Easter Vigil at Stephansdom

I figured the best place to go for the most important church service of the year would be Stephansdom, the cathedral for the diocese of Vienna. Previous pictures of Stephansdom can be found HERE and HERE. The Easter Vigil Mass was quite an experience. I do have a couple of videos that I took towards the end of the mass, but it was not really appropriate to take pictures at any other time, although some people really made fools out of themselves and had most of the church mad at them.

The service started in a Romanesque style courtyard of the church building across from the cathedral. If I had to guess, I would say it was built in the 18th century because the similarities to other 18th century buildings in Vienna. There was a fire pit about one square meter in the center and at 9PM the Cardinal came into the courtyard and started the ceremony there. He lit the Easter candle from the fire and we all processed to the cathedral. Fortunately they didn't use all of the readings, but they did use five so it was about an hour until we got to the Gloria. To my surprise, they used both the Gloria and Sanctus from the Schubert German Mass that we use at St. Laurence. Of course they used the German words though and not English! The church bells also began ringing and there was incense everywhere, but not quite as much as Larry Votto likes to use! I'm beginning to think that there must be some problem with the main organ, because they used the choir organ exclusively tonight. It's no small instrument itself, but the main organ is the largest in Austria and it would be nice to hear it. I never got a clear look at the instrumental ensemble, but there were also brass and timpani with the organ and choir. The cathedral was absolutely packed, and even the last place to stand was taken. Fortunately a few people left after the first 2 hours, so it cleared up a tiny bit. The Mass ended just before midnight, so around 3 hours and when I walked outside the church bells began to ring again in celebration of Easter.

The first video is part of one of the anthems. I apologize in advance for the quality of these videos, but I recorded them with my digital camera so a lot of the bass in particular is missing. Also, since I wanted to make sure the files were small enough to upload easily, they are only sections of the pieces. For the purposes of scale, the tallest pipe in the facade of that organ is roughly 32' tall. This organ is also at the front, right of the church in one of the aisles.



This second video is part of the organ postlude, Simon Sechter's Fuge über das österliche Alleluja.