Embracing the Decline, part 7
A Musical Epilogue
Now, I generally refuse to read the Grauniad, but not on any particular principle. It's just because, whenever I do, I feel like my mental capacity is reduced by a fraction in an effort to comprehend the barrage of incoherent, oversocialized spluttering. These days, I'd prefer to increase my brain power by doing things like listening to baroque music.
Which is one of the reasons I made an exception for this piece, which wasn't even written for the Guardian in the first place, but is a transcript of a speech given by Sir Simon Rattle to the London Symphony Orchestra on April 23rd, 2023 (that happens to be St. George's Day, interestingly enough). Rattle addressed the recent reallocation of Arts Council England's budget, which hit traditional art forms particularly (and predictably) hard:
...there’s a kind of dishonesty at the heart of many of the decisions. George Orwell will recognise the language: “Refresh the administration” and “reimagine the art form”. They are two bits of “newsspeak” which mean the opposite of the actual words, but you can all choose your own personal idiocies.
The funds have been reallocated to such elevating cultural hubs as the London Postal Museum, or various identity-based 'inclusivity' box-tickers. CEO Darren Henley reportedly said “we wanted to make sure the portfolio reflects the way England looks and feels in the 21st century,” which is presumably why they've diverted cash to towns like Slough, considering the rest of the country will probably look and feel as cursed as them by the time the decade's finished.
Rattle, however, is politic in his speech, and does not address the obvious degree of cultural dismantling that is taking place under the WEF-occupied regime. Nor, indeed, do the various Grauniad opinion-pieces on the subject (don't worry, I stuck on some Telemann after reading them to restore my braincells). But, quite simply, Rattle and his colleagues are caught between a rock and a hard place; having become utterly dependent on government handouts, they are now pretty much screwed without them (there's a lesson in there somewhere). In the 20th century, the funded arts sector did everything that it could to alienate the plebs; 'high-culture' had to be transgressive, dissonant, and elitist, or funding would be cut, as my choreographer uncle found out while putting on populist ballets that consistently filled London theatres. “We can't give money to populist dance!”
Instead of acting as a bolster for art and culture that appealed to audiences and brought in increased revenue for companies that would leave them less dependent on government-funding, the Arts Council has done precisely the opposite; now the chickens are coming home to roost, the age of cheap energy is over, and the abrasive modernism and political-correctness of the arts sector is causing it to eat itself alive. It's bleakly ironic to witness a once-populist art form such as classical music, which used to see halls filled with drunken concert-goers yelling for encores, being starved of funds in favour of the Blackpool Illuminations, as an indirect result of artistic elitism.
There is, however, an opportunity in here, if Rattle and co are willing to seize it. Classical music promoters could rebrand themselves as the vanguard of beauty against the dissolving mush of globalism, standing defiantly as a beacon amidst the chaos of Clown World. Classical music is one of the great successes of Faustian civilization; it's non-partisan, listening to it literally makes you smarter, and it requires zero input from fossil fuels.
All it requires is a social framework in which enough people place enough value on classical music to keep it going. In the old days, this was supplied by patrons, and in the absence of government-funding, this will be the only way in which such art forms will have a chance of surviving.
It helps if such patrons are wealthy, of course, but if wealth is relatively thin on the ground, as it most probably will be in the future, then it will require a sufficient number of enthusiasts willing to chip in to preserve orchestras and conservatoires.
The word 'enthusiast' has become a little degraded in recent times – e.g., “enthusiastic sales representative wanted” - but tracing its etymology reveals that it originally meant “in divine essence” (Greek: en + theos + ousia). In the original sense of the word, the 'enthusiasm' that drives us towards activities such as music (or dance, painting, etc) is seen as emanating from a divine source. The original wokesters, the Puritans, hated enthusiasm, considering it to be “excessive religious emotion through the conceit of special revelation from God.”
Indeed, the Puritanical impulse in Western culture can be found within every movement that seeks to tear down the past, to ransack and despoil the natural world, and to poison the fecund seeds of joy within the heart. But rather than focusing on scapegoats to blame, we must reinvigorate ourselves with that which is vital, beautiful, and wholesome.
That's where folk culture comes into play. All forms of music originate from some form of folk music – folk music just means “people music”, and prior to the invention of AI software that will probably destroy whatever remains of the recording industry within a few years, pretty much all music was “people music” - aside from birdsong, or the music of the celestial spheres (we’ll get to those in a moment).
These days, though, folk-music and classical-music are vastly different. In European history, this divergence began in the Middle Ages, but wasn't really complete until the Renaissance – even then, a certain feedback continued, as composers continued to look to folk traditions for inspiration.
Prior to this branching, however, there was an extremely rich musical culture that is scarcely known outside of a small number of – ahem – enthusiasts, and I argue that reacquainting ourselves with this era is the key to healing our broken tribes, and strengthening them for the tumultuous centuries to come. There are many early music ensembles around, but while they often come up with excellent arrangements based on the evidence that survives, with instrumentation authentic to the period, the singers almost always use a style that is totally anachronistic. Ironically, this is one area in which classical training needs to be dropped.1
That which is missing, as Iranian-Quebecois ethno-musical educator Farya Faraji often points out, can still be heard in traditional singers from areas ranging from Ireland and Spain, through the Balkans and Middle East, and into India. There is a world (or at least a continent) of difference between an Irish sean nos singer and a Pakistani quwali singer, but they both share a broad approach to music, a highly ornamented and improvisational approach that has largely disappeared from Western classical music. Specific flourishes vary widely, but common across all of them is the heavy use of melisma, a rapid wavering between distinct notes. So thoroughly has this way of singing been excluded from Western music that, when Westerners hear it in Irish folk music, they assume it comes from North Africa, rather than being what it is: one of the last remnants of a voice that was once common across Western Europe.
Moreover, traditional singers incorporate vocal resonances that have been stripped out of the Western classical voice. The Western classical style of singing works well for the highly complex polyphony of Mozart's Requiem, but for the rawer style of the medieval period, it sounds strangely hollow, as if something has been scooped out. For instance, compare the piercing brightness of 'Pilentse Pi' by La Mystere des Voix Bulgares with Sequentia's interpretation of 'O vis eternitatis' by medieval mystic, herbalist, and composer Hildegard von Bingen. While Sequentia's rendition is lovely in its own way, I can't help but wonder if the choirs of von Bingen's time would have sounded closer to the former, with the natural harmonics of the conversational voice amplified in the service of the music, rather than excised.
“That's all very interesting, Luke,” I hear you think, using my remarkable powers of precognitive telepathy, “but what in the blazes does it have to do with the downfall of Faustian civilization?”
Well, I'm going to suggest that, despite my reverence for the classical tradition in music and desire to see it continue, I would suggest that the abandonment of yet more ancient musical forms has been detrimental to the health of the European folk-soul. In Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, Stephen Harrod Buhner writes:
The songs that people write, and perform, speak to specific kinds of damage in the specific module fields that they have, and are possessed by others. They write those songs in dreams. And as we listen to those songs later, the parts of us that need them come to the fore and for a while we dream, our conscious minds sleep. And while we sleep, that part of us synchronizes with the oscillations of the song and that song goes deep within us, reforming the field of that part of ourselves. And sometimes, those songs lead us to ways we can generate that wholeness permanently. (2014: 388)
Just as contemporary Westerners are reacquainting themselves with traditional herbal medicine to heal certain forms of damage untreatable – or, as is increasingly common, caused – by modern medicine, I would suggest the same should be true of music. Take, for instance, this rendition by Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI of a 13th century dance piece, entitled simply “Danse.” For me, it taps into something that modern music can't tap into; that's not to devalue that which modern music can tap into, but there is a medicine in this Danse that has become rare nowadays.
Furthermore, our efforts to heal our connection with the natural world must take into consideration the importance of music. Buhner relates that the Sioux traditionally held that each plant had a song, a song which would “evoke the deeper medicine of the plant” (264); for instance, ethnomusicologist Francis Densmore transcribed a song of yarrow sung by a healer named Eagle Shield. Again, this is not something that is remotely alien to Western Europe; it has simply been forgotten. An Anglo-Saxon herbal charm, preserved in a collection known to us as the Lacnunga, named the Nine Herbs Charm or Nigon Wyrta Galdor demonstrates that Eagle Shield would have found much in common with the herbalists of early medieval England:
Sing the above galdor over each of the nine plants. Sing the galdor three times before the patient self-applies the salve, and sing the galdor three times on the apple. Sing the galdor into the patient’s mouth, sing the galdor into each of the patient’s ears, and—before the patient applies the salve—sing the galdor into the patient’s wound.
To rediscover our own music will take some effort on our part, however. To cycle back to what I wrote in part 4 of this informal series: “If you value something, keep it alive. The embers you protect may produce fires that burn for generations.”
What I would add to that is that sometimes the embers will need a bit of oxygen flow to get them going. That will require some innovation and creativity, but as I discussed in this recent podcast, it helps to know where we came from to get an idea of how to get to where we want to go. Take, for instance, this old Irish sean nos singer recorded in the 1920s; listen to the richness of his voice, the lack of affectation and posturing. One can almost hear how the native birdsongs, trickling brooks, and turbulent rainstorms of his country have unconsciously informed the song he sings.
We need to remember how to sing like him.
An exception is the fantastic Ensemble Organum.