"As in Music, So in Life."

Cyril Scott

1879-1970

Tuesday, May 30, 2000

I promised to report on more of the little known English composer's writings once I had a chance to find and read them. My remarks are limited to a knowledge of the two works, Bone of Contention, a weird and wonderful autobiography replete with tiny sketches of people such as Bernard Shaw and his wife, Percy Grainger, Englebert Humperdink, who was Scott's teacher, and some of his less well known friends.

The other book which provides an even wider scope for an appreciation of Scott and his ideas is Music, It's Secret Influence Throughout The Ages. In this book, Scott outlines a theory that various styles of music have and can influence great masses of people in society, usually as a sort of aftershock as in the case of Handel's music and the Victorian period which followed it much later. Scott was probably aware of the connection between the music of Edward Elgar and the style of life most British people felt comfortable with between the wars. Some people who were lucky to have lived in England during this period called it "community spirit" and gave it credit for instilling in the British people the resolve to stand up and fight against Hitler.

It is a concept which included some strange turns of fate in that Scott remarks that organ music, which had tended to make Englishman more religiously fervent by the beginning of the seventeenth century was strongly proscribed by the Puritans who took over England during The Interregnum. This absence of organ music effectively cut off the religious fervor that it had fueled previously and set the stage for a social backlash against religious orthodoxy after The Glorious Restoration. Scott further illustrates the same idea by suggesting that the French Revolution was fostered by an absence of church music of any appreciable kind in France in the period immediately preceding The Deluge.

Arthur Loesser's remarkable book, Men, Women and Pianos gives a pretty good description of how the Pietistic movement in Germany and later in France influenced and was influenced by some of the music produced and how these encouraged the longing for a musical instrument that was capable of the loud and soft shadings of sound that ultimately led to the development of the pianoforte. There would seem to be no ready conflict between the ideas of Scott and Loesser. It's simply that Scott is propounding as it were a mass behavioral model predicated on the kinds of music produced bringing into existence a certain kind of society in its wake.

APPLYING THIS MODEL TO AMERICA

An analysis of modern American society based on music which has been produced here indicates that there is no one form of music that enjoys a clear hegemony over the whole society unless it is perhaps Country and Western music. If this is the case, we might assume that the kind of society this produces is filled with the symbolism surrounding this music. And in fact such a notion is not too far fetched. All one needs do is travel out from the urban centers and one immediately sees the symbols and iconography of the music emanating from Nashville, Tennessee. There are Country and Western music radio stations everywhere throughout the United States and sales of this kind of music probably account for more than any other kind. The truck driving, cowboy hat wearing, beer drinking, cigarette smoking, gun owning, slow drawling, not too smart and proud of it, simple to please kind of lifestyle is likewise everywhere throughout America, especially out from the urban centers. No other music says America quite like Country and Western. And considering what I am about to say, maybe we can all be grateful.

There are serious musical sub-cultures in the urban areas, music of the bold sexual heat of certain minority groups, of the uncertain alienation of the young often brutally portrayed. The rough and aggressive, often violent activities of the youth of America are predictably the direct result. The iconography associated with these styles includes a brutal sexuality, alienation bordering on willful stupidity, the resolve not to learn anything typified by an almost resolute illiteracy, the use of illegal and dangerous drugs, horror films that exploit the explicitly gruesome and black magic, violence, blood lust, piercing and tatooing, willful destruction that goes way beyond mere hedonism and DEATH!

Cyril Scott was saying as early as the 1920's that there was a fundamental connection between the music produced and promoted throughout a society and the kind of society that would result. Many sociologists have tried to make this idea stick as some means of curbing the nihilistic tendencies within the youth culture without very much success. Scott of course suggests occult reasons for this not being possible; a veritable warfare of occult forces as it were for influence over the creative talents of mankind. Of course we have no way of scientifically verifying any of these claims. Scott, being an occultist, speaks of great spiritual beings and squadrons or "brotherhoods" of these beings as if they were organizations comprised of flesh and blood living people, whereas for Scott and those of like beliefs, these beings are discarnate spirits insensible of being discovered or known except by occult means. By the way for Scott and other occultists there never was anything particularly negative about occultism. Religious orthodoxy has merely tended to make it so in order to keep people from following it. Scott does suggest though that there is a negative side to the struggle and that there are some negative agencies whose influence on mankind is wholly for our destruction.

At the present time we can see many directions being pointed to simultaneously. On one hand there is heavy metal and rap, on the other New Age and Techno. One direction indicated by the former music seems to presage a coming fiery catastrophe of people killing each other for no apparent sane reason but mere alienation, while the other direction seems to presage another kind of social alienation, one that seeks an almost escapist route perhaps involving a transformation of individuals and groups, the acquisition of new powers, extension of human possibilities, enlargement of human potentials until the results are not even human but other worldly and even alien.

In the midst of these many conflicting musical styles of the present are those who cling almost desperately to the "museum" styles of classical and jazz. Sooner or later even the rock n roll and rhythm and blues music of thirty and forty years ago will become the stuff of musical museums. We live in a time when more museum piece music is possible than at any time in history simply because we have the technology enabling us to preserve it all. It was only about 150 years ago that anyone seriously bothered listening to any music written in the past. Nowadays a large portion of the music bought and sold was created in the past. This will be more the case as time goes on because the technology has simply made this possible.

Extrapolating then from Scott's theory, the result will be that as more of the music of the past is retained, the nostalgia it produces will place a drag on society, keeping it more stable than it might have been otherwise. Can you imagine if the only music you could listen to was Country and Western or rap and heavy metal, New Age or Techno?

Another result is bound to be the segmenting of society into groups or "tribes" that identify with a particular form of music more than any other and these groups will find ways of finding each other, in festivals, in music clubs, in organizations and on the internet.

I have suggested now for quite a long time that the specifically classical music oriented person is likewise as identifiable as the person whose preferred music is Country and Western or heavy metal or rap or bluegrass or reggae or ska, etc. Those of us who have long been into classical music are certainly aware that Opera buffs are in a special category all their own and even in the world of Opera, there are those who are devotees of Wagner while others prefer Verdi, Mozart, etc. And each of these even has their preferred place of pilgrimage; Beyreuth for those who love Wagner, La Scalla for those who love Verdi, Salzburg for those who love Mozart, etc.

Scott's notion isn't as far fetched as it seems. It has certainly seemed clear to me just on an intuitive level. How much science do we need to convince ourselves that certain music has certain effects while other music has other effects? What effect did so much familiarity with traditional "classical" music have on American society in the early years of this century as that knowledge was brought over by immigrants who settled in the cities of the Northeast, Midwest and West? What incalculable harm has been done to American society by rather ruthlessly cutting funding for music programs in the public schools in the last forty years? Not only may we be getting the music we deserve but the society also; sullenly dumb and alcoholic in the country, brutally sexual and explosive in the cities. "As in music so in life" as Cyril Scott remarks again and again in his books.

The classical "tribe", failing to get this message across, in large measure because it hitched its message to a bankrupt and time warn political philosophy, is now forced to retrench and retreat and hopefully regroup for another assault on the minds of more and more young people in an evangelistic attempt to resurrect it's ideal of an intelligent, cosmopolitan, Euro-centered, civilization. The prospects for success are not great. The audiences for classical music are all too often aging, aged or eccentric. Classical music has largely been sidelined. Jazz is sadly close behind. Country and Western remains surprisingly healthy. Rock n roll is doomed simply because it was always a kids oriented music and the kids of the generations that grew up with it are themselves aging. Blues is becoming more rare. Meanwhile anything that's vulgar, shocking, in execrably bad taste, openly advocating destructiveness, usually on a personal level, is steadily gaining popularity, especially among the young. Yes I know, our elders complained about our music too when we were teenagers, but honestly it was nothing like this.

I hold my generation largely responsible. I can remember a time when a blues singing guitarist who was my age cynically told me he had no interest in learning to read music notation. In fact he didn't really care about music. All he cared about was how many girls he could screw thereby and how much alcohol he could consume. That was thirty years ago. It seems to me that little has changed. In fact it has probably gotten worse.

THE CHALLENGE

I challenge anyone who really cares about the health and quality of their society to buy a piano or some other musical instrument, learn to play it, practice and develop whatever musical talent you have, find others who share your interest whether it be around the corner or across the world. I speak particularly to those who have found classical music to be "their" music, to do everything they possibly can to spread the well known and time honored positive benefits of this music by playing it loudly and often and as well as possible, everywhere! Nothing is as inspiring.

I remember once coming out from a class at UC Berkeley in the early seventies only to find that a huge crowd had gathered and were standing silently listening. I thought there must be some demonstration or political activism going on. But no, it was another kind of activism. Two violinists and an autoharp player were simply playing the double concerto in G minor of Johann Sebastian Bach and the immortal strains of this music had brought this crowd together in rapt silence and respectful awe. Quite a few were moved to tears. When they finished the applause was deafening. It was a tribute to everything I have ever believed in as fundamentally right, true and great.

We need far more of this if we are to heal our society and turn back the destroyers. It is really up to us. Beethoven was right, music can change the world.