A time there was...
For me there really is nothing like a live heart-thumping performance of the Rolling Stones performing their all-time hit Satisfaction. This anthem to the counterculture of the Swinging Sixties is as much a part of my youth as hearing a young Joan Hammond sing Oh My Beloved Father at Covent Garden when I was just eight years old. Both pieces are unforgettably haunting in their very different ways, most particularly because of the way they helped create a litany of connectedness – of love and a shared humanity - that would endure.
Even more intimate experiences matter most though. For me the chance to play Marcel Dupre’s Cortege et Litanie on the instrument for which it was written at Saint Sulpice in Paris, to walk in the woods of the Bois Boulogne with Olivier Messiaen, listening to the songs of birds he would later use in his opera Saint-Francois d’Assise, and to perform my friend Michael Finnissy’s fiendishly demanding Xunthaeresis in my final organ recital at Bath Abbey, were all as formative to my personality as curating the Australian premieres of Gavin Bryars’ Jesu’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet in Melbourne’s Grant Street theatre and John Cage’s Musicircus in the National Gallery of Victoria.
These encounters with the ethereal nature of sound, permanently etched into my mind, are made even more poignant by deep-rooted recollections of my students composing and performing their own music, and my children playing an entire program of string quartets to an audience in Balmain Town Hall.
Even today, over a quarter of a century later, I get a lump in my throat with tears welling up uncontrollably when I recall Ben’s electrifying performances during Canberra’s First International Recorder Competition, Toby playing the Kol Nidrei of Bruch to a room full of mesmerized listeners, Jesse performing Spring from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with a local youth orchestra, Molly raking in the money from a huge crowd while busking on Sydney’s Circular Quay, and Rosie playing with a group of her Victorian College of the Arts friends during their graduation ceremony.
Given the state of digital streaming technology it is easy to imagine an infinite array of shards from these and all the other musics I have heard, performed or directed, edited and compressed into a single composition. Quite legitimately, such an artifact could claim to represent the soundtrack of my life, with intersecting arcs referencing the lives of others – both loved ones and strangers. A contrapuntal aspect of a broader and far deeper humanity.
To arrive at an inclusively authentic soundscape I would also need to edit in sounds from nature - such as the hammering of tropical rain on rice paddies, the soughing summer breezes in counterpoint with the drone of a myriad wasps in the elm trees, cicadas in chorus, and deafening lightning cracks - as well as the unmitigated racket from a built environment that bombards our senses day and night without us being aware of its intrusively intimidating clangour and the deep humming of electricity in the air.
As my life is a 75 year-old score many of the sounds that were common in my youth have since become extinct or are fast becoming endangered species. The clip clop of the horse-drawn carts from Fosters Brewery for example. The cries of the Sun-Herald newspaper boys at Flinders Street station. The characteristic click click of rotary dial telephones and manual typewriters. The distracting whirr of the movie projector…
And then there is the patois inflected with familiar dialects that weave their way like a golden thread through the rest of the tapestry. Never to be forgotten, the calming words of my mother advising me how best to deal with village bullies who seemed to be drawn to me like bees to honey. The tender wit of old Bill Euston as he chided me for my reserve before launching into a theatrically impromptu recitation of a speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The first quirky though recognizable words uttered by my children as babies. The imperious tone of Mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger as she summoned me into her salon for a lesson in two-part counterpoint. The hushed intensity of Max Davies walking me bar by bar through the score of his St Thomas Wake while pointing out the various references to plainchant and other 'found' sonic objects. Accompanying Peter Harrison in a concert of songs by Duparc and Faure…..
The great Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo wrote one of the most bitter-sweet poems in 20th century literature:
Everyone is alone on the heart of the Earth Pierced by a ray of sun And suddenly it’s evening.
A time will come...
Life is so fleeting. What seems interminably slow in youth rapidly hastens - passing us by in the single flutter of a hummingbird’s wing. And while it is true that both our coming into this world and our leaving it are singular rites of passage, our individual journeys through life do not need to be quite so solitary.
Injecting an enlivening and spiritually uplifting soundscape into one’s lifespan is no mere accident. Harmony can be a path to consonance. But it must be composed. The making of harmonic coherence is a deliberate act, in life as much as in music. Sadly it is far from clear we even appreciate what being human actually means, least of all the concept (or the capacity) to create a universal accord from streams of so many flecked descants.
Although it has yet to become perceptible, the age of individualism is fast fading. In its place we seem to have embraced a contagion of social alienation sown into a shroud of narcissism. Each individual is increasingly detached from the kind of society that might otherwise provide a sense of purposeful harmony and of true meaning. Corporate babel is commonplace. An ear-splitting fifteen minutes of fame offered to many. In this strident tower of fictions, science is disparaged, the arts considered trifling, politics has found a home in the gutter, and even common sense is often silenced by tumultuous nonsense.
It should not be this way. It does not have to be this way. We deserve a more congenial ensemble and a score befitting a soaring human purpose. But this music can only start when each one of us is familiar with our part and can harness our own expertise to play in tune with others.
With willing hearts, receptive minds, and an impulse for cooperation, our species could become an advanced civilization of the kind we now dream about in science rather than in fiction. Accessing profound insights we could unite around a common desire to make authentic social progress a priority – not in terms of a competition for more resources, nor one that suckles on the breast of fame and fortune.
For when these are not forthcoming we increasingly retreat into a palliative cocoon in our futile efforts to treat mind-numbing despair. Resorting to trite television rituals, and accepting counselling we did not seek from virtual friends we have never met, this path leads uncompromisingly to a joylessly hedonistic collapse of the social order.
An empathic society, generous in spirit, progressive, determined to learn and to adapt, drawn to a devotion of truths briefly forgotten yet now brought more fully to mind, can help resolve our most existential dilemmas. We might fulfil a greater destiny even now. The opportunity to recapture some element of intelligence, bring a generative capacity to the ways we live, and enable the restoration of concord among the human family, is too grand a challenge to reject out of hand. It is even greater a crime to ignore.