Metamorphoses – the Terrible Beauty of Change Transcript
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Metamorphoses – The Terrible Beauty of Change Transcript Date: Monday, 22 June 2009 - 12:00AM Location: Barnard's Inn Hall 22 June 2009 Metamorphoses – The Terrible Beauty of Change Professor Michael Mainelli, John Harle and William Joseph A Fusion Of Benjamin Britten's 1951 "Six Metamorphoses After Ovid (Op. 49)" For Solo Saxophone with Commercial Musings On Sustainability People change the planet in beautiful and terrifying ways, from high art to base waste. Never before have we had such power to transform our planet and ourselves. Never before have we so risked losing everything. Robust economies and environments are essential to mankind's future. This performance combines music inspired by Ovid's works with selections from modern political and economic thinking in order to envision how society might metamorphose towards sustainable commerce with nature. John Harle – Saxophonist & Composer & Speaker Michael Mainelli – Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce William Joseph – Computer Graphics [Opening Graphic – John Conway's Game of Life] Changes [Graphic – Publius Ovidius Naso] Today's performance features a sustainable odyssey 2001 years old. In 8 AD Publius Ovidius Naso completed his great work, Metamorphoses, Changes. Metamorphoses is an epic poem written in dactylic hexameter, the grand style of classical times. It was published as 15 books, in length over 600 pages. As our most complete reference for Greek and Roman mythology, Metamorphoses would always have been important, but Ovid was a master. A master poet, a master storyteller, a master muser on life's most enduring theme, change. Metamorphoses has inspired art, theatre and music - from wandering minstrels and troubadours to Chaucer, Botticelli, Marlowe, Milton, Mozart and Joyce as well as Benjamin Britten, whose works are being performed, and other poets such as Ted Hughes, from whom there are six selections today. Today's exploration began at the request of the Director of the City of London Festival, Ian Ritchie, who had the idea to combine selections from four years of Gresham College Commerce lectures on sustainability with music and graphics as part of the Sustain! segment of the festival. Change challenges mankind constantly. From natural disasters & diseases, to social upheaval & disorder, to science & technology, the only constant is change. Ovid's masterpiece was written in a time of change. He was born into a republic and died in an empire. Over the two millennia since Ovid wrote, perhaps the biggest change is to our world. Ovid's poems play out in a world of sylvan shade, of babbling brooks, of lavish landscapes and of perilous peaks. A world of nature. Today we live in a world compressed by our own expansion. The terrible beauty of change inspires the wonder of scale changes. Scale changes are my phrase for a Zen-like moment of enlightenment. You delight in changing scale when you move from believing that some carnival magician is just sleight of hand to the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, he or she is deploying genuine magic. You delight in changing scale when you move from the wind-in-the-face exhilaration of a roller coaster at a fairground to staring at a rattling bolt inside the coaster with the terrifying realisation that some overworked carnival employee bolted it all together last night. [Graphic – Pan] I. Pan – Despair to Hope – Nature & Mankind Pan, who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx his beloved. Which takes us to Pan. Pan is the god of woods and pastures, mountain peaks and landscapes, the god of wild nature. Pan is equally the god of pastoral lust. Pan has a goat's feet and two horns, and wears a lynx-pelt. His appearance at birth so terrified his nurse that she fled, thus irrational terrors come from Pan-ic. Pan once battled Apollo in music, his Pan pipes against Apollo's lyre. While the judge, Tmolus, awarded the prize to Pan, King Midas believed Pan's wild music was the more authentic. The music touches on how Pan got his pipes. Chasing the nymph Syrinx to the banks of the river Ladon in Arcadia, Pan's pursuit terrifies her. To escape him, Syrinx called on the river nymphs to change her form and "instead of a fair nymph's body, Pan found himself clutching some marsh reeds" [Raeburn, 2004, page 40 – I, 706]. Yet, The tender canes were shaken by the wind; And breath'd a mournful air, unheard before; [ http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.1.first.html ] effecisse sonum tenuem similemque querenti. arte nova vocisque deum dulcedine captum [ I, 708-709 - http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.met1.shtml ] Thus when Pan blows on his pipes made from Syrinx's form we have the music of nature. "This converse, at least, shall I have with you". Thus our first encounter of commerce, commerce with nature and commerce with each other. Business commerce, social commerce, sexual commerce. Pan - signifying the limitless potential of the human spirit - creativity, regeneration, endeavour – perhaps the first and most optimistic part of an economic cycle, yet these bubbles will be blown apart and die. Gods can never experience the second greatest transformation of all; gods cannot die. Yet since classical times the death of Pan has been rumoured. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in despair over 150 years ago of the disappearance of Pan's world, "Pan, Pan is dead". Oscar Wilde lamented too – "O goat-foot God of Arcady! This modern world is grey and old, And what remains to us of thee?" Our first scale change is an AH of nature – from low to high, from tiny flower to dramatic landscape. Just a rumour that Pan lives gives us Hope. [Pan (1:48), graphic – Strings, a fractal] PAN The cliff-face of Tmolus watches Half the Mediterranean. It falls away To Sardis on one side, and on the other To the village of Hypaepa. Pan lives in a high cave on that cliff. He was amusing himself, Showing off to the nymphs Thrilling them out of their airy bodies With the wild airs He breathed through the reeds of his flute. Their ecstasies flattered him, Their words, their exclamations, flattered him. But the flattered Become fools. And when he assured them That Apollo, no less, Stole his tunes and rearranged his rhythms It was a shock For Pan To find himself staring at the great god Hanging there in the air off the cave mouth, Half eclipsed with black rage Half beaming with a friendly challenge 'Tmolus, the mountain', suggested the god, 'can judge us'. [… after the contest …] Pan was humbled. Yes, he agreed - Apollo was the master. Tmolus was correct. The nymphs gazed at Apollo. They agreed. But then, a petulant voice, A hard-angled, indignant, differing voice Came from behind a rock. Midas stood up. 'The judgement', he cried, 'Is ignorant, stupid, and merely favours power. Apollo's efforts Are nothing but interior decoration By artificial light, for the chic, the effete. Pan is the real thing - the true voice Of the subatomic.' [Hughes (1997), "Midas", selections from pages 206 to 209] [Graphic – Phaeton] II. Phaethon – Rise and Fall – Mankind's Power & Terror Phaethon, who rode upon the chariot of the sun for one day and was hurled into the river Padus by a thunderbolt. David Bowie sang, "Turn and face the strain" in his album Changes. From tension springs creativity. Arthur Koestler proposed three domains of creativity – artistic inspiration, scientific discovery and comic inventiveness. The common pattern underlying creativity is the "shaking together of already existing but previously separate areas of knowledge, frames of perception or universes of discourse" [Koestler, 1967, page 195]. Koestler wryly expresses the continuum from artistic inspiration, to scientific discovery to comic inventiveness by the reaction induced, respectively the AH reaction (art), the AHA reaction (science) and HAHA reaction (comic). "Zen lives in humour. … and humour lies on the razor-edge of self and selflessness, where a man looks round at the back of his head and lifts himself up by his belt. Zen recognises the tension between technical mastery of a subject and enlightenment or satori." [Humphreys, 1949, page 130]. Scale changes inspire enlightenment, whether through the art in fractals, the power laws in science or the sudden jolt of realising a double meaning. We face two big social challenges. The first challenge is evident doubt about our own sustainability. Whether it's climate change, pollution, biodiversity or just the recognition that our own successes have led to population growth that may bring about our downfall, people clearly have more and more concerns about sustainability, the long-term. "Koyaanisqatsi" is a Hopi word for "crazy life", and also the title of a prophetic, non-verbal 1982 film about our world being out of balance. We've been having more and more koyaanisqatsi moments. The second big social challenge is evident doubt over the sensibleness of our governments and our economies. The drama of the Credit Crunch provides many opportunities for tragic heroes, from hedge funds to crooks to big bank chairmen to politicians to regulators. Dr Gro Brundtland's 1987 "Our Common Future" report said – "What is needed now is a new era of economic growth that is forceful and at the same time socially and environmentally sustainable." "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Can we change our scales? Jokes rely on scale change. A couple book a flight on a four engine aircraft. The husband looks to starboard to see one of the engines on fire, only to hear the Captain on the loudspeaker, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are dousing a fire in a starboard engine, but don't worry, this aircraft is designed to fly safely on just three engines.