Posts Tagged Fifth Avenue Famous
Salvatore Basile's New Website
Acclaimed Fordham author Salvatore Basile now has a website where you can find news, reviews, events, and other information about the eclectic writer/music historian/music enthusiast and his first book, Fifth Avenue Famous.
The site also includes a blog , updated frequently by the author himself. The blog contains ruminations on everything from cookbooks to the publishing process of Fifth Avenue Famous.
Check the site for updates and information!
The Drama of St. Patrick's Cathedral
“It’s hard to top St. Patrick’s Cathedral, not only as a church, architectural treasure and municipal monument, but also as a venue of drama This applies as well to the Cathedral’s music program, which has had almost as many high and low moments as New York City itself.” Thus begins a review of Salvatore Basile’s Fifth Avenue Famous on Handing On the Faith, the blog of the Archdiocese of New York.
And it’s true–Basile’s book chronicles feuds between music directors and Cardinals, post-Vatican II changes to liturgical music programs, and vast shifts in music style. The stories behind the music are just as dramatic as the famous organ housed inside the cathedral.
Says Maureen McKew in her review, “Whether your interest is music, New York history or you simply love an inside story, you will really enjoy this book…I enjoyed [it] so much that I read it from cover to cover in one night.”
The Easter Parade (of music)
In 1853, the New York Herald wrote, “In former years Easter Sunday was observed in a pompous and splendid manner by the Europeans; but as the people continued to grow enlightened all those absurd and nonsensical customs have become obsolete.”
Not quite.
Easter crowds on Fifth Avenue outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City, 1904. (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
I tried an experiment, asking a number of people to complete the phrase, “Easter _____.” The two most frequent responses were “eggs” and “parade.” Those answers make sense: Zoroastrians were painting eggs for their springtime “new year” celebrations some 2,500 years ago, chocolate eggs have been around for more than 150 years, and those dissolve-the tablet-in-hot-water egg decorating kits have been staining kitchen tabletops since 1893. As to the parade, New York seems to hold the patent. Back when the Herald was first jeering at those splendid and absurd customs, New York’s Easter was celebrated in fairly sedate style . . . except that a new outfit was considered indispensable, and many people invariably took a turn after church in order to show off. By the 1870s, when a number of the city’s wealthiest churches were clustered on a ten-block stretch of Fifth Avenue, the number of fashionable types increased exponentially and the post-church promenade had turned into an eye-popping event. By the mid-1880s, the New-York Tribune was using the phrase “Easter parade.” It stuck.
Pussy Willow Easter Bonnet
Then I asked some singers to complete the phrase “Easter _____.”
There wasn’t a response, at least not in words. Instead, a sticking-out of the tongue enhanced by a faint strangulation noise, rolling of the eyes, groans, a shaking of the head, a sigh. Singers are thinking of the music, which asks a lot. Even a century ago, when things were couched in much more genteel terms, Harper’s admired the Holy Week music heard in New York but acknowledged that the city’s organists “should be credited with phenomenal powers of endurance in that they survive the ordeals of the season.”
The situation hasn’t changed with the years. The run-up to Christmas may demand a lot from a singer, but Easter—more precisely, Holy Week—demands it in more concentrated fashion. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, choristers will be asked during that week to participate in as many as nine services and eight rehearsals. (Some of that singing takes place at the altar, which by Easter Sunday will be surrounded by a sea of lilies. Guess who’s allergic to lilies.)
But exhaustion and hay fever notwithstanding, it’s worth it. 
The history contained in Fifth Avenue Famous shows that St. Patrick’s musicians have willingly dealt with stress, exhaustion and long hours for over 125 years, in an effort to heighten the experience of Cathedral visitors. (Then again, one story tells of the 1880s violinist who got up at the end of a pre-Easter rehearsal, smashed his instrument into pieces, tore off his jacket and shoes, and ran out of the Cathedral. He was ultimately taken to Bellevue. Maybe not all musicians have dealt with the stress that well.) Written by
Salvatore Basile, author of Fifth Avenue Famous:The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
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Music as a Communal Experience
On February 11, 1930, in the midst of a dire American economic crisis, St. Patrick’s Cathedral dedicated its brand-new organ to an impressive amount of fanfare and ceremony. Salvatore Basile describes the historic event in Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral thus:
The obstacles were forgotten as the evening went off with its expected solemnity and musical polish; but in addition, there was the kind of crackling excitement that New York usually experienced at a Broadway opening night. More than an hour before the doors opened, a long line of ticket holders stretched down 50th Street, and Fifth Avenue itself was packed with a mass of people hoping to get in. …An astonishing crowd of 7,000 (reported the Sun) pushed inside to hear the event; another 5,000 people were turned away.
This was an impressive crowd of concert-goers, even by today’s standards. The past 80 years has done nothing to dim the enthusiasm of music lovers; in fact, their zeal has only grown since the early days of radio. This past week the South by Southwest Music Festival took place in Austin, Texas. Now in its 23rd year, the festival has swelled from several hundred registrants to 12,000, with fans descending on the Texas capitol every March to hear thousands of acts spread out over 80 venues over 4 days. Its an epic event, bringing together passionate music lovers, industry professionals, and up and coming musicians from around the world. The result is a pulsing community of innovators, each seeking out the most creative, most groundbreaking, and most energetic music the scene has to offer.
This is the link that bonds the music of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to the secular music of today–the passionate community of those who make music and those who love music, who are always searching for something new and beautiful to inspire them.
St. Patrick's Day, Set to Music by Salvatore Basile
St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in such far-flung places as Paris, Tokyo, and Sydney, but more than anywhere else it has become identified with New York. At least the parade has. That tradition started in colonial days, when a group of homesick Irish soldiers staged an impromptu march through the streets of the city. Other Irish fraternal organizations picked up the idea, each holding its own parade, and by the 1850s their efforts were consolidated into a massive, well-organized celebration. (Well, sort of. For a number of years, the parade tended to step off an hour late or so.)
But the other part of the celebration centers on St. Patrick’s Cathedral. From the moment the Cathedral had been built—the first one, far downtown on Mott Street—its commemoration of its patron saint became linked with all of the other ballyhoo. And when a new St. Patrick’s arose on Fifth Avenue, the parade, and the festivities, followed. Now, the image of the St. Patrick’s Day parade swirling past St. Patrick’s Cathedral is one of the holiday’s most iconic sights.
There has always been a grand celebratory Mass held at the Cathedral early in the morning on St. Patrick’s Day—a pull-out-the-stops affair with full choir, after which everyone ventures out to watch the parade begin. Interestingly, though, just about no one gives much thought to the music: ever since the 19th century, press accounts have run along the vague lines of “the choir sang, accompanied by the swelling tones of the organ.” Once, in the 1970s, a new Mass setting was crafted for the occasion by a noted composer who had converted to Catholicism. The single comment came from a bishop who celebrated the Mass: “I don’t think there’ll be any conversions today. I just hope we don’t lose any.”
So there you have it—after exhaustive research, it turns out that the St. Patrick’s Day Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is less of a high-powered musical event than Christmas or Easter. But if it isn’t flashy, it’s appropriate: suitable to the occasion, a prelude to the spirited party waiting right outside its doors and a part of the larger picture of the Cathedral’s music-making that takes in all the events of the year.
The full story of music at St. Patrick’s and its relationship with the city is told in Fifth Avenue Famous, a chronicle which captures the humor, vibrancy, and occasional heartbreak of people who devote themselves to providing the musical score for some of New York’s most important spiritual moments.
Join Fordham Press for the official launch of Fifth Avenue Famous on Thursday, May 13, 2010 from 6 pm to 8 pm in the Lowenstein Building’s 12th Floor lounge!
Fifth Avenue Famous
Posted by FUPress in American History, Categories, Catholic Studies, Music, New York on March 3rd, 2010
Easter Sunday, 1904. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the most famous church in America, is jammed with reporters as well as worshipers – all straining to see if the women in the choir loft are sobbing.
The cause of this commotion is a new Papal edict, intended to “reform” church music throughout the world, not only by changing the music itself . . . but by banning all women from all choirs, a decision that wouldn’t be reversed for over fifty years. With both Women’s History Month in March and the Easter holiday coming in April, this nearly-forgotten chapter in the story of New York, and St. Patrick’s, takes on striking new significance.
Photo of Dr. Jennifer Pascual, Director of the St. Patrick’s Cathedral Choir
Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, by Salvatore Basile, examines in depth not only this
incident, but the full story of musical life at the nation’s most famous church in the world’s most vibrant city. The book explores in deeply personal fashion the stories of musicians both well-known and unknown, and the men who helped to cement St. Patrick’s position in the music scene, often at the expense of their own lives. It’s a story of New York itself, ranging from small-scale musical scandals of the 19th century, to concerts that caused riots on Fifth Avenue, to groundbreaking radio and television broadcasts – to the moment, exactly a century after that shattering Papal edit of 1904, when the Cathedral came full circle to appoint a woman as its music director. For fans of New York, this book presents their city in a fascinating new light.
Join us for the official Book Launch on May 13th at 6 pm at Fordham’s Lowenstein Building, in the 12th Floor Lounge!
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