‘All About is Night’: Spiritual Anxiety and the Ritual Impulse in World War I Europe
by
James Berry, BA, MM
A Dissertation
In
FINE ARTS: MUSICOLOGY
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Approved
Dr. Christopher Smith Chair
Dr. Stacey Jocoy
Dr. Thomas Cimarusti
Dr. Michael Borshuk
Professor Genevieve Durham DeCesaro
Peggy Gordon Miller Dean of the Graduate School
August, 2011
Copyright 2011, James Berry Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
Acknowledgements
This document is indebted to several people who aided in its creation. A special debt of gratitude is owed Christopher Smith whose continued encouragement and careful editor’s eye was invaluable to the final version of this dissertation. Additionally, I would like to thank the members of my committee who suffered tirelessly through quick reading turnarounds: Stacey Jocoy, Thomas Cimarusti, Michael Borshuk, and Genevieve
Durham. I am equally indebted to Dorothy Chansky who was a through reader and editor.
In addition, I should thank the faculty and administration of Ohio Valley
University for their ceaseless understanding and support throughout the completion of my degree.
ii
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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………… ii
I. THE BANKRUPTCY OF CIVILIZATION ...... 1
II. SYMBOLS OF CHANGE ...... 14
III. AN INHUMAN FINAL CEREMONY ...... 40
IV. DUSK TURNED INTO NOTES ...... 70
V. SHORT LITANIES...... 105
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 115
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Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
CHAPTER ONE
THE BANKRUPTCY OF CIVILIZATION
On August 3, 1914, the British statesman Lord Grey of Falloden said, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” 1 He was
expressing a view that was reflective of the views of many artists and musicians at the
beginning of what would become the first truly world-wide war, that the progress of
human culture foreseen during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was forever
lost. The five years between 1914 and 1919 changed the world forever through political
revolution, economic upheavals, and intellectual turmoil. Romain Rolland, one of the
greatest war writers, remarked at the onset of the War: “It is horrible to live in the midst
of this demented humanity and to be a powerless witness to the bankruptcy of
civilization. This European war is the greatest catastrophe in history over the centuries,
the ruin of our most sacred hopes for the human fraternity.” 2 The lives of everyone,
including those previously on the forefront of the musical avant-garde, were thrown into
chaos. Ralph Vaughan Williams took part in the War as an ambulance driver, while Igor
Stravinsky was forced to leave his homes in France and Russia and flee to Switzerland
for the duration of the War.
J.R.R. Tolkien served as a soldier on the Western Front. While in the English
army, he wrote the beginnings of what would become the mythology of Middle Earth.
Written during this time, the poem “Habbanan beneath the Stars” describes an
encampment of men:
1 Glenn Watkins, Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 3. 2 Ibid., 13. 1
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
There is a sound of faint guitars And distant echoes of a song, For there men gather into rings Round their red fires while one voice sings – And all about is night.
Tolkien was expressing the uncertainty of his time. Though men may gather around their fires, they are surrounded by darkness. Paul Valery, shortly after the War, observed in an address at Oxford that “modern civilizations have learned to recognize that we are mortal like the others. We feel that a civilization is as fragile as a life.” 3 Some composers responded to this sense of ‘fragility’ by seeking to create music whose sense of spiritual journey could speak to human needs. This document argues that the composers Erik
Satie and Ralph Vaughan Williams addressed post-World War I cultural trauma through the creation of music which evoked ritual-like responses to reconnect with the human needs formerly addressed by sacred music. These two composers and the specific pieces discussed in the following chapters are tied together by the process through which they responded to the War. Each piece is an example of varying compositional responses to this ritual-like process.
Victor Turner wrote that artistic performances have “something of the sacred, mythic, numinous, even ‘supernatural’ character of religious action – sometimes to the point of sacrifice.” 4 Turner also describes the concept of “social dramas” in which the
normal order of society has been disrupted by conflict. “In large-scale modern societies,
social dramas may escalate from the local level to national revolutions, or from the very
3 Hans Kohn, “The Crisis in European Thought and Culture,” in World War I: A Turning Point in Modern History , ed. Jack J. Roth, 25-46 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 28. 4 Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York, NY: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), 12. 2
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 beginning may take the form of war between nations.” 5 World War I, then, can be
viewed as an example of a large-scale social drama which restructured social groups and
brought long term conflict. Turner describes a process which moves from “breach,”
where the potential conflict becomes evident, to “crisis,” the period of conflict, and
finally to “redress,” where the conflict is resolved. The common modes of redress
include the judicial means of courts and the ritual means provided by religious
institutions. In modern societies, however, Turner describes how “the third stage … has
moved out of the domains of law and religion into those of the various arts.” 6 Therefore the artistic creations of composers and authors, for example, may serve as a means of redress, as a way for the rupture of social drama to return to the norms of society. For the purposes of my argument, I will suggest that the work of Satie and Vaughan Williams, as described in later chapters, was an example of such an attempt at redress, made even more evocative through the connection to their spiritual questioning.
Though it is beyond the scope of this document to attempt to provide a comprehensive definition of the sacred, a short discussion of the terminology used in this document is necessary. In describing the sacred quality of certain objects, Catherine Bell comments that “their sacrality is the way in which the object is more than the mere sum of its parts and points to something beyond itself.” 7 Calling something sacred is to
denote it as different or separate from something else which might be called profane or
mundane. In the same way, a sacred experience is separate from a mundane experience.
5 Ibid., 10. 6 Ibid., 11. 7 Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 157. 3
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
A sacred experience is one which includes attitudes and the expression of values of the transcendent or the spiritual. This document will explore the sacred experience in terms of two characteristics: ritual-like actions and connotations and liminoid phenomena 8.
Ritual-like actions are otherwise normal actions which become symbolically invested through a combination and juxtaposition of supra-situational associations.
These are not rituals in the sense of being closely linked with the sacralities of traditional and organized religion, but instead are behaviors, events, or objects that have characteristics similar to rituals. Catherine Bell provides a model for identifying ritual- like actions through the presence of specific characteristics.9 Bell lists formalism (high degrees of formal actions as opposed to informal or casual ones), traditionalism (attempts to make a set of activities identical to or consistent with cultural precedents), invariance
(sets of actions marked by precise repetition or self-control), rule-governance (presence of elaborate sets of rules governing the action in question), sacral symbolism (creation or use of objects, places, buildings, or people viewed as sacred), and performance (actions that share characteristics with performance activities). These qualities can denote ritualization individually in some cases, though it is much more common for them to appear in various combinations.
Ritual-like actions can be religious in origin, for example pilgrimages which become ritual-like through traditionalism, invariance, and sacral symbolism, or secular in origin, for example the ritual-like actions of a baseball pitcher (invariance and performance). Thus, the invocation of a chorale at the opening of Satie’s Parade can be
8 The term “liminoid” will be discussed in detail below. 9 See Bell, Ritual , 138-170. 4
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 seen as ritual-like through traditionalism, rule-governance, or even sacral symbolism. In the same way, other musical actions become ritual-like by employing those techniques outlined by Bell.
The sacred experience can also be examined through Victor Turner’s term
“liminoid phenomena.” Scholars of anthropology have used the term liminality to describe a period of anti-structure and role change that is often a part of pre-industrial rituals, particularly rites of passage and seasonal change rites. 10 Turner introduced the term liminoid as an application of liminality for modern post-industrialized societies.
While liminal states tend to be essential for society, liminoid states in modern society are optional, a matter of choice. Turner says, “The liminoid is more like a commodity – indeed, often is a commodity, which one selects and pays for – than the liminal, which elicits loyalty and is bound up with one’s membership or desired membership in some highly corporate group. One works at the liminal, one plays with the liminoid.” 11
Liminoid phenomena imitate the rule-bound and proscriptive nature of liminal
phenomena but are usually created by a solitary artist in the realm of art or sport and then
communicate collective liminal symbols to the community.
Both ritual-like actions and liminoid phenomena are characteristics of sacred
experiences which take place outside the normal sacred space. It is therefore possible to
examine the possibility of a sacred experience in many situations and activities not
viewed as sacred in term of religiosity. Although such an examination could cover any
number of subjects and time periods, this document focuses specifically on the sacred
10 See Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969), and Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960). 11 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre , 55. 5
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 experiences in select artworks created during and after World War I in France and
England.
It would be helpful at this point to explore several examples of a sacred experience emerging from World War I. Many soldiers used myth and fantasy to create a sacred experience. Paul Fussell describes several examples of this phenomena, such as the repetitive sequences of threes (front/support/reserve, three men in a bay, groups of three colors), legends of barbarous actions of the opposing side, and visions of angels and spirits, such as the Angel of Mons which was reputed to have protected retreating English troops from Mons. 12 The formalism, appeal to tradition, and rule-governance of these
actions gives them a ritual-like connotation. Of particular interest is the effect of The
Well at the World’s End (1896), a popular prose romance by William Morris. The Well tells the story of a young boy’s adventures in search of a magic well at the end of the world. It is filled with images of heroism and nobility, destiny and the romance quest, all concepts which had been prevalent in pre-war minds. Fussell writes of the novel that
“there was hardly a literate man who fought between 1914 and 1918 who hadn’t read it and been powerfully excited by it in his youth.” 13
The effect of the novel is seen in many post-war authors. C.S. Lewis commented,
“My great author at this period was William Morris ... I found The Well at the World’s
End . I looked – I read chapter headings – I dipped – and next day I went off into town to
12 See Paul Fussell, Chapter 4, in The Great War and Modern Memory (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 114-154.
13 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 135. 6
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 buy a copy of my own.” 14 Sassoon referenced The Well when describing the landscape on the front: “On Wet Days, the trees a mile away were like ash-grey smoke rising from the naked ridges, and it felt very much as if we were at the end of the world,” 15 and “The
end-of-the-world along the horizon had some obscure hold over my mind which drew my
eyes to it almost eagerly, for I could still think of trench warfare as an adventure. The
horizon was quiet just now, as if the dragons which lived there were dozing.” 16
The references to the Well ’s title and chapter headings, similar imagery, and
references to romantic adventure were common in War literature. 17 Seemingly out of place, soldiers often spoke of their experiences during the War with similar terms as a trial or a hero’s journey from romantic literature. The same impulse led, at least partially, to the creation of such literary works as Eliot’s Wasteland, Tolkien’s The Lord of the
Rings , Jones’s In Parenthesis , and Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia .18 This appeal to myth and fantasy is an example of a sacred experience that emerged from the War.
Another post-war example of a sacred experience can be found in veterans’ associations. Many veterans attempted to come to terms with their war experience by forming groups with individuals who had shared similar experiences. Such veterans groups offered times and places where men who had created a shared identity in war could come together and celebrate in songs and toasts to dead comrades the
14 C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (London: Fount, 1998), 164. 15 Siegfried Sassoon, Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (London: Faber, 1962), 372-373. 16 Ibid., 21. 17 See Fussell, The Great War , 135-37. 18 For a more detailed discussion of the sacred experience in post-war literature, see Chapter 2 of this document. 7
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
“distinctiveness of their common identity.” 19 Certainly none of these men wished to repeat the actual experience of war. Instead, they re-envisioned the experience, removing the worst and recalling the best, creating an interpretation of memory that helped to provide meaning and assurance to those struggling to reintegrate into civilian society.
These groups demonstrated characteristics of a sacred experience. They became formalized and rule-governed with standard events taking place at each meeting. They sought to re-experience liminoid characteristics as they celebrated being a soldier, a period in their lives where they were separate from normal society which Leed aptly compares to Van Gennep and Turner-style liminality.20 In this way, post-World War I
veteran’s groups, now liminoid in character because of their optional nature, created a
kind of sacred experience for the purpose of aiding these men’s reintegration into society.
Each of these examples reflects the presence of a sacred experience in non-
traditional circumstances. We find many similar examples in music of the post-war
period. For various reasons, many composers chose not to express their spiritual journey
through the traditional forms of Christian sacred music. Instead, they created highly
individual expressions of a sacred experience. I will address the particular expressions of
Erik Satie and Ralph Vaughan Williams in chapters three and four.
My work on the importance of the sacred experience is based on a foundation of
previous scholarship. Research on each of the individual composers’ ritual-like style is
lacking in many ways. Few studies attempt to systematically investigate music that
resulted from the War. One of these, however, is Glenn Watkins’s Proof Through the
19 Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 3. 20 Ibid., 23-26. 8
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
Night: Music and the Great War .21 Watkins’s first goal in this study is to examine the
cultural implications of the music that came directly out of the War. As Watkins has
done proficiently in his other writing, the book also integrates music of the War and early
20’s into a framework of the culture surrounding it. Each chapter focuses on one
composer primarily and addresses the role of the War in his music. However, there is
little discussion of the role of ritual in such music. This study will address that issue.
Studies of Satie and Vaughan Williams tend to neglect the sacred experience in
their work. For example, the literature on Erik Satie is lacking in materials that deal
directly with sacred experience in his late compositions. Even one of the most
comprehensive studies of Satie’s life and music, Alan M. Gillmor’s Erik Satie, is missing
such a discussion. 22 Gillmor does provide both an extensive biography and a thorough
investigation of Satie’s own writings. In addition, Gillmor draws on his wide-ranging
background in twentieth-century avant-garde art movements to demonstrate Satie’s
ability to relate to other contemporaneous art-forms like visual art, theatre, or film. The
focus of the work is on contemporary cultural contexts and consequentially musical
analysis is not a priority. My work will build upon Gillmor’s by exploring the sacred
aspects of several of Satie’s late works.
Moreover, focused studies on a particular issue of Satie’s oeuvre are lacking in
English scholarship. One study that does fall into this category is Robert Orledge’s Satie
the Composer .23 In this work, Orledge discusses the compositional processes Satie used
21 Glenn Watkins, Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 22 Alan M. Gillmor, Erik Satie (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988). 23 Robert Orledge, Satie the Composer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 9
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 in various pieces. In contrast to Gillmor, Orledge is more focused on the music and therefore makes a good companion to the former. Instead of a biographical format,
Orledge uses each chapter to address a particular aspect of composition, such as, “Why and Where Satie Composed,” “Questions of Form, Logic, and Mirror Image,” and
“Composition and the Other Arts.” This structure allows for a more in-depth look at the details of Satie’s music. However, again a discussion of the mystical or sacred aspects of
Satie’s music is missing.
A third study is Patrick Gowers’s “Satie's Rose Croix Music (1891-1895).” 24
This article, written for the centenary of Satie’s birth, focuses specifically on the music produced during the Rose-Croix period. This period of Satie’s life was marked by extreme religious beliefs and collaboration with Josephin Peladin’s Rosicrucian sect, as I will discuss in Chapter 3. The music is stylistically different from the music Satie composed both before and after. Gowers’ work seeks to examine these unique stylistic devices. My discussion of this period is indebted to the extremely detailed analyses of
Gowers, and the implications of the music of this period will be discussed in Chapter
Three.
The literature on Ralph Vaughan Williams follows much the same pattern.
Vaughan Williams research commonly acknowledges and investigates the influence of sacred music traditions on his oeuvre. However, there are few studies that directly tie
Vaughan Williams’s sacred music to World War I. The primary research on Vaughan
Williams was done by Ursula Vaughan Williams and Michael Kennedy in their
24 Partick Gowers, “Satie’s Rose Croix Music (1891-1895),” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , 92nd Sess. (1965 - 1966), 1-25. 10
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 respective books R.V.W. and The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams .25 Both studies
address Vaughan Williams’ spirituality and how it relates to his music, but there is little
discussion of the War. Another text is James Day’s Vaughan Williams , a more current
monograph that displays a more distanced and objective view on Vaughan Williams’ life
and works. 26 Here, Vaughan Williams’ war experience is clearly tied with the music
produced after it, but Day does not extend the association to works throughout the
Twenties, as I will do in Chapter Four.
One final cited work of importance to this study is Byron Adams’s essay
“Scripture, Church, and Culture: Biblical Texts in the Works of Ralph Vaughan
Williams.” 27 This essay employs a methodology that informs my own. Adams analyzes the use of Biblical texts over the span of Vaughan Williams’s life. He notes that the use of Biblical texts increased in the period after World War I, but does not analyze his examples in terms of their relationship to the War.
The issue of post-World War I ritual behavior has wide-ranging implications for other artforms. Chapter 2 will explore the particularly fertile connections with post-war literature. Therefore, in addition to purely musical studies, my work will be informed by studies in literary criticism. Of particular relevance is research into the nature and origins of liminoid and mythological literature of the time period, of which John Garth’s Tolkien
25 Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W.:A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1964); Michael Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1964). 26 James Day, Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1998). 27 Byron Adams, “Scripture, Church, and culture: biblical texts in the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams,” in Vaughan Williams Studies , ed. Alain Frogley, 99-117 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 11
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 and the Great War is an example. 28 Garth documents, through personal correspondence,
military records, and Tolkien’s artistic efforts at the time, the ways in which J.R.R.
Tolkien’s World War I experiences influenced his creation of the mythology of the Lord
of the Rings. These parallel developments within the artistic zeitgeist further corroborate
and enhance the discussion of the ritual-like aspects of Satie and Vaughan Williams’s
music.
This study will draw connections between these select composers’ war
experiences and their compositional practices. My methodology will build upon that of
several works previously cited. The first, Watkins’s Proof Through the Night , provides a
model for analyzing music within both a general historical context and a particular
cultural context. I will show that World War I was a turning point that created a unique
cultural environment from which ritual-like liminoid music emerged. The second model,
Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War , provides a model for relating an artist’s personal
experiences to this artistic output. I will analyze the personal correspondence and
writings of the individual composers in order to illuminate their intentions in composing
ritual-like music. Musical score analysis will further enrich the model’s insights. Third,
the structure of each of the composer chapters will be modeled in a fashion similar to
Adams’s “Scripture, Church, and culture: biblical texts in the works of Ralph Vaughan
Williams.” Each chapter will discuss the sacred experience through the lens of a few
representative example pieces.
28 John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003). 12
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The next chapter, Chapter 2: Symbols of Change, will outline the relationship between World War I and European culture by examining the general results of the War.
It will provide the basis for the theory presented above. In addition, the chapter will include analyses of several literary and visual art examples in further support of the theory. Chapters 3-4 form the heart of this study, focusing in turn on Erik Satie (Chapter
3: An Inhuman Final Ceremony) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (Chapter 4: Dusk Turned
Into Notes). Each of these chapters forms a case study, discussing each composer’s expression of his spiritual journey. Finally, Chapter 5: Short Litanies will explore the effect of ritual space in other contemporary composers and speculate about its use in other post-war contexts.
13
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CHAPTER TWO
SYMBOLS OF CHANGE
In recalling his war experiences, Second Lieutenant Francis Foster tells of a particular evening when his company commander took him out into no-man’s land between the lines. The event was a watershed moment for the young lieutenant after he overcame his fear of death: “Because I was no longer fearful, elation filled me. But I could not understand what had caused the transformation. It was as though I had become another person altogether, or rather as though I had entered another life.” 29 Many soldiers from the period describe similar, life-changing moments during their experience in the war. Max Plowman describes leaving the trenches: “It is marvelous to be out of the trenches: it is like being born again.” 30 Henry Williamson describes those who
“passed through the estranging remoteness of battle” as “not broken, but reborn.” 31
Finally, Ernest Parker recalls thinking on his first trip to the trenches, “What effect this
experience would have on our lives we could not imagine, but at least it was unlikely that
we should survive without some sort of inner change.” 32 Clearly, involvement in the war caused changes in the mindsets of those involved.
Because of improvements in technology and increases in the number of forces and
material used, the First World War was a sharp contrast to any war that preceded it, and
thus caused entirely different reactions. The purpose of this chapter is to explore these
reactions in terms of their effects on the participants. In addition, it will explore the
29 Fussell, The Great War , 114. 30 Max Plowman, A Subaltern on the Somme (Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, 2001), 54. 31 Fussell, The Great War , 114. 32 Ernest Parker, Into Battle (London: Longman, 1964), 20. 14
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 relationship between the War and religion and how the Church’s involvement in the war would change perceptions of religion. Finally, the chapter will examine the results of these changes as they are reflected in two example pieces of literature.
Throughout history, war has had a catalyzing effect on society, culture, and music. As Janet Croft has commented, “Even the least prescient reader must realize the creative result of individual war-time experience. The literary artifact is not responsible for the situation; instead, the evil at last has this singular positive result.” 33 In the
fourteenth century, the Hundred Years War sparked the spread of English faburden to
France in the form of fauxbourdon . During the American Civil War, politicians and
composers alike appropriated traditional tunes in order to transmit modern ideas through
new texts. From The Illiad to Henry V , from the frescos at Halicarnassus to Guernica ,
from Star Wars to Band of Brothers , images of war resound throughout the history of
human culture. Wars produce reams of music designed, at least in part, to lighten the
spirits of the soldiers or those at home. It is important to remember that wartime, while
bringing great destruction, also potentially brings creation, or at least change. The period
following war is often a fertile ground for new artistic endeavors. This was the case
during the period following World War I.
World War I presented a profound shock to the concept of “Meliorism.”
Meliorism is defined as a belief that the world tends to become better as time progresses
and that man can aid its betterment. It holds that human action can influence
33 Janet Brennan Croft, War and the Works of J.R.R Tolkien (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2004), 1. 15
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 circumstances, whether comparatively good or bad, for the better. 34 The concept can be
traced back to Aristotle’s Metaphysics , but it came into prominence in the European mind during the Enlightenment. Meliorism was a commonly held philosophy in the late
Nineteenth, early Twentieth Century. 35
Meliorism was challenged on multiple fronts following the War. Hans Kohn says of post-war Europe: “Everywhere there reigned a general feeling of social and intellectual, economic and political insecurity.” 36 The enormous cost of the war resulted
in economic depression in many of the belligerent states. The pre-war system of
economics was notable for its volume of capital amassed from nineteenth century
industrialization, international free trade, and large overseas investments. By contrast,
post-war Europe had to cope with “economic exhaustion and universal economic
dislocation.” 37 Peacetime industries had been neglected and had atrophied. In addition, the industries which had fueled the war effort were weighed down by the strain and cost of wartime production and deferred maintenance and replacement. Raw materials were depleted and the supply of fuel was short. Correspondingly, international trade from
Europe suffered, both because of the economic chaos at home and because new economic centers, like the United States and Japan, had supplanted European overseas interests during the war.
34 James Campbell, “Optimism, Meliorism, and Faith,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 4, no. 1 (1987), 103. 35 In 1924, Daniel Sommer Robinson reviewed this history while critiquing its current value, see Daniel Sommer Robinson, “A Critique of Meliorism,” International Journal of Ethics , 34 No. 2 (1924), 175-194. 36 Kohn, “The Crisis in European Thought and Culture”, 34. 37 Bernadotte E. Schmitt and Harold C. Vedeler, The World in the Crucible, 1914-1919 ( New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1984), 455. 16
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
The economic crisis was accompanied by widespread political uncertainty.
Monarchies were replaced by fragile republics and massive numbers of displaced citizens often had no homes to which they could return. The Treaty of Versailles, which was supposed to create a lasting peace, and the League of Nations, the theoretical solution to war, simply created more political turmoil. Instead of crafting a permanent peace, the
Treaty of Versailles became a vehicle for France’s revenge against Germany, victor and perceived victim inflicting harsh punishments on the loser. The conditions of the treaty placed full blame for the war on Germany and severely limited its economic and political recovery. Consequently, within a decade the treaty was undermined and ineffective. The failure of the treaty to provide fair terms for the ending of the war led directly to the rise of the Nazi party and Fascism in the 1930s. 38
The war also caused disorder in intellectual society. Hamilton, the allied
commander of the Gallipoli campaign, recorded in his personal chronicle that “the war
will smash, pulverize, sweep into the dustbins of eternity the whole fabric of the old
world.” 39 Many at the end of the war believed that there had been an intellectual break with the immediate past. The horrors of the war had shaken beliefs in traditional thought processes and morals. Paul Fussell argues that “the Great War took place in what was, compared to ours, a static world, where the values appeared stable and reliable.” 40 In
contrast, the new post-war world would be characterized by questioning authority, both
political and religious, and a rejection of traditional approaches to society. This loss of
38 Some historians argue that the treaty was more advantageous to Germany than was once thought. For more on this topic, see Gerald L. Weinberg, A World at Arms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). However, regardless of the position on the effects of the treaty, the fact remains that the treaty led to the events that followed, namely the rise of fascism and World War II. 39 Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary (London: E. Arnold, 1920), 125. 40 Fussell, The Great War , 21. 17
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 traditional sources of stability caused many to look for new sources for their security, or perhaps older sources that felt new.
Thus emerged from the war “a climate variously described as of violence, restlessness, instability, confusion, uncertainty, skepticism, anxiety, and alienation.” 41
Melioristic views of a teleological march of human progress, the perfectibility of man, and the infallibility of reason could no longer be defended. In a world in which technology had caused the death of millions through impersonal and mass mechanized warfare, society realized that while it had previously accepted technology’s role in advancing human welfare, technology could also be used for ill.
As was mentioned earlier, from the late-eighteenth century onward, and linked with the rise of industrialism, the melioristic idea that progress was both good and inevitable had dominated intellectual thought. However, with the chaos and destruction scientific advancement had wrought in WWI, technology was seen to have “betrayed” this promise. Henry James wrote after the War:
The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness … is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words. 42
James’ quote reflects this betrayal. Looking at his war-torn civilization, he sees that the gradual progression toward a better society has been revealed as false. This was a remarkable change in perspective which had far reaching effects. European thinkers could previously have taken comfort in the knowledge that however it looked at the time,
41 Schmitt, The World in the Crucible , 486. 42 The Letters of Henry James , vol II, ed. Percy Lubbock (New York: Scribner, 1920), 384. 18
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 society was moving toward betterment. The loss of such a belief left many in a void without direction.
The Great War became to many a symbol of change. The war was different than any that had come before it. Historians delineate this difference by applying the term
“total war.” This term refers to the extent to which the warring nations’ societies became involved in the conflict. Although there were signs of higher involvement of civilian populations during the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, restrictions were in place which for the most part contained combat violence to combatants and combat areas. 43 The Great War, however, featured armies made up
primarily of conscripted citizen soldiers. In addition, entire economies of the belligerent
nations were turned to war production. After the war, the American military described
the change to warfare: “War is no longer simply a battle between armed forces in the
field, it is a struggle in which each side strives to bring to bear against the enemy the
coordinated power of every individual and every material resource at its command. The
conflict extends from the soldier in the most forward lines to the humblest citizen in the
remotest hamlet in the rear.” 44 When enemy dirigibles dropped bombs on London and
submarines sank merchant ships, the war was unavoidably linked with the civilian sphere.
There was a perception that the War was nothing but a friendly encounter on the
sports field. Many soldiers also initially held this view: “[wars were] only a brief armed
version of the Olympic Games. You won a round; the enemy won the next. There was
43 See Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14-18 Understanding the Great War , trans. Catherine Temerson (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2000), 29. 44 Quoted in Schmitt, The World in the Crucible , 24, from U.S. Congress, Senate, Special Committee to Investigate the Munition Industry, Report on War Department Bills S. 1716 –S. 1722 Relating to Industrial Mobilization in Wartime . S. Report 944, 74 th Congress, 1 st Session, 1935, pt. 4, 7. 19
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 no more talk of extermination, or of Fights to the Finish, than would occur in a boxing match.” 45 This cavalier approach to the start of the war was aided by its portrayal in the media. Early maneuvers in late October and early November 1914 were characterized by names such as “The First Battle of Ypres” and “The Race to the Sea.” As Paul Fussell points out, the tagline “Race to the…” was already popular among the press; it had been used in 1909 to headline Peary’s “Race to the Pole” against Cook. Fussell goes on to say,
“Rehabilitated and applied to these new events, the phrase had the advantage of a familiar sportsmanlike, Explorer Club overtone, suggesting that what was happening was not too far distant from playing games, running races, and competing in a thoroughly decent way.” 46
These early attitudes ultimately contributed to the pervasive disillusionment among the soldier population. Following one of the first British attacks in Flanders, a young subaltern said to Lieutenant General Douglas Haig, “Sorry, Sir. We didn’t know it would be like that. We’ll do better next time.” 47 Yet over the span of a four year war, they never “did better.” What followed the initial maneuverings was the prolonged trench-lined stalemate called the Western Front. The enormous loss of life in the future was hinted at during the spring of 1915 at Ypres, a series of conflicts which yielded over a hundred thousand casualties on both sides. This would be followed by Verdun in 1916 with three hundred thousand casualties and the Somme on July 1, 1916. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 110,000 British soldiers climbed out of their trenches and
45 Osbert Sitwell, Great morning : being the third volume of Left hand, right hand!; an autobiography (London: Macmillan and Company, 1948), 199. 46 Fussell, The Great War , 9. 47 Gordon A. Craig, “The Revolution in War and Diplomacy”, in World War I: A Turning Point in Modern History , Ed. Jack J. Roth, 25-46 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 11. 20
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 charged the German lines. The orderly advance was soon disrupted by the mere six
German divisions who unleashed machine gun fire. Out of the 110,000 attackers, 60,000 were wounded or killed; over 20,000 lay dead between the lines with no one able to retrieve them.
That battle on July 1, 1916 was a figurative turning point for the perception of the war by its participants. Henry Williamson was a soldier who took part in the assault:
I see men arising and walking forward; and I go forward with them, in a glassy delirium wherein some seem to pause, with bowed heads, and sink carefully to their knees, and roll slowly over, and lie still. Others roll and roll, and scream and grip my legs in uttermost fear, and I have to struggle to break away…my wave melts away, and the second wave comes up, and also melts away, and then the third wave merges into the ruins of the first and second, and after a while the fourth blunders into the remnants of the others, and we run forward to catch up with the barrage…every bit of the months of drill and rehearsal forgotten, for who could have imagined that the “Big Push” was going to be this? 48
Looking back on it, Edmond Blunden wrote, “By the end of the day both sides had seen,
in a sad scrawl of broken earth and murdered men, the answer to the question. No road.
No thoroughfare. Neither race had won, nor could win, the War. The War had won, and
would go on winning.” 49 In the memories of these soldiers, that single day symbolized
the change from glory and heroism to disillusionment and distrust. They were
disillusioned with the conflict, believing that their leaders had lied to them, that the War
was unending, and that the world was forever changed for the worse.
The root of the disillusionment was the stark difference between the past and the
present, between romanticism and reality, between idealism and cynicism. Jacques
Rivière, in remembering the War, writes, “I challenge every combatant, all those who
48 Henry Williamson, The Wet Flanders Plain (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1929), 15-16. 49 Edmund Blunden, The Mind’s Eye (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1967), 38. 21
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 experienced the entirety of the war in their bodies and their souls, to state that they have not felt themselves cut off from a whole area of feeling. We are alive once more but we are no longer the same.” 50 The man that existed before the war had died and was
replaced by a new man, one born of the modern Total War.
The most powerful indication of disillusionment at War’s end was the revulsion
with which its beginnings were re-imagined. Later observers perceived the almost
universal exuberance and enthusiasm for the War in August 1914 as unreal and illogical.
Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, “It was an outbreak of madness which raged through the
streets at that time, an explosion such as had already been experienced and described, but
which had never been fanned into such a world-burning flame.” 51 W. M. Maxwell
commented that “even when we try to rationalize the matter we are left with the feeling
that reason had very little to do with it.” 52 J. H. Tansley wrote, “One’s revulsion to the
ghastly horrors of war was submerged in the belief that this war was to end all wars and
Utopia would arise. What an illusion!” 53 The survivor of the War, now on the other side
of the sharp divide between pre- and post-war, was unable to reconcile the early
portrayals of the War with the current reality. What resulted was mass disillusionment, a
“climate variously described as of violence, restlessness, instability, confusion,
uncertainty, skepticism, anxiety, and alienation.” 54 It is out of this climate that many
50 Jacques Riviere, ‘Les letters francaises et la guerre,’ Revue rhenane , November 1921, 860-9, quoted in Annette Becker, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France, 1914-193 ( Oxford: Berg, 1998), 114. 51 Magnus Hirchfeld and Andrea Gaspar, Sittengeschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs , 50, quoted in Leed, No Man’s Land , 40. 52 W. M. Maxwell, A Psychological Retrospect of the Great War (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 57. 53 Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2002), 315. 54 Schmitt, The World in the Crucible , 486. 22
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 artists would turn to ritual: a means of recovering the spiritual in a post-apocalyptic world.
This disillusionment was strongly reflected in the words chosen to express it. The meaning of war had changed: “We [the soldiers] had long since exchanged heroism’s iridescent mantle for the dirt smock of the day-laborer.” 55 The concepts of glory, honor, and duty which had led so many to volunteer for combat in the name of their country, concepts long tied to a medieval, Romantic view of war and revived in the name of hawkish nationalism, lost their meaning in the technological stalemate of death and destruction. There would be no glorious charge from the cavalry which waited throughout the War for a break in the lines. Eleven years after the War, this attitude would lead Hemingway to write in A Farewell to Arms that “abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.” 56
One of the most potent reflections of the change brought by disillusionment is in poetry. Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “The Hero” describes a brother officer giving a fictitious account of a soldier’s death to his mother:
“Jack fell as he’d wished,” the Mother said, And folded up the letter that she’d read. “The colonel writes so nicely.” Something broke In the tired old voice that quavered to a choke. She half looked up. “We mothers are so proud Of our dead soldiers.” Then her face was bowed.
Quietly the Brother Officer went out. He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies
55 Ernst Jünger, Werke , Vol 5 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 38. 56 Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms , (New York: Scribner, 1957), 191. 23
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That she would nourish all her days, no doubt. For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy, Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.
He thought how “Jack,” cold-footed, useless swine, Had panicked down the trench that night the mine Went up at Wicked Corner; and how, at last, he died, Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care Except that lonely woman with white hair. 57
The “gallant lies” of a glorious and honorable death no longer had any meaning for the
Brother Officer, given only to the old mother who had not experienced the War. Brother
Officer’s disillusionment would not allow him to see the old heroic language as truth,
instead it is “some gallant lies.”
In much the same way, the line from Horace, “it is agreeable and morally proper
to die for one’s country,” becomes a symbol of anti-war protest in Wilfred Owen’s poem
“Dulce et decorum est”:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues – My friend you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. 58
It is in such poems that the full extent of the disillusionment produced by the War becomes clear. The leaders of the War had failed to understand the true nature of the war
57 Siegfried Sassoon, Siegfried’s Journey (London: Faber, 1945), 19. 58 Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” in The War Poems , ed. Jon Silkin (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994). 24
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 and their failure led to millions of lives lost. The brutal and inhuman quality of trench- based warfare removed all meaning from traditional words used to bring meaning to war.
Another related area which experienced the effects of disillusionment of the war was nationalistic, organized religion. The close ties between religion and war are evident to any student of history. The writer Jacques Riviere wrote in 1915 that “all wars are wars of religion,” trying to persuade his readers that the war had meaning as an expression of religious belief. 59 In 1917, when the Americans entered the War, John
Gardner wrote, “It is primarily a religious war. This can be felt everywhere. And the
allies’ armies are religious armies, for the men are there in order to make the world a
better place.” 60 The appeal to religious faith as a motivating factor for the war was in many ways a recruitment tool. Many Christian citizens were lured into the army by the belief that it was their “Christian duty.”
Chaplains in the army “always connected and combined faith in the nation with religious faith.” 61 On the home front, Randolph McKim was one of many officials in the church who used the pulpit to incite men to War. “It is God who has summoned us to this war. It is His war we are fighting… This conflict is indeed a crusade. The greatest in history – the holiest. It is in the profoundest and truest sense a Holy War.” 62
Evangelist Billy Sunday expressed similar views, “If you turn Hell upside down, you will
find ‘Made in Germany’ stamped on the bottom.” 63 Sunday, who had spent much of his
59 Riviere, “A la trace de Dieu”, 37, quoted in Becker, War and Faith , 7. 60 Jon Gardner, Letters to a Soldier on Religion (New York: Association Press, 1918), 95. 61 Annette Becker, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France, 1914-1930 (Oxford: Berg, 1998), 42. 62 R. H. McKim, For God and Country or the Christian Pulpit in War Time (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1918), 116-117. 63 Watkins, Proof Through the Night , 275 25
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 time before the war campaigning for prohibition, was zealous in using religion as a reason for enlisting in the War. He successfully turned the energies of the prohibition activists to the war by associating alcohol, especially beer, with the direct action of the
Kaiser in America. He organized “crusades” in the same manner of revivals where large numbers of Americans were convinced to enlist. The New York Times recorded the following regarding one such meeting:
16,000 CHEER FOR WAR AND RELIGION MIXED BY SUNDAY
Sermons Brought Up to Date to Sink the Kaiser With the Devil as an Enemy Alien 64
Through such recruitment efforts and the other pro-War actions of the clergy, organized religion became clearly tied with the War.
Charles Stanford, in his 1916 essay “Music and the War,” asserted that during
national convulsion and international wars music’s most potent role was as a rallying
cry. 65 Song tunes, which had been a battleground for the mind of the populace from broadside ballads to protest music during the formation of labor unions, were appropriated and given new texts, often juxtaposing the meaning of the original text with the new. Canon Basil Wilberforce replaced the original text for the hymn “Stand Up,
Stand Up for Jesus, Ye Soldiers of the Cross:”
Stand up, Stand up for Jesus! Ye soldiers of the cross; Lift high his royal banner, it must not suffer loss; From vict’ry unto vict’ry his army shall he lead, Til ev’ry foe is vanquished, for Christ is Lord indeed. with:
64 Ibid, 276. 65 Ibid., 51. 26
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O Rank and File of England, bold privates of her line, Whose Battle deeds outnumbered, in deathless glory shine. Sharp spurs have we to honour, but ye without their aid, Rush on the deadly breeches and storm the barricade. 66
Wilberforce’s new text equated standing firm for the cause of Christ with strong military action, making the direct comparison by replacing the line “soldiers of the cross” with
“bold privates of her line.” In its role as rallying cry, music tied organized religion together with the War.
As the war went on, hymn texts were used to communicate the growing disillusionment of the soldiers. One anonymous soldier penned these new words for the hymn “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”:
I do not wish to hurt you but (Bang!) I feel I must It is a Christian virtue to lay you in the dust. You – (Zip! That bullet got you), you’re really better dead. I’m sorry that I shot you – pray, let me hold your head. 67
This soldier’s lyrics juxtapose the violent act of killing another human with moral regret.
The juxtaposition of violent actions with Christian peace demonstrates the growing disillusionment with war rhetoric coming from organized religion.
This effect can also be seen in the example of Frederick Delius (1862-1934).
Delius spent much of the time between 1914 and 1916 writing a Requiem for soprano, baritone, double chorus, and orchestra. At its first performance in 1922, the score bore the dedication “to the memory of all young artists who lost their lives in the war.” Delius was strongly affected by deaths during the War of those near him, perhaps most strongly by that of George Butterworth (1885-1916), a young composer who was considered one
66 George Bedborough, Arms and the Clergy, 1914-1918 (London: Pioneer Press, 1934), 21, 31. 67 Watkins, Proof Through the Night , 274. 27
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 of the most promising composers of his generation before his death on the Somme. The text, constructed from excerpts and paraphrases of Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and the Bible, reflects the state of disillusionment discussed earlier, lashing out at the lies perpetrated by the leaders on both sides.
Example 1: Frederick Delius, Requiem , mm 27-31, Chorus 1 and 2. The first movement opens with the words (see Example 1):
Our days are as one day; for all our days are rounded in a sleep; they die and ne’er come back again. Why then dissemble we with a tale of falsehoods? We are e’en as a day, that’s young at morning and old at eventide, and departs and never more returns.
It goes on to speak of men who “drugged themselves with dreams and golden visions, and built themselves a house of lies to live in.” In the context of a war memorial, the subject of this statement must be those leaders who, intentionally or not, misrepresented
28
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 the actual condition of the war. It is also clear that Delius’ ire is most focused toward those leaders of organized religions who pointed men to war with the hope of securing their eternal salvation.
The distaste for organized religion was echoed by Robert Graves: “…Christ was being invoked by the Germans and the Allies for victory…This paradox made most of the
English soldiers serving in the purgatorial trenches lose all respect for organized Pauline religion, though still feeling a sympathetic reverence for Jesus…” 68 Graves draws a distinction between organized religion, which shares culpability in the War’s apocalypse, and personal faith. His “sympathetic reverence for Jesus” reflects what I mentioned in the previous chapter, that though faith in an organized expression of spirituality declined, the desire for a personal expression continued. Soldiers, seeing the hypocrisy of invoking religion to support War, abandoned allegiance to organized religion, but kept their faith in basic beliefs of Christianity. This attitude toward the sacred experience is a reflection of the same motivations that will be discussed of music in later chapters.
It is this feeling of disillusionment in the War that led in part to so many liminoid works of art in the years following. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, many of these works of art were literary works. I have chosen to examine two such literary works in the remainder of this chapter: David Jones’ In Parenthesis (1937) and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The
Lord of the Rings (1954-55). Although many novels could have been examined here, these two were chosen because both of these authors were combatants during the War and many of their responses to their experiences parallel the responses of Satie and
Vaughan Williams.
68 Robert Graves, 5 Pens in Hand (New York: Doubleday, 1958), 123. 29
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
Many post-War authors tried to express the futility of wartime experience by drawing on a highly ironic mode of communication. 69 Avoiding the traditional methods
of composition, these authors demonstrated the disconnect they experienced between the
war and the immediate past. David Jones, however, took the opposite approach. Far
from eschewing traditional symbols and means of expression, Jones embraced them in an
attempt to place World War I with other historical wars.
What results is a remarkable juxtaposition of myth and legend with the reality of
the front. While much of Jones’s writing deals with legends of Roman soldiers during
the time of Christ, “the day-to-day routine and the language used to describe it are those
of a British soldier of the First World War. Duckboards, bivvies, chitties, and the like
mingle with the technical terms of Latin military vocabulary…” 70 While the process is remarkable, the resulting amalgam of allusion and reality is often overwritten and unbelievable, yielding various degrees of literary success. 71 For the purpose of this
discussion, however, it is not Jones’ final product that is interesting as much as the
process and mindset involved in its creation.
David Jones served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers on the front from December,
1915, to March, 1918. He was a participant in the same War as everyone else, but
described his experience this way:
I think the day by day in the Waste Land, the sudden violences and long stillnesses, the sharp contours and unformed voids of that mysterious existence, profoundly affected the imaginations of those who suffered it. It was a place of
69 See Fussell, The Great War , 7-8. 70 David Blamires, “Preface,” in The Anathemata , by David Jones (London: Faber, 1972), 41. 71 See Fussell, The Great War , 153-4. 30
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
enchantment. It is perhaps best described in Malory, book iv, chapter 15 – that landscape spoke ‘with a grimly voice’ 72
Jones was viewing his experiences through the lens of myth, ritual, and tradition. After leaving the army, Jones became a Roman Catholic and joined a religious community of artists in Sussex where he pursued an interest in the artistic expression of ritual and liturgy. It was during this period of explicitly religious renewal that he began In
Parenthesis , the poem which most closely relates to the War.
In Parenthesis tells of Private John Ball’s journey from army training to frontline duty to his wounding during a battle at Somme. 73 On the larger scale, In Parenthesis sets itself to “re-attaching traditional meaning to the unprecedented actualities of the War.” 74
Jones associates the events of the front with Arthurian legend, Welsh and English
folklore, Old Testament history, Norse myth, Chaucer, G.M. Hopkins, and Lewis Carroll.
Perhaps the most interesting in the context of this study is the union of everyday events
with ritual-like activity and Roman Catholic liturgy.
The opening section of the poem describes Ball’s journey from England to
France, including language “whose effect will be to relate military procedures to religious
rituals.” 75 The NCO calls out commands – “Stop that talking. / Keep those chins in” – which Jones compares to a liturgy. This begins a steady stream of ritual-like actions. In
Part 3, Ball arrives at the front and is tasked with relieving a group of soldiers on guard.
72 David Jones, In Parenthesis (New York: Chilmark Press, 1968), x-xi. 73 Interestingly, Fussell speculates that Jones may have borrowed the name John Ball from another of Morris’ romances – The Dream of John Ball (1888). See Fussell, The Great War , 147. 74 Fussell, The Great War , 146. 75 Ibid., 147-148. 31
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
The formulaic questions and responses shared between the two groups are repeatedly conceived as ritualized and liturgical:
These coming from and these going to the front line used almost a liturgy, analogous to the seafaring “Who are you pray” employed by shipmasters hailing a passing boat. So used we to say: “Who are you,” and the regiment would be named. And again we would say: “What’s it like, mate,” and the invariable reply, even in the more turbulent areas, would come: “Cushy, mate, cushy. 76
Notice the direct invocation of the word “liturgy,” making clear Jones’ intent. Jones also
characterizes the reply as “invariable,” a characterization which was one of Catherine
Bell’s categories for ritual-like actions.
In Part 4, as Ball’s participation in the War has become serious, Jones, through
the words of Ball’s colleague Dai, compares the current conflict with traumatic events of
Christian history, the fall of Satan, the murder of Abel by Cain, and the Crucifixion of
Christ:
I was in Michael’s trench when bright Lucifer Bulged his primal salient out. That caused it, That upset the joy-cart, And three parts waste … I was with Abel when his brother found him, Under the green tree … I served Longinus that Dux bat-blinded and bent; The Dandy Xth are my regiment; Who diced Crown and Mud-hook Under the Tree…77
Three significant comparisons draw out Jones’s experience of ritual in his War memorial.
By invoking these Christian symbols, he again features one of Catherine Bell’s categories
76 Jones, In Parenthesis , 195. 77 Ibid., 79, 83, 84. 32
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
(sacral symbolism). Through each of these ritual-like actions, Jones constructs an elaborate alternate liturgy with its own myths (the experiences of soldiers throughout history) and sacred rituals (the repetitive day-to-day events of the trenches).
The difficulty with In Parenthesis , in the eyes of many readers, including Paul
Fussell below, is that the ritual does not entirely work. The juxtaposition of chivalry and
machine gun warfare seems incongruous at best. Thus it is interesting that Jones would
work so hard to create these ritual-like activities at the risk of not being successful.
Clearly, the desire to frame his experiences in these allusions was worth the risk of
failure; or, to put it in terms of my thesis, the desire to reconnect with what Jones
understood as the spiritual was worth the risk.
Paul Fussell comments that Jones’ allusions “all testify to Jones’ serious, if
perhaps Quixotic, desire to rescue and reinvigorate traditional pre-industrial religious and
ethical connotations. His search is always for ‘valid signs,’ for an unimpoverished
system of symbols capable of conveying even to a modern audience the rich
complications of the Christian view of history.”78 In the context of this document,
Jones’s efforts may be seen as reflections of the ever present search for a spiritual experience. Its existence in the face of Jones’ disjointed, largely unsuccessful imagery and marginal results simply illustrates the strength of the desire.
A second writer of significance to this study is J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien’s work on the Lord of the Rings and the extensive mythology of Middle Earth began immediately before and during World War I. Both the writing done shortly after the War and that of decades later shows the influence of the War and its themes. As in Jones’ work,
78 Fussell, The Great War , 145. 33
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Tolkien’s writing is substantially different in tone from the pervasive ironic mode of much war literature. Janet Croft comments, “What Tolkien forged from his experiences differs greatly from the writing of ‘canonical’ World War I authors like Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon in both subject matter and tone, but he writes about many of the same themes they do.” 79 John Garth goes even further to say that Tolkien’s literature
“expresses aspects of the war experience neglected by his contemporaries… [Tolkien and
his contemporaries] represent widely divergent responses to the same traumatic epoch.” 80
Tolkien had the skills to write irony. His first attempt at an epic style was a poem published in the King Edward’s School Chronicle , “The Battle of the Eastern Field.”
This poem presents a rugby match in the guise of a war between Roman legions, a tongue-in-cheek parody of Lord Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome .81 Irony also appears several times as a plot device in his later writings. Thus, it is not that Tolkien could not write irony, only that “he did not write in a largely ironic tone.” 82
Instead, Tolkien “mythologized his war experience,” creating an entire world where his ideas of morality and ethics could be explored. 83 He described himself as a writer “whose instinct is to cloak such self-knowledge as he has, and such criticisms of life as he knows it, under mythical and legendary dress.” 84 In the preface to The
Fellowship of the Ring , Tolkien famously despised direct one-to-one comparison of the events in his mythology with real life events. It can be detrimental to our understanding,
79 Janet Brennan Croft, War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2004), 13. 80 Garth, Tolkien and the Great War , 287. 81 Ibid., 19-20. 82 Croft, War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien , 30. 83 Ibid., 10. 84 J.R.R Tolkien, Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: A Selection , Ed. Humphrey Carpenter (London: Allen Unwin, 1981), 211. 34
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 therefore, to point to any one event as a depiction of his experiences in the war.
However, when we look the large picture, the impact of his war experience is clearly central in the genesis of his mythology.
Tolkien’s initial foray into mythmaking had been through language. He experimented with the creation of a language that could be a predecessor of several
European variant languages. After being exposed to the Finnish Kalevala at King
Edward’s School, Tolkien became convinced that an early body of English mythology, akin to the Kalevala , existed but had been destroyed by the Norman invasion. “These mythological ballads are full of that very primitive undergrowth that the literature of
Europe has on the whole been steadily cutting and reducing for many centuries with different and earlier completeness among different people,” he told a group of fellow students in 1914, “I would that we had more of it left – something of the same sort that belonged to the English.” 85 Tolkien’s initial goal for his linguistic and narrative
experiments was to recreate those lost mythologies of England.
Soon after this, however, the whole of Tolkien’s generation experienced the
cataclysmic shock, trauma, and disillusion of the War. Tolkien was greatly affected by
the War. He told one of his professors that “the outbreak of war had come as a profound
blow to him, the collapse of all my world.” 86 It is clear that, despite the claims of later
critics responding to his writing, Tolkien did not enjoy war, nor did he find glory in it.
War was something to be avoided: “The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but
85 Garth, Tolkien and the Great War , 52. 86 Tolkien, Letters , 393. 35
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was
(despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists)…” 87
Yet even in the face of its enormous suffering, it was war that sparked the creation
of Tolkien’s mythology. As Tolkien wrote in his essay “On Fairy-stories,” “A real taste
for fairy-stories was wakened by philology on the threshold of manhood, and quickened
to life by war.” 88 Tolkien repeatedly used his War-time experiences as the raw material for mythological writing. While finishing his studies at Oxford after the War began,
Tolkien envisioned the deserted city of Kor, whose citizens had left the city behind. As he joined the army and began training he wrote of the migrant encampments of Aryador.
After the Somme, the battlefield where tanks were first employed, he wrote of the attack on Gondalin by armies of mechanical “dragons” breathing fire. In these writings we can easily make a connection between reality and the mythical.
As distance increased from his war experiences, so the influence of the war on his writing became more shrouded in myth. It is interesting to note that both Tolkien and
Jones produced their greatest war works at least a decade after the Armistice. Croft argues that many World War I writers’ “closeness to the war in time and their direct use of it as subject matter may have prevented these writers from mythologizing their war experiences in writing.” 89 In contrast, Tolkien and Jones allowed sufficient time to pass that the experience could solidify into myth. 90 Writing to his son Christopher during the
87 Ibid, 75. 88 J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in Monsters and the Critics and other Essays (London: Harper Collins, 2006), 135. 89 Croft, War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien , 29. 90 It is important to note that Tolkien and Jones were not alone among World War I writers to allow time to pass before writing. Others, such as Eliot and Hemmingway, also let their experiences mature before writing of them. 36
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
Second War, Tolkien describes how he “took to ‘escapism’: or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie
(representing beauty and grace of life and artifact) and so on.” 91 This temporal distance
may be one factor in explaining the divergence of these two authors from much of the
literature of their contemporaries.
Instead of depicting his war experiences through a hyper-realistic, ironic,
journalistic approach, Tolkien employed those very heroic images which many felt were
bankrupted by the war. The question then is why Tolkien chose to cast his war literature
in what at the time was an outdated heroic mode instead of the popular ironic mode.
Tolkien was aware of his anachronistic language: “This sort of thing – the building up of
a poetic language out of words and forms archaic and dialectal or used in special senses –
may be regretted or disliked. There is nonetheless a case for it: the development of a
form of language familiar in meaning and yet freed from trivial associations, and filled
with the memory of good and evil, is an achievement, and its possessors are richer than
those who have no such tradition.” 92
The answer is that, to Tolkien, repossessing the “memory of good and evil” was
essential. For other War writers, the ironic mode had allowed them to communicate the
despair and disillusionment engendered by the War. Sustained irony can be sterile and in
many ways presented only one perspective: the War was evil and everything about it was
bad. Tolkien was unable or unwilling to subscribe to the “abridgement of hope”
91 Tolkien, Letters , 85. 92 Tolkien, “On Translating Beowulf,” in Monsters and the Critics and other Essays , 55. 37
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 described by Fussell as the foundation of the ironists’ mode. 93 In fact, Tolkien sought a
kind of ‘renewal’ for the possibilities of the sacred.
By choosing a mythological idiom, Tolkien was able to include the possibility a
fortuitous end, of fighting regardless of the odds. These are characteristics of Tolkien’s
“fairy-stories” but not of ironic literature. In “On Fairy-stories,” Tolkien laid out four
factors involved in the creation of a fairy story: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, and
Consolation. 94 The idea of consolation is tied in with the concept of eucatastrophe.
Eucatastrophe, as described by Tolkien, is the sudden turn of events for the good at the
end of the story. For the Catholic Tolkien, the most fitting example of this principle was
in Christ’s resurrection when all hope appeared to have been lost by the crucifixion but
was suddenly regained. Such an experience of post-Apocalypse transcendence would
have been impossible in the ironic mode.
Tolkien’s creation of a world exhibited many characteristics of ritual-like action,
particularly through the category of traditionalism. Eucatastophe sets conditions and
structures through which a sudden shift from desperation to favorable resolution can
occur. The overarching moral dichotomy between good and evil has been simplified,
made black and white. Tolkien created a mythology in which good and evil were clearly
defined and relegated to opposite sides of a conflict. Each of these elements was
something Tolkien identified as an element of traditional fairy stories.
93 Fussell, The Great War , 3. 94 Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” 46. 38
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Post-War realist literature often subverted the concept of absolute evil, leaving only “relative degrees of social maladjustment.” 95 Instead, Tolkien “took the confused
moral landscape of the real world and attempted to clarify it into polarities of good and
evil.” 96 The goblins in ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ and the Orcs of The Lord of the Rings are not personifications of German soldiers, but instead embody all the evil on both sides of the War. Tolkien’s morality mythologizes evil, making it possible both to understand its existence, and to provide hope of a mythological resistance to it. By archetyping the concepts of good and evil, Tolkien was recalling a traditional literary view.
The culminating result of Tolkien’s decades of mythologizing is The Lord of the
Rings , a work which is not religious in action, but, rather, spiritual in tone. There is very
little organized religious practice by any of the characters in The Lord of the Rings , but the presence of ritual and ritualistic behaviors is never far from the surface. 97
World War I was a catastrophic event in the history of the Twentieth Century. It
changed forever Europeans’ definition of war and their response to it. It birthed a century
of change and conflict. And it prompted extreme and varied reactions from the artistic
community. The remainder of this document will explore the response of a few
musicians who, similar to Jones and Tolkien, chose ritual connotations as their means for
recovering a sense of the sacred in a post-apocalyptic world.
95 Garth, Tolkien and the Great War , 300. 96 Ibid., 219. 97 For more information about the presence of ritual behavior in The Lord of the Rings , I would encourage the reader to see Tolkien’s letters as well as secondary material such as Anne Petty, One Ring to Bind them All: Tolkien’s Mythology (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979). 39
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
CHAPTER THREE
AN INHUMAN FINAL CEREMONY
In a letter to Paul Dukas on 18 August 1915, Erik Satie wrote: “For me, this war is like a sort of Apocalypse, more idiotic than real. Happily we shall not be present at this grandiose, but stupid and inhuman final ceremony.” 98 Although he served as a member of the Home Guard in Arcueil during World War I, Satie demonstrated in this quote that he did not approve of the War. Later, he wrote, “Certainly the Germans are an unpleasant lot and continue that way. So why should we drive them to the wall … This business is nothing more than a version of the end of the world, but sillier than the real one.” 99 In questioning the sincerity of the War, Satie displayed his usual prescience, and anticipated the pervasive disillusionment experienced after the Armistice. During and immediately following the War, Satie wrote two large-scale works, Parade (1916-17) and Socrate (1917-18), which, as this chapter will demonstrate, served as Satie’s
response to the War.
Neither of these two works overtly mentions the War. Though it does not appear
on the surface, both Parade and Socrate are attempts to change the perception of the
War. Victor Turner, in The Ritual Process , says:
Liminality, marginality, and structural inferiority are conditions in which are frequently generated myths, symbols, rituals, philosophical systems, and works of art. These cultural forms provide men with a set of templates or models which are, at one level, periodical reclassifications of reality and man’s relationship to society, nature, and culture. But they are more than classifications, since they incite men to action as well as to thought. 100
98 Robert Orledge, Satie the Composer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 65. 99 James Harding, Erik Satie (London: Secker and Warburg, 1975), 134. 100 Turner, The Ritual Process , 128-9. 40
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Turner would later add the concept of liminoid to relate these situations to modern industrialized society, as discussed in Chapter 1. Here Turner argues that works of art, in their liminoid roles, can act as vehicles of change, both change in thought and action.
Satie’s Parade and Socrate are examples of such works of art. They have characteristics that are designed to create a liminoid situation in which change of thought and action can take place.
Parade was composed during 1916-17, in the midst of the war. On the surface
Parade appeared more satirical and comical than journalistic war commentary. In part because nationalistic fervor was at its highest, Satie was attacked for spending the war years composing Parade , “an anarchic farce that was totally insensitive to the political situation at the time.” 101 At the first public performance of Parade in May 1916, public morale was expectedly low. Allied forces had been unable to make any progress against the German lines, the Russians had defaulted, and the Battle of Verdun two months earlier had begun to show the true cost of the war in terms of lives lost.
Satie and the other creators of Parade were savaged by the critics. The anonymous critic for the Le Courrier musical declared the work “infinitely more stupid than ingenuous, more boring than droll, more senile and antiquated than audacious and innovative.” 102 Another critic, Jean Poueigh, charged Satie with incompetence and a
“complete lack of musical inventiveness.” 103 Satie responded to Poueigh’s comment with an open-faced card calling Poueigh an “asshole, and an unmusical one at that,” which landed Satie in court for libel. Certainly Satie had faced criticism before. What drove
101 Orledge, Satie the Composer , 65. 102 Alan Gillmor, Erik Satie (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988), 208. 103 Ibid. 41
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 him to react so violently to this one critic? Perhaps the answer can be found in Parade itself.
The subject matter for Parade is, on the surface, quite simple. The setting is a
Parisian theater forain , a small travelling theatre presentation associated with the circus and other light entertainments. 104 At the French versions of these events, an elevated platform called a “parade” was set up at the entrance. On it, members of the theatre troupe performed short acts designed to draw audiences into the theater forain proper.
Parade replicates this staging by playing out three acts, each introduced by a bombastic manager; the acts include a Chinese magician, a little American dancer, and an acrobat.
Immediately, Satie’s setting creates a ritual-like atmosphere. The imitation of the theater forain and the parade invokes a specific, traditional image while the play-within-a-play
draws on the performance category. The overt “framing” of the play-within-a-play also
serves to accent the liminoid separation from reality.
But Parade portrays a failed performance; the momentary crowd disperses, mistakenly thinking it has seen the full show, not just a preview. This fact has important implications. Richard Axsom points out that, “a thin scrim of anxiety rests over the ballet from the beginning.” 105 The actions of the performers become increasingly desperate as
the audience continues to believe the preview is the main attraction. At the end of the
ballet, after each of the three managers has presented his act, all three performers return
to the stage in a futile last attempt to draw the audience into the main attraction.
104 The French Theater forain was at the height of its popularity during the turn of the century. It is tied historically with other light theatrical genres such as commedia dell’arte in Italy and shares similar characteristics. For more information about the French variety, see Richard Axsom, “Parade”: Cubism as Theatre (New York: Garland, 1979). 105 Richard Axsom, “Parade”: Cubism as Theatre (New York: Garland, 1979), 63. 42
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The relevance of anxiety to my discussion here is clarified when we consider the reaction of the imaginary audience. An audience at an actual theatre forain would have
no difficulty distinguishing the brief introductions from the real show inside. We must,
therefore, see the inability of the audience to understand the action as an example of a
world turned upside down, one in which people do not respond as expected. This is the
first in a series of examples of liminoid characteristics. Turner says, “in liminality people
‘play’ with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them.” 106 In Parade , the normal or expected sequence of events is subverted and replaced with the abnormal or unexpected. Instead of entering the theatre forain proper, the play-within-a-play audience unexpectedly leaves.
The design of both the plot and setting for Parade additionally show the presence of these liminoid characteristics. The original designer of the plot for Parade , Jean
Cocteau, called the work a ballet realiste , a claim meant to contrast the ballet with the faux-realism Cocteau saw in contemporary French theatre. Parade was realist not in the
sense that it depicts exact events like a photograph, but insofar as its subject matter
originated in everyday life. It totally rejected the sets, topics, and narratives that had been
the staple of classical ballet. The setting was instead a collage of modern existence, from
the music hall and ragtime to American cinema to sounds of the firing of a pistol and the
motion of a typewriter.
The setting of the theater forain was not uncommon in early Twentieth Century
art. Realist visual artists documented it as part of contemporary life. Symbolists
discovered rich metaphors for the human condition hiding in its characters and events.
106 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre , 27. 43
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An aura of fantasy and mystery had previously been connected with the painting of the theater forain in Seurat’s La Parade du Cirque , “whose eerie and disturbing mood should
be viewed as intentionally instilled by the artist rather than as inadvertent.” 107 Satie and
Cocteau’s Parade was part of a larger thematic interest in the theatre forain among
contemporary artists.
Satie and Cocteau further connected with this artistic theme with the selection of
Pablo Picasso, the famous progenitor of the Cubist style, to design the sets and costumes
for Parade. Cubism, at its heart, was driven by the evocation of confusion caused by
multiple connotative meanings from a single image. This process reduced everyday
forms to geometric shapes and multifaceted cube-like complexes. “Lines and shapes
transcend their indigenous forms, thereby becoming illusory objects that challenge the
authenticity of other objects.” 108 There was a constant question about what is real and
unreal, truth or falsehood, which freed the viewer from the slavish reliance on imitation,
or a fixed perspective.
From the “red curtain” backdrop with its winged horse and a girl holding an
unsupported ladder, to the costumes which only vaguely resemble actual persons,
Picasso’s designs for Parade changed the mental framework of the audience, in effect
creating a new reality where the everyday is unique and questionable (see Figures 1 and
2).
Parade “mythologizes the mundane” 109 by combining the confusing nature of the
visual images with the “noises” used during the performance, the revolver shots, sirens,
107 Axsom, “Parade” , 37. 108 Gillmor, Eric Satie , 199. 109 Axsom, “Parade” , 59. 44
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
Figure 1: Pablo Piccasso's set design for Parade.
Figure 2: One of Pablo Piccasso's costume designs for Parade.
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Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 typewriter clicks, and lottery wheel. These effects, while seemingly everyday, are combined in nonsensical ways just as Turner described earlier. Thus the setting, the noise effects, and the curtain all combine to create a liminoid event.
The music which Satie composed “as a background for certain noises which
Cocteau considers indispensable in order to fix the atmosphere of his characters,” adds to the creation of ritual-like and liminoid elements. 110 From the opening “Chorale,” Satie created a mood which was dark, pessimistic, and melancholy. As Picasso’s red curtain framed the anxiety of the visual action, the dissonant eight-bar chorale, written for low strings, woodwinds and brass, framed the music. Satie’s use of the term “chorale” must be viewed as purposeful, a calling to mind of the ritual connotations of Lutheran worship music. The traditionalism and sacral symbolism of the chorale create a ritual-like atmosphere which supports the liminoid characteristics of the non-musical elements above.
Satie also creates the ritual-like atmosphere through repeated use of ostinato textures. Ostinati are short melodic patterns which repeat, often over an extended period.
Such textures, because of their precise repetition and control, fall into the invariance category of Bell’s ritual-like actions. Satie’s ostinato textures dominate entire sections of
Parade and are often juxtaposed with new, contrasting melodic material.
After the initial statement of the chorale, the focus shifts to the flutes and violins, which spin out a melody based on a descending second interval, a sigh which adds to the mournful atmosphere (see Example 2). This melody becomes the basis for several ostinati, beginning with the Chinese Magician’s act. The music for this first act is built
110 Gillmor, Eric Satie , 200. 46
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 on several versions of the same pattern, each slightly different in terms of metric placement and instrumentation, but with the same basic melodic pattern (12, 9, 12, 9 measures long respectively, see Example 3).
Example 2: Erik Satie, Parade , “Chorale,” mm 9-12.
Example 3: Erik Satie, Parade , “Prestidigitateur Chinois”.
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This ostinato is the first in a string of repeated passages which underlie much of the remainder of the work. For example, in the American girl section, clicks of the typewriter are accompanied by repeating eighth-note patterns in the clarinets and second violins (see Example 4). Later in the act, the shots of a revolver are accompanied by ostinati in the bassoons, horns, and strings. At the end of the act, the now deserted girl is left with an ostinato in the harp and strings. Finally, in perhaps the most dramatic use, the ostinato theme reappears in the acrobat scene during the tightrope act. The harmonic structure, which had been shifting through the first part of the scene, suddenly stops on a long octave E pedal. Against this pedal, the violins and violas weave a long ostinato pattern with the flute playing a shrill counterpoint (see Example 5).
Example 4: Erik Satie, Parade , “Petite fille Americaine”, mm 35-40.
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Example 5: Erik Satie, Parade , “Acrobates”, mm 83-88. The combination of these musical techniques and allusions with the setting, noise events, and curtain discussed above creates a ritual-like atmosphere. Parade presented a world and a population turned upside down. The plot portrayed an audience which did not understand its role, did not go inside for the real show, and failed to understand the purpose of the events. The staging displayed a world where everyday images are turned into strange and monstrous metaphors. Although Satie never directly addressed the issue, this interpretation suggests Parade was his response to the War. Turner describes liminoid events as settings for new models, symbols, and paradigms which can feed back into the society. 111 It seems clear from this interpretation that Satie intended his work to express his distaste with the war.
111 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 28. 49
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We should not be surprised that Satie chose to employ ritual-like actions in his ballet. Parade was the synthesis of the musical behaviors and influences of the past forty years of his life. In order to understand where Parade originated, and where Satie would go from there, we must look back at the origins of Satie’s ritual style.
Satie’s interest in ritual began early in life during the years he spent in Honfleur between 1873 and 1878. During these early years, Satie was taking music instruction from Vinot, the organist at St. Leonard’s church. 112 St. Leonard’s was a modest
establishment built in a heavy Gothic style. Both the architecture – the high vaulted
structures and elaborate sculptures – and the associated music – plainchant – captured the
young Satie’s imagination. He absorbed “the visual and the aural combined: the Gothic
look of Vinot’s church and the sound of the Gregorian mode which he heard there.” 113
Plainchant was “never far beneath the surface of Satie’s music;” 114 chant’s slow moving,
florid lines, Gregorian modes, and earnest simplicity all appear in later works. Likewise,
we see in these early influences both stylistic characteristics, and an interest in music
functioning as part of ritual, which would be lifelong interests.
In 1878, Vinot gave up his post and moved to Lyon. Simultaneously, with the
death of his Grandmother and the ill-health of his Grandfather, Satie moved, at the age of
twelve, to live with his father in Paris. Here, he was enrolled as a student in the Paris
Conservatoire to continue his music training. The Conservatoire experience was a
112 Satie’s early biographer, Pierre-Daniel Templier, placed Vinot’s employment at St. Catherine’s, the church across the square from St. Leonard’s. Further investigation has shown the correct place of employment to be St. Leonard’s. 113 Harding, Erik Satie , 13. 114 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 9. 50
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 failure. Satie’s already highly individual compositional style did not fit well in such an academic environment.
It was also in Paris that Satie began to create an image for himself based upon a pseudo-mystical religion. He spoke of “his religion” and assumed such a persona of humility that his friends began calling him “Monsieur le Pauvre.” He had already begun to experiment with the kinds of invariance, rule-governance, and performance that would characterize his later ritual-like creation of his own church.
It is also during this period of heightened religiosity that we find Satie renewing his interest in gothic style. He began spending hours each day in Notre Dame Cathedral, studying the architecture and absorbing the atmosphere, or in the Bibliotheque Nationale reading books on medieval subjects. What had begun as an interest in things medieval in
Honfleur was turning into an obsession. Out of this obsession came the first of many works inspired by his medieval studies, the set of four Ogives of 1886.
The term “ogive” refers to the curve that forms the outline of a Gothic pointed arch. The connection to his studies of gothic architecture is clear from the title and the music reflects the influence of plainsong, confirming a connection which began back at
St. Leonard’s. Each of the four Ogives is constructed the same way: a conjunct, modally ambiguous melodic line is presented in octaves (a), the melody is harmonized with a series of chords (a’), the melody is repeated with a simple triadic harmony (a’’), and a’ is repeated (see Example 6). These small works illustrate the effect of the early ritualistic influences. Satie constructs a structure whose modal and rhythmic ambiguity create a hypnotic effect. Many of these same techniques would recur his Rosicrucian period
(1890-1895). 51
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Example 6: Erik Satie, Premiere Ogive Satie’s interaction with the Rosicrucian movement began with his interaction with the strange mystic Josephin Peladan (1858-1918). As early as 1886, during his brief service in the volunteer army, Satie may have encountered the writings of Josephin
Peladan, the extreme mystic who was making his name in Paris. Early in his career,
Peladan had taken the title “Sar,” a title associated with Assyrian priest-kings. He completed the transformation with a long, unkempt beard and a flowing oriental robe, calling himself a spiritual reincarnation of the ancient Babylonian/Assyrian monarchs. It is not hard to see why Satie, already interested in the distant past and the religious
52
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 mysticism of Dynam-Victor Fumet, might be drawn to the eccentric Sar. 115 It was not until 1890 that Satie, while playing at the Chat Noir, actually met Peladan, who, attracted to Satie’s musical ability, invited Satie to join his Rosicrucian Brotherhood.
Peladan’s Order provided a new forum for Satie’s compositional experiments in ritual. It is certain that one of the things that drew Satie to Peladan was the “colorful ceremony and eccentric trumpery of his quasi-medieval Rosicrucian rites.” 116 Satie’s role
in this grand enterprise was official composer; he was tasked with providing music for
the varied rituals of the Order. Appropriately for the setting, Satie’s music of the period
featured a high degree of sacral symbolic language and traditional rule-governed
structures which certainly must have pleased Peladan.
Peladan’s expressed aesthetic aim was to “ruin realism, reform Latin taste, and
create a school of idealistic art.” 117 Banned by Peladan for their “realism” were
historical, patriotic, rustic scenes, still lifes, and landscapes, among others. What was
encouraged was material drawn from myth, legend, allegory, and dream. He would
realize this image through a series of six Salons de la Rose-Croix, multi-media events
combining art forms, between 1891 and 1897.
Few pieces of art produced for these salons have any lasting significance, but one
is relevant for this discussion, the play Le Fils des etoiles from 1891. The play, written by Peladan himself, is a strange story of a poet-shepherd from ancient Chaldea. The story describes the mystical journey of the shepherd and his initiation into the Chaldean
115 For more information about Satie’s relationship with Dynam-Victor Fumet, see Gillmor, Erik Satie , 60- 65. 116 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 75. 117 Ibid., 77. 53
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 priesthood with a strong theme of the war between physical and spiritual love. Peladan’s play clearly exploits the connection to Wagner’s redemption theme from Parsifal , even
going so far as to put the words “Wagnerie Kaldeenne” (“Chaldean Wagnery”) on the
published version of the play. The incidental music Satie wrote for the play is far from
Wagnerian, however; Satie labeled his score with “Pastorale Kaldeene” (“Chaldean
Pastoral”) instead.
Satie began his composition with a dedication that showcases the development of
his ability to construct ritual-like scenarios. This dedication to Le Fils des etoiles is a
clear example of the formalism and sacral symbolism categories:
Without prejudice to the observances of my cousins, the powerful sorcerers, I offer this work to my peers. In doing so, I claim no glory for myself. I invoke upon my fellows the mercy of the Father, creator of things visible and invisible; the protection of the Majestic Mother of the Redeemer, Queen of Angels; along with the prayers of the heavenly hosts. May the righteous indignation of God crush out the proud and the unholy. Erik Satie
The music features several idioms that would become standard in his Rose-Croix
compositions, as well as later uses of ritual-like events. The opening instructions on the
score are “En blanc et immobile” (“White and motionless”) and “Pale et hieratique”
(“Pale and hieratic”) suggesting a kind of atmosphere built around clear, pure sounds,
sparse textures, and unusual harmonies. Here we see the beginnings of the type of
texture that Satie would return to in the composition of his post-war Socrate .
The harmonic language of Le Fils des etoiles is filled with strings of parallel
seventh and ninth chords as well as developing chords based on a fourth interval. The
prelude to the third act is the most texturally variant. In that section, the chordal texture 54
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 chains from major, minor, and augmented 5/3 chords to parallel fourth chords, juxtaposing with a fanfare-like texture in octaves (see Example 7).
Example 7: Erik Satie, Le Fils des etoiles , act 3, prelude. . The works of the Rose-Croix period all feature a primarily vertical harmonic structure which places strange sonorities in unusual places. “He seems to have been intent on creating an invocatory effect through reiteration, juxtaposition, and accumulation of sonorities rather than through any kind of traditional harmonic logic.” 118
Satie’s modus operandi of this period calls for music focused on the total combined effect of sound rather than any specific, recognizable structure. The resulting wash of sound invokes a ritualistic atmosphere through both the psychological effect of the repeating textures and these sounds’ association with other ritual music. Le Fils des etoiles is a
118 Ibid., 82. 55
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 prototype ritual. Here, Satie is testing musical techniques for the realization of the ritual impulse. These techniques would be heard again in many of his compositions of the next half decade, and would resurface in some of his more mature works: in, for example, the repetitive ostinati of Parade and the “white” and thin textures of Socrate .
It is shortly after the first performance of Le Fils in 1892 that we see Satie’s interest in ritual-like action culminate in a grand show of separation from Sar Peladan.
He had spent years learning the method of creating ritual-like atmospheres in both music and writing. Now, with a mastery of those skills under his belt, he put them to the test in the creation of a highly structured, individualistic church to rival Peladan’s salon. To illustrate the highly ritualized approach Satie took in the creation of this church, it is beneficial to quote an extended passage from Satie’s article entitled “First Epistle to
Catholic Artists and All Christians”:
Daring to attribute the woes with which We are afflicted to these causes, Our Christian heart is moved by the sight of so many wretched souls doomed to everlasting damnation; it draws from the infinite grace of Our Saviour Jesus Christ the burning desire to work for their purification, using the most appropriate means to restore the Holy Religion trodden underfoot by sinners, and the Arts which are its most sublime expression. We have thus resolved, following the dictates of Our conscience and trusting in God’s mercy, to erect in the metropolis of this Frankish nation, which for so many centuries aspired above all others to the glorious title of Elder Daughter of the Church, a Temple worthy of the Saviour, leader and redeemer of all men; We shall make of it a refuge where the Catholic faith and the Arts, which are indissolubly bound to it, shall grow and prosper, sheltered from profanity, expanding in all their purity, unsullied by the workings of evil. After long consideration, We have named this refuge of the reinvigorated Faith, the Metropolitan Church of Art , and have placed it under the divine protection of Jesus Leader . The first invaluable demonstrations of affectionate gratitude and Christian approbation which a great number of our brethren have so kindly brought Us, have spread in Our heart ineffable joy and at the same time
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sown the seeds of new strength and courage to resist all snares Hell may lay against Us. 119
Satie continued by penning elaborate instructions for clerical orders, uniforms, and membership rules. Using a small inheritance he received from his father after his death in 1892, Satie published a journal which would form the voice of the church, calling it the Cartulary of the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Leader . He lists
his expectations for the 2 billion members of the church: 1,600,000,000 black-robed
“Peneants noirs convers,” 8,000,000 black and white garbed “Peneants noirs profes,”
40,000 “Peneants gris,” 200 “Peneants blancs,” 50 “Cloistriers,” and 10 “Definiteurs.”
Each group was to be defined by a detailed color scheme for the vestments. Satie
himself, the “Parcener,” would wear a crimson robe with violet hood. The official
vesture of the church would include “a cowl, sleeves, and leggings of mail; hooded robe;
conical helmet with nosepiece; gloves of mail; a large battle sword; and a lance five
meters long.” 120 Such detailed descriptions of the ranks, clothing, and arms must surely
have come from Satie’s medieval studies. The elaborate nature of the rules governing the
new church is further evidence of ritual-like action.
Through the Cartulary , Satie could strike out at those he deemed to be
undermining modern art. He would issue violent diatribes against them, demanding that
they turn from their “evil ways,” and finally “excommunicating” them from an
organization to which they never belonged. A brochure dated 8 March 1895, under the
title “Intende votis supplicum,” directs Satie’s wrath against Lugne-Poe, Valette,
Natanson, and Deschamps for unspecified “execrable practices,” condemning them as
119 Nigel Wilkins, Ed, The Writings of Erik Satie (London: Eulenburg Books, 1980), 36. 120 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 91. 57
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“evildoers speculating on human corruption,” promising to “use all means to precipitate their moral downfall.” 121 The motivations for these attacks are unclear; these men were progressive artists and directors who were praised in the pages of Le Mercure de France ,
La Revue blanche , and La Plume .122
The article and subsequent Cartulary reflect Satie’s knowledge of formal language and the elaborate sacral symbolism that he gained from the ritual-like nature of
Peladan’s writings. In fact, the connections between the Metropolitan Church of Satie and the Rosicrucian order of Peladan are so clear that some scholars argue that Satie’s church is an elaborate parody, a “vast travesty of Peladan’s Rosicrucian Temple.”123 The lines
“to restore the Holy Religion trodden underfoot by sinners, and the Arts which are its most sublime expression,” are closely aligned with Peladan’s proclamations against
“those responsible for the aesthetic and moral decadence of our time.” 124 In this light,
Satie’s church can be seen as an early example of the kind of farcical “events” he would compose throughout the balance of his career.
Throughout his later career, Satie demonstrated the ability to create works whose conflict between serious and parodic was fundamental to his vision. This duality between authenticity and farce intentionally leaves the listener wondering about the true purpose of such works. In this light, Satie’s part-serious, part-parodic ritual-like construction of his church has more implications for this study due to the question of the devices he used
121 Ibid., 92. 122 One possible reason for the attacks is a continued parody of Peladan’s order. These excommunications are similar to the actions of Peladan during the so called War of the Two Roses, a disagreement between Peladan and an early adherent to his ideas, Stanislas de Guaita, which spilled into the press in a series of Sar issued “Episcopal decrees” in which Peladan excommunicated enemies of the faith for crimes of “sacrilege and iconoclasm”. 123 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 92. 124 Ibid., 93. 58
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 to create it than whether the imitation was serious or parodic. The Metropolitan Church of Art confirms the development of his fluency in ritual-like style from Peladan, Fumet, and his early studies in Gothic mysticism.
Although Satie broke association with Peladan in 1892, he continued to employ
the Rose-Croix style he had developed for Peladan’s rituals until 1895. The music
composed during this period thus employs similar techniques to Le Fils des etoiles with
parallel ritual effect. Two of the major works of this period are Uspud (1892), a
“Christian Ballet” the plotline of which reveals the work as a parody of Peladan’s
writings, and Prelude to the Gates of Heaven (1894), a piano piece which Alan Gillmor
describes as “an ironic study of religious sentimentality.” 125 The last Rose-Croix work was the Messe des pauvres (1895), a piece for organ and voices, and a topic meriting further discussion here. 126
The Mass for the Poor is relevant to the current study because it is the only attempt Satie made to compose in the formal ritual setting of the Mass. Up to this point,
Satie’s ritual composition had employed less formulaic, more individualistic approaches.
He had been concerned with evoking the ritual-like atmosphere while avoiding the parameters of any pre-existing ritual.
125 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 103. 126 Perhaps one of the more interesting works from this period for the reception history of Satie was a short fragment of a piece found in Satie’s notebooks and published in 1968 by Robert Caby. “Vexations,” as the piece was called, consists of a simple chromatic line followed by a series of chords. The intriguing part of the work is the performance instructions which state that if one wishes to play the piece 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself in advance, in the most profound silence, by a period of serious immobility. “Vexations” has been taken up by the avant-garde movement in music. The first “authentic” performance of the work by John Cage in 1963 was an eighteen hour and forty minute marathon. The zen-like instructions for “Vexations” have evoked an almost religious response from many modernist musicians. Perhaps later composers were taping into Satie’s predilection for ritual in the performance of ritual-like invariance in such a strange work. 59
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What is the reason for the change in procedure? Why did Satie suddenly decide to draw on the centuries-old formalized ritual construction of the Mass? Robert Orledge argues that “more than anything, [the Metropolitan Church of Art] provided an excuse to return to the medieval world he loved, with architectural designs and fake plainsong.”127
It is certainly plausible that the selection of the formal structure of the Mass was another attempt to get closer to the Medieval, to connect with the gothic world he had studied in his youth and imitated in the creation of his church. However, I believe that the reason for the change lies in his increasing use of sacral symbolism in the previous years. When
Satie desired to create a parody of Peladan’s salons, he employed elaborate details of every aspect of the new church, as I detailed above. In order to create an effective serious versus parodic conflict, he needed such details. The use of the mass structure is more of the same.
Although the Misse des pauvres departs from Satie’s tendency to avoid evoking pre-existent ritual, it is remarkably similar to his other works from this period, and indeed going all the way back to Le Fils des etoiles . It is scored for organ with groups of high and low voices in unison. In the published version, the voices are only called for in the first two movements: “Kyrie eleison” and “Dixit domine.” The remainder of the work is a series of short movements for organ: “Priere des Orgues,” “Commune qui mundi nefas,” “Chant Ecclesiastique,” “Priere pour les voyageurs et les marins en danger de mort, a la tres bonne et tres quguste Vierge Marie, mere de Jesus,” and “Priere pour le salut de mo name.”
127 Orledge, Satie as Composer , 211. 60
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There is evidence that Satie either composed or intended to compose more movements than those which survive. The first publication of fragments appear in the journal Le Coeur in 1895 accompanied by a review of the work by Conrad Satie, Erik’s brother. In that review, Conrad mentions that the “Priere des Orgues” comes between the
Kyrie and the Gloria, suggesting a lost movement between the Priere des Orgues and the
Commune. There are also sketches of material that may have been intended for the
Mass: a “Spiritus sancte deus miserere nobis” and “Modere.”
The existence of these lost fragments is important because they show that Satie truly was seeking to create a work in the mold of the Mass. Looking at just the published version, an observer might make the assumption that the work is only suggesting a Mass from the title and the first few movements. The fragments show that Satie’s intention, should the work have been completed, was to employ the pre-existing structure of the
Mass.
The Mass for the Poor is the fullest realization of the ritual impulse which Satie had been developing throughout the Rose-Croix years. It features many of the stylistic characteristics which are seen in the other works of the period, including parallel movement of triads, sevenths, and ninths, fourth chords, and organization by motivic repetition and juxtaposition. The use of the Catholic Mass, even in a changed version, suggests Satie’s love and connection with the Medieval and the Gothic as well as his desire and drive to communicate his sacred experience in terms of traditional ritual, whether perceived as serious or parodic.
All the events of 1892-1895, during which time Satie continued his activities as leader of the Metropolitan Church, combine to offer a picture of his interest and ability to 61
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 create ritual-like actions. This period is the culmination of all the influences and education he had received in the first years of his life, from his first experiences in
Vinot’s gothic cathedral, to his time spent in Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral reading about the Middle Ages, to his connections with Fumet and his Christian Mysticism, and finally to Peladan and the lessons he learned as the composer of the Rosicrucian temple.
The years following 1895 show Satie moving away from the openly religious outlook of the Rose-Croix period, as well as toward new techniques in his composition.
Although he remained a spiritual man throughout the remainder of his life, Satie’s writings and interactions with others around the turn of the century reflect more of the sarcastic café hall than mystic Christianity. In a letter to his brother Conrad from 1906,
Satie commented, “What else can I do but turn toward God and point my finger at Him.
I’ve come to believe that the Old Man is even more stupid than he is powerful.” 128 His receptivity to traditional dogma had waned, but Satie had learned his lessons well and would call on his ability to compose in a ritual-like style in Parade and Socrate .129
Satie would take a different approach to the same search in Socrate . Instead of finding significance in the unique reactions of a crowd seeing a commonplace, contemporary episode, Satie explores a connection to the distant past and a tragic event which might help provide some context for the tragedy of the War. The ritualizing impulse remains, however, with a body of idioms and techniques drawn from his
Rosicrucian Period.
128 Pierre-Daniel Templier, Erik Satie (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1969), 24. 129 Though it is beyond the scope of this document, there is the possibility for research into Satie’s music in the 1900s and 10s examining the possibility of the presence of ritual-like actions. 62
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Satie began composing Socrate immediately after finishing Parade in 1917. As
early as January of that year (the tumultuous premier of Parade would take place in May)
there is evidence that Satie was thinking of the creation of a completely different kind of
work. On January 6, 1917, Satie wrote to Valentine Gross of a piece he was working on
which he felt must be “as white and pure as Antiquity.” 130 Two weeks later, on January
18, he again wrote to Valentine, “I’m working on the Life of Socrates . I have found a
very attractive translation: one by Victor Cousin. Plato is the perfect collaborator, very
gentle and never importunate.” 131 Satie’s new work would be a contrast from the café- hall, popular atmosphere of Parade , instead drawing on a “white” sound, a “pure” sound,
as he described it. He found his subject matter in the death of Socrates, reaching into
history for a model of ritual death as others might reach for the lives of the saints.
Satie found in the story of Socrates a call for simplicity. He sought a new idiom
for emotion based on small forces and little movement, as opposed to the highly
melodramatic expression of emotion commonly found in Romanticism. In late 1917, he
wrote, “Let us mistrust Art: it is often nothing but virtuosity. Impressionism is the art of
Imprecision; today we tend towards Precision.” 132 For Satie, precision meant efficiency –
doing with little what others might do with much.
In the midst of the fledgling work on Socrate, Satie began associating with the group of younger composers who would eventually be called Les Six , including Frances
Poulenc and Darius Milhaud. Also associated with this group was Satie’s old
collaborator, Cocteau. In the spring of 1918, Cocteau published a seventy-four page
130 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 216. 131 Ibid. 132 Orledge, Satie as Composer , 69. 63
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 pamphlet entitled Le Coq et l’Arlequin which proposed Satie as the epitome of French
art. He is praised by Cocteau for teaching “what, in our age, in the greatest audacity,
simplicity.” 133 Satie would be an example for younger musicians who desired to free
French art from the taint of the German. “Sick to death of flabbiness, fluidity,
superfluity, frills, and all the modern slight of hand … Satie voluntarily abstained, in
order to remain simple, clear, and luminous.” 134
Socrate is the poster-child for simplicity; it is as if a single line ran through the entire work. In the preface to Socrate , Rene Chalput, whom Satie had asked to write a few words to introduce the work, wrote, “This method of drawing with a precise and severe line is rather as if Ingres had illustrated these passages from Plato at the request of
Victor Cousin.” If the presence of ostinati in Parade was an example of invariance, then
Socracte’s texture is one of extreme invariance. The white and pure sounds Satie was
searching for resulted in a musical work almost devoid of change: very narrow melodic
lines, repetitive accompanimental constructions, and an overall quiet dynamic. What
emotional power the work has derives from small changes in a previously established
texture.
The concept of simplicity in composition was not new in Satie’s oeuvre. From
the very beginning of his career, Satie drew on limited forces or elements in his pieces.
Robert Orledge comments that “a natural tendency towards simplification, succinctness,
and economy underlies all his work, rather than any desire to make a virtue of his
133 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 210. 134 Ibid. 64
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 technical limitations.” 135 The often simple-looking approach taken by Satie is, then,
employed on purpose; the “simpleness” is the unique aesthetic Satie preferred as a
contrast to Romantic excess.
This extreme aesthetic sparseness was a point of criticism from many
contemporaries of the 1920 premier of Socrate. Jean Mernold characterized Socrate as a
“total nullity … a string of relentlessly reiterated phrases … intoned in the manner of a drawing-room conversation.” 136 Another critic commented that “the work is of interminable length. M. Satie seemed to be playing practically the same phrase all the time, except when he tried to brighten the monotonous proceedings by thumping out some inconsequential dischords.” 137
The sparse, thin textures of Socrate are similar to those in the Rose-Croix piece
Le Fils des etoiles . Earlier in this chapter, Le Fils des Etoiles was described as a
prototype, a piece in which Satie experimented with techniques in the creation of ritual
space. Now, in Socrate , Satie returns to those techniques to invoke a solemn and serious
atmosphere. The fact that Satie used similar techniques in both pieces legitimates the
suggestion that Socrate has ritual connotations similar to the earlier Rose-Croix work. 138
Many scholars have noted the connections between the character of Socrates and
that of Satie. They compare the ancient scholar who was accused of corrupting the youth
with the elder composer who now served as a rallying point for younger musicians
135 Orledge, Satie as Composer , 7. 136 Gillmor, Erik Satie , 218. 137 Ibid. 138 The case for Socrate as ritual is further supported by the choice of oratorio as an overall design feature. Although the work is called a ‘symphonic drama’ in its title, the genre oratorio would be a much better fit for the work which features four solo vocal parts with orchestra to be performed without staging. The fact that the oratorio is traditionally a sacred idiom would certainly add to the ritual-like atmosphere of the work. 65
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 seeking new ways. Alan Gillmor cites these connections as the primary reason for
Socrate ’s composition. 139 While there are certainly startling similarities between Satie
and Socrates, I do not believe they are the sole reason for the composition of this work,
especially in light of the degree of ritual connotations found in it. I find it much more
likely that Socrate , along with its pair Parade , represents another example of Satie’s sacred experience in the wake of World War I.
Socrate is filled with death. It is focused on it. It ends with it. Death is at the heart of Socrate . And death is at the heart of the tragedy of World War I. The numbers
of people who died on both sides for what seemed like a futile, worthless endeavor is the
cause of the spiritual unrest in many artists in the post-war period. The death of Socrates
at the end of the piece is a metaphor for the death of millions during the war. In fact, the
overt simplicity described in the previous section may have much to do with Satie’s
desire not to “add a pathetic note where it was unnecessary, to overemphasize pointlessly
the brave simplicity of Death.” 140 A pre-war composer taking up this subject might
approach it through the excesses of Romanticism, trying to do justice to the topic by
over-exaggerating the drama and over-expressing the emotion. But Satie, who had lived
through the death and destruction of World War I, believed that a proper tribute to
innocent death could only be accomplished by eschewing the extremes of Romantic
technique.
Perhaps the most fitting example of this is the final movement of the three-
movement work. The third movement, Mort de Socrate , is a narration given by a single
139 See Gillmor, Erik Satie , 219-220. 140 Templier, Erik Satie , 94. 66
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 voice, Phedon. It tells the story of the final hours of Socrates’ life, when he is sitting in jail awaiting execution with his friends. In one particular section of this movement, Satie sets the words of Socrates in his final speech to his friends:
How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; ... Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body ... I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I cannot even persuade you that I am no worse off now than at any other time in my life. Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are. 141
Here Socrates speaks of the immortality of the soul, of life after death, and of the liberation allowed by death in the union with God. In this beautiful passage, one hears the voice of Satie finding some measure of comfort from the tragedy of the war. As if to further emphasize this point, Socrates’ last words are: “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” Socrates desires to insure that the tradition is fulfilled because, in his mind, death is not an end, but only the next phase on the journey of his immortal soul. All of this suggests that Satie’s message is that in death, even the multitude of deaths from the war, one finds some manner of comfort.
Example 8: Erik Satie, Socrate , “Mort de Socrate,” mm. 1-4.
141 Translated by Benjamin Jowett. 67
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Example 9: Erik Satie, Socrate, “Mort de Socrate,” mm. 268-276. Musically, this last movement is built around a single, 4 chord motive (see
Example 8), moving with only slight variation through most of the movement. As was mentioned before, there is not a lot of change through the work; it moves along a single plane with little motivic development, dynamic movement, or harmonic variety. There is not a true climax to the work, but the moment of Socrates’ death does involve a significant change in the motive. At Socrates’ last words, the motive abruptly shifts direction and becomes a four-note descending motive, each note slightly accented, making the sound of bell tolls (see Example 9). Overall, the music serves to create the
68
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 sacred experience from which Satie could find a resolution to the “inhuman final ceremony” of World War I.
There is an aspect of Socrate which presents the problem of extreme spiritual loneliness, of spiritual emptiness. “It is the expression of a spiritual loneliness so complete as to be almost without consolation; unless perhaps there is a measure of relief, even of elevation, in the ‘terrifying honesty’ of the statement.” 142 In Socrate we find
articulated the spiritual crisis of many artists in the post-war period. That Satie chose to
give a unique form to his spiritual yearning does not separate Socrate from other, more readily identifiable rituals, such as the Catholic Requiem Mass. Satie described his work on Socrate as “an act of piety, an artist’s dream, a humble homage.” 143 It was a work that originated in his struggles to find manifestation of spirituality in a modern world which had denied it. In the end, it is a work which flows from “the smiling mysticism” of his youth and encapsulates the spiritual anxiety of a generation. 144
142 Wilfrid H. Mellers, “Satie and Contemporary Music,” Music and Letters 23, no. 3 (1942), 220. 143 Rollo H. Myers, Erik Satie (London: Dennis Dobson Limited, 1948), 56. 144 Templier, Erik Satie , 96. 69
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
CHAPTER FOUR
DUSK TURNED INTO NOTES
In 1920, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) wrote the following in an attempt to define his aesthetic creed: “The object of all art is to obtain partial revelation of that which is beyond human sense and human facilities.” 145 In the wake of the War, Vaughan
Williams was attempting to define a kind of spiritual expression through the process of creating art. The result of these efforts was a series of works which provide insight into
Vaughan Williams’s emotional and psychological response to World War I. Of the two composers addressed in this document, Vaughan Williams was the closest to the actual fighting, having voluntarily enlisted after the initial days in August 1914. His primary duty was as an ambulance driver, moving through the various levels of the front lines.
Though he was not engaged in the levels of heavy combat that Tolkien or Jones experienced, Vaughan Williams was strongly affected by the War, especially in its aftermath and in recognition of the enormous weight of human lives and material possessions lost for England. His response to the War, and war in general, can be seen in three periods which emerged in his music during the decade 1918-1928: an attempt to return to peace and normalcy through works like the one-act opera The Shepherds of the
Delectable Mountains and his Third Symphony; a call for judgment and apocalypse in
Sancta Civitas and Flos Campi ; and finally an examination of the consequences of apocalypse in the masque Job .
145 Wilfrid H. Mellers, Vaughan Williams and the Vision of Albion (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1989), 135. 70
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First, however, it will be beneficial to examine Vaughan Williams’s War
experiences and his motivations for the sacred connotations of his post-War works. In
August 1914, Vaughan Williams voluntarily joined the army and by September was a
member of the Royal Army Medical Corps. The 42 year-old Vaughan Williams joined
the War alongside younger members of art society like George Butterworth, F.B. Ellis,
Geoffrey Toye, and R. O. Morris, all of whom were under thirty. On account of his flat
feet, he was given the job of wagon orderly, though he quickly discovered there were no
wagons. This experience must have symbolized the waste, inefficiency, and illogic of the
Wartime experience. The twenty-one months following his enlistment were spent
training and serving in various posts in England, until 22 June 1916 when his unit
shipped off to France. There they were stationed at Ecoivres, not far from the battlefield
of the Somme, which began days later on July 1. Vaughan Williams described his duties
in a letter to Gustav Holst: “… all parades and such things cease. I am ‘waggon orderly’
[sic ] and go up the line every night to bring back wounded and sick in a motor
ambulance – all this takes place at night except an occasional day journey for urgent
cases.” 146
Though he was not a front-line combatant, his work in the ambulance corps surrounded him with death daily. “Working in the ambulance gave Ralph vivid awareness of how men died.” 147 It was here amid the screams of the wounded and the
dying, amid the silence of the dead, that Vaughan Williams planned those works which
146 Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W.:A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 120. 147 Ibid., 122. 71
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 would be completed soon after the war: the Pastoral Symphony and the Shepherds of the
Delectable Mountains .
A few months later, the unit was sent to Salonika in Greece, where Vaughan
Williams was to spend the next few months. Finally, in June 1917, Vaughan Williams
was shipped back to London to train as an officer in the Royal Garrison Artillery. For a
short time after his training concluded in November 1917, he was assigned to an artillery
unit in France and took part in the retreat caused by the Hindenburg/Ludendorff March
offensive. He continued to serve as an artillery officer there until February 1919, when
he was demobilized and returned to England.
Certainly these war experiences affected Vaughan Williams. The most
emotionally traumatic element was the growing number of deaths of those close to him.
During the summer of 1916, a number of his pre-war friends and associated were killed
in action: Charles Fisher (Vaughan Williams’s brother-in-law), F.B. Ellis, Denis Browne,
and George Butterworth are just a few of that number. Perhaps the most poignant of
these losses was Butterworth, a young composer who was a disciple of Vaughan
Williams. 148 His death at the Battle of the Somme ended what might have been an extremely successful musical career, if his early works are any indication. “For Ralph, the loss of Butterworth’s friendship and the unfulfilled promise of his music were a profound sorrow.” 149
At the end of that fateful summer, Vaughan Williams wrote to Gustav Holst:
148 Recall also the relationship of the death of George Butterworth with other post-War works as described in Chapter 2. 149 Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W. , 122. 72
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I sometimes dread coming back to normal life with so many gaps – especially of course George Butterworth … and now I hear that Ellis is killed – out of those 7 who joined up together in August, 1914 only 3 are left. I sometimes think now that it is wrong to have made friends with people much younger than oneself – because there will only be the middle aged left and I have got out of touch with most of my contemporary friends – but then there is always you and thank Heaven we have never got out of touch and I don’t see why we ever should. 150
The reference to heaven in this letter to Holst was prophetic. The music which Vaughan
Williams produced following the War had a much closer tie with spirituality and mysticism than prior to the outbreak of conflict. The decade 1918-1928 produced works such as the motets ‘O Clap Your Hands,’ ‘Lord Thou Hast Been Our Refuge,’ and ‘O vos omnes,’ the Mass in G minor, The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains , Sancta
Civitas , Flos Campi , Benedicite , and Job , all works which feature Biblical texts or overt
Christian imagery. This leads us to one of the major paradoxes in the life of Vaughan
Williams: the dichotomy between his expressed atheist views and his use of Biblical and
Christian imagery in his works. This paradox can best be explained through Vaughan
Williams’s connection with the strong Christian heritage of England.
Vaughan Williams first began questioning his family’s religion during his late teenage years. By the time he completed his studies at Charterhouse, a public boarding school, he had discarded the idea of God and accepted the role of atheist. As his second wife, Ursula, commented, “He was an atheist during his later years at Charterhouse and at
Cambridge, though he later drifted into a cheerful agnosticism: he was never a professing
Christian.” 151 These tendencies were continued at Cambridge where he acquired a
150 Ibid. 151 Ibid, 29. 73
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 reputation as a “most determined atheist.” 152 Bertrand Russell, a fellow student of
Vaughan Williams, remembers a time when Vaughan Williams “walked into [Trinity]
Hall one evening saying in a loud voice, ‘Who believes in God nowadays, I should like to know?’” 153 During his years at Cambridge, he accepted the position of organist at St.
Barnabas’ church in South Lambeth, the only paid position he ever held in the church,
but his tenure there was short as “his atheist views and his refusal to take communion
made him persona non grata with a new vicar.” 154
Yet, at the same time, there were signs in his early years that, despite his atheist
tendencies, Vaughan Williams was interested in the forms and rituals of the Christian
religion. At Cambridge, he had organized a choral society that rehearsed masses on
Sunday mornings, and he would attend Christian services.155 During a visit to the Isle of
Skye, he participated in an open air service conducted in Gaelic, though he knew nothing
of the language. 156 Clearly Vaughan Williams felt a connection to the Christian worship
service, independent of conventional faith or belief.
This fluid, non-traditional relationship between atheism and religion in Vaughan
Williams’s life has prompted examination in the scholarly literature. Wilfrid Mellers
calls Vaughan Williams a “Christian Agnostic,” a double man who simultaneously
questions the established religious procedures while holding to a deeply spiritual world
view: “Over the course of a long creative life … Vaughan Williams demonstrated that the
152 Michael Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 42. 153 Ibid. 154 James Day, Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1998), 21. 155 Ibid., 16. 156 Ibid., 17. 74
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 human spirit … lay dormant, awaiting resuscitation.” 157 His spirituality, the fact that he believed that man was more than a collection of flesh and bone, continued to impel him to religion even after he gave up on the idea of God. He espoused Christian values, holding onto a code of conduct based on “the chivalrous ideals of high-minded Romantic agnosticism that still accepted the altruism of the Christian ethic while rejecting its supernatural element.” 158
Interestingly, even in the midst of such religious exploration, Vaughan Williams composed no original music set to Biblical texts prior to 1913. In fact, other than his work with the English Hymnal and his Five Mystical Songs , he did not set any texts even remotely associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition in a major work until after his return from the War. Instead he had drawn on secular poets such as Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Walt Whitman. While Vaughan Williams is quoted as saying that “the object of art is to stretch out to the ultimate realities through the medium of beauty,” it is unclear what he meant by ‘ultimate realities’ but certainly he was speaking of something outside the realm of normal human understanding which can possibly be reached through art, something a more conventionally religious person might call God.159 It is also certain that Vaughan Williams believed the path to these ultimate
realities to be reachable through the experience of Biblical texts and Christian writers like
Herbert and Bunyan, as well as secular writers like Whitman.
Consider the works Toward the Unknown Region and Sancta Civitas . Both have
as their subject a place beyond the present to which we will journey, the unknown region
157 Mellers, Vaughan Williams , 1-2. 158 Day, Vaughan Williams , 100. 159 Ibid., 103. 75
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 of the title of the first and the New Jerusalem of the second. Vaughan Williams showed himself equally able to explore the issue with the secular poetry of Whitman for Toward
and the sacred text of the book of Revelations in Sancta .
Moreover, Christian texts and ideas were also used by Vaughan Williams because
of their connection with English tradition. Vaughan Williams’ affinity with folk music is
widely known and accepted, so much so that he is often viewed only in those terms, as a
folk musician without any real compositional skill.160
It would be more precise to say that folk music was one resource through which
Vaughan Williams was able to connect with the English nationalism in which he was so invested. As early as 1903, Vaughan Williams had begun collecting and notating English folk songs. For the next several years this endeavor would occupy the majority of his time. Vaughan Williams was not, however, simply a collector; he was also a composer.
His ultimate purpose in collecting folk songs was not only to set them down in notation and preserve them for posterity, but also to use them in his music to link to the long history of English cultural tradition. In his 1912 article “Who wants the English
Composer,” Vaughan Williams wrote the following:
We English composers are always saying, ‘Here are Wagner, Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, what fine fellows they are, let us try and do something like this at home,’ quite forgetting that the result will not sound at all this ‘this’ when transplanted from its natural soil. It is all very well to catch at the prophet’s robe, but the mantle of Elijah is apt, like all second-hand clothing, to prove the worst of misfits. 161
160 See Alain Frogley, “Constructing Englishness in music: National Character and the Reception of Ralph Vaughan Williams,” in Vaughan Williams Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1. 161 “Who Wants an English Composer” was published in No. 1 of Vol. ix of RCM Magazine in 1912. 76
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
There had been a tendency in English music culture to appreciate and support
music from Germany above music native to England. Vaughan Williams believed that
such translocation of music removed some of its emotional strength. His point was that
music produced in England must be English in origin, not foreign. This quote
demonstrates that Vaughan Williams desired to use English folk music to create a native
English nationalist music. It is important to note that Vaughan Williams was part of a
larger group of composers at the turn of the century who were seeking to redefine English
music. This movement, known as the English Musical Renaissance, pursued the
composition of music by native English composers in native English styles. 162 Though
many composers of this movement used similar musical techniques, Vaughan Williams is
of interest in this study both because of the journey his response to the War took through
many different pieces and because of the heightened levels of dissonance, especially
during the second period, which separate him from the others.
In 1906, Vaughan Williams was offered a commission to edit hymns for the
English Hymnal . Percy Dearmer, the first general editor, certainly knew about the composer’s atheism, yet he was still chosen as music editor. The result was a hymnal of higher musical quality than the norm. Vaughan Williams was uniquely equipped to approach his work as editor from the position of folk music collector, drawing on material from not only English sources but also French, German, Welsh, Scottish, Swiss,
Irish, Finnish, Hebrew, Italian, American, and Scandinavian sources. He also arranged melodies from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger and Parsifal and set them to hymn texts.
162 See Meirion Hughes, The English Musical Renaissance, 1840-1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). 77
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Through this inclusive approach Vaughan Williams demonstrated that derived material could be freely rearranged and reconstructed to fit his current goal.
In addition to his work on folk song and the English Hymnal , Vaughan Williams was also connected to tradition through his experience as a student of composition. He studied with English musicians and composers of the previous generation: Charles
Stanford, Hubert Parry, and Walter Parratt, early proponents of the creation of a new modern English national music tradition. Vaughan Williams wrote that Hubert Parry once instructed him to “write choral music as befits an Englishman and a democrat.” 163
Parry was concerned that his young composers continue to write choral music and
oratorios. The English musical tradition has long been closely connected with choral
music; performances of Handel and Mendelssohn’s oratorio choruses by Church choirs
and amateur choral societies were common. Choral music was thought to be a metaphor
for democratic society wherein a mass of people could come together with one voice to
communicate an idea. Perry believed that choral music had a moral effect, “fostering
Christianity in an ethical if not ultimately in a religious sense.” 164 Vaughan Williams is connected to this tradition through such a lineage of instructors, instilling it in his earliest training. As Mellers puts it, “The ‘mind of England’ was thus in his blood and bones, his nerves and intellect.” 165
One begins to reconcile the paradox in the atheist’s commitment to Biblical or
Christian Texts when one sees it as emblematic of Vaughan Williams’ dedication to
English choral tradition. It was not the doctrinal, but the cultural, historical, and spiritual
163 Hubert Foss, Ralph Vaughan Williams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 24. 164 Mellers, Vaughan Williams , 3. 165 Ibid., 2. 78
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 connection which drew him. One might speculate that if the predominant religion of
England was Judaism, then Vaughan Williams’ spiritual music would take a form associated with that culture. Byron Adams comments that “Vaughan Williams’s music for the Anglican Church expressed his appreciation of the church’s role as a reliquary of
English cultural traditions;” Adams suggests that Vaughan Williams had come to view
Christianity and the Church of England as an essential part of English community and culture, beyond or even despite their religious intentions.166
The conception of Biblical texts as English culture, rather than religious ideology, is confirmed by National Music , a collection of Vaughan Williams lectures published in
1934. The fourth chapter cites Gilbert Murray’s contention that the Bible and the Illiad were communal creations, works constructed over time by multiple authors. Vaughan
Williams comments:
Can we not truly say of these [folksongs] as Gilbert Murray says of that great national literature of the Bible and Homer, ‘They have behind them not the imagination of one great poet, but the accumulated emotion, one might almost say, of the many successive generations who have read and learned and themselves afresh re-created the old majesty and loveliness … There is in them, as it were, the spiritual life-blood of a people.’ 167
This argument allows Vaughan Williams to treat the Bible and religious texts as he did
folk songs, to be arranged, conducted, or composed as needed: as culturally created
communal and thus free of the complications of faith. This inclusive, non-doctrinal,
tradition-driven conception of English religious texts enabled him to solve his “religious
166 Byron Adams, “Scripture, Church, and culture: biblical texts in the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams,” in Vaughan Williams Studies , ed. Alain Frogley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 106. 167 Ralph Vaughan Williams, National Music , (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 23. 79
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 dilemma…of a person deeply spiritual, yet far too intelligent to accept unquestioningly the historical reality of the Christian Myth.” 168
We may thus legitimately argue that Vaughan Williams’s use of Christian texts
and ideas, despite seeming inconsistencies with his personal religious opinions, emerged
from a love of his country’s cultural heritage while keeping the connotation with the
sacred. The War had convinced him to search for a connection with the spiritual. Even
in the midst of a non-Deist atheism, he found in the Bible and Christian poetry powerful
metaphors for spirituality and a strong connection with English tradition and culture.
This more nuanced understanding of the interplay of faith, texts, and tradition casts new
light on the pieces that emerged directly out of Vaughan Williams’ War experiences and
helped him come to terms with the catastrophe.
The War greatly affected Vaughan Williams’s music. Though he did not leave behind his impulse toward folk song and national music, he began a series of compositions that featured more emphasis on spirituality and mysticism than had been seen prior to the War. His compositional style “seems to have been broadened and deepened by his Wartime experiences.” 169 I have already shown that his use of Biblical
texts was a variation of his enduring nationalist impulse. Something about his Wartime
experiences led Vaughan Williams to express his spirituality through more readily
identifiable rituals. He sought an idiom which had provided comfort and satisfaction to
Christians throughout history, though he did not share their faith.
168 Adams, “Scripture, Church, and culture,” 109. 169 Day, Vaughan Williams , 49. 80
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In order to better understand Vaughan Williams’s experience of the sacred after the War, I have divided his works into three periods: first, a return to peace in a pastoral style featured in the Pastoral Symphony and Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains , second, a recognition of the catastrophe and a call for judgment and justice seen in Sancta
Civitas , and lastly, the exterior search for judgment turns inward in the masque Job .170 I
will discuss each of these in turn.
The first few years after the War were characterized by English composers’ movement toward natural and pastoral topics. Composers close to the conflict paralleled an interest in pastoral themes seen in many literary examples: Fussell comments that
“recourse to the pastoral is an English mode of both fully gauging the calamities of the
Great War and imaginatively protecting oneself against them.” 171 Michael Kennedy comments that “it was as if their experiences had deepened in them a love of eternal and natural things rather than impelled them to express their disillusionment with mankind.” 172 Disillusionment would come later, as we will see in the next section, but
for Vaughan Williams as for other veterans, the initial response was of joy and
excitement to be back at peace. The result was some of his “quietest and most meditative
music,” a quietness which celebrates escape from the loud sounds of battle and the
soldier’s life. 173
Such a turn to nature, in the wake of war’s horror, is not a new event in English literary or musical history. In fact, many of the reactions of post-World War I English
170 Though beyond the scope of this study, it is possible to view the late 1930s as a fourth phase, led by the Dona nobis pacem , where Vaughan Williams’ experiences in the first war allowed him to urgently call for peace in light of the threat of a second. 171 Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory , 235. 172 Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams , 150. 173 Ibid. 81
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 culture are reminiscent of reactions following the English Civil War (1641-1651). Poets such as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan turned to nature when their Christian God was unable to provide comfort, leading to a string of idyllic preoccupations with nature. 174 As Mellers comments, “It is not surprising that in times when men can find
little satisfaction in their man-made institutions of Church and State they should seek
consolation in the impersonal forces of Nature”175 The parallel to 1920s England is
easily seen. Analogous disillusion with government and religious structures would lead
many to similar acts of nature worship. The pastoral theme in Vaughan Williams’s post-
War music is an example of such a process.
Perhaps the most obvious example of Vaughan Williams’s post-War pastoral style
is the symphony of the same name. The Pastoral Symphony (1921) originated during
Vaughan Williams’s time as ambulance driver in France. He would write later about the
work, “It’s really war-time music – a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night
after night with the ambulance wagon at Ecoives and we went up a steep hill and there
was a wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset”176 This quote presents a
juxtaposition which epitomizes the relationship between war and the pastoral: the
Symphony is at once inspired by war, “war-time music,” and by nature, “landscape in the
sunset.” These two seemingly contradictory themes were combined in the mind of
Vaughan Williams and many of his contemporaries.
174 More examples of this phenomenon can be found during the industrial revolution. See for example Keats’ nightingale and Shelly’s skylark. For more information see Mellers, Vaughan Williams , 60-62. 175 Mellers, Vaughan Williams , 60. 176 Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W. , 121. 82
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Although it might be expected that a pastoral symphony would take as its subject the composer’s own home and landscape, the setting of Vaughan Williams’s Pastoral
Symphony is more accurately France. Instead of imagining escape from war’s horrors and a return home, the Pastoral evokes the quiet which now occupies the landscape of the deserted battlefields. He makes the physical place of France itself a spiritual memorial: “beneath the symphony’s tranquility lies sadness: it is Vaughan Williams’s war requiem.” 177 It was a requiem for those who wouldn’t come back to England, for all the friends and disciples whose early end would leave empty holes in the psyche of a nation. This is no musical landscape painting; it is a spiritual lament which gives tribute to those lost in the war.
The Pastoral Symphony features many musical characteristics of Vaughan
Williams’s pastoral style: first, a focus on diatonic tunes and triadic harmony; second, a
luminous and soft texture; third, the instrumental use of the human voice. Speaking of
the Symphony’s experimental approach, Kennedy says, “It is the achievement of
Vaughan Williams that he developed for himself a symphonic style based not on tonic-
and-dominant sonata form but on his hard-won flexibility in the handling of melody
itself.” 178 Melody is the most important element of the Pastoral Symphony , leading
perhaps from the composer’s interest in folk song. As Kennedy implies, melody provides
the backbone of the structure, not through traditional melodic development, but with a
sequence of tunes which move in and around one another, combining and moving apart.
For example, in the first movement, what might be called a development section is a
177 Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams , 155. 178 Ibid., 169. 83
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 violin solo version of the opening melody only varied with more emotional power and depth (see Example 10).
The second movement features an episode inspired by an event from Vaughan
Williams’s experience on the front. He described encountering a bugler practicing at dusk, playing scales in the time between sunset and darkness. This picture resonated in his mind and was the inspiration for the long trumpet cadenza in the second movement.
______
Example 10: Vaughan Williams, Pastoral Symphony , Above - tutti violins, Below - Solo Violin. The use of the trumpet is significant. Its timbre calls to mind various military trumpet calls. The solo is played over a haunting accompaniment of still chords which
Michael Kennedy calls “dusk turned into notes.” 179 The combination of the timbre and
179 Ibid., 171. 84
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 the accompaniment reinforces the sense of requiem, as if we are standing watch at the twilight of a generation, giving tribute to those who will not see another sunrise. The literal image of the single bugler playing into the night becomes a spiritual metaphor for the tragedy of war (see Example 11).
Example 11: Vaughan Williams, Pastoral Symphony , “Bugle Call” Trumpet Solo. The fourth movement features a timbre not present in the other three movements: a wordless soprano voice. The voice opens the movement from offstage, crying a wordless lament (see Example 12). This melody provides the basis for the climax of the movement: a fortissimo section with the thickest texture of the entire work. The strings and woodwinds participate in an urgent exchange that bears similarity to a work by
George Butterworth, A Shropshire Lad , a subtle memorial for the former disciple. 180 The
180 Ibid. 85
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 movement ends with the return of the soprano voice recalling the material from the opening, this time with a stable string accompaniment which fades into the distance.
Example 12: Vaughan Williams, Pastoral Symphony , Distant Soprano solo. The other primary work in which Vaughan Williams explores a pastoral style is the one act opera The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains (1922), the subject of whose “pastoral episode” is taken from The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1628-
88). This would be the first of a long series of works based on Bunyan’s masterpiece, and this act would eventually be incorporated into the full length opera The Pilgrim’s
Progress of 1951.
The Pilgrim’s Progress had special significance to many who participated in the
War. Perhaps the most resonant image was that of Bunyan’s Christian, the hero of
Pilgrim’s Progress , a figure who invoked apt comparison to soldiers. They saw their burdens, both physical and emotional, as reflections of those experienced by Christian:
“The spirit takes note of nothing, perception dies, and, like Christian, we carry our own burden, thinking only of it.” 181 Knowledge of Pilgrim’s Progress was so pervasive that newspapers on the front could refer to Christian by name but without the title of the novel and expect even the most uneducated soldier to understand the reference.
181 Hugh Quigley, Passchendaele and the Somme (London: Methuen and Company, 1928), 77. 86
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Soldiers used Pilgrim’s Progress as a means to express their experiences in the
new events of trench-driven, mechanical warfare through the old language of popular
romance. In this way No Man’s Land becomes the “Slough of Despond” or the “Valley
of the Shadow of Death,” as in this quote by Major Pilditch:
The bare poles and brick heaps of Souchez looked perfectly weird and unnatural as the sun came out and threw it all up into a livid pink-hued distinctness. I knew I should never be able to describe its sinister appearance, but that I should never forget it. It reminded me of an old wood-cut in my grandfather’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” of the Valley of the Shadow of Death where Christian met Apollyon. 182
In much the same vein, Christian Creswell Carver described a particular night detail: “In our steel helmets and chain visors we somehow recall Pilgrim’s Progress , armored figures passing through the valley of shadow. On – for Apollyon’s talons are ever near.” 183
Christian’s “Dangerous Journey” and “Safe Arrival at the Desired Country,” two of the three parts of Pilgrim’s Progress , were likened to the soldiers’ journey through war and eventual return to civilian life. The trials of everyday soldiering, risking life through war, could be seen as bearable because the soldier was walking in the same path as
Christian, through trials to reach the goal of the Holy City, that is, demobilization. In
Alfred Hale’s memoirs, the end of the war and demobilization is compared to Christian’s arrival at the Holy City. 184
Vaughan Williams’s fascination with Bunyan may be seen as another example of his appropriating a Christian work as a cultural symbol. Though Bunyan’s work is clearly based on Christian beliefs and ideas, Vaughan Williams emphasizes its place of
182 Fussell, The Great War , 139-40. 183 Laurence Housman, ed, War Letters of Fallen Englishmen (Philadelphia: Pine Street Books, 2002), 69. 184 Fussell, The Great War , 142 87
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 reverence in English culture and the value of its spiritual message. This is suggested in the name of the main character in Vaughan Williams’s version; while Bunyan calls his hero “Christian,” Vaughan Williams calls him “Pilgrim,” distancing his work from the
Christian overtones of the original.
The opera tells of Pilgrim’s arrival at the Delectable Mountains, one step away from the Celestial City, and his discussion with the shepherds who live there. At the conclusion, a Celestial Messenger leads Pilgrim through the river of death before his arrival at the Celestial City. The majority of the music revolves around Pilgrim’s discussions with the shepherds who tell of the delights of the mountains, of bird-songs and flowers, all appropriately pastoral topics.
This work is both a connection to the pastoral themes of the Symphony and anticipation of the style of the next period. The opening viola theme is similar in construction to the melody sung by the soprano in the finale of the Pastoral Symphony ; similarly, a focus on melody and clear textures dominates the act. In the midst of this, we begin to hear the beginnings of the anger and fury that characterizes the second period.
During one section of the shepherds’ speech, the accompaniment rises in intensity and volume, foreshadowing the high-intensity music of the second period.
The end of the opera takes Pilgrim into the river of death, but only hints at the other side. In Bunyan’s novel, Christian emerges from the river into the Celestial City of heaven, but Vaughan Williams only suggests what is to come through a series of triplet alleluias. It is as if at this stage of his spiritual/compositional journey, Vaughan Williams could not bring himself to show the “New Jerusalem” which was at the end of Pilgrim’s
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Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 travels. It would take a few more years before Sancta Civitas (1925) could show us the
new city.
After expressing a pastoral desire for peace at the beginning of the 1920s, the
middle years of the decade saw Vaughan Williams seek a judgment on the actions of
mankind. This phase is characterized by apocalyptic topics and violent, aggressive
music. Central to this discussion is the oratorio Sancta Civitas , though a similar style can
also be found in works such as Flos Campi (1925) and the Fourth Symphony (1930).
We first hear the new style in Flos Campi , written for solo viola, small wordless
mixed chorus, and small orchestra. This work is an odd juxtaposition of program and
music, a passage from the Biblical book Song of Solomon heads each of the movements.
The first movement, for example, is headed by the Latin verse “ Sicut Lilium inter spinas, sic amica mea inter filias ” which translates “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.” Vaughan Williams, in a procedure that he had followed many times throughout his life, provided clues to a programmatic meaning, but then denied their existence. Though the passages were included on the score, Vaughan Williams made no mention of them in his program note, leaving it to the musicians to communicate their meaning. Michael Kennedy quotes Vaughan Williams as saying that “if my music doesn’t make itself understood as music without any tributary explanation – well it’s a failure as music and there’s nothing more to be said.” 185 In this case, the music, while not
explicitly contradictory to the inscriptions, certainly permits alternate readings in their
absence.
185 Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams , 211. 89
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011
Example 13: Vaughan Williams, Flos Campi , Opening Bi-Tonality. The new musical style is apparent from Flos Campi ’s beginning. Instead of the clear tonal textures of the earlier style, the opening musical passage is a bi-tonal exchange between the oboe and viola (see Example 13). James Day comments that “the rapt bitonality used to convey the work’s searing passion represented a new and highly expressive departure in his output.” 186 The second movement illustrates a further shift from the pastoral style of the early Twenties. Its text inscription, “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land,” describes the return of spring in a pastoral manner suggestive of the earlier style, but the music is radically different, employing progressive harmonic structures and a rhythmic freedom not seen in the earlier style. 187 Flos Campi thus represents a shift in focus, from finding comfort in the sheer fact of living through a horrible conflict, to an angry exploration of the consequences of such a conflict.
The full flowering of the new focus comes with Sancta Civitas , a work whose topic is taken from the apocryphal Book of Revelation. Day explicitly links style and topic to the War: “The intensity with which he expressed the apocalyptic vision in the
186 Day, Vaughan Williams , 57. 187 James Day suggests that the sense of loss which permeates much of Flos Campi can be attributed to the feelings of loss and loneliness caused by the death of so many in the war. See Day, Vaughan Williams , 229. 90
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 text must surely have some roots in his experience of the war.” 188 In the aggressive and
violent music of this oratorio one finds Vaughan Williams searching for judgment.
Through the famous prophesy of the apocalypse, he struggles to capture the magnitude of
the suffering of the War. Who was responsible for the massive destruction and lost lives?
How can society go on after such devastation?
As Flos Campi employed a textual introduction for each movement, Sancta
Civitas provides an epigraph from the Phaedo of Plato on the first page of the score:
Now to assert these things are exactly as I have described would not be reasonable. But that these things, or something like them, are true concerning the souls of men and their habitations after death, especially since the soul is shown to be immortal, this seems to me fitting and worth risking to believe. For the risk is honourable, and a man should sing such things in the manner of an incantation to himself. 189
With this passage, Vaughan Williams is both distancing himself from the traditional
Christian interpretation of the texts that follow and allowing, in a fashion consistent with agnostic ‘not-knowing’, that there might be the possibility of life after death. Among the many levels of symbolic interpretation applicable to Sancta Civitas , one must be the
work’s relationship with contemporary culture. The work is thus a statement of personal
belief in life after death, and it may also be seen as a statement of society’s ability to
revive after a metaphorical death. If European society has been destroyed in the blaze of
World War I, then what will arise from the ashes has been tempered by fire and may be
made into something new.
It is not coincidental that Vaughan Williams chose to address issues of present-
day apocalypse by setting a text which had been universally associated, in Western
188 Day, Vaughan Williams , 55. 189 Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams , 194. 91
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 imagination, with the end of time. The Book of Revelation tells of a vision given to St.
John of Patmos. It describes the court of Heaven with God on the throne dispatching the events of the last days, calling on archetypal images such as the man on the white horse and the death-dealing, life-creating dragon and mystical number symbolisms of 3, 4, 7, and 12, not to mention the infamous 666.
The apocalyptic theme was often associated with political messages. The city of
Babylon, the original tormentor of Israel, was given special symbolic significance as the root of worldly pleasures whose fall is preordained, while Jerusalem represented the city to come, an embodiment of heaven. Throughout English history, the concept of the
“New Jerusalem” was given political significance as a new and reinvigorated society.
Examples range from Shakespeare to Milton to the “City on the Hill” of the New World.
“The ‘new heaven and earth’ spoken of in Revelations is not a thing proffered to erring but redeemable man but is rather man’s own potential to create , from the maelstrom of
error, a new self.” 190 In Vaughan Williams’s hands, Revelation had come to be a guide for men who sought to reclaim hope in the face of disaster, to seek rebirth out of catastrophe.
The music for Sancta Civitas has been described as existing “at a white-hot pitch of temperature.” 191 Michael Kennedy called it “fire and ice.” 192 Its dynamic range, thick textures, complex harmonic structures, and rhythmic freedom mark a significant departure from the music of the early 20s. Vaughan Williams employs multiple instances of bi- and tri-tonal (modal more often than tonal) textures, many times using extra-
190 Mellers, Vaughan Williams , 135. 191 Foss, Ralph Vaughan Williams , 155. 192 Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams , 195. 92
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 musical associations with disharmony. The extremity of usage in each of these areas communicates the composer’s passion for the subject.
The oratorio can be divided into two large sections: the onset of apocalypse/downfall of Babylon, and the descent of the New Jerusalem. The first section opens quietly, turning on the solo baritone intoning the voice of the prophet (see Example
14). His vision quickly opens before him, with an increase in the dynamic range and thickening of the texture.
Example 14: Vaughan Williams, Sancta Civitas , Baritone Solo. The first major climax comes with the vision of the man on the white horse, leading his army into combat. The stage is thus for a war in heaven against the forces of evil. The aggressiveness of the music can be seen on the words “and he treadeth the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God,” particularly on the chord for
“fierceness,” with its increased duration, dynamic, and pitch level (see Example 15).
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Example 15: Vaughan Williams, Sancta Civitas . The text continues with the “Kings of the earth and their armies…gathered together to make war against him who sat upon the throne.” In this scenario, war must precede the coming of the new city. The kings of the earth are swept away and fed to the birds. Instead of the long, drawn out European War, this conflict quickly ends with the defeat of the Kings of Earth.
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Finally, to end the first section, the voices mourn the fall of Babylon the great. It is here that Vaughan Williams sees justice: an angel appears and states, through the baritone soloist, “Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and found no more at all.” Babylon, the epitome of evil and licentiousness, is thrown down.
Read as a metaphor for contemporary society, Babylon corresponds to the culture and society of pre-war Europe; the height of decadence and nationalistic fervor which could be argued to have helped lead to the war. Judgment is turned upon that society and sees it put to death.
The second section of the work begins with the words “And I saw a new heaven
and a new earth,” shifting the focus from the old Babylon to the new city being created in
the aftermath. It is a “bold vision of the reformed and revered city,” born out of Vaughan
Williams’s desire for a better world to come out of the destruction of war. 193 The arrival of the city is heralded by an ascending violin, emerging seemingly from nothing and climbing to the heights (see Example 16).
The piece continues by extolling the Deity and the purity of the new city. But even in such an idyllic vision, there are hints of doubt. The bi-tonality, which in the first section had added to the war-like atmosphere, continues here, acknowledging the possibility of coexistence between creation and destruction, acceptance and doubt.
The final moments of the oratorio are perhaps the most poignant. Amidst the quiet return of the opening bars, a tenor soloist, used only for this moment, intones
“Behold, I come quickly, I am the bright and morning star. Surely I come quickly,” responded to by the chorus singing “Amen, even so come Lord” (see Example 17). It is
193 A.E.F. Dickinson, “Ralph Vaughan Williams,” The Musical Quarterly 45, no. 1 (1959): 239. 95
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Example 16: Vaughan Williams, Sancta Civitas , Violin Solo.
Example 17: Vaughan Williams, Sancta Civitas , Tenor Solo.
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Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 as if the furious search for answers and hope has come to an end and the composer is left with only a cry to a higher power to reveal the truth.
In the end, Sancta Civitas provides no answers, only hope for answers to come.
The judgment found within is empty because the renewed city is only a vision: its coming has not yet arrived. The question of how to deal with the consequences of the war remains for the third style period.
By the end of the decade, Vaughan Williams had changed much from the middle- aged man who had gone to war. Folk music, for many years a core of his musical existence, was absorbed to such a point that it was reflected in the style of virtually everything he composed. He found a new appreciation for spirituality and religion; he had drifted into the “cheerful agnosticism” described by his widow, Ursula, and found new inspiration in Christian literature and ritual. European society was tilting on the brink, moving inexorably to a second devastating war. Vaughan Williams would soon have much to say about the dangers of another war, but first he was impelled to make one more comment on the first war: Job (1930).
In 1927, Geoffrey Keynes, noted surgeon and William Blake scholar, began to
conceive of a ballet which would be set to the Blake cycle Illustrations of the Book of
Job , in honor of the centenary of Blake’s death. Keynes commented, “Blake had, moreover, unconsciously provided in his designs settings which could easily be adapted for state scenes … which cried out for their conversion by a choreographer into actuality and movement.” 194 He took the twenty-one illustrations and condensed them into eight
194 Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams , 201. 97
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 scenes. With these eight scenes in hand, Keynes approached Vaughan Williams about writing music for the ballet.
Vaughan Williams insisted on calling the production a “masque” instead of a ballet, hoping to avoid the modern connotation of elitism which had come to be attached to the latter. The scenario was first pitched to Diaghilev, who turned it down. Instead,
Vaughan Williams set out to write the music on his own, even without any guarantee of a staged production. He wrote his own version of the scenario, incorporating both Blake’s images and scriptural texts.
Vaughan Williams’ scenario was quite different from Keynes’ and the differences illustrate the composer’s point of view on the myth. Alison McFarland comments that
Job is “a testament of personal conviction that led Vaughan Williams to a deconstruction of Blake’s basic premise.” 195 The basic point of contention among Biblical scholars revolves around the issue of Job’s sin. One interpretation views Job as blameless and treats the story as an insoluble problem of human suffering, while the other, diametrically opposed, interpretation explains Job’s trials as a result of his sin. In this interpretation, his repentance brings an end to the trials. Blake’s interpretation of the story is clear: Job sinned by putting his focus on material objects and overt displays of piety rather than on spiritual concerns. Thus, in Blake’s illustrations, the conflict is less about the external
195 Alison Sanders McFarland, “A Deconstruction of William Blake’s Vision: Vaughan Williams and Job ,” in Vaughan Williams Essays , ed. Byron Adams and Robin Wells (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003) 30. 98
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 struggles between God and Satan and more the internal struggle between good and evil within Job. 196
Some of Vaughan Williams’s changes to Blake’s presentation result merely from a feel for dramatic unity: for example the insertion of a funeral cortege into Scene V where it enlivens a previously-static section. But Vaughan Williams also de-emphasized
Job’s materialism. In Keynes’ scenario, Elihu rebukes Job for his sin, and the rebuke acts as a turning point to Job’s repentance, but Vaughan Williams’ Elihu simply acts as comforter by showing Job a vision of heaven.
Additionally, Vaughan Williams’s ending is much more subdued than either
Keynes’ or Blake’s. In Blake’s illustrations, Job has all his sons returned to him and he is seen playing an instrument and rejoicing. In Vaughan Williams’s version, only Job’s daughters attend him in the end and he is seen old and humbled, receiving charity from others.
Vaughan Williams’s alterations create a “darker and more somber view of the story.” 197 Instead of rendering Blake’s final illustration with the caption, “So the Lord
blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning,” Vaughan Williams presents a Job
who does not receive wealth after his trials and is left, in the composer’s description, “an
old and humbled man.” This is a different, darker vision than the holy city arising from
the ashes of war in Sancta Civitas. Instead, in Job we find Vaughan Williams’s third and
final response to World War I. By this time the focus has shifted from the external search
for judgment and justice to the internal quest for meaning. Job is a story of the “bold
196 For more information about Blake’s interpretation of Job, see Joseph N. Wicksteed, Blake’s Vision of the Book of Job (London, 1910; reprint, New York: Haskell House, 1971). 197 McFarland, “A Deconstruction of William Blake’s Vision,” 45. 99
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 confrontation of the problem of evil and unjustified suffering” told from the perspective of one man, not a chorus. 198 Job, though he lives through his trials, is not the better for it in the end. Perhaps this is a manifestation of the knowledge that the War had solved nothing; men were on the path to another war, having learned nothing from the devastation of the first.
This interpretation is reinforced by looking at the score. Vaughan Williams constructed his interpretation through a series of motives and stylistic constructions associated with different characters in the scenario. The presence of Satan, for example, is always accompanied by minor thirds and tritones or a quartal figure. This is particularly clear in Scene II “Satan’s dance,” which is based on a tritone-bounded ostinato (see Example 18). Another prominent motive associated with Satan is a chromatic staccato leap (see Example 19). Vaughan Williams initially associated these motives with Satan; later he used them to personify evil in the other characters, as when he employs the staccato leap at the entrance of Job’s three “comforters.”
Example 18:Vaughan Williams, Job , "Satan's Dance"
198 Day, Vaughan Williams , 104. 100
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Example 19: Vaughan Williams, Job , Scene II The music of heaven is presented in a sharp diatonic key, in a homophonic rhythm, and usually with an expansive melody (see Example 20). In the same way that
Satan’s themes represent evil, heaven’s themes represent good. Elihu, the only companion who speaks for God, is presented with music that mimics the melodic emphasis and sharp key of heaven’s theme (see Example 21). In between the two extremes of God and Satan is Job, whose music is modal or pentatonic and often presented contrapuntally.
The actions of evil, of Satan, mar what would otherwise be a perfectible world. In
Scene III, the “Minuet of the Sons and their Wives,” the opening modal melody is presented in the flute; after Satan enters and causes the sons and wives to fall dead, the flute melody continues but with chromatic and dissonant alterations (see Example 22).
Complex layering of thematic material and motives make clear the interaction between characters without the need for any stage action. 199
These interactions highlight the dark and somber ending of the piece. In the final scene, “Epilogue,” all the stage directions imitate the opening scene, with the stark
199 See McFarland, “A Deconstruction of William Blake’s Vision,” 37-45. 101
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 absence of Job’s dead sons (see Examples 23 and 24). Similarly, the music returns to that of the introduction, with one crucial difference: while the introduction ended in the key of
G, the epilogue ends in the key of B-flat. The new key is a minor third distant from the original key, an interval associated throughout the work with Satan. The presence of
Satan in the music of the final scene suggests that evil has not been vanquished, only pushed back – that the events played out here could reoccur at a later date.
Example 20: Vaughan Williams, Job , Scene I, “Heaven”
Example 21: Vaughan Williams, Job , Scene IV, "Elihu"
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Example 22: Vaughan Williams, Job , Scene III, Above - Original form, Below - After Satan's entrance
Example 23: Vaughan Williams, Job, Introduction
Example 24: Vaughan Williams, Job , Epilogue Vaughan Williams specifically constructed the ending of his masque to remove the vision of future perfection from Blake’s illustrations. Instead of seeing his sons and wealth restored, Job sits in poverty with only his daughters, forced to accept charity from others. The key change suggests Satan’s presence and the possible reoccurrence of these events. In light of Vaughan Williams’s experiences, it is difficult not to see a connection to World War I and the war to come. He was expressing the knowledge that his war 103
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 experiences had taken something from him, both in psychological terms and in those
“sons” who never returned from France. Job’s trials and losses resonated with Vaughan
Williams, the composer seeing in Job’s suffering a similarity to his own. In the end,
Satan’s presence reflects Vaughan Williams’s knowledge that the evil of war was still present in the world and growing in power again.
Job represented Vaughan Williams’s final attempt to come to terms with World
War I through music. He had written pastoral works upon his return to peace. He had sought to depict judgment and a new society wrought from violence in the middle of the decade. Finally, he had turned inward and found a compatriot in his suffering in the form of Job. Job also reflects Vaughan Williams’s discovery that the spiritual journey
continues endlessly. It was from this place that Vaughan Williams, having experienced
war first hand, would warn against the coming of a second in pieces such as his Dona
nobis pacem . The lessons learned from his experiences in the First World War flowed
into the works for the second. By exploring each of the three emotional and stylistic
phases, Vaughan Williams was able to gain the strength to approach war in the Thirties
and Forties.
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CHAPTER FIVE
SHORT LITANIES
In the words of Glenn Watkins, “War is a terrible thing.” 200 It destroys lives and
landscapes, men and materials. But, like the mythological phoenix rising from the ashes,
society can emerge from war with great changes and even renewals in culture. It cannot
be denied that the periods which follow war are often periods of great artistic change. In
the years during and following the First World War composers and artists faced questions
that demanded a reevaluation of compositional practices. In avant-garde music, the
Expressionism and extreme Romanticism of the immediate past was abandoned by many
in favor of the more measured and balanced approach of Neoclassicism. Many
composers and artists perceived that pre-War excesses had in some way contributed to
the catastrophe of the War and therefore should be reevaluated and possibly abandoned.
A sense of catastrophe was universal among those who experienced the War. One
response to the War’s catastrophic results was a heightened awareness of the experience
of sacred events.
In many human cultures, music plays a significant role in the sacred experience,
both religious and otherwise. In the early part of the Twentieth Century, the growing
divide between progressive conceptions of secular music and conservative conceptions of
sacred music tended to demand that composers perceive themselves as conforming to one
category or the other. Works such as Strauss’s Salome (1905) caused controversy in part because of the distinction between the subject’s Biblical source and the musical idiom.
While newly-composed functional liturgical music was on the decline, the impulse to
200 Watkins, Proof Through the Night , 1. 105
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 write music to express their sacred experience continued to motivate composers, especially in light of the horror of the War.
In Chapter 3, I illustrated this thesis through examination of works by Erik Satie.
His Parade utilized its “failed performance” plot, unusual staging, ostinati, and unusual
sound effects in the creation of a liminoid environment. Through this liminoid setting,
Satie was able to comment indirectly on the senselessness of the War. Similarly, in
Socrate , Satie expressed his sacred experience through the ritual-like technique of
invariant repeated motives and ostinati. Both these works reflected Satie’s lifelong
interest in the sacred and his particular response to the War.
Chapter 4 highlighted Ralph Vaughan Williams’s decade-long response to World
War I. Although he first employed the same pastoral themes seen in much post-war
literature, works like Sancta Civitas explored a theme of vengeance and anger toward the
waste of the war. Later, he turned to inner contemplation in works like Job . These phases represented successive emotional responses to the War. Vaughan Williams expressed his sacred experience through a complex bundle of emotions divided into individual reactions.
It is important to note that though this document explores the sacred experience of only two composers, many others had similar experiences. An interesting parallel case
(but one beyond the scope of this document), is that of Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky spent
1914-1920 in exile in Switzerland, separated physically, economically, and emotionally from his homeland. Though he was not a combatant, his everyday existence, like Satie’s, was thrown into chaos by the turmoil of the War. The disillusionment described in
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Chapter 2 is likewise reflected in several works of Stravinsky’s transitional years 1914-
1921.
For example, in 1919, Stravinsky composed the fourth song in his Quatre chants
russes , “Chant dissident,” featuring a text full of religious longing: “Snowstorms and
blizzards close all the roads to Thy Kingdom. Closed are all paths to my Father.” The
text simultaneously reflects Stravinsky’s separation from Russia and his burgeoning
revival of religious faith. The highly chromatic piano accompaniment emphasizes the
hard, bitter character of the text through frequent use of dissonant minor seconds and
sevenths. The vocal line operates within an extremely restrictive range, rarely leaving a
span of a 4 th from A to D. Within this range, the singer undulates back and forth in a
flowing, metrically irregular line in a manner evocative of both Roman Catholic and
Russian Orthodox chant (see Figure 20). The Rite of Spring had already demonstrated
Stravinsky’s interest in ritual, but “Chant dissident” is an example of a different kind of ritual behavior, one that Stravinsky would cultivate throughout the post-War period, a more austere and simple ritual than the colorful intensity of the Rite .
A second example of a sacred experience, one which dominated Stravinsky’s musical thoughts during the war, was Les Noces , begun in 1914 and not premiered until
1923. Les Noces is often viewed as a Christian corollary to the Rite , though that interpretation has its problems. 201 Stylistically, Noces belongs in the period of transition toward Neo-classicism, when Stravinsky was steadily paring down and simplifying his musical textures. In its original 1914 conception, Noces was scored for an extremely large orchestra incorporating several folk instruments like the guitar and the gusli .
201 See Roman Vlad, Stravinsky (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 68. 107
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Example 25: Igor Stravinsky , Four Russian Songs , "Chant dissident," mm 1-6. Over the course of the next few years, Stravinsky’s conception of Les Noces moved away from a realistic portrayal of a Russian folk wedding (in the manner of
Petrushka or Le Sacre ) to a more abstract and stylized treatment of the topic. A 1917 draft shows the orchestra being placed on stage in different groups with the addition of cimbalom, piano, and harpsichord. Further drafts removed the orchestra entirely in favor of two cimbaloms, mechanical piano, and harmonium, though this was removed because of the difficulty of using the mechanical piano. In the final version, the instrumentation consisted only of four pianos and percussion.
This movement toward fewer instruments reflects a trend of austerity and simplicity that would characterize Stravinsky’s post-War Neoclassicism. Stravinsky said of his final orchestration, “It would be at the same time perfectly homogeneous, perfectly
108
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 impersonal, and perfectly mechanical.” 202 When viewed in light of the increasing mechanization of society from the War, this tendency toward more mechanical and less human elements in the piece implies a kind of social commentary. Stravinsky instructed that the four pianos be placed on the stage with the action, distancing them both physically and conceptually from the audience. Such distance was crucial to the new experience. Whereas the Rite was vivid and intense, the post-war rituals are distant and cool. By placing the pianos on stage and separating the audience from the primary event,
Stravinsky effectively highlights the performance aspects of the ritual-like action.
One final example of this austere style is the Symphonies of Wind Instruments
(1921), the only one of these examples which is entirely instrumental. Stravinsky
described the work as “devoid of all the elements which infallibly appeal to the ordinary
listener and to which he is accustomed. It would be futile to look in it for any passionate
impulse or dynamic brilliance. It is an austere ritual which is unfolded in terms of short
litanies between different groups of homogeneous instruments.” 203 In such clear terms
Stravinsky sums up the goals of this period of ritual-like construction. The “short litanies” are constructed musically with large blocks structures of sonorities that stay stagnant and non-developmental. As I mentioned when discussing Satie’s Socrate , the
invariant repetition of these static blocks can be understood to gain ritual-like
connotations.
202 Michael Oliver, Igor Stravinsky (London: Phaidon Press, 1995), 82. 203 Igor Stravinsky, Chronicle of My Life (London: V. Gollancz, 1936), 156-7. Emphasis added. 109
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This short discussion only brushes the surface of the ritual behavior in
Stravinsky’s music. It would be beneficial to examine these elements in detail in a work devoted to Stravinsky alone.
In much the same way, the implications of this theory of sacred experience after war can incorporate a wide range of composers and artists. I will not attempt to give a comprehensive list of such implications, but a short discussion of the further possibilities of this thesis will be valuable.
Edward Elgar was asked in 1915 to write a Requiem Mass for the dead of the
War. What resulted were the three pieces for soprano, chorus, and orchestra under the title The Spirit of England (1916). The work is clearly in the tradition of English choral
music from Handel to Mendelssohn. In fact, the style in so close to the English choral
tradition, that its usage becomes in one sense ritual-like, evoked for the purpose of
recalling a nostalgic ideal in and of itself. This turn toward tradition recalls the
obsessive, though ultimately unsuccessful work of David Jones as described in Chapter 2.
Other English musicians more closely followed mainstream literary authors in
employing an ironic approach. Frederick Delius’s Requiem , also described in Chapter 2,
speaks of those who “drugged themselves with dreams and golden visions, and built
themselves a house of lies.” Gustav Holst, the close friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams,
wrote several War tributes that drew on explicitly Christian ritual elements. The Hymn of
Jesus sets several Gregorian chant melodies and Latin texts of the “Vexilla regis” and his
“Pange lingua” recalls the sacred origins of the text.
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In France, the leading composer of the time, Claude Debussy, wrote to his publisher in 1914: “I am just a poor little atom crushed in this terrible cataclysm.” 204 He
was totally devastated and essentially struck mute as a composer. He would express
many times his discontent at the attitudes the War caused toward German music. In the
next few years until his death in 1918, Debussy was able to produce only a few small
works. One of these works was a short song “Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de
maisons,” “Noel of the Children Who No Longer Have a Home” (1915). “Noël” evokes
a righteous anger similar to that seen in Vaughan Williams’s Sancta Civitas . Menacing
triplet figures at the top of the singer’s range as well as ominously repeating octaves in
the piano all bring to mind the punishment that must follow on those who harm children.
The song is filled with death, as is fitting for a composer gradually succumbing to cancer
and surrounded by the recollection of the War’s deaths.
By contrast, Maurice Ravel experienced a surge of creative energy during the
War. He completed the Piano Trio (1914), Three Songs for Unaccompanied Mixed
Chorus (1915), and Le tombeau de Couperin (1917), and began the work which was to
become La valse . Ravel had also served as a soldier in the war, though not in the
trenches. After being turned down for the Air Force for health reasons, Ravel was
assigned as a driver, spending at least a portion of his time behind the lines at Verdun.
One outgrowth of his War experience, Le tombeau de Couperin (1917), was dedicated to
a series of friends who died in the War. Tombeau shares a similar sparse aesthetic to
Satie’s Socrate and Stravinsky’s Symphonies for Wind Instruments. The precisely
etched ornamentation and carefully constructed fugues and dances are another example
204 Quoted in Watkins, Proof Through the Night , 87. 111
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 of the simplifying impulse that would become part of the defining characteristics of neoclassicism in the 1920s.
Composers in Germany also experienced many similar reactions to the War.
Schoenberg was drafted into service in 1915, though only for duty in Vienna. The menial
work, authoritarian atmosphere, and decreased opportunity for composition left him
distraught. “I am suffering terribly from this war. How many close relationships with
the finest people it has severed: how it has corroded half my mind away and shown me
that I can no better survive with the remainder than with the corroded portion.” 205 The
principle composition to come out of this period was Jakobsleiter (composed during
1915-1917 but not completed for performance until the 1970s), a work that graphically depicts a frantic search for spiritual meaning. Dense and symbol-laden, many sections are so complexly constructed as to border on the chaotic. It is significant that
Schoenberg’s search for order began here with the work’s twelve-note theme which is subject to manipulation through inversion and retrograde devices. Although stylistically distant from the music discussed in this document, this prelude to his twelve-tone system can be seen as an example of an invariant ritual-like action.
Schoenberg’s student Alban Berg also viewed the war as disastrous. Berg was called up in 1915 but was assigned to the war ministry office in Vienna after suffering a total breakdown during basic training. The opera Wozzeck (1925), which Berg admitted
had some autobiographical elements, grew out of his feelings of loss and spiritual aridity.
Wozzeck forms an interesting parallel to the World War I. It combines images of the
205 Schoenberg, letter to Busoni, 14 November 1916, in Busoni, Selected Letters , 419-420. Quoted in Watkins, Proof Through the Night , 221. 112
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 familiar and the unsettling, describing scenes of horror that happen in the most common places or circumstances. This is similar to a sentiment expressed by many soldiers: that of death taking place amidst the everyday countryside. In addition, the primary climactic action of the opera takes place at night in much the same way as work in the trenches began at night. Wozzeck shares many of the ritual-like elements that connect it
irrevocably to the War.
The Twentieth Century has been defined by a series of wars; the Great War was
only the first of many. Further research might explore this thesis in terms of the others
wars of the Twentieth Century. Initial evidence leads me to believe that composers like
Francis Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen, and Benjamin Britten had similar responses to the
Second World War. It would be intriguing to investigate this theory in relation to the
Vietnam and Korean Wars as well.
Music and the arts do not exist in a vacuum. Musical content is influenced by contemporary contexts and contemporary contexts are influenced by music. World War I was a seminal moment in the history of the West, causing irrevocable change in modes of thought, politics, and culture. Although this document has focused on one aspect of the response to the war, there are many others that have varied consequences for the artistic movements that followed. For the artists discussed in Chapters Two, Three, and Four, the War prompted a spiritual journey in search of meaning. David Jones sought to bridge the modern with the historical through ritual-like allusions. J.R.R. Tolkien created a mythology which searched for human identity through the conflict between good and evil. Erik Satie explored the possibilities of liminoid performances which would change society. Ralph Vaughan Williams demonstrated several stages of a journey which 113
Texas Tech University, James Berry , 2011 traveled from pastoralism to anger to contemplation. Each artist is responding to the same human impulse, the desire to experience the spiritual journey. This document seeks only to illuminate this singular aspect of the War’s effects, that one common response to the War was through an experience of the spiritual.
The apocalyptic events of the First World War caused many artists and musicians to rethink their artistic goals. Although forms of traditional spiritual expression had been avoided by many avant-garde composers, the events of the War led many to reevaluate their sacred experience. By composing music that explored ritual-like themes and liminoid constructs, these composers were able to reconnect with the human desire for spiritual expression. This investigation of these processes is crucial to understanding the complex contexts of music after World War I.
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