Organ Concert In A Medieval Church

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(Edited)

Last night I had the occasion and the pleasure to participate in an organ concert, organized in a medieval church. I must admit, it feels like I'm the luckiest person on earth as my dream came true. I had my eye on a concert like this for a long time, but somehow I've never been at the right place at the right time. This year I had the pleasure to enjoy two concerts in medieval churches, one of which was this extraordinary organ concert.

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The organ for me is the God of all instruments and not only because of the size and the construction of the instrument, but because of what this amazing creature can do, but before I go into more details, let's see where the concert took place.

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The Lutheran Church of Reghin

The concert took place in the Lutheran Church of Reghin, which is a historical building and a historical piece of the city.

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The Reghin Lutheran church is a Lutheran church located at 1 Călărașilor Street in Reghin, itself situated in Mureș County, in the Transylvania region of Romania. The church was built by the ethnic German Transylvanian Saxon community at a time when the area belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. Initially Roman Catholic, it became Lutheran following the Reformation.

The oldest building in the city, it was completed in 1330, as attested by a stone inscription in Latin, the earliest such carving on a medieval Transylvanian church. Valuable architectural elements include a Gothic window frame from 1400 decorated with human figures; corbels unique to the region that describe a treasure hidden inside; and the city’s first coat of arms, inscribed O.P.R. (Oppidum Privilegiatum Regun), confirming its privilege to hold fairs. The tower, 47 meters high and flanked by four smaller towers, attests Reghin’s power to pass judgment. source

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Last year I had the pleasure to visit the church and also to take photographs. You can read my post here.

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This year I only took a few photos of the exterior of the church, to show you how amazing the building is.

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I was standing at the entrance and looking at this arched part, thinking that is similar to the Notre-Dame de Paris but checking it out, there's very little similarity.

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The windows are something to specially pay attention to. These church windows are usually painted glass, some have real artworks painted on them, but not these ones.

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This is the side entrance...

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... and the lovely door.

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I did one year of Latin in school, because it was mandatory. We had some basic knowledge, of which most of it is long forgotten. However, the numbers are not. I took this photo with the purpose of teasing you. There's a number at the bottom, the year in which this stone plate was carved. Let's see how many of you know what year was that :)

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And finally one of the lovely windows. As I said before, it's not the usual window you see everywhere and maybe that's why I like it, It's more simple, more elegant.

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Another interesting thing is this sundial, that was created in 1630. There are only a few left in Transylvania, so this is valuable. However, the sundial is not working properly as the time when I took the photo was 9:30 am.

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The Concert

The reason I wanted to attend this concert was because it was an organ concert. Unfortunately there are not many concert halls in Romania, I mean proper concert halls and even less have a proper organ. This is why medieval churches are important and many are hosting concerts during summer. The acoustic of these churches is absolutely fantastic, therefore are perfect for concerts.

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I'm not sure if photographing is allowed, but as we entered, I snapped a few photos quickly. Last year we were the only two visitors and when i asked about it, the woman said she did not see anything :)

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And here's the beautiful beast! The organ, an instrument that can't be compared to any other instrument.

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Basically these are just the pipes as the organ itself was up in the first floor, where we were not allowed.

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Yesterday we had the pleasure the listen to Peter Kleinert's organ performance, a cantor and an organ artist from Germany (in the middle on the photo above).

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The entrance was free and this was the program of the concert.

Before the concert started, the maestro addressed the audience, explained what he's going to play and also warned us about the organ having a couple of faulty key, due to which he almost dropped the third piece, but then decided it to keep it.

This was kind of funny as the majority, if not all the audience had no musical studies and I doubt anyone could tell in the end, which were those few notes that sounded funny. I tried to figure out, but obviously couldn't.

So what was the concert like? For me it was an hour of traveling to another world, to another dimension through the sound of music. There were moments, when I thought those pipes will blow the roof off, that's how powerful the sound was, which makes me love this instrument.

Each musical piece had a different intensity. I'm really sorry for not having the proper vocabulary to explain this, but I'm trying. So there were louder pieces, then more quiet ones.

While I was listening to the sound of the organ, I had the impression that a whole orchestra is playing for us, although it was one single person.

Luckily, we live in the 21st century and we have smart devices, so I audio recorded the whole performance and can listen to it whenever I want. I'm not sure if I can upload it to Hive, or if I'm allowed, but at leas I have it. Unfortunately not many are fan of this genre of music though.

There's another organ concert in another medieval church that I have my eye on, let's see if i can attend as I'd love to.

This is the second Transylvanian church I'm pinning to the map of Pinmapple for musical reasons.

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If you're planning to visit the church and have time to stay the night, you can pick a day in which there's a concert and enjoy the unique experience. There's one more concert this year, in September, after which the season is over.


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I will agree about the "God of instruments". I'm far from religious but the sound of an organ in a church is a unique audible experience. Last time I had it was in Verona an age ago.

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Same here. I'm also far from religious but the organ can convince me to go to the church any day 😏

I'm planning to attend as many organ concerts as possible.

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When visiting these old medieval churches, I always wondered how the organs would sound like. I imagine you were transported to back how people heard the sound originally. It’s almost as like a time travel machine!

What a cool experience and hope I can experience it someday.

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Exactly what I felt sitting there for an hour. I was thinking back in those days maybe the sound of an organ wasn't such a big deal but maybe it was as not every church had an organ, just the big ones. Another thing that I was wondering about was if those medieval people had any idea how much organs ars appreciated today. They had no idea.

I'm working on making a video with the audio recording of the concert and see if I can share it but it'll take some time.

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Lol all I could think about when you asked about the date on the Italian writing tease was how that would sound like a spell if I said it out loud in a sorcerers voice.😂 Only thing I can guess in Italian on that thing is the word “inspect” which I see written in english lol.

I think I’ve read stories of people from medieval times generally just using their own shadows to tell time. They would combine the size of the shadow and it’s position or orientation. I guess that’s where the inspiration of the sun dial came from.

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Lol, that's Latin, not Italian. Latin is a dead language now but it's still used in medicine, music and religion.

At some point I thought I'd offer one Hive to the first user who guesses the right translation of that year, to see how many are paying attention and read the whole post, but then didn't. I know, I'm mea 😏

Yes, you're right, when there were no clocks and watches, people used to estimate the time using their shadow. These are interesting things 🙂

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Lol I meant to say Latin. Something must’ve happened.

The fact that you still went ahead to tell me how you had planned to do it but changed your mind again shows just how mean you are.😂😂

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Once I had a similar post with a year written in Latin and got a comment from a guy saying: "Damn, it took me 5 minutes to solve it but I did it waiting in traffic". And there was no prize announced.

It felt good to know someone actually took the time and energy to figure it out. Many have no clue honestly. Nowadays kids don't even know what time it is if you show them a regular clock as they are used to digital. Which is more than sad.

The reason why I decided to drop this little game is because it's easy to cheat and with the amount of cheaters we have on Hive ... 🥴😵‍💫

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Yeah, I agree. Anyone who wanted the prize probably would’ve just been a google search away from it.

It really is sad with the way thing are going now. I guess we could say technological advancements that were meant to make things easier, have done their job in a way, but also created new problems of laziness and a system where most people want to cheat in the process.

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Beautiful pictures.the entrance and the magnificent window.. They all are beautiful sight..

But please can you say what the sundial is ? It got my eye more
I can see 16 and 30 it's a bit confusing

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1630 is the year of construction or the year when the sundial was set up. The time on the sundial is a little after 7.

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Ohh that's really a wall clock??🤭.

Sorry It took me time to realize!

Thank you for the explanation!

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No worries, this is how we learn and this is why Hive is the most amazing platform 🙂

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MDCCCXV? 1815? Oops sorry I look at it on Mr. Google so I cheated 🙉. It's just that I'm curious too 🤧.

Anyways, this is just Beautiful 😍 and I haven't really seen a Sundial in my whole life. I'm curious how it works 🤔 it is base on the sun? And the Organ Concert too. I want to experience watching it live and listen to it and see if I will also enjoy it. That would be a unique experience for me for sure 🤩

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Cheater! 😁

A sundial is working when the sun is out and the shadow of the sundial is indicating the time. This is off as it's old but otherwise it's a cool thing.

I hope one day you can listen to an organ concert :) Good luck!

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