Against the monoculture of modernity

The terrible amnesia to which humankind is prey is undoubtedly one of the principal causes of our inability to learn from history. The invasion of Occitania and particularly the massacre on 22nd July, 1209, of the 20,000 inhabitants of Béziers on the pretext that the town harboured 230 heretics whom the town council refused to hand over to the Crusaders, dramatically recalls similar events in modern times, such as the Spanish Civil War triggered in 1936 by Franco's army with the excuse of the Communist threat and the division of Spain, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939 with the excuse of the Sudetenland, and the invasion of Poland by Hitler's German troops, in September 1939, over the question of Gdansk.

More recently, we remember the wars in Vietnam (1958-1975), Afghanistan (2001), those launched in retaliation against the terrorist attacks of 11th September, and the Iraq war (2003) with the excuse of that country's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction. Just as the laws promulgated by Pope Innocent IV in his Bull on torture, Ad Exstirpanda of 1252, contemplated all the methods of accusation with no possible defence (still in place today at Guantanamo) and authorized torture as a means of extracting information from heretics, so do countries ruled by dictatorial and unscrupulous regimes today still deny the rights of those they accuse. Punishment was meted out not just to those convicted of heresy, but also to those accused without being sentenced, by the demolition and the very destruction of the foundations of their houses, a procedure still used today against the houses of Palestinian terrorists.

Absolute evil is always the evil inflicted by man on man. That is why, in common with François Cheng, we believe that "it is our urgent and permanent task to unveil the two mysteries which constitute the extremes of the living world: on the one hand, evil, and on the other, beauty. For what is at stake is no less than the truth of human destiny, a destiny which involves the very foundations of our freedom."

Eight centuries have passed, and yet the memory of the crusade against the Albigensians has not been erased. Even today, it evokes sorrow and pity. Leaving myth and legend aside, the destruction of the memory of that remarkable civilisation which was the "land of Oc", destined to become a truly forgotten kingdom, and the terrible tragedy of the Cathars or "Good Men" and their witness to their faith, deserve our unreserved respect and determined effort to preserve their historical memory.
Frankly I find it very difficult to add anything to that extract from Jordi Savall's introductory essay to his latest project The Forgotten Kingdom - The Albigensian Crusade, but I will try.


Jordi Savall is seen above, photographed during my just-in-time interview with him in 2008. Scholarship, musicianship and production excellence are givens for any of his projects and this new release, which documents in music and texts the Albigensian Crusade of the 13th century, is no exception. Three CDs come in a sumptuous 560 page book and in addition to the constant of Hespèrion XXI there are guest musicians from Armenia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Morocco. But there is something else that makes the The Forgotten Kingdom exceptional.

The Albigensian Crusade was the established Church's reaction to the supposedly heretical Cathar Christians of south-western France who were virulent critics of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy. In one of the illuminating essays that accompanies The Forgotten Kingdom David Renaker of San Francisco State University gives the first English translation of Pope Innocent IV's infamous Ad Exstirpanda, a papal license to torture. David Renaker concludes his illuminating essay by saying:
One only needs to read the Ad Exstirpanda to discover that the inquisition [against the Cathars] was not about faith and not even about heresy, but about wealth and power, and the crudest method of attaining these - terror.
In the Middle Ages multinational armies, the Crusaders, were used to attain wealth and power. It is not difficult to see similarities between those armies of long ago and today's multinational media conglomerates, who seek wealth and power by restricting choice and establishing a monoculture of modernity. Free thinking is today's heresy, and it will surely not be long before those who swim against the tide meet the same fate as the Cathars of Béziers.

The Forgotten Kingdom is an important reminder, in both historical and contemporary contexts, of the importance of protecting the foundations of our freedom. Through music and texts documenting the tragedy of the Cathars, a group who dared to swim against the tide, we are reminded how wealth and power corrupts. And through the singular commitment of a group of artists working outside the media controlled celebrity circuit with a musician owned independent record label we are reminded of the true price of today's monoculture of modernity.

Swimming against the tide has always been deeply unfashionable. But is that tide turning? The Norfolk & Norwich Festival has a long and distinguished history, and its commissions include works from free thinkers such as Benjamin Britten (Our Hunting Fathers), Ralph Vaughan Williams (Five Tudor Portraits) and William Alwyn's (Fifth Symphony). In recent years the Festival's headline acts have included, as reported here, others who swim against the tide, including Jacques Loussier, the Hilliard Ensemble and last year Philip Glass.

In 2010 the closing concert of the Festival is not EMI's latest Chinese pianist or Sting's latest supermarket merchandised blockbuster. In another blow against the monoculture of modernity the closing concert is the UK premiere of Jordi Savall's Jerusalem, and the volume of early ticket sales suggests that swimming against the tide may just be coming back into fashion.


* In another of the excellent essays in The Forgotten Kingdom Antoni Dalmau reviews how history has treated the Cathars and cautions against some recent fictional treatments. But the National Socialism's fascination with the Albigensian movement cannot pass unremarked, read more here.

* This blog is also guilty of capitulating to the monoculture of modernity, which means Amazon is usually cited as the default source for CDs. So it is worth noting that I bought The Forgotten Kingdom from Prelude Records for £27.99, the amazon.co.uk price is £36.89. That is Jordi Savall in Prelude Records in the photo above which comes from my post The tills are alive with the sound of early music.

* The terrible Albigensian Crusade started from Nîmes, which featured in one of my road trip posts.

Our tickets for his Jerusalem project at the Norwich & Norfolk Festival were bought at the box office. Other performers at the Festival include John McLaughlin. Photos of Jordi Savall are (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

The Marches Hatter said…
Another commission for the Festival, I understand, is Arve Henriksen, who will be writing a piece for community choir and performing it with them.

Both events sound worth travelling from the other side of the country to hear.
6:04 pm
Pliable said…
Arve Henriksen - http://www.arvehenriksen.no/
6:40 pm
Pliable said…
The download of The Forgotten Kingdom from amazon.co.uk costs £13.98.

But if you buy it that way you will succumb to the MP3 monoculture of modernity and thereby miss out on an awful lot.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Forgotten-Kingdom/dp/B0037MZD96/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk
6:41 pm
The Wound Dresser said…
I don't know how to comment on history that was criminal.I cannot believe that ,in any circumstance, Jesus would be with anyone other then the persecuted,the outsider if you will. I reckon this is where the Grand Inquisitor ring true.I do know the shortest sentence in the Christian Scripture,though is this:Jesus wept...I have pre-ordered this latest from Sr. Savall and await it as I do the Ry Cooder Chieftans on the same day.Iris and Mexican?! Now that is a path...
8:01 pm
Pliable said…
Email received:

Speaking of Ry Cooder and other overgrown paths, this is one of my favourite Ry Cooder recordings:

http://www.amazon.com/Pecos-Bill-Ry-Cooder/dp/B00001XDSG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1267043782&sr=1-2-spell

Cheers

David Cavlovic
9:03 pm
shadrach said…
The massacre of Beziers was appalling and must lead one to ponder the problem of evil, but need our respect for the Cathars be 'unreserved'. People are overly sentimental about the Cathars. The Cathars let their definition of the perfect be the enemy of the good: their attitude to the truly human aspects of life was puritan. Not unlike the Communists in Spain, perhaps. The Republicans were not backward in butchery. The slaughter of priests, nuns, and Catholic laypeople just for their faith is often forgotten. I'm sure Jordi's music here is as wonderful as it always is, but I'll keep my respect for the Cathars reserved to their, admittedly sublime, status as fellow humans, not their Catharism.
3:41 am
Pliable said…
Shadrach, you make a very good point and deeper study of the beliefs of the Cathars does indeed make illuminating and disturbing reading, as does the Nazis interest in the sect.

The value of projects like The Forbidden Kingdom is their power to make us think for ourselves and to prompt us to make up our own minds. This is in sharp contrast to today's mainstream media which tries to do the thinking for us and to get us to accept someone else's opinion.

The response and diversity of views on this post on the, let's face it, fairly arcane topic of the Albigensian Crusade is heartwarming. It is also yet more proof that there is an alternative to the monoculture of modernity.
8:01 am
Pliable said…
Email received:

It happened to be a very good book from :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Le_Roy_Ladurie
8:02 am
Pliable said…
John Cale is also appearing at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival this year.
5:09 pm
Myster B said…
Thanks for such a insightful piece, Bob. One small correction... Jerusalem isn't the closing gig of this year's NNF but the last night of our residency at the Theatre Royal on 15 May. Festival closes on 22 May and there are plenty of great classical and contemporary performances in the second week, including Academy of Ancient Music (St Andrew's Hall on 18 May), Louis Lortie playing Chopin's Etudes and Nocturnes (St Peter Mancroft on 19 May) I Fagiolini (with their Tallis in Wonderland project at the Roman Catholic Cathedral on 20 May), and as mentioned Arve Henrikson and Jan Bang with the Voice Project with our latest commission for the choir, Recording Angel (at Norwich Cathedral on 21 May). Check here for more info.
9:13 am
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

Image
Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of
Read more

Classical music has a lot to learn

Image
In June and July 1945 Yehudi Menuhin performed at camps for “displaced persons” – Holocaust survivors – including outside where the demolished Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had stood. He was deeply shocked by what he saw; yet in 1947 he returned to Germany to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the recently de-Nazified Wilhelm Furtwängler. Menuhin was the first Jewish musician to perform in post-World War II Germany, explaining that he did so in order to support the rehabilitation of German music and to help heal the spirit of the German people.  My header photo shows Menuhin playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in 1966 with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the  now fashionably-reviled Herbert von Karan. The Jerusalem Cinematheque - Israel Film Archive describes that collaboration as an example of how "how music can still contribute to reconciliation today". Coincidentally, or possibly not, both Menuhin and Karajan were yoga practitioners. Menu
Read more

Whatever happened to the long tail of composers?

Image
Reader Antoine Leboyer writes to point out that the New York Philharmonic has made its programme archive available online and that the archive shows how past programmes were far more varied than those played today. Here are just some of the composers that Antoine highlights from past concerts by the orchestra: Siniaglia, Busoni, Bosi, Chadwick, Stanford, Loeffler, McDowell, Hadley, Goldmark, Pfitzner, Enesco, Vieuxtemps and Grétry. Antoine also remarks on how Webern's music has virtually disappeared from New York concerts in recent years. One of the many confidence tricks of the digital era is how a long tail of cultural riches was promised , but a short head immaculately coiffed by audience whoring celebrities was actually delivered. I suggest that one of the key search criteria for the New York Philharmonic's new music director should be a passion for giving audiences permission to like unfamiliar music . Graphic is grabbed from the New York Philarmonic archive lan
Read more

Tribalism is ruining classical music

Image
Marketing is now an accepted tool for trying to reach classical music's elusive new audience. In the world of marketing there are two separate entities, the product and the brand. Classical music's product is the music itself. Fortunately there is very little that can be done to damage the product. The transcendental genius of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and their peers across the ages will continue to shine for decades and centuries to come. But the classical music brand is a different matter.  One definition is that a brand is the personality of an organisation, communicated through an identifying.....voice and tone. So what is the personality, voice and tone that the classical music brand is communicating today? The self-styled 'world's most-read cultural website' is  Slipped Disc . This high-profile face of the classical music brand enjoys the full support of the classical music industry. Yet for years Slipped Disc has leveraged tribalism through its on-line lync
Read more

Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

Image
On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
Read more

Nada Brahma - Sound is God

Image
It may be my age, but those moments when a piece of music really hits me in the solar plexus seem to get rarer and rarer. But during my recent extended travels in India I was metaphorically punched time and time again when listening to ECM's Codona recordings on headphones. Recent posts have touched on the potential of virtual concert halls and the fact that no one mixes for speakers these days , and the Manfred Eicher produced Codona sessions from between 1978 and 1982 really demonstrate the impact of the up close and personal sound of headphones . The line up for Codona was African-American trumpeter Don Cherry, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, and Colin Walcott on sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, and voice. The band took its name from a circus trapeze act of the early 20th century called the Flying Codonas , and the three albums packaged by ECM for CD as The Codona Trilogy capture the peerless musicians-beyond-frontiers performing their creative hig
Read more

Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

Image
That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear
Read more

Intimations of mortality

Image
Over the last few weeks I have been following an interesting medical path in French Catalonia. On May 24 a short ride in a fast ambulance and an emergency operation brought to a halt the painful effects of an inflamed appendix coupled with an abscess on my abdomen wall. I was discharged from hospital a couple of days ago and am now holed up in a hotel near Perpignan with my wife, an iPod full of Bach , Jonathan Harvey and Titi Robin , and some good books while awaiting medical clearance to fly back to the UK next week. Thanks go to my quite wonderful family and apologies to the monks at the Dashang Kagyu Ling - Temple of a Thousand Buddhas for cancelling my stay at such short notice. Blogging will be resumed but bear with me if it is somewhat sporadic. Header photo was taken at the Abbey of Arles-sur-Tech shortly before my appendix intervened. More on the composer who set Thomas Traherne's Intimations of Immortality here . Photo is (c) On an Overgrown Pat h 2011. Report bro
Read more

Label me obsessed

Image
In Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby , one of the characters, Tom Buchanan, a rich man who's also a well-known polo player, says, "I've heard of making a garage out of a stable, but I'm the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage." Not to brag, but I'm doing the same thing. Whenever I find a quality LP recording of a piece I have on CD, I don't hesitiate to sell the CD and buy the LP. And when I find a better-quality recording, something closer to the original, I don't hesitate to trade in the old LP for a new one. It takes a lot of time to pursue this, not to mention a considerable investement of cash. Most people would, I am pretty sure, label me obsessed. The kindred spirit is Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami writing in his new memoir What I talk about when I talk about running . And talking of the same piece on LP and CD my photo shows three generations of a recording I couldn't possibly live without. The HMV LP of Sir John Bar
Read more