St. Jean's Cathedral

In Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) one of the main sights to visit is the Cathedral of St. Jean (Saint John). The Cathedral itself is pretty great for those of us from the oh-so-young America, and especially for those of us who were raised in baby-new Alaska where an "old" building is anything that survived the 1964 earthquake. This beauty was finished in 1476- nearly 20 years before Columbus 'sailed the ocean blue'! The Cathedral isn't gigantic compared to some others I've seen- Grenada, Tours, St. Peter's, but it's got spirit. The outside is peppered with gargoyles looming down over a small square, and the inside is adorned with some very gorgeous stained glass windows.

I've only been inside the Cathedral a few times so far, and never for very long. I want to go back more and more, because each time I return I find something interesting inside that I missed on my previous visits. Plus, there are great little plaques set up describing in both French and English the images in the stained glass, so I can practice my iconography and my French at the same time- magnifique!

Dan and I ventured to St. Jean's last Saturday just before closing time. We only had a few minutes to take in what we could before we were told to get out. But, we noticed that the very next day there was going to be an organ concert in the Cathedral. So, on Sunday we walked over two bridges and through a few streets in Old Lyon and made our way into a pew near the front of the Cathedral. We were handed a pamphlet in French and I read what I could about our young organ master that we were there to see. He was born in 1980, was admitted to some great school for organ music at some obscenely young age, and has since mastered both classic and modern organ music. There was very little ceremony about the concert. A man came out, spoke for a minute in French, and then organ music began to fill the cathedral. The problem with going to a concert in a cathedral is that the main fixture of the apse is the altar rather than the organ. The organ is placed to the side sort of in the ambulatory, and was impossible to see from where we were sitting. This is a great set up if you're there for mass, but not so convenient if you're there to hear and hopefully see an organ concert. So, while listening to the music we instead got to just take in the stained glass, the architecture, and the people around us.

If there's one thing I can say I know basically nothing about it's organ music. I'm only a little embarassed to say that to me the sound of an organ is synonymous with Halloween, vampires, and The Addams Family. Needless to say, I can't really give a good review of the music I heard. But, I can say that I enjoyed sitting there in that old Cathedral listening to the organ, played by someone I couldn't even see. Sometimes a few women would come out to where we could see them, stand with their backs to us, and sing in what I guess must be latin (it wasn't French and it certainly wasn't English). Although the organ music was interesting and a new experience, I have to admit that the parts with the singing were probably my favorites. Next time I hope to venture back when I can hear a choir.