The Transformation of Ritual Space: Berlioz’s “La Grande Messe des Morts” at Tanglewood, by Larry Wallach
The Transformation of Ritual Space: Berlioz’s “La Grande Messe des Morts” at Tanglewood
Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Russell Thomas, tenor
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit, July 9, 2011
For medieval and modern readers, Dante’s Inferno imparts to the after-life a spatial grandeur, a vision of echoing vaults, vast beyond the reaches of terrestrial architecture, filled with souls in various stages of damnation or beatitude. Our imaginations seem capable of constituting visual and three-dimensional experiences from such partial cues as words on the page or moving images on a screen. Natural locales such as the top of Pike’s Peak or the rim of the Grand Canyon inspire awe, if not vertigo, but provide a different order of experience. Closer to Hell-Purgatory-Heaven, or to the view from the space-ship Enterprise, perhaps, are the interior architectures designed by humans to enclose us in ideological spaces. Chief among these, in the Western historical experience, is the Gothic and post-Gothic cathedral, in which spatial experience is given a precise theological definition.

