Titanic Lyric? and Cool Site

I found a pretty cool website that breaks down the action of the Broadway musical TITANIC scene-by-scene with dialogue and song lyrics. Plus accompany screen-caps from the press video reels.
Visit here: http://www.amazing-journey.com/titanic.htm

I adore this score and show and yet something has always been unclear to me. What famous monument are they referring to in the lyric: "From flying buttresses alone, a wall of light"...?

At first I thought the Eiffel Tower but that wasn't built yet and isn't a "wall"... neither is Notre Dame (which has flying buttresses)... Any idea?

PEACE

Thank you, Yankee.
I know what a flying buttress is.

What I'm curious about is to what monument in specific the lyric is referring to, because of the reference to "light." The Notre Dame? Westminister Abbey?

We've got the Great Pyramid, Great Wall of China, Duomo, Aqueducts of Rome, Sistine Chapel, Stonehenge, the Parthenon...

So what is "flying buttresses to make a wall of light" referring to? I wonder if it's just a blanket-verse for all architectural wonders of that design.

Updated On: 4/7/07 at 08:49 PM

I believe Yankee is right. Flying buttresses are most notably used in Notre Dame and Chartres, but on the whole, their contribution to architecture was the fact that they opened up the possibility of enormous cathedrals that didn't have to have ridiculously thick load-bearing walls. In other words, because of the advent of flying buttress, the dark, cold cathedrals of the Romanesque period were able to be replaced by the light, ornamental cathedrals of the Gothic period, which is when cathedrals became a work of art as well as a piece of architecture.

yes it is.

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You know, I never considered that the other lyrics were so specific. If I had to name one particular cathedral whose flying buttresses created a "wall of light," it would probably be Chartres.

"At first I thought the Eiffel Tower but that wasn't built yet and isn't a 'wall'..."

Uh, the Eiffel Tower was already more than twenty years old at the time of Titanic's disaster. Its structure was completed in 1889.

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Ooh wah wah wee wah!!!!

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