Approaching “Blast”
Beethoven’s music, blasted for three days, Should
shock, console, enlighten and amaze.
Music is gravely misunderstood and its power seriously
underestimated by liberals. They are still human enough to enjoy some music or
other, logically some kind of trash – and to see how much music matters to
people just try telling them that theirs is trash. But in any case liberals’
subjectivist ideology, whereby man is the master of reality (up to and
including Almighty God), makes them deny that there is anything objective about
music. So for liberals there is no such thing as a composer using certain means
to attain certain ends, and there can be no saying that any one piece or kind
of music is “better” than another. Music, they will say, is purely a matter of
the listener’s mood or taste – “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and
horribly discordant music is just as “good” as the most famous music from the
past.
Of course such liberals are completely wrong. A
Chinese proverb says that “when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the
city shake,” a truth amply illustrated by the advent of Rock music in the
1950’s and 1960’s. Plato knew so well the moral influence of music for good or
ill that in his ideal Republic certain kinds of music would have been banned.
Woe to parents today who do not care what music their children listen to! “It’s
only music,” they will say, and so saying they will deserve to lose their
children to the Pied Pipers of Rock. Music is supremely important, and it is
objective in nature – is it not common sense that all military music and no
lullaby will emphasize rhythm? But what do liberals care for common sense? They
are doing everything possible to wipe it out. It is too real for their dream.
A major turning-point in modern times between men’s
recognition and their refusal of the objective order of reality planted by God
in all his works was the French Revolution (1789–1794). Because Beethoven’s
life straddled that Revolution and gave to it its outstanding musical
expression, some of his best-known works can be used to illustrate clearly
certain objective truths concerning music. From Haydn and Mozart he inherited
the objective order of the 18th century. To his successors it was mainly
Beethoven who bequeathed the increasing musical disorder (not without its
beauties) of the 19th century, to be followed by the musical chaos and
disintegration (with exceptions) of supposedly “serious” music in the 20th and
21st centuries. Beethoven might then be called the grandfather or
great-grandfather of Rock. That statement may so shock many a lover of
Beethoven that it must immediately be qualified by saying that it took a great
musician to launch the destruction of music.
Fast approaching – February 19 to 21 – is the
“Beethoven Blast” to be held here in Broadstairs from the Friday 18h00, to the
Sunday midday. A young American pianist who can sight-read nearly all of the 32
piano sonatas and Liszt’s piano versions for two hands of the nine symphonies,
has offered to play as many of the sonatas as can be made to fit into one
weekend, together with extracts from the symphonies chosen to illustrate the
nature of music and how Beethoven works. The idea of the “Blast” originated in
sheer self-indulgence, but then there occurred the temptation to throw it open
to whoever might like either just to listen to the music (which should be a
feast in itself for lovers of Beethoven), or to find out why liberals are so
wrong, in music as in everything else.
So if anyone is interested besides readers who have
already signed on, let them come between the times mentioned above. Bed and
breakfast in the off-season of Broadstairs should be findable on the Internet,
and if you let us know when you may plan to come, we may be able to manage
in-house lunch and supper. In all things may God be served.
Kyrie eleison.
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