Last night I went to a wonderful concert of music by the French composer Poulenc at London's Southwark Cathedral. I'll come back to the concert later, but what I really want to talk about is the pervasive effect of music in modern society. And what has been lost.
Classical music is the best thing that Western civilisation has produced - above all, it is the finest flowering of Christianity, from medieval monastic plainchant to Bach to the astonishing Francis Poulenc. For real Christianity is less about theological dogmas than about sound - The Word made Flesh worshipped through ringing sound, the choir of voices united in worship, the ecstasy of soaring to heaven on transcendent tone. In fact this goes back to the roots of European civilisation in the mysteries of Apollo and Orpheus, which is why Christ was often compared with Orpheus, the sacred musician who can charm and move all things with the music of his lyre.
Yet in England music, like so many other things, has been made a subject of class war. I owe almost everything in my life to the lucky coincidence that led to me taking up a musical instrument and discovering classical music. I have played rock and pop in my musical past, but my favourite kinds of music are folk and classical (and jazz which in many ways is an African American form of classical music). My blood boils at the idea that privileged snobbery and militant class hatred often combine to deprive British people of this wonderful, life saving gift of music. Pop music has its place, but there is just no argument - classical music is better, more important.
Listening to harmonious music positively affects the brain, and not just the brain but the soul as a whole. Learning a genuine musical instrument that makes a real sound is one of the best things a person can do for their happiness and spiritual development. Not all children take to music lessons, and forcing piano lessons on children may do more harm than good, but parents give an incalculable gift in offering the opportunity of a musical education, especially if its based on joy rather than pushy ambition.
And here's the appalling truth. Everyday, we are soaked in disharmonious vibrations. You see people listening to angry music with jarring beats, which makes them angrier. Their bodies twitch, their heart rates race. Cars play music so loud that windows rattle. Commuters with headphones on listening to music that insulates them from the ugly city - yet they become disconnected and allow the city to become even uglier.
We underrate music. It gets 'under the skin', especially repetitious music; it changes your moods, the cycles of your nervous system, your hormonal secretions. Indian yoga uses Mantra, the repetition of sacred sounds that attune yogis to divine vibrations. Many traditional peoples use drumbeats to induce trance - and because so much of modern pop music is rooted in African American traditions, rhythmic, repetitive beats with an ancient link to trance and magic have become part of our global listening experience.
Repetition and devotion to spiritual beings through changing our neurology are natural parts of our human heritage. But they can be abused. From military music used to create the desire for war to jingles to worm into consumers' brains and make them buy things they don't need. And above all the endless message of pop music - be a materialist individual, saying 'fuck you' to anyone that challenges your selfishness.
Modern pop music is mostly either repetitive and moronically hypnotic, or it is jagged paranoid and expresses and furthers urban alienation; and of course bland love songs - which are really sex songs - abound. It is hardly surprising that large numbers of people have almost no attention span, no ability to concentrate and dwindling empathy. If more people learned a musical instrument and learned to listen, crime would decrease and people's happiness and even productivity would increase. More importantly, they would be free - we are either dancing to our own tune, or being moved like marionettes on strings by the covert forces that choose what vibrations our society will be flooded in.
As a generally miserable teenager, I was lucky to play some amazing classical music in youth orchestras. One piece that changed my life was Francis Poulenc's organ concerto. Poulenc (1899-1963) was a French composer of that generation that blended modern music of the French tradition with the new atonal tendencies, as well as jazz, which had a European centre in 1920s Paris. His mercurial temperament, wonderful gift for melody, sensibility affected by his homosexuality and his rediscovery of his Catholic faith combine to make his works endlessly surprising, satisfying and refreshing, full of an endearing humour. Sometimes, as with the organ concerto, there is also tragedy and an soul-filled elegeic mood that more boring and serious composers with heavy souls cannot approach.
The City of London Symphonia conducted by Stephen Layton, did a grand job. Opening with Poulenc's engaging Les Animaux Modeles, the organ concerto closed the first half, a thrilling ride despite the challenge posed by the acoustics of Southwark Cathedral. The second half was opened by Ravel's Pavane pour une infante defunte, played with stately elegance before closing with the astonishing Gloria and the astonishing and beautiful soprano Elizabeth Watts.
We have become too addicted to music that makes a statement or is a narcotic for the disintegrating contemporary psyche - usually the statement is full of ego, ambition and a kind of soulless concentration on form. Witness the ruthless perfection of the dance routines that accompany contemporary pop videos. Listening to Poulenc last night my heart ached for all that Europe has lost, destroyed by the combined forces of Fascism and Communism which in fact won World War 2 and from whose reign we struggle to escape. The roots of Europe are our folk tradition, our good paganism, our good Christianity and our commitment to a society which balances the needs of the individual with the good of the community.
It is time to clean out our ears, open our hearts and refresh our souls.
Beautifully expressed, James - and, as a lover of classical, mediaeval and folk music myself, I can identify with much of what you say. In many ways, music is the purest and most instinctive of the arts; it connects us most immediately with the world and the higher realms.
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