Day #4: Gaming, Organ News!

Today was definitely one of my favorite days so far, despite the rain, and yes, it does have something to do with music. ;-) We started with another Orientation meeting about the school-sponsored trips around Europe, then we got our books and our laundry baskets. Today's highlight was a little tour of the city of Gaming, thus today I learned the locations of the illustrious grocery store, Spar (pronounced Shpar in German), the local pub, Urs, the ever so important ATM machines, and Book Mountain. During the tour I walked with a girl named Justina, an LCI student from Lithuania who is studying English and Theology at the Kartause. She will be in my Art Appreciation and my Christian Marriage classes. She was super nice and her English was excellent! The city itself is very cute! There's a little stream that runs next to the shops.
The highlight of the tour was Mass at the church in Gaming. The church is very, very old, older than the Kartause (which was built in the 1300s, to give you an idea). I didn't get to look around at the actual artwork much yet, or take many pictures, so hopefully those will follow soon.  After Mass we met the parish priest, Father Franz, a cute little German man, who was gracious enough to permit us to practice on the organ!!!! It's a small yet beautiful instrument, and the pitch isn't that off! It's better than the piano in the St. Francis Hall or the organ in the Maria Thron! Annie and I went up to look at it and try it out. The stops are very old, of course, but you had to pull them out and they were little blocks of wood with knobs on the end. You could hear the stops working behind you in the wind chests! The pedal board goes from E2 to A3 (I think, don't quote me on that though), which was better than I had hoped. The keys are harder to play, but I expected that. It was so wonderful to be able to play it though! Annie and I are hoping to go down and practice a lot, but we'll see how it goes with classes and such. We were elated though: we got to play on an organ that Mozart played on!!! How cool is that?!
Classes start tomorrow: Christian Marriage at 8:40 with Dr. Asci, followed by Foundations of Ethics with a new professor they brought in. We also have Mass with the bishop tomorrow! Sister Joan Paul asked me to play the final hymn on the organ in the Kartause, as they've never had an organist here! Wish me luck and say a prayer for me! Pictures will soon follow!

Day #3: The Kartause

This afternoon we went on a tour of the Kartause (which actually means Charter House, fyi). We started the day off with an Orientation meeting, meeting some of the staff, and a tour of the dorms and the classrooms. The tour was given by my Art Appreciation professor, Prof. Healy. We began in the chapel titled Maria Thron (pronounced “Maria Trone”) which means Maria Throne. This is demonstrated particularly in a statue within the sanctuary itself which depicts Mary with the Child Jesus in her lap. God is enthroned in her lap. Also, though, Mary is enthroned in heaven as Queen. The statue is a copy of an original statue at the most famous Marian Shrine in Austria, Mariazell, which I may be visiting later in the semester. 

The original ceiling was a Gothic ceiling built in the 1400s and was fifteen feet higher than the ceiling in the Maria Thron now. The Gothic style was focused on lifting the eyes and the mind towards heaven, so the church is in fact three times as high as it is wide. The second ceiling was built later as the Carthusian monks were claiming that the draft was making them sick because of the cold. 

The dome over the sanctuary of the Kartause was from the Renaissance Period, but it is only apparent on the interior of the chapel : outside it is  a Gothic steeple. The dome was built because it is circle and a circle was representative of heaven, and it is in the sanctuary that heaven touches earth during the divine liturgy. 

In the early 1700s, the paintings on the ceiling were done of the Carthusian founder, St. Bruno. The Carthusians had inhabited the monastery since the 1300s, but they were forced to leave when Emperor Joseph II closed the Kartause in 1782. The emperor closed down any order that he did not believe was doing anything actively useful for society, such as teaching. The Carthusians are a very contemplative order, thus they were closed. The Kartause thus fell into disrepair and was later desecrated when the Russians came to the city and used it as their stable.

In 1983 the architect Hildebrand bought the Kartuase and began renovating it. He later invited the Franciscan University of Steubenville to found a study abroad program here.

We also saw the Baroque library, which had lots of lovely paintings on the ceiling. The Carthusian monks only slept for 3-hour periods and would get up in the middle of the night for prayer, so outside one of the windows of the library we could see, instead of a sun dial, a MOON dial. You learn something new every day! 

A photo of the ceiling from the Baroque library. The central dome was dedicated to the liberal arts. The group in the center is a group of musicians (Brian called them Baroque music ministry, LOL).

The moon dial

We got to go up above the ceiling to see the original ceiling, the beams and the arches. There were two levels: the topmost level was very very dark, while the other was lit by windows and you could see the decorated original painted ceiling. They let us go around the beams to see through the windows to the outside. I have never been so scared in my whole life! You had to cling to the walls as you scooted around the ledge (and I mean a small ledge) until you reached a small passageway between the windows and walls looking outside and the windows and walls looking inside. There was graffiti from the Russians all over the walls of this passageway - they said the Russians came up here and wrote their names because it was considered a feat to get to this place. I could see why! Fortunately Craig, one of the RAs, was around for me to hold onto when it was a little too much, although I think sometimes Craig was just as scared as I was. 

The top most level of the ceiling

The lower of the roof, where we were walking across the actual ceiling, and the ledge we had to climb across to get to the  tower. SCARY! You can see the guy in the black sweater climbing into the cranny between the outer and the inner wall. The cranny goes all the way around the tower to the other side where you have to creep across the ledge again to get back.

A photo shot from the window inside the layer. 

A Russian autograph in the tower wall.

The next stop was the museum, which contained a few altars from the original church. There was no pictures of the original organ though. :-( The original sanctuary was beautiful though, very dark and ornate compared to the original! They also showed us the two side chapels. One of them was more modern, finished in 2009, while the one above it was much older, but both were very simple. 

The final part of the tour was the Byzantine chapel on campus. This was my favorite part of the tour, I think. The written icons were incredibly beautiful, and the way they made the space seem symmetrical and balanced despite the dissimilarities and the imperfections of the room itself was a great accomplishment! The imagery all over the chapel was wonderful, as well. I think I might come there to pray a lot during the semester! 

I ate dinner with one of the LCI students (people from foreign countries who come here to study Catholicism and learn English). He was an older priest by the name of Father Andrej from Slovakia who was working in Siberia until he had a heart attack. Then his boss gave him a year off to go study and such. He was very sweet, and wanted to know about my family and their names and such. His mother was named Emily! 

We had our organ auditions tonight! They went well, but the little electric organ in the choir loft is also tuned differently, so that’ll be an adjustment, esp. for the choir. The space is magnificent, but we're really going to have to be careful to make sure our vowels are very good, otherwise we'll go flat very quickly. :-P Well, people say that Austria is full of new challenges, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find them even in the choir loft! Sister also said we could use the electric keyboard in her office for practicing. Yay for middle C, right where it should be!

I guess we’ll manage somehow. Practicing in Gaming is also in the works. I met with the go-between between the Kartause and the Gaming parish church and she said we would need to speak with Father Franz. Perhaps we will meet with him tomorrow when we take the tour of Gaming. Mass tomorrow will also be in the Gaming parish church. Looking forward to seeing that organ!