Critchley and Simmons, Sydney Drama House
Start with ‘A Walk (around the Stream Lea)’ with visuals as individuals sit down and settle down. Music blurs, stage to dark, quiet. Then, at that point, stage lit with a solitary spot. SC comes in front of an audience, tracks down the spot and talks:
Goodbye, Lovely people. I’m Simon Critchley. Some place in the dimness prowls John Simmons. Together, we are Critchley and Simmons, not a firm of specialists, but rather a perfect, pounding, living examination in words, sounds and pictures.
Music matters. It is important Hochzeit DJ. For certain individuals it is important more than whatever else. However, the why and the how of its making a difference stays a puzzle for us, a dim enigma. What difference does music make? For what reason does it address us so intensely? This is where a little way of thinking could help. The errand of tonight’s diversion is to peer rationally into the conundrum of music, to peruse its question not to tackle it for the last time, yet to reveal a little insight in the haziness.
Also, with regards to the way of thinking of music what other place would it be a good idea for one first go however to the wise direction of Albert Freiherr von Thimus, 1806-1878, creator of the concise Pass on harmonikale Symbolik des Alterthums (The Symphonious Imagery of the Old World). He was a fascinating individual, a legal counselor, an adjudicator and a Prussian lawmaker, an obsessionally committed novice whose work on music is recognized by the way that it was completely disregarded in the course of his life. He was a close companion of Noble Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo, legend of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. Albert Freiherr von Thimus thought music, the music of days of yore, seemed to be this,
What von Thimus is sprucing up in rather close fitting nineteenth Century britches is the antiquated Pythagorean hypothesis of music, the supposed ‘agreement of the circles’. This is an old, unwritten, obscure and exceptionally compelling practice that starts in the fogs of days of yore yet whose first literary help is an entry from Plato’s Timeaus on the making of the world soul expounded on quite a while back. The Timaeus was the just of Plato’s texts to be accessible all through vestige and the middle age time frame. Tragically, the section being referred to is totally incoherent. Here is a taste,
‘From a pith impartible, and continuously remaining alive as per equivalence of being, and from a nature separable about bodies, he (the Demiurge) blended from both a third type of embodiment, having a center means between the two. Furthermore, once more, between that which is impartible and that which is distinct about bodies, he set the idea of same and unique.’
You understand. However, the essential thought behind the music of the circles is that the superb bodies uttered sounds as they traveled through space. The old Greeks knew about nine circles: the Sun and Moon, the planets that we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the Brilliant Circle of the decent stars overhead and the Glasslike Circle which controlled the parade of the equinoxes. On the Ptolemaic, earth-focused perspective on the universe, these circles moved around the earth in a dignified and unvarying parade. It is accepted that Pythagoras accepted (we don’t be aware without a doubt; truth be told, we don’t actually have an idea as no works of Pythagoras have made due) that the Circles, just the same as any remaining articles which move, should vibrate and that these vibrations should create sound. The various circles, being of various size and moving another way from the others, produce as needs be various sounds. Saturn, being in days of yore the farthest planet from earth would give the bass note climbing through to the high pitch of the Moon. In any case, concerning the Pythagoreans all nature was an agreeable entire, the sounds radiated by the different circles should likewise be agreeable, a sort of heavenly widespread harmony as the universe turned everlastingly through space. It could have sounded something like this…
On this view, music, human music – culled or played with human fingers – if it was formed and played by legitimate guidelines, was an impression of the numerical congruity and flawlessness of the universe. More than that, to the extent that melodic congruity was on top of the concordance of the universe, music made conceivable a fellowship with the maker of the universe, God himself, herself or no self. Music is the key by which we could enter the psyche of God. Getting the graphs of the sixteenth Century Swiss humanist, Heinrich Glarean, the melodic universe would have seemed to be this…
Here, the nine circles of the universe compare to the nine dreams. Obviously, the word ‘music’ gets from the Greek mousike, that craftsmanship over which the dreams directed which was one of the three mainstays of Athenian instruction where youthful residents were educated to sing verse to the melodic backup of the lyre, which is where we find out about verse..
The vital idea in the music of the circles is amicability: the universe is agreeable for it is crafted by God and melodic concordance is the human key to the heavenly congruity. A long way from having the very best tunes, Satan despises congruity. In the words on St. Thomas of Villanova (1486-1555), “Music puts Satan to flight…and he whom no power can defeat is overwhelmed by agreement”.
This Pythagorean practice bends and wends its direction through history like a tram line, more than once showing up momentarily over the surface prior to getting out of view. The Pythagorean faith in the supernatural and grandiose meaning of music is the center of an Airtight practice that traverses relic, the middle age and renaissance universes and reaches out into innovation in magnificent figures like Charles Fourier (1772-1837), about whom I might want to say a couple of words as he is so peculiarly fascinating. Fourier was gigantically persuasive in revolutionary communist legislative issues before 1848, contending that on the off chance that people genuinely freed their interests, they would live in an express that he called – who could have imagined – Concordance.
However, what I love around Fourier is that he had a few completely distraught thoughts. That’s what he accepted, after the freedom of the interests, the human life expectancy would be reached out to 144 years, that the seas would be changed from saline solution to lemonade, the posts would be warmed and become prolific, that lion and sharks would be changed into enemies of lions and enemies of sharks, giving quick and amicable types of earthbound and sea human vehicle, that people as one would reside not in religious communities but rather what he called phalansteries, which would be somewhat nineteenth century lavish inn buildings dedicated to the free investigation of the interests and where garments wouldn’t be important in light of the fact that the earth would be circled by immense mirrors reflecting and keeping up with the sun’s glow in winter.
Going to music, Fourier accepted that the person was what he called a ‘passional console’ with 32 keys. The 32 keys of the human console were as one with the planetary console, which was likewise comprised of 32 tones which relate to the – hang tight for it – 32 planets. Truth be told, there are 32 planets, since our thought process of as satellites and space rocks where initially residing moons in the planetary group. Simply figure it out and you’ll see that Fourier is correct. Together as one, the earth would recapture its five moons, that is correct five moons, every one of which – and I love this – produces its own assortment of gooseberry here on the planet.
Regarding the matter of gooseberries and general concordance, here is our endeavor to express something about how the book of nature may be perused with music, a watery book, a book of water. Keep in mind, as Robert Walser writes in his unconventionally tormenting 1932 piece ‘Boat Outing’, ‘On fish one tracks down no arms. Is this why they have such enormous eyes and expressive mouths?’ Shrewd words. We should consider them as we watch ‘The Book of Water’.
This is all exceptionally decent, yet is the importance of music the impression of the heavenly general agreement, a reverberation of the brain of God himself? Is that what music implies? Is that why it moves us? Obviously, we can’t say without a doubt, however I have to strongly disagree, unfortunately, much as I couldn’t want anything more than to live with vast gooseberries, lemonade oceans and enemies of lions in the place that is known for Congruity. In the event that the old earth-focused or geocentric perspective on the universe was commenced upon congruity, then, at that point, the limitless and open universe that has been our buddy since the hour of Copernicus and Galileo causes us to feel, in the most natural sounding way for Pascal, fear, it causes us to feel restless and reduced. The universe isn’t there for us, it is simply there and on second thought of the music of the circles, all that we hear is the turbulent background noise radio transmissions from which we weakly attempt to attribute something that we can distinguish as outsider knowledge. On the off chance that relic is agreeable, innovation is grating, now and again to be sure uproarious.
However, the possibility of the music of the circles isn’t simply some piece of humiliating supernatural fly rubbish as it answers a profound human need: that music isn’t inconsistent, inadvertent, neighborhood and socially unambiguous pluckings, strummings and twangings, yet gives voice to an option that could be more noteworthy than us. That is, we feel that music ought to give us some attunement with how the world is, into the actual things and in addition to our thoughts regarding those things. The music of the circles gives voice to the possibility that what happens in music has a significant association with the status quo in their embodiment and is definitely not an eventually contingent social mishap. One needs to feel that Beethoven Peaceful Ensemble expresses something about nature, that Holst’s Planet Suite expresses something about the planets or that Schubert’s Trout Quintet expresses something about, indeed, trout.
The advanced scholar for whom, seemingly, music made the biggest difference and who attempted to hold tight to its astronomical significance while recognizing that the universe is our universe, the impression of the human will, was Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). For Schopenhauer, and this view applied an enormous impact, specifically over Richard Wagner’s late work, music is the highe