‘Oh Magnum Mysterium’
embellishes stairwell
By JIM GERSBACH
01 the Emerald
The PLC stairwell is ugly. The steps
are a cold gray, the dirty walls a sickly
cream color.
But Thursday morning something
beautiful happened there.
On the first floor landing, four
singers from the music school cleared
their throats of the stairwell dust and
performed ‘‘Oh Magnum Mysterium”
by the 16th- century composer Tomas
Luis de Victoria.
The singers were testing the
acoustics in the stairwell that attracts
a parade of amateur musicians, whis
tlers and singers.
Most are drawn, no doubt, by the
irresistible silence. Even tone-deaf
students can’t resist humming in the
caverns of Chapman, Condon,
Science II or Lawrence
Being surrounded by your own
voice is mesmerizing, and empty
stairwells are protectively private. The
same anonymity that inspires graffiti
artists tempts potentially great tenors
to flex their vocal chords.
And cement doesn’t snicker.
Neither do the tiles in the men's
shower room in Esslinger Hall, also an
excellent place for singing, says mu
sic student Ray Morse.
The room's smooth walls and large
size “make you sound good," he
says.
But the PLC stairwell doesn’t fare as
well in comparison. It sounds slightly
harsh because it's so closed in, Morse
says.
But the reverberation there en
hances the music “so it really
balances the harshness caused by
the relatively small space,” he adds.
The result is PLC is “a fun place to
sing."
It certainly was for Morse and Julie
Vander Schaaf, Sonja Rasmussen
and Scott Manton, the four music
school singers.
While fluorescent lights hummed
like wasps, the singers’ voices rever
berated off the smooth walls and shot
upward through the nine-story stair
shaft. Somewhere above the singers’
heads a door squeaked open, sound
ing like a great Medieval church door.
When the doors shut, they sounded
like cannon shots.
Midway through the impromptu
performance, a professor walked in.
Momentarily startled to see four faces
intently offering up Latin hymns, he
instinctively ducked and sneaked
past, taking stairs two at a time
At the top, the wafting voices
sounded like a musical wind from a
cave. Is this how the voices of choirs
sound to God in Heaven?
Vander Schaaf thought not. “It’s
sort of like singing in the shower.”
Along with our typesetting service, we also
do paste-up and photo work (screening
photos, enlargements, reductions, toned
screens and reversals). For more
information, call 686-4381 or come up to the
Production Department of the ODE on the
third floor of the EMU.
STRETCH YOUR TRAVEL
DOLLARS TO EURGPE
Contact EUGENE TRAVEL
for details 687-2825
Be a part of the
committee that spends
your incidental fees.
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For more information
come to Suite 4, EMU
or call 686-3724.
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