It has been a long time since I hiked up to the Cloisters, for a variety of reasons.
What got me to make the hike?..only one of my all time favorite art pieces..Janet Cardiff's 40 Part Motet. When I first encountered this piece at Moma quite a while ago, I was moved to tears, and must have spent close to an hour listening to the piece over and over again. I thought the choral piece had been taken apart and rearranged..but it was just the effect of each of the 40 singers being recorded on a separate track and played on a separate speaker, with all the speakers arranged in an oval. The sound would wash across the room in different ways, creating a very visceral feeling of the piece. You could feel the sound vibrate in the room. The installation at the Cloisters is beautiful, but the sound just isn't the same. I am not sure if the piece is a victim of its own popularity, as the much larger number of people in the room muffled the sound a bit, or the higher ceiling in the somewhat larger space cause the sound to get a little lost at times. It didn't, how shall I say..bounce and ricochet across the space (who knows, maybe what I loved at Moma was an acoustical mistake). Still, I will try to return for a second hearing on a day when it is not so crowded.
on the way home...the hill is inwood hill park, claimed to be the only remaining natural forest in manhattan..
