Monday

All right ladies and gents, we gon' skip right on over Sunday for now and go rstraight to the Monday rundown(though it was certainly a beautiful Palm Sonntag in the city).

Today was definitely an early start for the Chorale. 7:30 breakfast at the Prinz Eugen and right onto Ernst (the bus, driven by Willie) for a morning tour of St. Stephen's Cathedral in downtown Vienna. St. Stephen's, by far the city's largest church, is an enormous and marvellously ornate building that showcases the best of both Baroque and Gothic architecture. At half past eight, we assembled in front of the sanctuary and performed Haec Dies, Ave Maria, and the three Charles Villiers Stanford motets (Coelos ascendit hodie, Justorum Animae, and Beati quorum via) before taking an hour-long tour that took us up to the top of one of the main bell towers; pictures for that oughta be up pretty soon. Incidentally, when we arrived at the cathedral we were met by the Hamilton College choir, who performed in the church's choir loft directly after us. Their tour was much later than ours, so we never got to meet at all.

By eleven o'clock we were on Ernst again; but this time we headed to the Schönbrunn, the summer residence of the 17th- and 18th-century Hapsburg family. Set in an outer district of Vienna, the castle is an impressively large, estate-like affair, painted in lemon-yellow, with an expansive courtyard and gardens like those at Versailles. It was in fact intended to be a response to Versailles by the Hapsburg family, and it might have become the more extravagant of the two had Emperor Franz Josef III had as much interest in luxury as his wife Sisi did. The castle contains 1,440 rooms in total, of which we only got to walk through 40 (sardonic emphasis on only). Lots of Chinese lacquer, and even more gold leaf. The chairs in the castle were enough to seat ten parliaments, and the Schönbrunn gardens are big enough to contain all of the country of Monaco. Again I thought of the question I'd asked John the day before, as we walked throught the Belvedere: "Can you imagine walking through these gardens, looking back at the castle, and thinking, "...and all of this is mine""?

The afternoon was an excellent block of free time. A large group of us, including Jarvis, Dori, and Hannah, went to the Albertina, an art museum by the Ringstrasse that was featuring a very good Chagall exhibit, while others (including myself) cut up behind the Museumsquartier to the Maria-Hilfestrasse and the Burggasse to peruse the stores, art galleries and bookshops. Dinner was, you guessed it, schnitzel, followed by some sachertorte. The evening's turning out a mellow one; other than a few short trips downtown, it's an early crash time. Got to be ready for tomorrow.

Tuesday'll be the day to hear about, because it's then that the gloves are coming off and the white and black goes on. Afternoon rehearsal in St. Stephen's, followed by a 6:30 Mass and an 8:00 full concert. It's time to sing the lederhosen off this town.