Winter Warmers (1): Noon Song

The Christmas Markets have disappeared from the city squares, the last stalls with warm roasted almonds are melting away with the snow, the New Year firework display at the Brandenburger Tor is only a memory, and as January sets in, it feels like time to balance all that exuberant Yang with some more rueful Yin.

So I'm introducing a series of entries through the months of January and February called Winter Warmers: Berliners' personal favorites for places to warm body and soul.

Thirty Minutes of Heaven
My first pick is Noon Song, thirty minutes of heaven every Saturday at the Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz. Eight professional singers form Sirventes, a choir that performs mostly Renaissance (but sometimes Romantic or contemporary) choral music. Unlike a concert at the Chamber Music Hall at the Philharmonie, this performance embeds the music in the liturgy for which it was composed and so has a meditative quality that is deeply moving.

Noon Song is the brainchild of Stefan Schuck, who explains that the tradition of marking each hour of the day with sacred music goes back to the Benedictine monks.

The weekly Saturday market takes place opposite the church, and most listeners come in directly from their shopping, lugging bags and baskets of flowers, cheese, or vegetables. The music is a heavenly interlude that begins and ends in the earthy reality of the market stands.

Last week, I bought sweet potatoes and carrots for a winter soup, then came in and listened to the pure sounds of choral arrangements by Schein, Praetorius, and Schütz. You couldn't do much better for food that warms body and soul.

50 Years of Noon Song
Saturday, 9 January 2010, will be the fiftieth performance of Noon Song, and Schuck plans to make it special. Don't miss it.

Noon Song takes place every Saturday at 12:00 noon at the Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz (U3, Hohenzollernplatz). Entrance is free, but you can show your appreciation of the music by making a contribution at the door.  You can read more about Sirventes and Noon Song at www.noonsong.de

Global Stone: Five Continents Meet in the Tiergarten

"The quickest way to find yourself is to sail once around the world." These words from the biography of Bernd Moitessier, philosopher and passionate sailor, were the inspiration for Wolfgang Kraker von Schwarzenfeld, the artist whose Global Stone project is about to be completed in Berlin's Tiergarten.

In his 20s, von Schwarzenfeld began a sailing voyage around the world. His trimaran capsized in the Atlantic, off the Florida coast. He survived sixteen days in chest-deep ice-cold water, eating raw fish (not a gourmet experience, he discovered), drinking salt water in desperation, and close to dying from hypothermia. In a near-death experience, he looked at the sky and endless horizon stretching around him to infinity and thought to himself: "There is no end point to life. All of mankind is one entity, like the millions of cells in a human body."

This thought became the germ of an idea that von Schwarzenfeld has spent the greater part of his life realizing -- a project he calls "Global Stone."

Sailing around the world in "Pegasus," his three-masted sailboat, von Schwarzenfeld searched on each of five continents for a pair of magnificent stones, similar in substance, form, and weight (approximately 30 tons). Once he had made his choice, he left one of the "sister stones" in the country of origin, bringing the other (at considerable cost and with mind-boggling logistic planning) to Berlin's Tiergarten. The last of the five stones to be brought to Berlin will arrive tomorrow -- from Bhutan.

The stones in the Tiergarten have been so arranged that their polished surfaces reflect the sunlight in five invisible straight lines. The "sister stones" on the five continents have also been carefully arranged by the artist so that once a year, on June 21st, the sunlight glances off their surface, travels in a frequency of 16 minutes around the world, and meets the pentagram of light between the stones in Berlin exactly at high noon.

The stones -- each a natural wonder, polished, sculptured and inscribed by the artist with one of five linked themes: Awakening, Hope, Forgiveness, Love, and Peace --  are a kind of hieroglyph of the connection between Berlin and the world, as well as the interconnectedness of all nations on these five continents.

I can't think of a better note on which to end my last blog before Christmas 2009.

You can find the Global Stone Project near the Löwengruppe (The Lions) in the Tiergarten.  Keeping the Brandenburger Tor behind you, follow the Ahornsteig for 300 m. Or, from  Potsdamer Platz, enter the Park from behind the Sony Center, and walk about 250 m.