Monteverdi - Lamento della Ninfa - Kirkby

I hadn't heard this piece until recently. Best to start at about 1:35.

Capriol Suite

Here's a fine piece of music, the pavane from Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite composed in 1926:

A classical find

Western high culture reached a peak of nihilism in the mid-twentieth century and it was at about this time that the tradition of classical music was ruptured. The decades following 1950 were barren ones; if you loved classical music you had to go back to music that was composed earlier.

But there are signs of a revival. One of the most curious examples is that of the Welsh composer Karl Jenkins. He spent his early career as a jazz musician; according to his wikipedia entry his breakthrough into classical music happened in 1995 when he was already in his fifties.

If you listen to his music it's as if the great rupture never happened. He has picked up the tradition and carried on with it.

That's not to say that there aren't issues. He has written much sacred music but from within the "interfaith dialogue" perspective. So, for instance, in his work Stabat Mater there is a section involving an Islamic call to prayer. To my ears it just doesn't gel with the rest of the work.

Here is an abridged version of the Stabat Mater; in my opinion parts of it are very good:



Another work he is well-known for is the Benedictus from The Armed Man:

Sourp Sourp

I wasn't expecting to like this so much: it's a high school choir singing an obscure Armenian hymn with poor sound quality. But for one minute, from 00:20 to 1:20 it's very good. (Hat tip: Tiberge)

Welney sunset & more

At The Orthosphere there is a regular feature called "Reactionary composer of the week" - meaning a contemporary classical music composer who has rejected the atonal or dissonant type of modernist music.

A composer I was unfamiliar with until recently is the Englishman Patrick Hawes. He draws inspiration from the beauty of nature, from English literature and from Christianity. One of his works which is worth listening to is "Quanta Qualia" the lyrics of which mean:

Anima mea (my soul)
Mane! (Wait!)
Quanta Qualia (how great and how wonderful)
Conventus gaudia (the joys of the meeting)
Erunt. (will be)

Here is a recording of the piece featuring the New Zealand singer Hayley Westenra. The video is of a sunset near Welney in Norfolk, England.



It's interesting to contrast this piece with a another also titled "O Quanta Qualia" - this time in a monastic style of music:



Welney is in the Fens in the district of King's Lynn. King's Lynn has some interesting historic architecture, including the guildhall below from the early 1400s:

There is also the surviving tower of a Franciscan monastery founded in the 1230s:

Finally, when I did a search on King's Lynn I found out that Hayley Westenra, who sang the first version of Quantia Qualia, gave a concert there last year. So to round off the post, here are some photos of her visiting King's Lynn:

Sopranos

There is something special about a soprano in full voice. I found a YouTube clip of the American soprano Renee Fleming yesterday and even though it's the wrong time of year for a carol I'm posting it below.

Holding the stage

Talk about a man out of his time. Just as Western high art was collapsing in the mid-twentieth century, one man stood against the stream in its defence. He was a Canadian opera singer, a heroic tenor, named Jon Vickers.

There's an interview by Bruce Duffie in which Vickers explains some of his views on art. It's worth reading in full, but the sections I enjoyed most are these:

BD: Do you think that opera should speak to everyone?

JV: Absolutely. I'm not sure that it can speak to everyone, but it should attempt always to speak to everyone. There is a great difference between entertaining the masses and seeking to make them turn their eyes symbolically to that idealistic, divine struggle that is the example of manhood and womanhood. You understand? That element within mankind which is divine. I think that once we lower our sights from that which is unattainable, that degree of perfection which is totally beyond our understanding, beyond our comprehension and beyond our grasp, then if we only shoot at the tree-tops we'll only hit the tops of the fence posts.

* * *

BD: Is the music the servant of man or is it the other way round - is man the servant of the music? ...

JV: We are all servants of Man if, in my thinking, we recognize the divinity with the word "Man." I think that we cannot judge Manhood by men. We must judge men by Manhood. And when we speak of Manhood, we talk of that spark of the divine in man. And if that spark isn't there, then in our definition of man we have lowered the whole standard of work.

* * *

BD: You say that we are losing this in the vocal decline of our age. Will it ever come back?

JV: I'm not sure that there is a vocal decline.

BD: An aesthetic decline?

JV: I think there is a decline in exactly what we are talking about. There is a dis-inclination to demand of our artists truth.

BD: Are we lazy?

JV: No, I think it is a very long-developing process. I think it's developed possibly over the last 20 years. People will laugh when I say it, but I feel there has been for some years now a ground-swell of demand for mediocrity. They don't want excellence. We don't have positive heroes anymore; they're negative heroes. What do we attack? We've attacked all the great pillars of civilization. We take great heroes of history and so far as we are capable we snoop around in the excretia of some of these heroes until we find a flaw. So because a hero is not perfection, which if he was he would be God himself, then he's nothing more than anybody on the street.

* * *

BD: Should we not observe monsters at all?

JV: Yes. But I don't think we should embrace their philosophies. Look at the philosophical lines. In France, Voltaire showed the revolution; and then came Napoleon, and Napoleon was a monster. He was a great genius, but he was a monster. The same thing happened in German thought - Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud. The destruction of Christian principles, the lowering of man's sight from divinity to an acceptance of man's own majestic intellectual capacity that by himself he would pick himself up by his shoestraps and elevate himself to being divine. And, of course, what was the result? Hitler. And Stalin.

There have been some debates lately about the positive and negative effects of Christianity on Western civilisation. Vickers stands as an example of the more positive influence.

For example, when Vickers says that "I think that we cannot judge Manhood by men. We must judge men by Manhood" he is clearly rejecting the nominalist, anti-realist trend within modernist thought. He is asserting the reality of an entity "Manhood", external to our own wills, by which we might be judged and to which we might aspire.

Not only would modernist thought deny the reality of such entities, it would treat them as oppressive constructs which limit a man's freedom to self-determine according to his own will.

Vicker's Christianity allowed him to confidently assert a philosophical realism, which meant that he could positively look to and defend the ideals of his own civilisation.

A second interesting aspect of Vicker's Christianity is that it was not in the least productive of effeminacy. Vickers was a powerfully masculine presence on stage. For instance, Monteverdi's operas are often sung with high-pitched voices in the male roles (counter-tenors or mezzo sopranos). Although this does produce a beautiful sound, it doesn't heighten the dramatic interplay between the male and female characters.

So it's stunning to hear for the first time Vickers play the role of Nero in Monterverdi's Coronation of Poppea. This You Tube video isn't of great quality but it does convey Vicker's stage presence. I hope you enjoy it.

Hitting the right note

Who said the protest song was dead? I recently listened to the song Roots by English folk-rock group Show of Hands on You Tube. It's a stirring song with a catchy tune and the following lyrics:

Now it’s been twenty-five years or more
I’ve roamed this land from shore to shore
From Tyne to Tamar, Severn to Thames
From moor to vale, from peak to fen
Played in cafes and pubs and bars
I’ve stood in the street with my old guitar
But I’d be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request
For ‘Duelling Banjos’ ‘American Pie’
Its enough to make you cry
‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘Swing Low’
Are they the only songs the English know?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
They’re never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots - they need roots

After the speeches when the cake’s been cut
The disco is over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
When the Indian, Asians, Afro, Celts
It’s in their blood, below the belt
They’re playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we’ve got wrong?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots - we need roots

Haul away boys let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We’ve lost more than we’ll ever know
Round the rocky shores of England

And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well I’ve got a vision of urban sprawl
It’s pubs where no one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Over-paid soccer stars, prancing teens
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps
And we learn to be ashamed before we walk
Of the way we look and the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs
How will we know where we've come from?
I’ve lost St George in the Union Jack
It’s my flag too and I want it back

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots - we need roots

Haul away boys let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We’ve lost more than we’ll ever know
Round the rocky shores of England.

You might remember that in my last column I discussed the issue of liberalism and neutrality.

The argument is that liberals in the late 1600s began to see neutrality toward religious truth as the highest ordering principle of society and over time adopted the same neutral stance toward other substantive goods, such as ethnicity.

As a consequence Westerners, as the liberal "subject", either relegated their own ethnic identity to a sphere of private sentiment, or else failed to project their own ethnicity and became passive observers of other ethnic traditions.

The song by Show of Hands seems to me to be a protest against this failure to project one's own tradition. It's a rejection of "Invisible English Syndrome", in which one's own cultural roots are ignored and unacknowledged, whilst other ethnic traditions or a commercialised global culture are given free play.

Surprise conservative

Looking through a copy of University Review, a magazine I published at Melbourne University in the late 1990s, I came across an item about the Icelandic pop singer, Bjork.

Bjork is probably better known these days for her eccentric fashion sense. Back in 1998 she made the following comment, surprising for an "out there" pop star:

I think I am a conservative bastard and lucky because I was brought up in a society that has been the same for 1200 years ... When we get drunk we scream in each other's faces poems that were written 1000 years ago.

Bjork is not right in a literal sense: Iceland has not been the same for 1200 years, and conservatives wouldn't want it to be. However, it has preserved its ethnic tradition better than other European countries. So it's understandable for Bjork to feel lucky that she belongs to an unbroken national tradition, in which people still feel a close connection to their own past and their own culture.