Saint Martin dividing his cloak with a beggar. XIVth century wall painting from Skibby church, Denmark<\/p>\n Irrespective of whether Martin left the army as a youngster or a mature man, he was baptised shortly before returning to civilian life. He became an icon of charity thanks to a deed that ultimately determined his decision to become a Christian: when he encountered a half-naked beggar on his way to the city of Ambianum and was unable to give him alms, he cut his officer\u2019s cloak in two and shared it with the beggar. His later life is the story of an unusual bishop of Caesarodunum (today\u2019s Tours) who renounced the benefits of the his position in favour of living an ascetic life, preaching the faith \u201cin the field\u201d and ruthlessly fighting paganism. He zealously destroyed pagan idols and sacred groves, but forgave humans and took their sins upon himself. He died in missionary glory, away from his diocese. His body was ferried in secret on the rivers Vienne and Loire. A ceremonious funeral took place on 11 November 397 in Tours.<\/p>\n The day is celebrated as the Fest of Martin the Bishop. Strangely enough, it was on 11 November that the armistice between the Entente and the German Empire was signed in a railway carriage near Compi\u00e8gne, France, ending the black night of the First World War. Even more strangely, in the early months of the conflict the London parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields was entrusted to the pacifist Dick Sheppard, who ran it like Saint Martin incarnate. Sheppard, too, had served in the army, but radically changed his views under the impact of his harrowing experiences during the Second Boer War. Shortly after the outbreak of the Great War, he volunteered, having become an Anglican pastor, to serve in a French field hospital, where he defended German soldiers from lynching by an angry mob several times. In 1915 he transformed his church into a centre providing help to all who needed it and called it the Church of the Ever Open Door. Every day he fed the homeless and put them up for the night there, cutting off any protests with one sentence: \u201cYou can’t expect to hear the truth on an empty stomach\u201d.<\/strong> In 1924 he led the first ever religious service to be broadcast on the radio from St Martin-in-the-Fields. He would later boasts about letters from the faithful thanking him for the possibility of singing hymns in the company of their drinking mates in a nearby pub.<\/p>\n Perhaps it is the genius loci. Some years ago archaeologists discovered a burial ground beneath the church and a number of artefacts suggesting that a centre of Christian worship may have existed here already in Martin of Tours\u2019 times \u2013 most probably built on the site of a sacred grove and demolished pagan altars. The first church of Saint Martin was built here in the thirteenth century \u2013 it was indeed located \u201cin the fields\u201d, outside the walls of London. Whether the monks of Westminster Abbey, who were in charge of the church, were guided by the teachings of the former legionary \u201cwho bought himself a place in heaven for a cloak\u201d\u00a0 \u2013 is hard to say. We know that in 1542 Henry VIII had a new church built on the site: to nurse and bury the victims of a mysterious plague called English sweating sickness as far away from the Royal Palace of Whitehall as possible. As an additional precaution, he had a pillory erected in front of it \u2013 as a warning for the less sick \u2013 fearing the collapse of the parish healthcare system. The brick structure of the church proved so fragile that as early as in 1710 the Parliament decided to build a new edifice, allocating for the purpose a substantial sum of 22,000 pounds.<\/p>\n The design of the church was entrusted to the Scottish architect James Gibbs, a discreet Catholic who skilfully smuggled into his buildings elements of the \u201cclassicising\u201d Carlo Fontana-style Baroque, while remaining an ardent follower of the Vitruvian triad of utility, durability and beauty. As the available space was limited, his original idea of constructing an edifice with a circular floor plan was rejected. Gibbs then decided to go the whole hog with the design and came up with a solution that embodied the idea of the \u201cundivided Church\u201d: a building without any religious symbols on the outside, with a Corinthian portico, a Baroque spire rising from the roof and a bright interior lit by windows with no stained glass. The construction works were completed in 1726. Initially, the building generated controversy, but soon became a model of Anglican church architecture, imitated countless of times throughout the Empire.<\/p>\n St. Martin-in-the-Fields church, engraving by H.W. Bond after a drawing by Thomas H. Shepherd, 1827<\/p>\n In addition to the charitable work that the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields started with the local poor as early as in the eighteenth century, hiring adults to work in flax spinning and wool carding, and providing children with basic education in reading, writing and bookkeeping, the vicars of the church also made sure that services would have worthy musical settings. They hired the finest organists, beginning with John Weldon, a pupil of Henry Purcell and composer of incidental music to Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest<\/em>, staged in 1712 at the Drury Lane Theatre. In the twentieth century \u2013 thanks in part to the collaboration with the BBC started by Sheppard \u2013 the church was also transformed into a thriving concert hall. In 1959 it became the home of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, a chamber orchestra founded on the initiative of the violinist Neville Marriner, which played a key role in the British revival of historical performance of Baroque and Classical music. The Caf\u00e9 in the Crypt has for years been welcoming jazz musicians. Less well-off music lovers can enjoy free afternoon concerts. In addition, the parish organises music education events, family events and the famous Concerts by Candlelight. Two months ago St Martin-in-the-Fields became the base of all of John Eliot Gardiner\u2019s three ensembles: Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre R\u00e9volutionnaire et Romantique. The programme of the first evening at their new home featured Hector Berlioz\u2019s L’enfance du Christ<\/em>.<\/p>\n Among this richness performances of Polish music have been sporadic and rather accidental. That is why Pawe\u0142 \u0141ukaszewski\u2019s initiative to organise \u2013 in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute \u2013 a festival of Polish sacred music, Joy and Devotion, at St Martin-in-the-Fields in November deserves special appreciation. \u0141ukaszewski is an outstanding exponent of a strand of contemporary music appreciated much more in the United Kingdom than in Poland, where some critics remain sceptical about his oeuvre. \u0141ukaszewski\u2019s compositions fit perfectly with the British sensitivity to the sacred: perfectly constructed in terms of form, expertly exploring the possibilities and limitations of the human voice, they can appeal to the local audiences, from childhood accustomed as they are to choral music \u2013 the least expensive and most natural instrument of communal experience. The terms \u201canti-modernism\u201d and \u201crenewed tonality\u201d do not bring to mind anything inappropriate to the Brits. The same categories of simplicity, subtle play with the past and purity of expression can be used to describe John Tavener\u2019s oeuvre, the value of which no one questions in Poland. Maybe we are not detached enough, maybe we find \u201cforeign\u201d spirituality more palatable than our own, or maybe it takes truly phenomenal performers for music to speak to us fully.<\/p>\n \u0141ukaszewski made sure such performers were in place and promises to attract them for the future editions of the new festival. As a composer he took a step back this time, adding just a few of his short pieces to the programme presented by the London Tenebrae Choir led by Nigel Short, a former member of the King\u2019s Singers. The event also featured a concert by Echo, an ensemble active for four years and conducted by Sarah Latto, while the opening night featured the organist Rupert Jeffcoat and one of the UK\u2019s most promising vocal ensembles, The Gesualdo Six \u2013 known to Polish music lovers as well \u2013 founded in 2014 by a young singer, conductor and composer, Owain Park. In addition to the oldest works of Polish vocal music, the programme of the entire event also included jewels of Polish Renaissance and Baroque, works by contemporary classics as well as pieces by representatives of the younger generation of composers, including Pawe\u0142 \u0141ukaszewski\u2019s students.<\/p>\n The Gesualdo Six at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Photo: Marcin Urban<\/p>\n I went London to attend the inauguration \u2013 and to savour the incredible cohesion of the six quite distinct voices that make up The Gesualdo Six. Their singing is like a wise conversation, emphasising every rhetorical gesture, every rough and smooth texture, every mystery contained in the musical form. It finally revealed to me the phenomenon of Krzysztof Borek, the alleged maestro di cappella <\/em>of the Cracow Rorantists. I hope that the living and the dead authors of the other compositions will forgive me: I only remember the Missa Mater Matris<\/em>, a reworking of Josquin des Pr\u00e9s\u2019 Missa Mater Patris<\/em> \u2013 seemingly not far from the original, yet softer, more tender, full of strangely familiar harmonies. Perhaps this is what I had been missing in the few Polish performances of Borek\u2019s works: a masterful familiarity with the style of the original and at the same time a fresh look at the work of a completely unknown composer. The ability to look into a score with the same attentiveness and emotion with which Martin \u2013 not yet a saint \u2013 once looked into the eyes of a frozen pauper on the road to Ambianum.<\/p>\n The Gesualdo Six shared with Borek everything they had. And they were none the worse for the experience. It is wonderful to be taught such a lesson in the church of Saint Martin in the Fields.<\/p>\n Translated by: Anna Kijak The life of Bishop Martin of Tours was complicated enough even without the lofty embellishments of later hagiographers. A saint of the \u201cundivided Church\u201d, venerated by the Catholics, the Orthodox and the Anglicans alike, one of the first Confessors \u2013 witnesses of faith who somehow managed to die a natural death \u2013 Martin is also … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-mangusta","4":"post-6250","6":"format-standard","7":"category-posts-in-english","8":"category-wedrowki-operowe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6250"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6265,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6250\/revisions\/6265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/WEB-Martin_af_Tours_skibby-church-Denmark-wikipedia-web-.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a><\/a><\/p>\n
\nOriginal article available at: https:\/\/www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl\/swiety-marcin-wsrod-pol-169764<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"