Decline and Rebirth

My post of the last movement of the String Quartet No. 4 of Bartók the other day provoked a couple of enthusiastic comments. Yes, that music, plus other music by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berg and others is powerfully expressive music of a kind that we don't seem able to produce these days. Mind you, the power of that music largely derives from the chaotic aftermath of the suicide attempt by Western Civilization that we label "World War I".

One reason I find little to write about these days is that there is little to write about. Taylor Swift being booed at the Super Bowl? Please. There is nothing interesting in pop music these days and the last creative musician that I enjoyed, Ye, has now descended into vile anti-semitism. In classical music we are either re-hashing the past or genuflecting to the gods of DEI and that is coming to a swift and ignominious end.

I recently re-read Jacques Barzun's magisterial volume From Dawn to Decadence which, though it fell into irrelevancy at the end, did a good job of charting the arc of Western Civilization from around 1500 to around 2000 when it was pretty much coming to an end. The really interesting thing is that what has happened since 2000 might herald some kind of rebirth.

I doubt that this rebirth will show itself for a couple of decades at least, so I likely won't be able to comment on it, but what I see is a rediscovery of the transcendentals: the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Yes, that Bartók movement, though fierce and dissonant is truly beautiful. Beauty can be terrible in its aspect. Marshmallow softness is not beautiful, only cloying.

I realize that a fundamental way I look at everything is moral: the values that are important are moral values (or, their near-relatives, aesthetic values). Sadly, what we are confronting is the truth that for many decades our intellectual and cultural elites have been morally bankrupt and are now suffering the consequences. This is not only inevitable, but inherently good.

A very good thing to do right now would be to re-read some Plato. Few authors write anything that is truly morally beautiful, but Plato is one of them. The Apology that he crafts recalling Socrates' speech to the jury of 501 Athenians at his trial in 399 BC is one of the fundamental touchstones of the civilization of the West. Sometimes I am approached by Christians asking me to accept Jesus Christ into my life. I appreciate anyone who is in pursuit of virtue, but I always have to tell them that of the two cities that lie at the base of Western culture, Jerusalem and Athens, I am a man of Athens.

The major turning point in my life came in September 1971 when I attended the University of Victoria as an undergraduate music student. I was enrolled in the university choir and the first piece we learned was the Requiem by Mozart. This was a profound revelation, not least due to the wisdom of the conductor, George Corwin. You only really get inside music by performing it.