So there’s this composer, Philip Arnold Heseltine, but he goes by Peter Warlock because he believes himself a wizard. And there’s his lover, a model named Minnie Lucie Channing who goes by Puma because … well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination.

Warlock lived only 36 years, taking his own life in the end. However, he managed to squeeze quite a bit of raucous living into that short life, including occult practices, fiery relationships, an unwanted child, saying whatever he wanted in the worst of circumstances, weekly orgies, police raids, and heavy drinking. He wrote his own epitaph:

Here lies Warlock the composer
Who lived next door to Munn the grocer.
He died of drink and copulation,
A sad discredit to the nation.

You’d expect anybody who lived a life like this to look awesome as well … and yes, Warlock had a very unique look (remarkably like Errol Flynn, I might add.)

Professionally, he was never happy with his work or his surroundings; he moved around quite a bit, took a number of different unsuccessful jobs, started (and never finished) many projects. Besides music composition, he published a number of different music journals, wrote musicological books, and helped to grow the budding new interest in folk and early music at the beginning of the 20th century. The influence of English folk music and early music styles can be heard in his popular Caprol Suite for strings. It features six folk-dance-like movements, simple melodies, and a sort of modern-modal harmony.

A fellow church musician once said to me that the poetry of George Herbert shows us that good hymns can indeed have good words. While some hymns merely repeat a simplistic word phrase over and over, Herbert’s plumb the depths of the soul. Likewise, there are sacred melodies that move us to new heights, and other that are tacky or dull.

This setting of “Love Bade Me Welcome”, from Ralph Vaughan-Williams‘ Five Mystical Songs, is not “catchy”; the dark, modal melody is slow to develop. The words require you to actually listen to them and think a little. This is musical meat, not a quick sugar rush; it feeds us in a lasting way that builds us up. It tells an allegorical story of an intimate dinner where a guest feels unworthy of his host; the host gently assures him he is worthy, and has him sit down to a feast. At 3:44, Vaughan-Williams uses the chant of the ancient Eucharistic hymn O Sacrum Convivium (O Sacred Banquet), tying Herbert’s poem to the Christian sacrament, ending with a quiet ascent to heavenly bliss.

By “modern love story”, I don’t mean “Romeo & Juliet retold with contemporary characters” – I mean “a prostitute lures a lecher to be robbed and murdered, but the lecher is magical and won’t die until his lust is fulfilled.”

When Béla Bartók‘s ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin” was premiered in 1926, it was quickly banned for its questionable morals. But it was cool to be intense, politically charged, and controversial back then – after all, this was the era which included the rise of facism and communism, American prohibition and speakeasies, and all kinds of varied fringe arts ranging from elegant, traditional-sounding neoclassicism to clunky, forward-looking futurism. Time has eroded this ballet’s edgy effect – after books like Lolita or movies like Pulp Fiction, the story of the Miraculous Mandarin feels pretty tame:

A woman dances to lures victims into a room where they are robbed by three bandits. Eventually, a Chinese man comes, and he jumps on the woman in lust. The three bandits attack him and stab him, but he won’t bleed. He begins to glow with an eerie light. The woman realizes what is happening, and orders the bandits off the victim. He jumps up and embraces the woman – his lust fulfilled, his wounds begin to bleed and he dies. Ah, love.