Exploring the organ

On Saturday, we will travel as a group to Udine, a city northwest of Duino. Our destination is a baroque church where we will offer a concert. The composition studio is contributing a piece, mentioned in the previous post. To help us get a sense of the organ as an instrument, we were able to spend some time with the organ ath San Giovanni Battista, a church that is just a short walk from the UWC campus, on the other side of the castle. This is a small, single manual instrument with some peculiar quirks, but its limitations are well-suited to a novice organ composer who needs to be aware of what the instrument does and doesn’t do well. We played through everyone’s drafts today, and tomorrow, the pieces will be finished and ready to be rehearsed.

Sunset over the cliffs of Duino

After dinner tonight, I took a nice stroll down the Rilke trail, enjoying another beautiful Adriatic sunset. From our first day here, I’ve been entranced by the colors I see at dusk–I don’t think I’ve seen quite the same quality of light anywhere else.

Sunlight through the clouds