Father Pitt

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Pittsburgh’s Forgotten Classical Master

A century ago, if you had asked anyone around here who were Pittsburgh’s most famous composers, two names would have come up: Stephen Foster and Ethelbert Nevin. (Today you might hear Billy Strayhorn or Erroll Garner, which would certainly be good choices.) Foster was known for his popular songs that became the sound of America being America; Nevin was known for evocative salon pieces that were not too difficult for a talented amateur pianist. Nevin was born in Edgeworth, the son of a Pittsburgh newspaper-owner (Robert Peebles Nevin, who founded the Times, later merged with the Gazette) and a well-known pianist (Elizabeth Duncan Oliphant Nevin). He died at the age of 38, at the peak of his fame, in 1901, and for at least two decades afterward his music was everywhere.

After that, he passed out of fashion so completely that few music-lovers today even recognize his name. His problem was that he wrote little suites meant to be evocative of a place or mood—“Water Scenes,” “In Arcady,” “May in Tuscany”—and the dogma of modernism in music insisted that such musical evocations not only should not but could not happen.

But there are hundreds of recordings of his most famous pieces from the early twentieth century. This one, from 1915, is an orchestral arrangement of the Canzone amorosa from Opus 25, A Day in Venice. Audio restoration has brought out a pleasingly rich sound from the Victor house orchestra, conducted by Walter B. Rogers.

This audio file comes from our sister site The Lateral Cut, which is trying to bring life back to old acoustical recordings with fancy (but not too aggressive) electronic sound restoration.

January 6, 2022
More Reflections of St. Paul’s

The Software Engineering Institute gives us an unending parade of reflections of the landmarks around it. The curved wall at the main entrance is particularly productive of interesting effects. Below, for example, what appears to be a reflection of the twin spires of St. Paul’s is actually, on closer examination, the same spire reflected twice.

January 5, 2022
Winter Sunset

January 4, 2022
World’s Largest Monolithic Columns (Again)

The Mellon Institute, designed by the prolific Benno Janssen, claims the largest monolithic columns in the world. Columns like these are usually made as a series of joined cylinders, but each column here is a single piece of stone. When the client wants to send the message “I spent money on this,” nothing is more effective than giving him the world’s largest something-or-other.

Note how, unlike most other monumental buildings in Oakland, the Mellon Institute has retained the sooty evidence of decades of heavy industry.

Addendum: Note the comment below with the rival claim of the South Carolina State House, whose monolithic columns claim to be taller by a foot. As in all such questions, of course, we can make pedantic distinctions one way or another: it depends on how we define “large.” Columns of the Corinthian order are more slender in proportion to their height; we have to say what we mean by “largest” before we can settle the question. The only thing that matters, though, is that the columns in Columbia are beautiful in themselves and add considerably to the beauty of one of our distinguished Greek Revival buildings. It is not necessary to take down one of the South Carolinian columns and weigh it to say that they are magnificent achievements.

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January 4, 2022
Holland Mansion, Oakland

Now the Music Building of the University of Pittsburgh, this house (built in 1884) was a gift from his wife to the pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church across the street. It is thus one of the few buildings in Oakland that predate Oakland (along with the tower of the church, which still stands beside a modern office building). It is also a lesson for clergy: if your particular sect permits marriage, it is a good idea to marry an heiress. You can see the advantages. Most pastors’ wives do not give their husbands a mansion designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, and that is because most pastors do not sensibly marry heiresses as they ought to do.

January 3, 2022
Looking Up at the Keystone Bank Building

Most of the light well, once this building’s most distinctive feature, has been filled in; but for some reason the mutilation stopped before it reached the very top. Here we see the underside of what used to be a spectacular arch.

January 2, 2022
Transept Tower, St. Paul’s Cathedral

A large Gothic church can be prickly with towers. In addition to the great front towers whose spires can be seen for miles, St. Paul’s has a pair of smaller towers on each transept front.

January 1, 2022
Prince Gallitzin Defends His Faith

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Demetrius Gallitzin, the Russian prince who left his princely life to become a Catholic missionary in the back woods of Pennsylvania, heard a sermon by a Protestant minister on “a day appointed by the government for humiliation and prayer, in order to avert from our beloved country the calamity of war.” He didn’t like it.

“The professed subject of his sermon on such a day was, or should have been, to excite his hearers to humility and contrition, and to a perfect union of hearts and exertions, during the impending storm; but he, very likely alarmed at a much greater danger, of which no body else but himself dreamed; alarmed I mean, and trembling for the ark of Israel, likely to be carried off by those Philistines, called Roman Catholics, or alarmed perhaps at the very probable danger of an intended invasion from the Pope, who would, to be sure, avail himself of the confused state of the country to assist his English friends in the conquest of it, that he might by that means extend his jurisdiction; or, in fine, alarmed perhaps lest our treacherous Catholics would take advantage of the times, and by forming a new Gunpowder plot, would blow up the Congress hall, State houses, and all the protestant meeting houses of the United States: Alarmed at least, by something or another, he suddenly forgets his subject, and putting on a grave countenance, enters the most solemn caveat against Popish and Heathen neighbours, cautions his hearers against their superstitions, and gives them plainly enough to understand, that such Popish neighbours are not to be considered their fellow citizens.”

A little book printed in Pittsburgh in 1816 was Gallitzin’s answer. The book is poorly printed—there were much better printers in Pittsburgh by this time (thirty years after the first press appeared in Pittsburgh), but perhaps no good ones willing to print Catholic tracts. But in spite of the worn types and blotchy ink, the Protestant minister doesn’t stand much of a chance against Gallitzin’s logic and wit.

For us two centuries later, though, it’s interesting to see that Gallitzin regards “the infallibility of the Pope” as one of the many “articles falsely attributed to Roman Catholics” that are “industriously propagated to answer certain iniquitous purposes” (p. 7). Well, you can’t always be on the right side of Popish history.

December 31, 2021
Riverview Park Visitor Center

A modest stone building from the 1940s that successfully creates the impression of having grown up out of the native rock by natural processes.

December 30, 2021
St. Simon the Zealot

A statue of St. Simon the Zealot on the east transept façade of St. Paul’s Cathedral. He is identified by the instrument of his martyrdom, the saw, which (according to one common tradition) was also how the prophet Isaiah was killed.

December 29, 2021