On a gloomy Saturday afternoon in December, the Langeveld family heads to Brussels. We attend the opening of the exhibition In the footsteps of Bruegel and the seasonal meter by Bert De Keyser. Organist and composer Jan van Landeghem will enliven the festivities with music by Bruegel's contemporaries and a new composition of his own.
A gallows with a magpie on top, positioned on the side of the church next to the chip shop, the biting wind and the ice-cold rain give the Kapellekerkplein a truly Brugelian allure. We immediately get into the mood. As if we have ended up in one of the paintings of the old master. Once inside the dimness of the church, our mood is further heightened by soft organ music, the public trickling in dressed in dark rain clothes, and Bert De Keyser, who in his long coat and hat also definitely looks sixteenth-century.
We are somewhat confused by the fact that several exhibitions are running here. Bruegel the Great Escape has been running here since last year. This is about tracking down characters who have escaped from Bruegel paintings and hidden themselves in the church. Really fun for the kids!
Curator and artist Bert de Keyser has also assembled a number of works by old and contemporary Korean artists within the framework of an East meets West project to demonstrate their kinship with Bruegel.
Finally, he has designed a gravestone inside for the master resting in the church and placed that gallows outside, a faithful copy of the gallows depicted in Bruegel's painting The Gallows and the Magpie (1568). Complete with magpie and strangely twisted poles. That offers an impressive and deterrent spectacle.
For the original you have to go to Darmstadt. We are grateful to Bert for letting us share the message of this work: the characteristic fluttering of the magpie symbolizes the wagging tongues, those are the gossiping tongues of gossips and slanderers, who talk people to the gallows. The link to our time dominated by gossip media is inescapable. And so this gallows screams its edifying message undiminished after five hundred years. 'You shall never gossip again!' But before that happens, you will first have to cancel your Twitter and/or Facebook account or you will have to immediately distance yourself entirely from your beloved smartphone!
The newly appointed minister of the Brussels Region Sven Gatz came to say a few words and cut a ribbon at the gallows. We view Bruegel's new gravestone and then it is time to listen to organist Jan van Landeghem, who brings some highlights from Flemish polyphony by Lassus, Sweelinck and Heredia. Beautiful, captivating music that even my oldest son – personal motto: I hate classical music – softly hums along to. Among that polyphonic cacophony, Van Landeghem's new composition La gazza sulla Forca (the magpie on the gallows) is by no means out of place. An original and fascinating work in which the flapping and scratching of a magpie is faithfully imitated. Never knew that was possible on an organ.
After the event, the thirst is quenched with a glass of Gueuze beer. The hungry sons are allowed to get a package of chips from the adjoining chip shop. A sympathetic offer and a decisive argument to get them to join this expedition.
Warmed by food and drink, we head home.
We can look back on a successful event that, in all its unpretentiousness and modesty, imparts a necessary and memorable message.
- WHAT: In the footsteps of Bruegel and the seasonal meter
- WHO:
- WHEN: 14 December 2019
- WHERE: Kapellekerk, Brussels
- PHOTOS: mt