Bigger on
the Inside October22,
2021
It is a curious fact of
history that on November 22, 1963,
three famous men died: the English
writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley
(who is perhaps best known for his
"Brave New World"), the British
popular theologian C. S. Lewis, and
the American President John Fitzgerald
Kennedy. One fellow, Peter Kreeft,
wrote a novel in which he imagines the
three of them meeting in purgatory and
having a conversation about faith.
But there is a fourth item to note
about November 22, 1963, and it
involves a beginning. The long-running
science fiction show Dr. Who made its
debut on this auspicious date. I find
that interesting because both Lewis
and the writers of Dr. Who liked to
use the phrase "bigger on the inside."
Lewis meant it more philosophically
than the television show, surely; in
the BBC program it refers to the fact
that the Doctor's ship through which
he can travel both in time and in
space appears from the outside to be
an ordinary 1960s British police box,
but once inside one discovers it is
actually a vast cavernous command
station which also has hallways
leading off to all kinds of rooms that
we never actually see but must include
living quarters and some that are less
functional and exponentially stranger.
The writers refer to these rooms
occasionally for fun and wit, and the
bean counters on the show don't mind
if their extravagance is contained in
merely a line of dialogue.
C. S. Lewis, who surely got to the
phrase first, used it in a series of
children's books he wrote in which a
wardrobe that the children discover in
a sprawling English country house
contains another world to which they
travel when the wardrobe permits, or
beckons.
In both cases it is a relatively small
piece of cabinetry that contains
another reality. I suspect Lewis
wanted to refer to it also as the
phenomenon whereby someone who was
familiar with Christianity would find
it much more various, nuanced, and
complex than someone who was
unfamiliar with it and only had
occasional brushes with some of its
most damaging members on the nightly
news. The same is surely true of any
major religion, or any other major
institution known to humans. As the
Spanish proverb goes, "two persons,
three opinions."
I find the same to be true about
Classical Music. The term itself has
become a phrase to contain all of the
music that you hear on the radio that
was written in at least the last four
centuries from at least two or three
continents. Technically, though, it is
meant to refer to a period from about
1750 to 1810 whose composers wrote
music out of a basic set of
assumptions about what music should
be. Those characteristics are said to
be classical, and they mirror
classical ideas in the other arts,
too: a sense of balance and symmetry,
a sense of cool reason dominating the
messy emotions, logic in design, and
aesthetic beauty in impact.
What is curious about all that is that
the Classical Era in music was
followed immediately by the Romantic
Era, in which the predominate ideas in
musical art were pretty much the
opposite. Now we look to the passions,
forget symmetry and rhetoric,
structure our pieces so that they
barrel toward a climax, the
accumulated tension resolving through
means of dynamics rather than merely
harmonic dissonance.
Persons who really understand the
Romantic Era itself will point out
that it is impossible to accurately
generalize even that time and place.
Although from our vantage, in a world
with such a diversity of sound worlds,
the 19th century looks relatively
homogeneous, the people living through
it had no such idea of conformity. It
is often pointed out that
Romanticism--at least as a historical
era (which is not quite the same as a
movement)-- often seems to contain its
opposite; that may even be one of the
characteristics.
Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out
that, given the differing artistic
aims of the two periods, that when you
turn on your radio to the "classical"
station, the much you may be listening
to might in fact be the opposite of
"classical" music. The difficulty with
characterizations is mainly in trying
to fix ideas in historical periods,
and to claim that they are the same.
If we think of Romanticism and
Classicism more as attitudes than
times and places, we can at least get
some fairly workable stereotypes out
of which pour a sea of exceptions. And
we can quickly realize that being
current on those individual
achievements in art makes it harder to
broadly label anything. Being inside
helps you to realize that.
If, on the other hand, your aim is to
dismiss all of it as music you don't
want to hear, it is much easier to
have a single label, even if it might
apply to a far greater diversity than
the music that you do happen to like.
Incidentally, the same has been true
of Christianity, whose adherents have
often labelled all others as
"atheists." Although etymologically
the word should be reserved for those
who don't believe in the existence of
a God, it has historically been used
on people who are actually very
religious, but do not share, in part
or in whole, the views or doctrines of
the ones making the accusation. At one
point Catholic Christians and
Protestant Christians considered the
other "atheists." As Rome once
considered all Christians, for that
matter.
In this sense labels are more useful
for those who would rather not enter.
It allows a quick and handy way to
refer to a path not traveled. The
world has a tendency to get
complicated when you are examining it
up close, but it is still worth noting
that in the vast swarm of individual
examples of things, a good
generalization can make the maelstrom
seem to stand still, for a second or
two.
Thus it is that "serious" music, or
"art" music, or whatever the
pointy-headed elites are supposed to
be listening to, contains within it
competing visions. Before the 20th
century came along and challenged
every basic assumption one could think
of, these were mainly divided into the
"classical" and the "romantic." There
were plenty of debates about the music
of the day, critics and fans of every
well-known artistic movement and every
composer, and lots of practitioners of
their craft who just knew how to do it
the right way and that the other folks
were just wrong. You can read up on
that, enter into the ideas, the
debates, the musical styles. Or you
can just prop your feet up and listen
to some nice Brahms for a while and
forget about all that human confusion.
I don't blame you for taking the
second approach sometimes. Old
controversies are easy to leave
behind, and music is wonderful;
besides, it seems so peaceful much of
the time.
Just remember the door is open.
Sometime you might want to come
inside.
|
...And
now another word
from our friend,
Mr. Bach
|
People have been
wondering for a long time what
they can do to become not just
better pianists or organists,
but how they can become great.
Because, after all, why settle
for anything that won't get us
worshiped by throngs of adoring
fans, right? And who knows the
secret alchemy to greatness
better than our own Johann
Sebastian Bach, possibly the
greatest composer who ever
lived, and certainly a great
organist and harpsichord player
as well. So let's ask him. Let's
shove a microphone right up in
his face as he's leaving St.
Thomas Church in Leipzig,
Germany, and see what he thinks
it takes to become great. Are
you just born with it? Do you
need some special diet or
workout, or can you pay some
guru five installments of 88.95
for the secret so that you, too,
can be the one everybody is
talking about. Oh Mr. Bach...?
|
|
