Light relief

[PaulW]

If you've not seen it, you can take a virtual tour of the Sistine chapel.

To navigate around it, the controls are in the lower left of the browser frame. The detail is fairly impressive. If you have sound, then there's music too, apparently. (I have no sound here at work, so can't tell you what it is. Perhaps someone else can enlighten us.)

[Southern Comfort]

It's the Benedictus + Hosannas from Palestrina's Missa Papæ Marcelli.

This is a good virtual tour, but nothing can prepare you for the vibrancy and brightness of the actual colours of the ceiling. On this computer, they do not seem anything like as striking as the real thing.

And what has happened to the organ? They installed a small two-manual-and-pedal free-standing mechanical-action instrument in 1999. It stood halfway along the right-hand wall, but there is no sign of it on this tour. Also, the tour shows a new balcony, a little to the right of where the organ stood, projecting out from the wall, and evidently designed to accommodate the Sistine Chapel Choir (but appears too small to house the organ).

[presbyter]

And what has happened to the organ?

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/cap-mus-sistina/documents/capmus_pro_20021214_foto-costruz_en.html

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/cap-mus-sistina/documents/capmus_pro_20021214_foto_en.html

Read this -

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Swiss_organ_echoes_in_Sistine_Chapel.html?cid=998288 and you might come to the conclusion that the instrument is in store in a nearby room.

'Tis three years since I have been in the Chapel. The comments about experiencing the art-work and its colours live should be taken to heart.

[presbyter]

It's the Benedictus + Hosannas from Palestrina's Missa Papæ Marcelli.

So it is - but sung by whom? Manifestly not the Sistine Squawkers........ and it does not sound like Westminster Cathedral.

[presbyter]

See here also. The brief was a portable instrument.

http://www.mathis-orgelbau.ch/rtf/sixtina_e.pdf

[Southern Comfort]

Thank you for this. Explains a lot. It had only just arrived when I saw it, and they made no mention of moveability at that point. Evidently they have learned to move it around, judging from the photo showing it at the front end of the chapel instead of the side. And the photos also clearly show where the singers' balcony wasn't but now is.

I wonder if they moved it out of the chapel, along with all the chairs, for the purposes of the virtual tour. Seems likely.

Didn't recognise the singers, but yes, it's not Capella Sistina nor Westminster. More like Clare College?