Eleison Comments

For readers who know the varied symphonies, here may be a little joy of recognition. For those who do not know them, may there be here a little encouragement to get to know them.

1. By 1800 Beethoven has already written much music, but here is his first Symphony. One would say, he is young, but the apprentice of Haydn and Mozart is already a master. Melody, harmony, rhythm, drive and humour, he has it all ! A joyful spirit comes to the battlefield. With promise of weapons musical rare to wield.

2. Two years later, the young composer (32) is stricken with the onset of deafness. Yet this Symphony shows no trace of his despair. Rather, it shows how the musician will mint his suffering in joy and triumph for his future listeners. The master is spreading his wings at greater length, Drawing from deafness’ grief yet greater strength.

3. The Symphony #3 fully lives up to its nickname, the “Eroica”. Inspired by Napoleon, it presents the life and death of a great hero. Musically its wealth and power of emotion open up a new language, a new age of music, where man is henceforth at the centre. Ready for battle, forward the hero strides. To death, but up on high his spirit rides.

4. The “Eroica” of 1803 unleashed from the now fully mature Beethoven a series of popular masterpieces. The fourth symphony of 1806 is one of these : rich, varied, profound, full of thought and beauty, life and joy, yet tightly organised to deliver its punch. To reign now over opening realms unknown. With passion, variety, order all his own.

5. “Beethoven’s Fifth” is the best-known of all nine Symphonies because it most dramatically presents the deep struggle in his soul to accept his fate. Here is modern man, 1807, striving to bend fate to his own will, in a blaze of revolutionary triumph. But storms do shake the universe’s frame. And man must fight, the victory to claim.

6. Beethoven loved the countryside where he drank in the beauty and grandeur of God. It inspired all five movements of the lovely “Pastoral” Symphony, of 1808, the Sixth. Its calm is in remarkable contrast to the tension of the Fifth Symphony, just before it. A walk in the countryside, beside a stream. Then peasants dance, a storm, a pastoral dream.

7. The Seventh, of 1812, is another popular favourite. Four movements of an Olympic grandeur, but never remotely cold or inhuman. The wild last movement reminds us of Beethoven’s inner struggles, but it is still perfectly designed and controlled. A majestic discourse, threnody of the soul. Noble in every part, and in the whole.

8. The Eighth, also of 1812, also relieves tension by harking back to the pre-heroic symphonies and humour of a Haydn, but Beethoven cannot forsake the richness and organisation of his mature style. The second movement is pure comic opera. Down from the heights, the hero comes to earth. Remembering earlier times, with rhythmic mirth.

9. The famous Ninth Symphony, is named the “Choral” because of the choir which Beethoven introduced to set to music a beloved Hymn to Joy. Three monumental movements set the scene, but, for Beethoven, it is joy that must have the last word. Doom, fate and crashing heavens open wide. Still rhythm, beauty, men’s joy will abide.

Kyrie eleison

Why do films have such an influence on people? Because even Catholics have human nature; and human nature needs music, stories and pictures; and films combine all three. Hence when Hollywood was created in the early 20^th century, the enemies of God sprang into action to make sure that they controlled it because of the huge influence which they knew – better than the friends of God seem to have known – that it would have on people’s minds and hearts. One could even say that these enemies created Hollywood. In any case let at least Catholic parents realise how important it is to know and to direct what music it is that their children are listening to, and let them absolutely ban jungle music from the house.

This is a tall order, because from the moment that children set foot outside the house, they will meet an all-engulfing jungle culture, and in particular jungle peer pressure. The children must stand on their own feet. The parents must give good example, and not listen themselves to music which is sloppy, with no shape or moral value or moral values. Frequently the first door by which the devil will get into their children’s souls is by bad music, and the rest of the decadence will follow. From the use that Mother Church makes of good music at Mass, cannot Catholic parents guess how much use the devil will make of bad music if only there is nobody keeping guard at the entrance to their children’s souls? Music is a unique language of the soul, and has a unique influence on people’s lives.

It was the 250^th anniversary of the birthday on December 16^th last year of Ludwig van Beethoven, which recalls the value and importance of good music. Now music-lovers will object straight away that his music is often too stormy, and they themselves prefer earlier composers from calmer times. Fair enough. And if they really have a handle on the earlier composers, by all means let them give to their children what they themselves possess. But the great advantage of Beethoven is that he straddled in time (1770–1827) the French Revolution (1789–1794), so that he was born under the ancien régime, the old way of living, but lived his mature years in Revolutionary times and his last years after the Congress of Vienna (1815), when Europe attempted to tame the Revolutionary forces that had been let loose. But, like in Beethoven’s music, those forces were barely tamed, in fact they have moulded the world more and more ever since, so that numberless youngsters today have no feeling for music earlier than Beethoven, whereas in the Master of Bonn they can clearly sense their own chaos arising.

Yet Beethoven’s music is by no means only, or primarily, chaotic. The old order is still in his bones as it was in his formation, and it enables a powerful musical mind to shape and control passionate feelings, and here is why Beethoven’s architectural passion, or passionate architecture, is so unique. Broadly speaking, the masterpieces of his maturity express more feeling than did any of the calmer composers who came before him, even while they express more order than did any of the wilder composers who came after him. As Shakespeare, straddling medieval and modern times, can be said to owe his stature as a world artist to his combining of medieval theology with modern psychology, so, broadly speaking, the greatness of Beethoven may be ascribed to his combining of an 18^th century head with a 19^th century heart.

He wrote many kinds of music, notably one opera, two Masses, five piano concertos, nine symphonies, 10 violin sonatas, 17 string quartets and 32 piano sonatas, but the most popular and best known of all are undoubtedly the nine symphonies, where the full orchestra and freedom of invention gave to his genius fullest rein. To an unfamiliar ear the symphonies can all sound the same, but the more anyone gets to know them, the more difficult it becomes to say which two most resemble one another, so different are they. Written words cannot say what music says, they can only attempt to describe it, but in another issue of these “Comments” an attempt will be made to describe the symphonies. The unrivalled culture of white European males must not be allowed to perish! It carries God within.

Kyrie eleison.

1   A joyful spirit comes to the battlefield

  With promise of weapons musical rare to wield.

2   The master is spreading his wings at greater length,

     Drawing from deafness’ grief yet greater strength.

3   Ready for battle, forward the hero strides,

     To death, but up on high his spirit rides

4   To reign now over opening realms unknown

     With passion, variety, order all his own.

5   But storms do shake the universe’s frame,

     And order, disorder both the victory claim.

6   A walk in the countryside, beside a stream,

    Then peasants dance, a storm, a pastoral dream.

7   A majestic discourse, threnody of the soul,

    Noble in every part, and in the whole.

8   Down from the heights, the hero comes to earth,

     Remembering earlier times, with rhythmic mirth.

9   Doom, fate and crashing heavens open wide?

     Still rhythm, beauty, men’s joy will abide.

If these “Comments” of April 17th praised the analysis by the Society of St Pius X’s Superior General, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, for his March 12 analysis of the unthinkable madness of Pope Francis’ “thinking,” then nobody need conclude that this week’s “Comments” are trying to undermine that Society if they go on to make a couple of suggestions to the same Superior General. In all languages there will be some proverbial expression of the distance between words and action. Fr. Pagliarani is talking the right talk. Americans might say that all he now needs is to walk the right walk, in accordance with his talk.

For indeed if the Superior General truly wants the good of the Society of which he is the Superior, he will want to act as the Founder of that Society acted, because to follow a Founder is to serve his foundation, while to contradict him in word or deed will be to help to undo his foundation. Now what distinguished Archbishop Lefebvre from his thousands of fellow bishops at and after Vatican II? He always said that a few hundred came out of the Council still resolved to defend the true Catholic Faith, but that in the 1970’s Pope Paul VI succeeded essentially in breaking their resistance, especially by misuse of his authority. So the bishops put the System above the Truth, while the Archbishop put the Truth above the System.

Now by declaring in your March 12 analysis that Pope Francis is virtually abandoning all Catholic philosophy and theology, honourable Fr Pagliarani, you show that you have a real grip on the Truth and on the dire peril in which it finds itself today. So what did the Archbishop do when in the 1970’s and 1980’s Popes Paul VI and John-Paul II similarly imperilled the Faith? Did he put the System in front of the Truth? Or did he not supremely walk the walk by Consecrating four bishops, even outside the System, to ensure the practical survival of his heroic talk? May I suggest that there are two things you can do, one for the Church and one for the State, to lift your walk to the level of your talk?

For the Church, help it enormously, as did the Archbishop (and as you did yourself with your absolutely clear condemnation in February, 2019 of the Pope’s Joint Declaration with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar) by not only faithfulness to Catholic doctrine, but also by unequivocally shunning the Church System, presently still mired in Conciliar doctrine, and liable to contaminate any Society priests or leaders who imprudently flirt with such objective instruments of Belial. Towards such gravely mistaken Church officials, courtesy and charity, yes, but friendly contact, by no means! For there can be no greater charity towards such objective traitors, risking a terrible eternity, than to make them understand how they need to convert. And you have a bounden duty to steer your own priests away from them, so dangerous are they!

And for the State, similarly. Virtually all States of the world are presently under the disguised control of the bi-millennial enemies of God and man, whom God is using to scourge apostate mankind. In what is radically a religious war on their part, by the blindness and weakness of the Catholics who should be stopping them, they have gained mastery of our banks, politics, universities, arts, culture, law, medicine, and so on, so that all of these things are the mere anti-Christian shells of what they once were as parts of Christian civilisation. It is the Christians’ fault by their lack of faith, and it has recently entailed the stealing in a once great nation of its national election, with far too little protest against the mass of lies necessarily involved. Now, bearing the stamp of the same anti-Christian warriors is the entire artificial Covid crisis. Father, any Catholic Society is further betraying Christ if it does not discern, and act upon, who and what is at stake. Covid is a problem even more religious than it is political, and the men of God must say so, if the people of God are to get back on their knees. May God be with you.

Kyrie eleison.

P.S. Enough ECs for the moment on the gravity of modernism. Let the next two ECs present for the Easter season the joy of Beethoven (even if it is not directly Christian joy, but rather derived from it.)