The Fine Art of Listening

Today’s episode is brought to you by the International Talk Like a Pirate Day advocacy board.

Arrrg! Avast, ye landlubbers, and harken to me tale. The seas be wild, they be, and only the sturdiest sea-legs be worthy of a ship as fine as the Flying Dutchman. What be the Flying Dutchman, ye ask? Shiver me timbers, I ne’er known a landlubber such as ye, what never heard of the Dutchman. ‘Tis a ghost ship, doomed to sail the seven seas, and her ghost captain is bound to this fate forever, unless – ah, ye guessed it – a fair wench did declare love for him. You see, us pirates be romantic folk – we love the battle between life and death, damnation and salvation, and the redemption that only true love can give ye. Wot? Ye don’t believe me, do ye? Well, a pox on you and your damned landlubbering gollymangers, and may ye be caught in the storm like the one that inspired old Dicky Wagner to compose this overture, and may it bring ye to Davy Jone’s locker, or worse yet, bring ye aboard the accursed Flying Dutchman herself.

If it tickle ye barnacles, I must mention that this recording be the finest I’ve heard – the inner parts do not get obscured in a sea of messy writing. Ye can hear every note clearly. May your sailing skies be as clear and clean as these.

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.