Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and yes, ‘tis chingchongchinaman once again (or not again, as you may react) as your guest FNBB blogger for this evening, the middle portion of the 3-week “guest conducting” gig alluded to last week. The allusion is more appropriate tonight, as you’ll soon read. The title for tonight’s edition might seem unusually populist for 3CM, given that the pairing of pretzels and beer is one of those beverage and food combinations that seem always to have been around and to be taken for granted. However, even given that 3CM is king of losers on DK, he always has a reason, however flimsy or outré, for his choice of FNBB topic. That reason will arrive in due course.
But first: from digging on teh interwebz, the pretzels and beer combo looks to have its roots in the Catholic Church, or at least part of its roots there. Starting with pretzels, Sarah Pruitt had this article from the History Channel page, which comments:
“The Catholic Church played a leading role in the early history of the pretzel. In the seventh century, the church dictated stricter rules governing fasting and abstinence during Lent than it does today. Pretzels, made of a simple mixture of water, flour and salt, were an ideal food to consume during Lent, when all types of meat, dairy and eggs were prohibited.”
On the beer side, the Catholic Archdiocese of Balitmore had this article from their “Catholic Review” page (dated one day before Leap Day 2020, as it turns out) by George Matysek, which cites a book by Father William Saunders titled Celebrating a Holy Catholic Easter: A Guide to the Customs and Devotions of Lent and the Season of Christ’s Resurrection:
‘Beer became a popular Lenten drink because monks, who abstained from wine and dairy products during Lent, needed a hearty drink to sustain them, Father Saunders said. They brewed a strong lager high in carbohydrates and nutrients.
‘Beer was particularly associated with a monastery established in the 1600s by the Order of Minims near the city of Munich. The monks began brewing beer there in 1634, continuing to 1799 before the brewery was purchased by Franz Xavar Zacherl and the brewing tradition was carried on by the Paulaner Brewery.
‘“Beer was a very good, hearty drink,” Father Saunders said. “It kept the monks happy.”’
No doubt :) . On the particular combo of beer and pretzels, the “Bottle Makes Three” blog had this April 2017 post, by ‘Chris’, one half of the couple, Jeff and Chris, whose blog this is. Chris comments:
“So why is it that beer and pretzels go so well together? While some people think that salty snacks are just there to encourage you to get thirsty and drink more, there may be another reason. The salt of the pretzel may actually help enhance the flavor and hop bitterness of some beers, while providing a flavor contrast to less hoppy styles. The fact that the salt enhances your perception of the different flavors in your beer is what makes them such a tasty combination.
“Hard pretzels are also a great palate cleanser. By enjoying a pretzel or two between beers when sampling various styles, you can help your taste buds to reset, so to speak. At the very least it can help you avoid harsh flavors when you taste two very different styles back-to-back.”
So now the reason for this FNBB topic choice, which ties to this concert almost exactly a month ago by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with the very unwieldy title “Operatic Encore with the SLSO”. The salient feature to this FNBB is this bit:
“Enjoy complimentary beer and pretzel samples courtesy of Schlafly Beer and Gus’ Pretzels outside of Powell Hall prior to the concert from 6:30-7:30pm.”
For the record:
* Beer selections: Schlafly Summer Lager and Schlafly IPA (if memory serves; BTW, this yearis the 30th anniversary of the Schlafly brewery)
* Pretzels: Pretzel Endz
This SLSO tradition of beer and pretzels concerts goes back to 1944, per this SLSO press release about the prior SLSO beer and pretzels concert, which was on Leap Day Weekend 2020, two weeks before everything cultural and much else pretty much shut down. Needless to say, especially given 3CM’s cultural elitist tastes, he attended both of those concerts, and partook of the refreshments heartily. Besides any purely musical and artistic qualities of the concert itself (review, in fact the only media review of this concert), other aspects are worth commenting upon regarding this SLSO concert, apart from the beer and pretzels. FWIW, the Pretzel Endz were soft pretzels, rather than hard pretzels like what the “Bottle Makes Three” blog post mentioned, but no matter: soft pretzels work just great with these beers as well. (Also, FWIW, because of weather that day, the noshing took place inside the hall, not outside.)
The obvious main aspect relates to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performing arts, which has been double-plus-ungood, to say the least. With the pandemic, it was clearly not safe for orchestras, opera companies, and theater troupes to gather like normal, for rehearsal and performance, due to the risk of spreading the virus via aerosols in enclosed spaces. So orchestras shut down full-scale concerts for the rest of the 2019-2020 season, which meant a huge loss of ticket revenue, and elevated financial risk, in a world where classical music is already uber-niche and alwas operating on a fiscal knife’s edge.
In very late Q3 and early Q4 of 2020, normally the start of orchestra seasons in the US, some orchestras, including the SLSO, resumed live concerts, generally with:
* works for smaller orchestras
* very limited audience sizes
* shorter running times generally without intermissions
* and as many musicians wearing masks as possible (string players, harp, percussion, piano, or harpsichord for baroque repertoire)
Likewise, in general, audience members had to wear masks. As well, with respect to the string players, the orchestras didn’t use the standard seating of two players per music stand. Instead, the orchestras switched to one string player per stand, and spaced them (and everyone else) apart on stage as much as feasible for both musician safety and ensemble cohesion. At least with the SLSO, the number of players that could be safely accommodated on stage was something like 40. This is a stark reduction compared to standard concerts where you can have 80-90 musicians on stage, and even up to 180-200 people on stage for a big choral work. All this is still before the vaccines, of course, and still not great at all for earned revenue.
Fast forward to last month’s “Operatic Encore” concert, towards the end of Q2 2021, with the adults now in charge in DC (though not in Jefferson City, sadly), and vaccines rolled out, even though the COVIDiot quotient in MO is well higher than average in the rest of the USA, and thus MO’s vaccination rate is well below what it should be. (Nothing like red state stupidity, right?) However, going on intuition, the symphony demographic is much more likely to be vaccinated than not, even the Republicans among symphony-goers. And, of course, to nosh on the beer and pretzels, one must de-mask. On stage, the string players, harpist, and percussionists were still masked. One key difference from past concerts, though, was that the (masked) string players were paired at music stands again, and also looked packed closer together, almost close to “normal” old days. Seeing that was both nice and disconcerting. The concert itself was good, where the orchestra sounded in very fine form (but then the SLSO pretty much always do). The conductor was OK, if nothing really special, kind of just keeping time a lot. At the very least, she didn’t get in the way of the music or the players, and her spoken introductions to the music were charming.
Obviously we would all like life in general to get back to something resembling normal. In the hall that night, many people (not I) dispensed with masks in their seats. Lin-Manuel Miranda expressed the worry that is (or at least should be) in the minds of all performing arts organizations in this NYT article by Michael Paulson, Ben Sisario, and Robin Pogregin from last weekend:
“On a fundamental level, our health is at stake. You get this wrong, and we open too soon, and then we re-spike and we close again — that’s almost unthinkable.”
Given general human stupidity, though, that worst-case scenario is not at all unthinkable. The reason behind L-MM’s concern is the obvious one, summarized in another NYT article from last weekend by Matt Stevens:
“But there is growing concern about a highly transmissible Delta variant that has surged in hot spots around the globe and is now responsible for more than half of new infections in the United States. The spread has renewed concerns about the virus and prompted the World Health Organization to urge people — even vaccinated ones — to wear masks again.”
The SLSO has announced concerts for the fall of 2021, rather than a full season slate through May 2022. This is quite understandable, given the general uncertainty of not knowing where the city and state will be in terms of the pandemic. I still have my masks on hand, of course, besides being fully vaccinated, and totally willing to get another dose of a new vaccine next year, even if I have to pay for it. If nothing else, if the SLSO is able to do another beer and pretzels concert, that one won’t be until 2022. We shall see.
But back (finally) to beer: tonight’s selection was a repeat of a selection from a few weeks ago, a “Live Your Best Life” from Ten7 Brewing. As pilsners go, it’s certainly less bitter than the Gras Mähen pilsner mentioned 5 weeks ago, but it still hits the spot. The only surprise was the amount of foam that escaped upon opening. This is all very First World, of cours.
With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you quaffing tonight? Anyone brewing their own? E-bonus points if you had pretzels at some point this evening. But even if you didn’t, feel free to join the conversation anyway ;) .