The Tide of Memory

Music is really the embodiment of time. Every sound is a vibration, waves of compression in the air. The speed of those vibrations, called Hertz after Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, is the pitch of the note. So each individual note is a vibration at a particular speed--textured time, in other words. Pulse is the same thing at a slower speed. The note A that we tune to vibrates at 440 times per second. The typical pulse of electronic dance music is 120 times a minute. But it is all about time.

Time is the life of the universe: without time mountain ranges would never erode, the tides would never advance and recede and we would never live and die.

What prompts this? A couple of things: reading Marcel Proust for one. His mammoth novel is all about time, in search of lost time, remembrance of things past, the conservation of the past. We are fascinated by the past, both our individual pasts and the long, dusty history of humanity at large. A cave was recently discovered in central Mexico containing human-made tools dating back 30,000 years. This is twice as old as the previously understood time-line of immigration to the Western hemisphere. Who made them? Absolutely no idea.

But at the same time, other news stories tell us of the rioting and destruction in many US cities. Another impulse in humanity is to destroy the past, to wipe out all traditions and institutions on the theory that they contain traces of evil or simply are evil.

Two impulses: one to preserve and understand the past and the other to destroy the past. I think I know which one I prefer. Those who destroy the past are left with no books, no culture, no traditions. This is all the better for their search, not for truth or understanding, but simply for power. After you have set the clock to zero, then the way is clear to realize whatever plans you have, victims be damned.

I won't apologize for these observations even though I didn't quite justify them in terms of musical interest.

A good choice of envoi is The Shadows of Time by Henri Dutilleux with L'Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Mikko Franck: