The Fredösphere

I've been listening to a CD I got for Christmas:  music by Constant Lambert.  It was a complete surprise, yet it was what I asked for.  Confused?  It's all thanks to the wizardry of the Amazon.com wish list.  The cool thing about having such a list is that you can add something to it, then months later have no memory of the item ever existing.

So how did I end up putting Constant Lambert on my list?  I don't remember at all, but it was probably one of those "if you like this, you'll like that" recommendations Amazon is always making.  How Amazon figures out those connections is achieved by pure witchcraft, I'm sure.

Wo ist Constant?  I was nervous, thinking she was a contemporary composer that I really should remember.  Well, he was an Englishman who lived 1905-1951 and drank himself to death.  The Rio Grande is his most popular work and was written when he was only 22, a funky grab bag of influences and styles that somehow avoids sounding campy.  I'm particularly interested in his cantata (also on this CD) called Summer's Last Will and Testament.  I'd like to know why the CD cover features a scythe-wielding Death riding over a city on a dragon, like a Nazgul.  This is from the liner notes:

What specifically motivated Lambert [to write the cantata] was the death in 1931, by his own hand, of one of his closest friends, the composer and scholar Philip Heseltine/Peter Warlock.  It was Heseltine who introduced Lambert to the world of Elizabethan music and letters which vitally determines the character of Summer's Last Will.  But Heseltine was also a deeply disturbed character whose influence on younger men was as much destructive as creative.

Uh-oh.  Alarms are going off.  What do they mean, "disturbed," and what's with that name change?  Here's a bit from a bio of Peter Warlock, the composer of some very nice art songs:

Although he had intended settling in Cornwall for a time, Warlock became alarmed at the renewed possibility of military conscription and in August 1917 fled to Dublin where he remained for the next year. During this period he became involved in certain occult practices which Gray claimed were psychologically damaging.

Red alert!  Well, okay, it's possible the occult wasn't the main problem.  Warlock was a drunk and a carouser and mentally unbalanced (possibly schizophrenic, although that's controversial), so he had plenty of arrows in his corruption quiver.  Nevertheless, somebody who would even flirt with the occult cannot have been a Nice Person.

Summer's Last Will, a cantata with surprisingly little singing, is a morbid fantasy:  summer turns to fall, we all turn to worm food, live large while you can, Lord have mercy.  Yow.  This piece has been neglected for many years.  The liner notes blame an indifferent first performance, but the macabre topic must be the real reason.

The wifeosphere informs me some of my music is too morbid for her taste (she claims as "proof" my choral setting of God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop, wherein a mass-murdering prelate gets eaten alive by rats).  I suppose I fit the profile of a dabbler in the occult, with an eye for the esoteric and the morbid, and an arrogant regard of oneself as "special" and above the rules.  Yet I have never been remotely tempted -- there but for the grace of God....

I'm going to finish this monster post with a little story.  Someone I used to know was a convert to Christianity from a life of drug use.  Shortly after his conversion, he became convinced LSD had opened him up to a demonic influence.  He wanted help, but didn't know where to go.  Finally, he found a book that described a procedure for "self-exorcism", to be used only in extreme need.  My friend said the prayers, and ... well, he had an experience.  He felt as though the spirit left him, accompanied by what seems to be the common thing in these cases:  a bodily discharge.  It was a huge belch that filled the room with a foul odor and an menacing ambiance.  (Regarding self-exorcism:  my friend gave a nervous laugh, then said:  "don't ever do that."  And I would add:  don't create a reality TV show out of it either.)

I'm not trying to prove anything here.  You don't know my friend, and even I can't confirm the accuracy of his account, although I never had any reason to think he was lying.  I'm not under the illusion that one story will change anyone's mind.  On the other hand, I'm not embarrassed to admit I'm comfortable with the possibility of demonic activity.  If you can believe in spirits, and if you can believe they have free wills, then really, the rest follows quite easily.

Mainly I just think this sort of thing is fascinating, and if you are reasonably free of hangups, and reasonably curious, and have a bit of an eye for the bizarre, you should find it fascinating too.  It was in that spirit that on Monday I gave you a link to Philip K. Dick's weird visions, which I believe are nonsense, but hey, I'm not going to shut my eyes to it either (and that business of his son's illness cannot be easily dismissed, if true).  Overly refined sensitivity to religious controversy leaves people sadly ignorant of all the strange, unsettling, sublime and ridiculous experiences this sad old world has seen.

Well, there, I went and alienated half my audience.  In future additions of the Fredosphere, I'll discuss politics I think are stupid, religions I think are evil, people I think are ugly, Haydn, Mozart and other untalented losers, and the influence of the Avignon papacy on modern rigid airship design.  Alone.