Monday, August 20, 2012

Fumes From the Past

A gift for you, this example of the genius of Western culture whose fumes we can now only catch a whiff of here and there. There was a time when people really thought Bach’s work approached the eternal; it has been long overtaken by the random noises of modernity.

It is about as eternal as… well,think of a child with her nose pushed against an empty rectangular pink box. She’s inhaling deeply from the memories of those chocolates it used to contain. When she’d first untied the gold ribbon and pulled off the top, the richness of those three layers seemed immense. If not exactly forever, five pounds was surely enough to last a long, long time.


These organ works are beloved by the Baron, who — without missing a beat — went straight from the Grateful Dead to Bach.

Sometimes visitors would ask, “do you listen to this church music all the time?” To which he would reply… well, let’s just say the Baron is indeed a genuinely courteous man. His rules for civil discourse arise from who he is.

A personal favorite of those interrogations about his musicial tastes came from Momma. One day after she’d been living with us for several month she got up the courage to inquire, “is this by Beethoven? He’s the one who wrote all those dirges, eh?

Umm…since we all laughed, including Momma, maybe you had to be there.

When we’ve been obliterated back to B.C., the only “music” our descendants will hear will be the ear-aching broadcasts of the muezzins’ calls to prayer emanating from competing mosques. Fortunately (for their sakes), those people-yet-to-be won’t have fumes to miss or even empty boxes to hold.

Enjoy while you can… via Takuan, a gift for our readers and especially for the Baron.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

A friend who is an architect and therefore sensitive to structure and symmetry, commented:
"Incredible;
We forget the ineffable unity of all things.
Imagine being within the chamber of the church.
What the hell has this world done to itself."
A culture is an organic whole. This music goes with church architecture and with the history of Western architecure going back straight to Rome and in the case of some churches, Greece. It goes with Christian spiritual feelings and with the history of the European peoples. For a ruling elite to re-engineer culture and society via population replacement, falsification of history, PC, lawfare, constant stimulation of the baser appettites and so is a monstrous crime, destroying the ineffable unity.
Takuan Seiyo

1389 said...

Two paws up!

Anonymous said...

What I find particular fascinating is music written to be performed in particular churches, which use the acoustics of that PARTICULAR church into account and use them to advantage in the performance.

That is absolutely mindblowing.

EV

Anonymous said...

I still don't grasp what sort of a Europe these people think they are going to be left with. They must live in some sort of pink haze and their iq's must surely be way down. How can a third world Europe ever take the place of the most civilised and successful civilisation the world has known. Why do they hate it so much? And how will China and Japan fare when the Europeans that keep them going with their technology and inventiveness have been replaced? Where is the reason, where is the logic, for those of us who possess them it is just so infuriating that they are being allowed to triumph.

Anonymous said...

Kenneth Clarke in his 1969 BBC Civilisation series had a lot to say about Bach and the Baroque. I suggest you all get the dvds and watch it. It begins by saying that Europe survived the Dark Ages by the skin of its teeth and ends by saying that European Civilisation will only survive if we do not lose confidence in ourselves. We are now in a worse position than the Dark Ages because nobody is fighting to save European Christian Civilisation but the likes of you and me. And I am sure that he knew what was planned and was begging us not to lose confidence. But he underestimated the massive Marxist brainwashing machine that was to be directed against the young and impressionable from the 1970s onwards encouraging them to commit cultural and racial suicide. I would also urge you all to listen to BBC Radio 3. Like all BBC stations it has its leftist leanings but daily celebrates our immense European classical musical heritage. On Radio 3 it is still 1955 and the presenters act as if European Civilisation is going to go on for ever and a day. They seem incapable of seeing the iceberg on the horizon that is going to obliterate it and them for ever. But at least you feel that we are still being allowed to celebrate there Europe's immense musical contribution to the world which even China is hooked on to. It makes a change from being told like the current generations that the vibrant cultures of Africa and Asia are superior to anything that racist Europe has produced.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful! Both Church and Music. Treasures.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you said that, Takuan. It is so important. It is a whole.

We should not be so afraid to embrace Church, after all. Many of us have been distancing us selves from the Church itself

Circumstances should make us look at what we have and appreciate it more. Our lives are based upon the foundation that was laid in Rome, Bysants, Greece - and then all the layers from those times made possible the Western civilization in a constant development with the continous smaller and bigger conflicts with the Church down through the times.

Those conflicts opened for developments which would not have been possible without them. That's what made the West progress.


"So
I say
Thank you for the music
The songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy
They are bringing

Who could live
Without it?
I ask
In all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or dance
What are we?

So I say
Thank you for the music
For bringing it to me"


I'm writing this lyrics from memory singing it in my mind, without realizing who originally wrote it, or who's actually singing the song. The singer I had in mind was for some reason Vera Lynn...and then I find that it is ABBA. But of course...now I remember.

"Thank You For The Music" was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA

- Amazing lyrics!

Anonymous said...

(*..cough..*)We should not be so afraid to embrace Church, after all. Many of us have been distancing ourselves from the Church itself

Anonymous said...

"The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit"

Locals gave names to mountains on the sea in the very North of Norway

Traveller blogs his way from Nordkapp til Oslo

Anonymous said...

Well, no, these mountains were not named by locals, but by a Dutch theologian on her visit over the Winter in 2010

Anonymous said...

Church vs wonders of nature
Religiosity

- We, up North, have a more relaxed relationship with Our Lord. We kind of meet him at the door every day nodding a Good Morning, in good, as well as in bad weather. We don't have this urge to go to church. Instead we meet him outdoors, says one commenter at this traveler's blog

He goes on by telling about once he went to Gratangen to learn more about what took place during the war where his father took part.

- It was a Sunday and many people went to and fro a somewhat special building with a large open space. I stopped a guy and asked if that would be a church.

Leaning against his car, casting a glance behind him he stated: "Yes, it is a church. But ugly as hell."

---

Humor on the politically correct aesthetics

"Norwegian Form in a rage over tree they found in the woods.
- Unaesthetic vulgar baroque!"

Anonymous said...

Very special Russian Cathedral project in Paris

Unwanted by islamfriendly socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë with strong ties to Tunisia.

He denounces the architecture, which looks absolutely great, saying that it won't go along with the nearby Eiffel Tower.

There were plans for a mosque at the site, but the Russians won the location for their cathedral project.

Anonymous said...


French socialist harassed at Bizerte, Tunisia

- What?! In Bizerte, socialist Paris Mayor Delanoë's Tunisian paradise...?


Anonymous said...

Takuan Seiyo's architect friend asks, "What the hell has this world done to itself"(?).

It hasn't done anything to itself; it, that is *our* world, has merely begun playing the final scene of its life. Death follows old age, culture is organic (TS: "A culture is an organic whole"), and all things organic succumb to death.

If don't come to terms with this we'll have little chance of influencing events and steering them in a more preferable direction.

IW

Anonymous said...

So where is this church located in the world? It looks like the ones I visited when I went to Gernmany in the Barvaria area. What increable beauty there was to see and feel. Buildt hundreds of years before the new world was even thought about. They still stand as a mounument to man's conectness to God and the Universe. May they always stand in the history of man and the universe.

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