Letters to Cicero (and my other dead friends)

Book Two

Letter One (Part One of Three):  To Plutarch on Oracles & Music

Dear Plutarch,

It has taken a while, but I've finally finished reading your book, The Rise and Fall of Athens, and I found your description of the tearing down of the walls of the city of Athens. Your book seemed like good preparation for starting Thucidides' The History of the Peloponnesian War, which is twice as thick and a much more serious, dry text. Those last few chapters of The Rise and Fall... are a magnificent tale of the struggling, complex layers of Athenian politics, and the war with Sparta and the whole mess being funded by Persia...but I'm getting off topic already. I wanted to talk about what happened outside the walls of Athens.

“After the Athenians had finally given way to all Lysander's (The Spartan commander) demands, he sent for a great company of flute girls from the city and collected all those who were in his camp. Then to the sound of their music, he pulled down the walls and burned the ships, while the allies garlanded themselves with flowers, rejoiced together, and hailed that day as the beginning of freedom for Greece.”

They were celebrating freedom for Greece in the defeat of the tyrannical democratic city-state of Athens. It's really weird for me to think of democracy of in such a way. Living in a democracy myself, I tend to think of democracies as being the very spirit, the essence of freedom and liberty. The Spartans didn't think so. Neither did a lot of the tribute paying states under Athenian rule. But I'm getting off topic again...I wanted to talk about the celebration outside the walls.

There's a lot going on in this scene, but I would like to start with that image of the burning ships and the flute girls and the garlanded allies of Sparta and the walls of Athens coming down. I can see it in my mind, the horizon blotted out by smoke, the bay a turbid mess of burning ships and all along the hills rising up from the coast, the great walls of Athens being pulled down by thousands of slaves, while kings and satraps and commanders celebrate the 'liberation of Athens' with flowers in their hair and hundreds of women playing flutes. Incredible.

There's a set of questions I ask myself often about music.

What is it for? What purpose does it serve? What do people want it for and what uses is it put to?

These days, entertainment is the first answer to all those questions. Every month of the year in every part of my country, there are music festivals devoted to many different cultures and music styles, with paying customers filling halls and amphitheatres. Churches still use music in their ceremonies, but they are not the public affairs they once were. The army too, still has bands for formal ceremonies, and each division still has its own songs, but they certainly never bring out the brass bands for public performances while the walls of enemy cities are torn down and their ships burned in port.

Plutarch, you mention on many occasions the Pythian games, a pan-Hellenic festival where music contests were held as part of the Festival of Apollo. Singing and lyre contests were included first, but gradually other instruments were added, as well as drama and poetry and later on, athletic and equestrian events. It is a sad fact that very little has survived to tell us about these ancient contests. Music is a contradiction: ephemeral, yet everlasting.

We have music contests in my time which showcase very serious talent, there are some international festivals and competitions that attract audiences of staggering proportions. Yet there's an incongruous aspect to all this glamour and festivity. The prevalence of music in my time is astounding. There are more musicians alive and playing than ever before at any time, more music being shared globally and locally than history has ever known, yet somehow certain ideas and attitudes towards musicians remain laughably similar to your time, Plutarch. In your biography of Pericles you say:

“...it is quite possible for us to take pleasure in the work and at the same time look down on the workman. In the case of perfumers and dyers, for example, we are delighted by the product, but regard perfumers and dyers as uncouth persons who follow a mean occupation. The same idea was well expressed by by Antisthenes, when he was told that Ismenius was an excellent oboe player, and retorted: 'Then he must be good for nothing else, otherwise he would never play the oboe so well!' We are told, too, that King Philip of Macedon, when his son was playing the harp delightfully and with great virtuosity at a drinking party, asked him: 'Are you not ashamed to play as well as that?' For a king it is surely enough if he can find the time to hear others play, and he pays great honour to the muses if he does no more than attend such contests as a spectator.”

You conclude that: “...it does not necessarily follow that because a particular work succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.”

It's a contradictory and confounding thing being a musician, that we should be so highly admired and so lowly regarded simultaneously. So those questions loom again: What is music for? What keeps it alive? What need does it fulfil? Since nothing in nature is redundant, music must have a place in the ecosystem of the human animal. Music's social aspects I think are well enough understood, but what deeper need does it fulfil other than the decoration of societal functions? We can throw dance in here to balance the question, since they share a lot of qualities as art forms and I think that a lot of what can be said of one can be understood of the other. Nietzsche said once that “Without music, life would be a mistake” which is a beautiful sentiment, but a little more philosophical than I want to get right now. What I want to talk about it this, from your essay On why the oracles cease to give answers:

“For wine does not at all times alike surprise the drunkard, neither does the sound of the flute always affect in the same manner him who dances to it. For the same persons are sometimes more and sometimes less transported beyond themselves, and more or less inebriated, according to the present disposition of their bodies.”

Delphi, home of the famous Oracle and birthplace of the Pythian games, was a powerful place, the oracular shrines brought a steady stream of pilgrims and offerings. That means GOLD, and lots of it. The festival of Apollo, held every eight years, included singing contests at first, and gradually included the lyre and the flute. For six months before each festival, huge sums were spent on repairing public structures and building new ones. Delphi was rich.

So here's my proposition. Religion and Music are linked through the common experience of intoxication, and as the 20^th Century anarchist writer Hakim Bey asserts, “To the dullard, the finest wine is tasteless, but to the true sorcerer, the mere sight of water is intoxication itself.”

There is something in the way that music transforms reality that is so like intoxication as to really be no different at all. Without music, everything in life is just as it is, unadorned by intentional melody, unaffected by the emotional stimulants of tempo, tone and timing.

With music, life is completely different. The emotional nature of all humanity is present in music, every combination of sounds corresponding to a host of feelings which may or may not have names. With music, the everyday becomes the incredible, from the dust that settles at sunset, to the silence between the bird calls at morning.

You, Plutarch, also say, "Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.” So those questions loom again, what is music for? What discord does it harmonise in human beings, what dis-ease does it counter? Which brings me to the parallel question of this letter.

Why don't we believe in the oracles any more?