July 1, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Our Cultural Inheritance – A New Essay on Music and Our Culture
Friends,
As readers of these columns will know, the MY CORNER series
is almost entirely dedicated to political and historical issues, some installments
more practical, others far broader in scope.
On various occasions, inevitably, religious and more cultural subjects
have been examined. Indeed, I don’t think it is possible to avoid discussing “politics”
or “history” without eventually focusing on a religious and cultural subtext.
Both the nineteenth century essayist Cardinal John Henry Newman
in England and the great traditionalist Spanish orator and writer, Juan Donoso
Cortes in Spain, made a similar observation: at the very base of all political issues
there is a religious question. In other words, it is virtually impossible to
separate political considerations from a religious ground in which those
considerations, either directly or indirectly, arise. And it is equally
impossible to understand a political position without comprehending the culture
and heritage that serve as both background and incubator for that position.
Even those ideological movements most violently opposed to
historic Western Christian tradition and to the culture created by it cannot
escape their debt to it. Communism, cultural Marxism, classical liberalism,
fascism, capitalism, democratism, secularism: They all, in one way or another, react
to that heritage, either by rejecting some or all of its vision or perhaps,
shaping or subverting that vision to suit their purposes. But, like Joel
Chandler Harris’ famous tale, “The Tar-Baby,” in their efforts to overturn or recast
our heritage, they become entangled in and by it and, thus, they implicitly
acknowledge their debt—willing or not—to it.
And perhaps the reason for that has to do with the fact
that Christianity itself is not just some cult based on Divine Revelation and
the Coming of a God-Man prophet in some far off Middle Eastern satrapy of the
Roman Empire, but that it closely fits and mirrors the laws of nature. Undoubtedly,
it was due to the great Greek and Roman Fathers of the Church, and then to
incredible figures such as St. Augustine of Hippo, and most significantly, St.
Thomas Aquinas—the Angelic Doctor—who were able to offer explanations of the
Christian faith that encompassed both the supernatural and the rational, which
demonstrated that the orthodox Christian religion not only did not distort or
deny the natural world, but that it was the logical, consistent and right
fulfillment and completion of it.
It is true that nearly every revolutionary movement in
history—wishing to somehow create a “new world”—has attempted in some way to
overthrow this heritage, but each time they have run up on the shoals of the ironclad
laws of nature which are fully integrated into Christian tradition, and in so
many ways cannot be separated from it.
We are, wrote the 12th century philosopher
Bernard of Chartres, like “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” Our
knowledge and culture are cumulative and inherited; and in a very real sense,
if we respect that inheritance, it will be for us an overflowing and extremely
fecund source of wisdom, and the surest rampart against the enticements of
revolutionary lunacy.
But that defense also requires of us that we continually
refresh ourselves in that culture and reinforce our understanding of what has
gone before, of that still very rich heritage which offers incredible
sustenance to us…and to our children and their children. It is how we not only inoculate
ourselves against the latest ideological virus or contagion, but how we also comprehend
the lessons that heritage will teach us, as well as experience the grandeur and
beauty of our culture.
Over the past few years I have authored several essays
focusing on our Western musical tradition, as well as about film and other cultural
topics. For I believe strongly that the arts, in particular, music, film,
literature, painting, and architecture, not only have a critical effect on our
cultural environment, but they also indicate in their creation what our society
values and esteems.
It is no accident that the Taliban in Afghanistan have
taken it upon themselves to destroy ancient architectural artifacts that
predate them by thousands of years (some perhaps dating to the times of
Alexander the Great or the Persian Empire). And it is no accident, indeed, that
today’s “social justice warriors” seek to topple and destroy monuments to Confederate
veterans, and also to the Founders of the American nation, George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, or even Christopher Columbus.
Erasing the past is a major step in the futile attempt to
overturn twenty centuries of civilization and “remake men into gods.”
In the end such attempts are, if I may say so, diabolical,
and destined to fail. But over the past 100 years those failures have been
uniquely devastating and unlike anything previous. We need only cite the
attempted worldwide Communist Revolution and its apparent triumph in much of
the world after the incredible devastation of World War II, in which so much of
our inheritance, so much of beauty and wonder, was destroyed, sacrificed and
incinerated by the forces of Revolution.
All the more reason to cling to and rediscover the richness
of our heritage and our culture, and the civilization that produced that
inheritance.
*****
Just recently I published a major essay on the German
nineteenth century composer and musician Max Bruch (1838-1920). The piece
appears in The New English Review and
is available
online in the July issue of that fine journal.
Who, most will ask, was Max Bruch? And why did I choose to
write about him?
In the past I’ve written pieces on the German composer
Richard Strauss, Russian opera (for The
Salisbury Review in England), the German orchestra conductor Wilhelm
Furtwangler, composer Anton Bruckner—but also on country music legend Roy Clark
and television’s “Hee Haw” program. For
me they ALL form a part of our cultural heritage, and we are far richer for
experiencing and coming to appreciate them and their contributions to our
civilization.
Bruch is a prime example of European and German Romanticism.
He was both a musical and social conservative (he despised what he called “social
democracy” both in music and in politics). He was a faithful continuer of the
traditions of composers George Frideric Handel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix
Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann, and a fierce opponent of new trends in music
which he felt undermined the classical tradition. He lived, ironically, to see
the triumph of those new trends and the defeat of the old imperial Germany in
which he had thrived and which he loved. It was a cultured and assured country,
rich in literature, music, art, and poetry; and when Bruch passed away in late
1920, at the age of 82, the disaster of the First World War had fatally
weakened it and endangered much of that culture.
Today Max Bruch is mostly known for his First Violin
Concerto, his Scottish Fantasy (for violin and orchestra), and his setting of
the Kol Nidrei (he was not Jewish but was attracted to this ancient Jewish
prayer). In his day he was lauded as a master of music for the violin, and for
his choral and vocal works (including works based on folk legends and songs),
and his fame spread to both England and the United States, where he sojourned
for periods of time.
Interestingly, my grandmother as a young lady attended a
performance of a Bruch oratorio prior to World War I—I recall the program that
she had saved. But, after World War I, and even a decade or so before, Bruch’s
music had fallen into disfavor…not to be “rediscovered,” at least to some
degree, until very recently. The times had changed, and, as the aged composer
himself had declared with melancholy two years prior to his death, “the tastes
of the present generation have passed me by.”
So today I offer my essay, “Max Bruch, Die Loreley, and the German Romantic Tradition.” The point of
departure is the release for the first time ever of Bruch’s early opera, Die Loreley, on compact disc, and the
discovery of a mine of enchantment and superb melody, based on the German poet
Heinrich Heine’s poem “The Lorelei” (1824), about a maiden who sits upon a rock
over the Rhine River and through her incredible beauty (and song) attracts
mariners to their rocky deaths.
There are two Youtube additions included in the essay which
allow you to actually hear some of the haunting music of the work. I hope you’ll
investigate…
I realize it’s far from my normal defense of Confederate
heritage or criticism of the Deep State. But it is part of our heritage, something that makes us richer and
more resilient in the face of the demonic revolution that seeks to do us all in
and turn us into silenced eunuchs, without heritage, without culture, and without
God.
Here is the link to the article—please take a look:
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