Book Two

Letter One, Part Three.

To Plutarch on Oracles, Intoxication and Music

A friend of mine recently related a story of finding himself in a cell at the police station, having been taken from his home in the early hours of the morning by a squad of angry, noisy officers. My friend claims it was a false charge, a case of police harassment in retaliation for some slight, but that's not what this story is about. You see my friend plays harmonica, and finding himself alone and dejected in the cold cell at dawn, he began to play music and to let it echo throughout the tiny jail.

The officer on duty at the station (not the officer who arrested him), hearing this music, came to investigate and enquired what had brought my friend to be in his sorry position, at the same time praising him for the music he played. My friend told his story of woe, and so effected was the officer on duty by his music and his charm, that the officer immediately released my friend and arranged for transport to take him home, offering great apologies.

My friend has said that a famous blues musician, Leadbelly, confesses to several similar experiences.

So, there's an answer to my question, what is music for? It sets us free.

Only sometimes it does not.

Sometimes music won't let us go.

Sometimes the hold that music has over us is the warm embrace that keeps a person alive, or keeps them sane, or releases a pressure that builds up inside us and that only music alleviates. Sometimes it's less dramatic than that and music is just music, and I am just a musician and all this drunken rambling and mad belief in prophecy is just mad rambling and even my featherweight Setar seems too heavy to lift. When notes are just dumb sounds, and melodies are just tricks of the ear and I go round and round in circles asking myself silly questions like, what is music for?

Curt Sachs, a 20^th Century historian claims that the sound wave was possibly first discovered by Lasos of Hermione, a Greek poet from the 6^th Century BCE. Lasos is also credited with innovations in the dithyramb hymn. There's a lot of good stuff in Sachs' book, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, like the fact that the Spartans considered music more important than grammar in regards to the education of their children. The art of choral singing spread from Sparta and throughout the rest of Greece, where men and women formed choral societies which accompanied the pilgrims sent to the oracles, with rival towns competing to form the largest choirs, six hundred singers recorded for one such event.

Choirs like these often sang the Paean'. Originally a medicine dance, it seems, as far as I can tell, to have been performed for loads of different reasons. Xenophon mentions it being sung before and after battles, a sort of prayer for good luck, and afterwards a thanksgiving for success. The Iliad describes a paean being sung to drive away the plague, and centuries later in Sparta, the government appointed the Cretan musician Thaletas to organise paean's to help drive out another plague.

Another form of song, the skolion, were common folk songs, tavern hall drinking songs. Curt Sachs writes that: “Everybody in Greece was expected to know such songs; one general who refused to sing because he did not know any was unfavourably criticised.”

The instrumental solo contests held at Delphi, the nomos, are known from the description of a concert piece played by Sakadas, performed in 586 BCE at Delphi in the Pythian games. “On his double oboe he represented the contest between Apollo and the dragon in five movements: a prelude, the first onset, the contest itself, the triumph following victory, and the death of the dragon, with a sharp harmonic when the monster hissed out its last breath.”

The musical contests and other performances are recorded as being very popular and well attended by huge crowds of utterly silent listeners, apparently no citizen would be absent. Huge open air amphitheatres filled with families. A Persian general once made a census of a several conquered Greek towns simply by counting the number of people attending a concert by a noted Lyre player.

Here in my home city in Australia, we have a different sort of silence. That friend I mentioned earlier, the one who played music in the police cell, he told me only a few days ago of an experience playing harmonica on the tram. My friend found himself in the company of a family visiting Australia from from Cyprus, and since my friend knew some traditional folk songs from their homeland, he began to play for them. The father began to sing and the whole family clapped in time with the music until a security guard (just imagine a low paid centurion without a spear, shield or helmet), stopped them from making such a public disturbance. My friend protested that he was sharing culture with a visiting family of travellers to our country, but the guard insisted that they stop.

So in my time, the generals are not criticised for their ignorance of folk songs, but rather the musicians are prevented from playing such songs as might make of ordinary public life, something more interesting. Yet, drawing such large conclusions from isolated stories may not be a useful thing to do, misleading us to believe that simple answers can be found to complex problems.

But Plutarch, the streets are so very quiet, and the generals do not sing.

*

“Listen, whatever it is you try

to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you

like the dreams of your body

its spirit

longing to fly while the dead-weight bones

toss their dark manes and hurry

back into the fields of glittering fire...”

From Mary Oliver, “Humpbacks”

I'm writing in a very disjointed way today, but my eye remains fixed on the goal. I'm not trying to make a link between the power of prophecy and the power of music. I'm not sure that the future can be predicted, I draw no conclusions on that question whether by consensus of evidence, or by instinct. But I do believe in my experiences. I do believe in magic. I do believe that the world is changed by the way we each view reality, for the simple reasoning that we are able to effect, only that which we acknowledge as real.

Is magic real? I believe in my experiences, and I experience magic as a real thing.

Is prophecy real? I don't know.

Is music real? It is at least as real as magic, and possibly more magical than reality.

What is music for?

Just imagine a world without it and you will probably have as good an answer as could possibly be divined by the Oracle at Delphi.

Why don't the oracles give prophecy any more?

Well, I'm only half way through reading your essay Plutarch, so I'll have to get back to you about that one, but I will leave you with this little quote from Cyropaedia: the Education of Cyrus, by Xenophon. Cyrus' father, Cambyses, says this to his son.

“My son, the gods are gracious to us, and look with favour on your journey – they have shown it in the sacrifices, and by their signs from heaven. You do not need another man to tell you so, for I was careful to have taught you this art, so that you might understand the counsels of the gods yourself and have no need of an interpreter, seeing with your own eyes and hearing with your own ears and taking the heavenly meaning for yourself. Thus you need not be at the mercy of soothsayers who might have a mind to deceive you, speaking contrary to the omens vouchsafed from heaven, nor yet, should you chance to be without a seer, drift in perplexity and know not how to profit by the heavenly signs: you yourself through your own learning can understand the warnings of the gods and follow them.”

So maybe, in the absence of an answer from you, Plutarch, I might instead seek my own.

Thank you Plutarch, for everything

Morgan.