
A Whiter Shade of Pale (Thank you Procal Harum)
On the night of our arrival, June 8th last year, a service was celebrated in the abbey church of Sainte Foy at Conques, France. The interior of the church that dates from the eleventh century was lit by candlelight. As I entered through the old wooden door under the famous tympanum depicting Christ enthroned in glory above scenes of devils and sinners in hell that is carved in bas-relief from the golden sandstone of which the church is built, the whole interior sank into a value study of light and shadows.
The incredibly tall Romanesque windows are of opaque white glass with black lead in diagonal, asymmetrical lines across them. A blue-tinged light from a full moon in a clear night sky entered the nave from the windows high above me, where it harmonized with the candlelit interior and the improbable music emanating from the enormous pipe organ.
The familiar notes arranged themselves in my mind and at first, confused by the odd juxtaposition of the setting I was in with the music I was hearing, I didn’t I recognize the familiar strains of a tune that I hadn’t heard for a long time. Amazingly, “The House of the Rising Sun” was being played on the organ. I walked further in to the church and looking up to my left and behind me, I could see a white-clad monk sitting at the organ, high up above the congregation. A stone staircase attached to the exterior wall was lit with individual white candles on each step. Instead of sitting down in the nave with the rest of the congregation, drawn by the music, I walked slowly up, step by step, to the gallery, high above the nave where there were more pews and the organ was installed.
A woman smiled at me and indicated an empty seat beside her. The service began. There were prayers and chants in French, and a short homily, also in French. After the service, as I descended the stone steps on my way out, my hand on the rough sandstone wall, my legs somewhat wobbly after walking 130 miles in 11 days, I sensed another strangely out-of-context piece of music. The organist was playing “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” a rock hit by British band, Procal Harum, that reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on the 8th June, 1967, where it remained for six weeks. The haunting and evocative strains of this song brought back my childhood in England. The lyrics include a reference to “The Miller’s Tale,” one of the stories related in “The Canterbury Tales,” the pilgrimage story written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. What strange phenomena time and space are! All these disparate things have been brought together by music, and the date, June 8th.