The Story Of An Old Auvergniat Church And An Old Violin

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Condat's Church By Night


A very old picture of Condat's main square. The church is the building all the way to the back on the left.

An old church stands in Condat -lès-Montboissier's main square, its bell tower plainly visible from all corners of this little village. It is in a sad state. Held together with huge blocks of local stone, the structure is slowly falling apart. The Catholic Church long ago abandoned this and all the other tiny community churches here in the Auvergne by not replacing the local priests when those died. So, after centuries of being the heart of the community of Condat, the church stays closed. No more service, no more marriages, a priest is only called for funerals. A sad state of affairs.
I had not been inside in many, many years, so when the mayor invited us to a concert in the church last night, Husband and I jumped at the chance. "Le Syndicat D'Initiative" of Fournol, a neighboring village, had organized a series of baroque chamber music concerts in many of the abandoned churches . So last night, the mayor opened Condat's house of worship with an eight inch cast iron key which weighed at least two pounds.
I was shocked by the church's state of disrepair. The smell of humidity and mildew was intense as we found our place on one of the simple wooden pews. One glance at the ceiling confirmed my immediate fear that we were sitting right underneath big chunks of loose plaster. I am not a religious person, but I was so saddened and shocked that this little treasure of a church had fallen in such disrepair.
The concert last night was given by a trio that had come all the way from Germany. I wondered how a group of first class musicians had gotten an engagement to play in such a god-forsaken place as Condat. The trio consisted of a husband and wife team playing the trumpet and the violin respectively and a harpsichordist. Though the trumpet was a bit of an odd choice for a baroque trio, it filled the little church with beautiful sounds.
I promised you a tale of an old violin as well as of an old church. So here it is.
As a young man, the grandfather of last night's trumpet player saw a violin in a music store in his native town in Germany. He passed the store many times before he had the courage to enter and to ask the shopkeeper the price. When he finally entered the store and asked, the elderly shopkeeper looked at the young man and declared: " My dear young man, you will never be able to buy it. It is a very expensive instrument." More determined than ever, the trumpeter's grandfather saved his money for many, many years and finally had enough to buy the violin. He loved and treasured it.
Then the Great War of 1914 broke out. Afraid that something would happen to his violin, he carefully hid it under the straw stack of his farm loft. Four long years went by. The trumpet player's grandfather came back from the war and immediately took out the violin from its hiding place. It has survived the war unscathed. But when he tried to play it, he realized that his fingers were no longer subtle and agile enough to produce beautiful music on the instrument. So, broken-hearted, he wrapped a rope around its scroll and hung it from the rafters of his bedroom.
When his grand-son seemed to have inherited his musical talent, he was overjoyed. But the grand-son had his own passion. He was only interested in the trumpet. So the violin stayed unplayed, suspended from the grand-father's ceiling until he died.
But sometimes, life is full of little twists and turns. The trumpet-playing grandson fell in love with a violinist. He presented his wife with his ancestor's instrument, but by then, it had not been played for so many years, that its sound was uninspiring and flat. So the trumper-player and the violinist decided to sell the violin. They took it to a dealer of old violins. The expert looked at the instrument for a long, long time. Finally, he said: " I just bought a brand new Mercedes. Would you consider accepting it as a trade for the violin?" The instrument was from the 1700's, the time of Johann Sebastian Bach's life. Needless to say, the couple decided to keep the violin.
That was eight years ago. Since then, the violinist wife has played the instrument many times and having been played again, the instrument has regained its beautiful sound.
It was played in Condat's little church last night. Its sound was magnificent. An old violin rich in history being played in a church of about the same age, equally full of history. It was a magical evening.
So there you have it, my little story of the day. I hope it did not bore you too much.

P.S. The name of the trio was " Ensemble Entrada" the name of the trumpet player was Dominik Arz and that of his wife, Agnieska Sokol-Arz