Places that make me say the word "Holy...."

In general, I believe the word "holy" is rarely the wrong word to use when referring to the inside of a church. When I saw the inside of The Duomo in Milan, I included another word you're not supposed to say in church.

If you ever need a reason to go to Italy, this would be it. The immensity of this building alone, is jaw-dropping. And whatever I said about long reverberation times in the previous post about St. Peter's Bacilica should be forgotten. Reverberation, or reverb as musicians call it, is the time it takes for a sound to die in a room. In a very large room, the sound will ring for quite a long time as opposed to the sound in a smaller room. This sanctuary has a reverb that creates an entire acoustical entity of its own, another symphony resembling one you just heard a few seconds before, making you think you're trapped in an eternal musical deja vu.

One thing that I found equally stunning though, was that in a church of such uncompromising visual beauty, that the actual music being performed was so unspectacular. I suppose I've been ruined by all those Mormon Tabernacle Christmas specials. Maybe I'm just a musical snob. Or maybe it's just hard to get someone to sing for free at a Catholic Mass on a Saturday night regardless of where it is. Or maybe people really do only "listen with their eyes" as one surly music agent once told me when I was an innocent sprite many years ago.

(A note to eight-year-old boys: They have the mummified remains of cardinals (almost popes) in glass boxes at the Duomo in Milan. Tell your parents you want to go there.)

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