It could be a winter song

 

Les cantates de Bach – allant des ‘soucis’ de l’homme fragile qui chante sa détresse et implore la pitié (à travers des chants et des duos/dialogues d’une beauté intense) aux éruptions de jubilation et d’éloge (sublimées dans des textures contrapunctiques et des harmonies) et se terminant par un choral entonné par la communauté.

(Inspiré par une réflexion de B-C Han sur Rilke, qui évoque les soucis de "l'animal fragile" et qui distingue « l’éloge de l’imploration » )

Easter Bunnies and the Tragic Mind

Those are definitely two bunnies, there in the background of that Bellini painting of a ‘Lamentation on the dead Christ’ (1). In the foreground: an ageless tragic scene with a mother grieving her dead son, sprawled on her lap. A still pieta framed by the broad gestures of mourning friends. A frozen scene of lamentation at the foot of an ominous cross.

Behind it all:  a luminous peaceful landscape with trees and rocky hills, with a blue river and hazy bluish mountains merging into the golden light of a pale blue sky with a few drifting clouds. There’s also a city by the river and buildings higher up on the hills. People are walking on the road. Sheep and other cattle are grazing. And there are two rabbits – two long-eared rabbits popping out from the green thicket, two perky white rabbits, utterly visible & present.

The landscape with its luminous tonal harmonies (2) quite transforms the despondent scene of lamentation ; it is a true Bellini painting, with its unique blend of pathos and poetry, of tragedy and beauty. In its emotional appeal, the painting is representative of what so much art throughout the ages, in the visual arts or in music (3) ,  has sought to convey : a sublimation of tragedy, redemption through beauty, a possibility of resurrection.  

It answers a deeply rooted human need for consolation (4), for art that can ‘universalize’ our concerns (5) and accompany us on a journey going from existential anxiety to hope, from descent into sadness to ascent into beauty, from destruction to restoration, from dissonance to consonance (6).

In our agnostic and hedonistic world, we can undoubtedly still long for and even sincerely immerse ourselves in this emotional and aesthetic process of sublimation (when looking at the light (7) in a Bellini painting, when listening to a Bach aria). But what does it mean for us, and what does it mean for contemporary artists, when such sublimation is no longer sanctioned by an unquestioned belief in transcendence? 

 

loving references

(1)    To be seen in the Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia  Lamentation over the Dead Christ with the Virgin, Saint Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Filippo Benizi (?) | Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia (gallerieaccademia.it) , or in the catalogue of the 2023 exhibition ‘Giovanni Bellini, Influences croisées’ (or on the web obviously). 

(2)   Roberto Longhi : « une pacification chorale »

(3)   So many Crucifixions and Pietas, so many Stabat Maters and Passions

(4)   Let’s not deprive ourselves from aesthetic bliss, even though one might wonder why we should be entitled to it while so much man-made suffering is going on  

(5)   Eric Chafe, 'Analyzing Bach Cantatas'

(6)   Gilles Cantagrel, 'Le moulin et la rivière – Air et variations sur Bach' : « La démarche du créateur, son travail acharné, consistera à répondre à cette angoisse fondamentale et à la sublimer »

(7)   Nicolas Joyeux : « Giovanni Bellini semble traduire en image l’ode à la lumière du platonicien Marsile Ficin. »

#devotion

Easter came and went - and no ponderous blogpost, no melancholy musings?  No humble contribution to the training of Google’s algorithms in the meaning of Easter for post-religious humanists?

Well, maybe it’s just wise to keep some mysteries off line? Unless, on the contrary, we should make sure that, amidst the billions of frivolous words & pictures that are continuously uploaded to the Internet, we also add our very own fleeting fragments? Feed our own morsels to that ever growing corpus of data which only an artificial intelligence can still digest.

 Meanwhile, off line, I’m grateful for the very tangible exhibition of old (1130-1600) Netherlandish sculptures in the Louvain Museum. 

The still & solid presence of  these sculptures and reliefs appeases me -  their (relative permanence) & companionship :  how many  people have stood before them, meditating, seeking & finding solace? 

A sculptured group of  a swooning Maria under the cross, held by a commiserating John ( #compassion). 

A relief of  a seated, mourning Maria, surrounded by pictures of her sufferings  (#7sorrows). 

I am also grateful for the very real voices & instruments of the Minimes Chapel Choir & Orchestra , singing and playing every month that divine music which is surely far better than us, poor sinners.   Bach’s music in the Castle of Heaven, il Divino Claudio (Monteverdi) (#sacredmusic), ....

So yes, as a post-religious humanist I am profoundly grateful for  sacred art and music: invented-sculpted-composed- sung & played by human beings – incorporating (and perhaps even assuaging) our longings for transcendence. In fact I’ve often wondered whether this sublime art could only have been created thanks to true religious faith, a real belief in the possibility of transcendence?  

But humanist appreciation of sacred art, however sincere & devoted, is not necessarily welcomed by true believers.   

Think of the notices in churches sternly admonishing visiting art lovers that "a church is not a museum".  

 Or take for example the sad fact that, after 35 years of performing Bach Cantata’s in the Church of the Minimes, the  Minimes Chapel Choir & Orchestra was compelled to look for another home (which thank god they found in the church Saint Jacques sur Coudenberg), because the Minimes Church authorities wanted to give priority to the Cult – dismissing the Bach cantata’s as "mere culture". 

The previous Minimes Parish  priest,  Abbé Van der Biest (who passed away in May 2016), an ardent Bach lover himself , would surely have disagreed.    So, at the last concert in the Minimes church , as a tribute and out of sheer human piety, the passage from Bach’s Magnificat that Abbé Van der Biest loved best, was sung.  

And while the music soared upwards, the whole congregation of music lovers rose and listened devoutly (#devotion). 

  

a variety of voices

Samantha Powers – some time back in the UN

“what chance do any of us stand, if we allow this? Haven’t we learned anything in 70 years?”   

My brother in law – watching the news, horrified

“We haven’t changed in a 1.000 years – it’s the same cruelty. The same barbarism “

Two friends –  in a Brussels restaurant

“Could there be a civil war here, too? You really can’t know what’s going to happen. Who would have thought evn only 5 years ago that the world would have regressed as it has now? It’s  human nature – an irrepressible selfish struggle for life, for power. Bloodthirst. Us versus them. Compassion? Yes, for for one’s fellow group members, for one’s co-religionists.”

Immanuel Kant – at his desk

“From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.”   

Walter Benjamin – in the 30s

“[the technocratic conception] recognizes only the progress in the mastery of nature, not the retrogression of society”

Choir & Orchestra of the Minimes - Chapel   –– BWV 191

“Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis”

Thank you for the music indeed  -  pouring out harmony.  And thank you for a civilisation that took the time and energy to build these  musical instruments  -  imagine all the craft and ingenuity that went into inventing & making them. These instruments - so material, so terrestrial, so technical – but so sensuous,  too, singing & sounding along the human voices.

And thank you for this particular Bach ensemble,  performing Bach cantatas since 35 years now. Capturing so well their typical alternation of jubilation and meditation. 

They’re mostly amateurs, with visiting professional soloists.  A mix of different nationalities, each with their independent part,  singing together, in a Brussels chapel, bound by their love of music and Bach.    

Every year, after the Xmas performance concert, members take tours, each in their native language, to extend their best wishes to the public. In Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Italian, German, Dutch, Greek, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, French, English, …..   A happy concert of voices.

post scriptum

So far for an attempt at Xmas spirit  ... written only a day before a terrorist ran a truck in a crowd on a Xmas market....So far for "peace on earth to men of good will"

The FT cites the editor in chief of BILD : "It may yet turn out that the terrorist assault on Christmas time Berlin is the price of the German display of generosity, so widely praised, 18 months ago. [...] To live with that frustrating idea ....[...]Will a majority of Germans bravely accept the notion that nothing in the world, including compassion towards strangers, comes for free?"  


 

About (not) putting music into words

Describing  

Lovers  of art history books  of course know the exquisite sensation of reading insightful words that match the pictorial evidence.  The exhilarating interplay of seeing and understanding.  Describing paintings, there’s a whole  body of literary texts and poems devoted to it , and a venerable word to consecrate the habit:   ekphrasis.

And how about describing what we hear?  For sure, there are lovely poems built entirely around  onomatopoeia’s.  And language is sound of course.  Clattering rain – thundering thunder – twittering birds (1).   So yes, obviously,  we can describe what we hear – but can we describe music? 

  

While in art history there is a well established, long standing relationship between evocative descriptions on the one hand and the visual  arts on the other , this seems  less so in the history of music where descriptions tend to be either technical (and reserved for the musically initiated) or limited to the review of a performance. (2)

Descriptions of works of visual art  are both very precise and very imaginative, immediately conjuring up a scene or an image while also evoking emotional and philosophical meanings & associations. 

But a description in words that effectively evokes a piece of music for the non-initiated?  Well, there are the CD-sleeve notes that give a  blow-by-blow account of the musical progression in terms of instruments, motives, rhythm, melody – sometimes mixed with indications of “emotional” pitch.(3)  And yes, there may be program music where even an accompanying story can be told.  

 However, in musical history there seems  to be no equivalent (at lease not on the same scale) of  the formidable tradition of  "written-out art history", be it in the form of those innumerable “Ecrits sur l’art”  (by many a  poetically inspired writer or artist), or as libraries full of lavishly illustrated and copiously written art history books. 

A quick Google search yielded an interesting article (“Some Thoughts Towards a Theory of Musical Ekphrasis “ ) about Musical Ekphrasis, but tellingly enough it dealt not with  the poetic  description of pieces of music, but rather with the opposite question, i.e. whether music can describe scenes.(4)

Moved to silence  

Perhaps music is indeed too abstract and “springing from [...] depths of the human psyche” that are too deep to fathom?(4)  Maybe we should really follow “Einstein’s summary advice” about Bach’s music (and about music in general) :  “listen, play, love , revere – and keep your trap shut” (5) .  

Luckily,  John Eliot Gardiner, for one,  did not shut up but wrote a wonderful  600+ pages book on Bach.  With insights and formulations that nearly belie the impossibility of describing music.  How well he does justice to the intricate evidence of Bach’s music itself: its mystifying complexity, sure,  but also its “rhythmical elasticity and buoyancy”, its dancing qualities, its empathy and emotional depth, “so full of poignant emotion that we are moved to the very core of our being “. 

Each of us has experienced the shattering effect music can have,  musical reception is highly subjective and the sheer depth of the accompanying emotions could make us (us = uninitiated but sensitive souls)  believe that we each  have some personal,  special insight in “the truth” of the music. This is most likely not the case, the emotion may very well be  not at all relevant to the composer’s aims, let alone to other musiclovers, it is a secret garden not to be shared. (6) 

So, not being a distinguished musical connoisseur, I shall hereby “shut my trap” – and finish with Auden’s words (7)

“All the others translate: the painter sketches
A visible world to love or reject;
Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches
The images out that hurt and connect.
From Life to Art by painstaking adaption
Relying on us to cover the rift;
Only your notes are pure contraption,
Only your song is an absolute gift.

Pour out your presence, O delight, cascading
The falls of the knee and the weirs of the spine,
Our climate of silence and doubt invading;
You, alone, alone, O imaginary song,
Are unable to say an existence is wrong,
And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.”

Non-musical notes

1) Word-examples inspired by the impressive electrical storm we had here at noon : first an oppressive stillness, then a bang and a flash, heaven’s floodgates opened, and the rain started pouring down: first aggressively clattering, then turning into a soothingly purring noise.  And soon a few courageous birds started signing again, while the first  sirens started wailing ( a medley of car alarms and fire engines).

2) of course there are many many reviews, of concerts, of CD's, songs and tunes , both classical and pop/contemporary - , just as there are private testimonials/love declarations to certain pieces of music : but they are not an imaginative, literary genre in their own right 


3)   There’s an  app from Touch Press editions that offers a “multi-media” guide to Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony. Quite impressive – while the music plays you can follow the progress on the score, you get to see the instruments taking their turns to perform, and there’s a continuous written comment running on what exactly is happening. All very instructive and insightful – but not qualifying as ekphrasis ... 
 

4)  

“As I understand it, what must be present in every case of ekphrasis is a three-tiered structure of reality and its artistic transformation:

A.      a scene or story--fictitious or real,

B.      a  representation of that scene or story in visual form (a painting or drawing, photograph, carving, or sculpture (or, for that matter, in film or dance; in any mode that reaches us primarily through our visual perception), and

C.      a rendering of that representation in poetic language.

The poetic rendering can and should do more than merely describe the visual image. Characteristically, it evokes interpretations or additional layers of meaning, changes the viewers' focus, or guides our eyes towards details and contexts we might otherwise overlook. Correspondingly, what must be present in every case of what I will refer to as "the musical equivalent to ekphrasis" is 
  A.      a scene or story--fictitious or real,
   B.      its representation in a visual or a verbal text, and
   C.      a rendering of that representation in musical language.

5) John Eliot Gardiner – Music in the Castle of Heaven   http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/30/music-castle-heaven-js-bach-john-eliot-gardiner


6)    Gardiner has this lovely habit of not only having copious references at the end of the book , but also plenty of illuminating quotes at the bottom of the page (it’s surely not an accident that he refers to Walter Benjamin’s  constellations), such as this one by Peter Williams: “ The exquisite world of imagination opened up by any powerful music is itself problematic, for it tempts listeners to put into words the feelings it arouses in them and so to visualize a composer’s priorities and even personality. There must be few people who have played, sung, listened to or written about Bach’s music who do not feel they have a special understanding of him, a private connection, unique to themselves, but ultimately coming from their idea of what music is and does. This might be quite different from the composer’s “


7)  Trust WH Auden to write as insightfully about paintings (Le Musée des Beaux Arts) as he does about music (The Composer).