The Bike in the Piazza: Venice

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Scott Smoot on a bike in Venice, virtually

Since November 8, I've biked 130 miles on trails around Atlanta. On the map of my virtual tour of the world, that distance takes me from Milano to 38 miles west of Venice. With inclement biking weather, I've completed the remaining 38 miles swimming at the West Cobb County Aquatic Center. Let's pretend that I swam the canals.

In the photo, I'm in St. Mark's Square, known to locals as Piazza San Marco. Glass barriers have kept out most of the flood waters. At the far end of the square stands the basilica of San Marco, the white building topped by crosses and cupolas.

When Mom and Dad took me along for a visit to Italy in January 1991, demonstrators protested in the piazza. Bombing had just begun in the first Gulf War. Something else that had just begun was CNN, which we could view each night in our hotel.

My strongest emotional connection to this place, however, is music for worship in the basilica composed in 1610 by Claudio Monteverdi, a local musician. Because choirs of singers and instruments at San Marco faced each other in balconies across the nave, Monteverdi often wrote antiphonal pieces for one side to echo the other.

I was still new to the Episcopal Church when a wonderful 2-LP recording of his Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin) came out around 1984. Director Andrew Parrott restored the chanting of the worship service with Monteverdi's music. The Episcopal liturgy helped me to appreciate this Catholic liturgy. I played the album during Saturday afternoons, which I had made my Sabbath (Sundays I was always busy with choir and preparations for class Monday).

Something else I love about the Vespers is Monteverdi's eclectic mix of styles. Plainchant calls us to worship; then comes a grand brass fanfare (from THE first opera, his Orfeo) with chorus singing homophonically -- a first, when composers thought in terms of counterpoint, not chords. Some of it is dance music; "Surge Amica" from the Song of Solomon is a love song by soloist with lute. The mix of styles appealed to me, much the same way that Leonard Bernstein's Mass (11/2013) had done. I emulated both when I studied composition with Dr. James Sclater (11/2015) beginning in 1987.

My title for this blogpost alludes to a wonderful musical by Adam Guettel which I write about in A Little "Light" Music (01/2008).

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire bike tour from the start.