A Touch of Majesty

An Urban Excursion

Just for the sake of doing something new and different, I attended an organ recital at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles a while back.  The recital itself didn’t really qualify as new—I’ve attended a few organ recitals and concerts and heard plenty of live organ music in church.  But the Cathedral was new to me, and I made the experience different by taking the Los Angeles Metro instead of driving.  Getting to Pasadena, parking and walking to the Metro, waiting for the train, riding to Union Station, walking from Union Station to the Cathedral, attending the recital, and then retracing my walk and Metro ride and drive took over three hours.  It would have taken half that time to drive straight to the Cathedral.  Was it a waste of time?

The Metro ride was, well, dreary:  no children peering at the world, no families bickering over seats, no lovers holding hands; just empty seats and a few weary passengers staring dully at their phones.  Union Station was not much better; smaller than I expected and only a bit livelier than the Metro. The streets of Los Angeles that I walked from Union Station to the Cathedral were quiet and sullen at mid-day, cluttered with the tents and tarps of the unhoused. 

The Cathedral itself failed to lift my spirits.  It is crammed against a freeway and the pedestrian entrance is about as appealing as the parking garage just beside it.  The architecture is all planes and angles on the outside and boxy and big on the inside.  The altar lies large and flat with neither focus nor interest.  Colorless murals surround the nave, blending into dull sandstone walls, the only splash of color a blue robe worn by Our Lady of the Angels on a mural behind the altar.  I suppose you could call the space calmly understated, and a thousand people (instead of the twenty attending the recital) would surely add life.  Photos taken at other times of day also show how the space captures Southern California’s sunlight.  As it was that day, though, the space left me cold.

But then the organ began to play.  As the first notes filled the Cathedral, the dreariness I had carried in scattered.  The organ’s pipes and console are tucked behind the altar, but they delivered the powerful swelling resonance that draws me to organ music.  The organist started with a set of variations and fugue that exhibited the organ’s power, and she followed with a quiet pastorale that sang with the clear, sweet tones of oboes and strings.  As she played and the organ sang, the harsh angles, the drab walls, the uninspiring altar became context for the pulse of the music, its rise and fall, its emotion and power.

As I made my way out of the church, back through the grime and dirty tents of the downtown streets and onto the dull subway, my day was refreshed by a touch of majesty mingled with quiet peace.  The music did not transform the city, but it had transformed me.  I arrived at the Cathedral lacking enthusiasm, dispirited by the cityscape I had come through; I left impressed by the power of creativity and the possibilities afforded by our diverse metropolis.  Sometimes, faced with the brokenness of the world, a personal transformation is all we can hope for.  But that is enough; it reminds us that the world will only be repaired by the work of individuals, transformed.

Now, a couple months later, the organ music having faded from my memory, I cannot forget the change the music worked.   I now know, too, that the change fed on the context of my journey.  A quick drive, rushing past the city’s flaws, would have brought me to a nice, brief recital.  The extra hour and a half created a frame for the music that lent it meaning.  Not a waste of time at all.

You can hear the pieces played at the recital on this Spotify playlist: 

Cathedral Organ Recital