U-topia or Eu-topia
The original Greek allows for two translations: either a ‘good’ place or a place of ‘nothingness’ – a ‘no-place’. Whereas the ancient Eastern philosophies pondered on the latter as nirvana, ultimate happiness as a result of dissolving the ego and setting us free of self and all earthly desires, the Greeks were the first to define in detail what a ‘good’ place could be. Lycurgus’ ideal constitution for the city of Sparta dates from the 9th century BC yet, alarmingly, it reads like the proto-type of an early fascist state based on harshly egalitarian military principles.
The other city-states developed more relaxed models of organization. In the footsteps of the relatively short-lived Athens democratic experiment, Plato’s Republic (4th cent BC) depicts an ideal imaginary state already somewhat removed from reality. Governed by a ruling class of philosophers, protected by warriors and supported by a class of labourers and artisans, the pursuit of common good is the guiding principle. Moral virtue equals political virtue and education is the key to social harmony. This first fully-fl edged vision of utopia immediately found followers as well as detractors. Aristophanes made a career out of ridiculing the sexual and economic equalities Plato was advocating whilst Zeno coined the idea of a universal brotherhood of men, a society without marriage, religion, laws, money or property. It is remarkable how many of these ideas returned to the fore in later utopian literature, including the concept of the Sun State (Iambulus 4th cent BC).
At this early stage too, the borderline between serious political/philosophical thinking and fantasy story telling started to blur, eventually giving life to a whole new and thriving branch of modern literature. When Sir Thomas More however wrote his famous Utopia in 1515, it wasn’t fantasy that prompted him but a complex and very real set of circumstances.
Garden of Eden c. 1600 Jan the Elder Brueghel
All ensuing English Utopian books such as Robert Burton’s Utopia of Mine Own, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, James Harrington’s Rota as well as a series of European works starting with Tommasso Campanella’s City of the Sun, take their lead from the early Greek models, albeit with some surprising results. One of the most peculiar is called ‘La Terre Australe Connue’ as originally published in Geneva in 1676 but also known as ‘A New Discovery of Terra Australis Incognita or the Southern World’ in its subsequent English publication. Written by the French monk Gabriel de Foigny, the book gives a fanciful description of the imagined Australian country where a certain James Sadeur spent 25 years “Cast There by a Shipwreck”.
Contrary to de Foigny’s personal experiences, this remote Southern country is utterly free of linguistic or religious divisions as well as mountains or clothing! In his Australia all mountains have been levelled, any mention of religion is considered a crime and all people, hermaphrodites at that, go naked. Here is equality as never expressed before…
The moment liberty, equality and brotherhood were translated in pragmatic political theory utopian thinking temporarily subsided or became increasingly fanciful. However, the moment these ideas were politically implemented, a new tidal wave of utopian literature appeared on the horizon around 1850, just as Marx’ Das Kapital started to galvanise political thought. H.G. Wells (1866-1946) is but one of several generations of utopian writers who demands to be understood in this context. His Modern Utopia (London 1905) pre-empts contemporary views of a dynamic, fl uid and progressive society with shared value systems, a universal charter of individual rights and freedoms, including the right of personal property and relying on advanced technology rather than human labour.
All this seems a far cry from the original myths of Paradise, Arcadia or the Garden of Eden. Yet notions of the Golden Age, the Island of the Blest or the Land of Cockaigne lie at the heart of our dreams and aspirations. Interlocked with the eternal questions of good, and therefore also evil, are the fundamental issues of social behaviour and our place in the world. Music hardly contributes to this three-thousand-year old intellectual discourse but through its powers of abstraction and emotion, music has a knack of suspending the hardest questions and the most intractable problems. Its redemptive and therapeutic powers perpetuate the dreams of an ideal trouble-free world, all whilst keeping the social wheels well-oiled.
Thomas More – Erasmus – Josquin
Thomas More’s fi ctional encounter with Raphael Hythlodaeus, the narrator of Utopia, took place in Antwerp during the summer of 1515. More was caught up in Flanders as part of a diffi cult and drawn-out trade mission on behalf of Henry VIII. More’s friend Erasmus had introduced him there to Peter Giles, Secretary of the City of Antwerp and it is through Giles that the invented encounter with Raphael took place. The ensuing conversation about the city of Utopia forms the basis of a book that follows the pattern of Erasmus’ Encomium Moriae (‘The Praise of Madness’), written as a guest of Thomas More in England. In Erasmus’ provocative tale Madness herself holds forth, thereby absolving its author of all responsibility.
Raphael’s impassioned account of a city ruled by far-reaching principles of justice and without private property was equally daring and revolutionary, duly prompting vociferous disagreements from the author. Yet, his stature and integrity could only protect him for so long. Compromised by Wolsey’s machinations, More refused to recognize the King as head of Church and paid with his life in 1535. With the help of Erasmus, Utopia had been published in Leuven (Flanders) in 1516. This makes the work remarkably contemporary to Josquin’s famous Pange Lingua Mass based on the hymn by St Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi, celebrating the central Christian doctrine of the transubstantiation.
Both More and Erasmus were profoundly devout men railing against the excesses of state and church and working towards a better society whilst holding on to the central tenets of one single Christian faith. Their lack of compromise fi nds pure and lasting expression in Josquin’s mature style. The Pange Lingua Mass is generally dated around 1515 when the composer had returned to Condé in the south of Flanders.
J.S. Bach – Frederick II- Voltaire
On May 7, 1747, a meeting took place in the Royal Palace of Potsdam, just outside Berlin, between Frederick II, 35-year old King of Prussia, and J.S. Bach, 62-year old composer from Leipzig. Both had a reputation: Frederick as the most politically enlightened ruler of its time but also as a fearless military campaigner, Bach as the most earnest composer of ‘diffi cult’ contrapuntal music but also as a fearless keyboard improviser.
Frederick II "The Great" (1712-1786)
The King, himself a gifted flute player, had recently acquired some new instruments, called pianoforte, and wanted someone special to ‘test’ the large collection. In return, the composer too was to be tested with an unusually long and chromatic theme devised by the king (Thema Regium), or, perhaps, as has been suggested, the composer’s son, C.P.E Bach, in gainful employment at Frederick’s court. How well exactly the composer managed on the spot to improvise fugues on this theme, we do not know, but we do know that the challenge of the theme did not lose its grip on Bach’s imagination.
Voltaire, portrait after Nicholas de Largilliere
Several months later, a musical present – Musikalisches Opfer – was sent to Frederick, containing not only a three-part fugue (to which the theme lends itself best), but also the seemingly impossible: a six-part fugue along with 10 puzzle canons and a trio sonata, all based on the royal subject and using the older name for fugue, Ricercar: Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta or ‘the theme given by the king, with additions, resolved in the canonic style’. With the exception of the trio sonata, the work carries no specifi c performance instructions and has been subject to many interpretations, including a beautiful Klangfarben orchestration by Anton Webern of 1935. On this occasion, the rendition is vocal rather than instrumental, using text material from the correspondence between Frederick II and Voltaire. Both had a habit of testing one another with elaborate often versifi ed letters. In the 1740s, Voltaire was mainly preoccupied with issues of Providence vs Free Will and the King gladly participated in the ongoing debate. Over time Frederick was to become increasingly despotic and Voltaire increasingly polemic. That would turn their relationship very testy indeed.
Terry Riley – Pandit Pran Nath
Terry Riley was born in California and famously visited Australia as recently as 2006. Riley’s musical path was forged through the experiments of the San Francisco Tape Music Centre (comprising musicians such as Steve Reich), the contact with LaMonte Young and above all, the Indian master Pandit Pran Nath, a Hindustani classical singer. The story goes that Nath had spent fi ve years in a cave near the Tapkeswhar temple to Shiva before re-entering the world in order to ensure the preservation of the Kirana style. Riley made numerous trips to India embracing the style of Indian vocal and instrumental improvisation. During the 1960s he organised his now legendary “All-Night Concerts”, during which he mostly improvised from dusk till dawn, using an old organ harmonium (“with a vacuum cleaner motor blower blowing into the ballasts”) and a tape-delayed saxophone.
It is from this heady time of social and musical change that In C stems. Often described as the ultimate reaction against the complex atonal exploits of European serialist music of the time (it was) and as the first minimalist piece of music (it wasn’t), In C builds on the collectively enjoyed freedoms and choices that creative musicians can share in performance. More important than the 53 individual musical cells the work consists of the spiritual, devotional dimension of the emerging dialogue, held together by one single repeated C.
