments in modern choral liturgical music, with a remarkable capacity to evoke transcendence. Much of it is hard to apply in a parish context, but hopefully it will be influential on the worship ethos in the long term. So much of the canon of contemporary worship songs are fine for generating a sense of fellowship, but far less adequate for lifting heart and mind into the sacred space of the Beyond.
When the congregation had departed, the church wardens showed me around the church boiler room where an oil fired plant delivers heat separately to both church and house. As it's becoming cooler at night now, it's good to know how the system works in case adjustments are needed to keep the house comfortably warm. I heard that a plan is underway to provide a communal heating system for public buildings and local residents in Territet. A wood fired industrial plant, will, I believe, circulate hot water for central heating throughout the commune. It's not going to result in money savings, but rather emissions savings, as hundreds of less than efficient individual heating units are taken out of service. It's similar to the arrangement in Baulmes where my friend Valdo was Pastor until he retired a couple of years ago.
Taking of Valdo, after church I drove out to Aigle for a reunion with him and his wife Ann-Lise, in their new apartment with a view of the town's vineyards. It was such a delight to see them again after five years, during which so much has happened, not only retirement, but also the arrival of grandchildren. Their new place is just perfect for the two of them, and they love their new location, surrounded by mountains and vineyard slopes.
They have given up their car, and now enjoy total travel freedom with a CFF abonnement generale, giving them the liberty of travel on trains, buses and lake ferries across Switzerland with only a few exceptions. Aigle has a main line station with frequent main line express and local services. There are also two mountain railways, both of which run, like trams from the station through different streets out into the country, either side of the valley behind the town. One ascends to Les Diablerets and the other to Leysin. It's a train lovers paradise.
We conversed excitedly in French throughout the delicious lunch Ann-Lise prepared, and savoured a bottle of Valeyres Pino-Gamay rouge, from the vignoble of a parishoner back in Baulmes. A real treasure of a wine. Then Valdo took me out to see the old town centre, and we went to the Chateau, set in the midst of vineyards full of grapes nearly ready for harvesting. The vendange will be early this year because of the extra heat of the summer. One winery already has its large grape harvesting buckets out of storage, and parked them outside the property, ready for the weeks of intense work which lie ahead. I'd love to be here and witness that, but alas it's unlikely.
Valdo pointed out how the clos du vignoble (vineyard fields) on the valley floor are surrounded by stone walls, which is rather unusual. It may signify ancient patterns of terroir ownership, but may serve a practical purpose. To call these fields a clos, implies linguistically an enclosure, after all. In many agricultural places hedges and walls have been done away with in the interests of efficiency of operation, and this has not always been beneficial to the environment. Machine harvesting may be quite undesirable in this area, because the quality and variety of the grapes requires a human eye and hand above all.
The Chateau was erected in the 13th-14th century under the Dukes of Haute Savoie. The warlords of the Canton of Berne annexed the area and brought it into the expanding Swiss Confederation in the fifteenth century, the first francophone area to join. It was rebuilt and became a regional seat of government, in the Canton of Berne before being passed on for other use, and eventually made part of the Canton of Vaud. A programme of restoration after neglect led to the place being turned into a Musée du Vin.
It's well stocked with local wine making artifacts to exhibit, and displays engagingly a narrative of the winemaking process, with an introduction to oenological science, tasting and the immense range of labelling artwork involved in marketing the variety of finished products over the past century. This alone was a fascinating treat which alone would reward hours of detailed study, as it says a lot about a culture which is highly aware of the value of its offer to a changing world.
It was a memorable couple of hours and despite the dull weather I harvested some lovely photos of the place and its surroundings. You can find the pictures here.
We returned to the apartment for a cup of tea, and then I left for Territet accompanied by warnings of traffic delays due to an autoroute accident. The ordinary road was unaffected by this however, and I was soon passing the Chateau de Chillon and joining there a slow moving queue of cars entering or passing through Montreux, so the last kilometre took ten minutes, as it normally does in the evening at weekends, with people returning home from the mountains. What a lovely day!
Great meeting, more info http://www.aigle-leysin-lesmosses.ch/en/Z6188
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