An orchestra and a church

Soundtrack to "Amadeus"; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer; Academy of St. Martin In The Fields; Sir Neville Marriner, conducting

During the summer of 2001, my friend Chad H. and I took a two week trip to Scotland, England and France. Having been to London many times before, but on someone else’s time table, I relished the freedom to visit places of appeal and significance for as long we wanted. Friends and interested parties had provided me with several places to visit, most of which I had already gone to see. But one recommendation started with, “If you’re looking to save some money…” They had my attention.

Apparently, the Crypt café, beneath the St.-Martin-In-The-Fields Church near Trafalgar Square in London, serves up some of the least expensive fare in the city. So I jotted it down on our itinerary. May I tell you? Not only are their food selections not expensive, they’re spectacular. We ended up going there three times, just to save on food funds.

You, dear reader, probably recognize the name of the church. It is, indeed, the home of the famous Academy of St. Martin In the Fields Orchestra. Under the baton of Sir Neville Mariner, this chamber orchestra provided the beautiful, impassioned and “spot on” soundtrack for the 1984 Academy Award-winning motion picture “Amadeus”. This soundtrack reached No. 56 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it one of the most popular recordings of classical music ever. With the exception of an early 18^th century gypsy tune and a portion of the Stabat Mater by Giovanni Pergolesi, every piece comes from the elegant pen of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

St. Martin of Tours, France, provided the name for the classically styled rectangular church in the middle of London. Only God knows when parishioners first started worshipping in this place. The earliest existing document that makes reference to the church comes from 1222 when a dispute broke out between the Abbot of Westminster and the Bishop of London over who had control over it. Almost three hundred years later, King Henry VIII had the church rebuilt. At that time, the church was literally “in the fields”, isolated between the quite small cities of Westminster and London.

I started college in August of 1984. In those last five or six weeks as I headed into my transition period from farmboy to egghead, I made sure to see all of the movies that I intended to, figuring that I wouldn’t have the time to see them after classes started. Not a single “Amadeus” trailer did I see at the movies; not even on TV. Nobody, not even my Music Major peers, made me aware of this upcoming biopic that wasn’t a biopic. It took my roommate M., courteously inquiring if I’d like to go with him to see this movie – AFTER IT CAME OUT!! – to find out that an “Amadeus” movie existed.

Finally, after marching band rehearsal one Friday, some friends and I went to see the film. About a third of the way through, however, the movie took a weird turn and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. About two thirds of the way through the film, the theatre manager stopped the movie, brought up the lights, and came in to tell us that the man in charge of changing the reels had accidentally shown them out of sequence: one, two, four, three, five was how we were seeing them. The manager kindly offered us tickets to see it the next night. I didn’t have time to see it the next night. And the next night, it had gone.

I liked it, anyway. I looked forward to its release on VHS so that I could watch it in the proper order. The movie falls, I would suppose, under the category of “Historical Fiction.” Sig. Salieri and Herr Mozart didn’t have the relationship as illustrated in the movie. But the “powers what be” had researched the historical period aspects of their subject so thoroughly that I honor this film more highly for the cultural truths they depicted. Beyond that, they’re just a bunch of dirty, rotten liars.

Credits: To St. Martin of Tours, for seeing the visage of Christ in the face of a homeless beggar. Thank you for lending your name to Herr Luther.