Bread of Angels

Candied Angelica

Did I already mention that in my childhood I had the use of part of my father's workshop in the "top garden"? Here I decimated old radios and TV sets and salvaged their parts and, over a period of years, constructed various projects including an oscilloscope, an audio sine-wave generator and an X-Y plotter. And I had a gramophone with an electric pickup that played only 78's and which used steel needles. I got my first 78 records from a second-hand shop "The Rocking Horse" just up the road from where we lived. And thus I was introduced to and got to love Rossini's overture to Guillaume Tell with its amazing portrayal of the storm. I also had a record of a man singing Caesar Franck's Panis Angelicus which tune has lurked at the back of my head and haunted me ever since, albeit mostly stifled because it was RC and my parents were ever so anti-RC. That was long before I discovered that my blog's namesake was a very devout RC.

Angelica is something quite different. My mother used it to decorate cakes so I got to taste it. It tastes like stalks steeped in sugar. A kind of sweet version of celery. Why would you put that on cakes?

Continuing with my recent theme of child musicians I came across Michael Verschuere. Quite a different cup of tea from Aksel Rykkvin but nevertheless I was moved by his rendition of Panis Angelicus.  But even richer than his singing is his expression when it was over - the joy in his face:

Michael Verschuere's joy having just sung Panis Angelicus

Bless all the dear children
In Thy tender care
And fit them for heaven
To live with Thee there