Harmonies of Connectedness

There really is nothing like a live heart-thumping performance of the Rolling Stones performing their all-time hit Satisfaction. This anthem to the counterculture of the Swinging Sixties is as much a part of my life as was hearing a young Joan Hammond sing Oh My Beloved Father at Covent Garden when I was just eight years old. Both are unforgettably haunting in their very different ways, most particularly because of the way they created harmonies of connectedness – weaving a thread of love and evoking a shared humanity.

Even more intimate experiences matter most though. For me the chance to play Marcel Dupre’s Cortege et Litanie on the instrument for which it was written at Saint Sulpice in Paris, to walk in the woods of the Bois de Boulogne with Olivier Messiaen, listening to the songs of birds he would later use in his opera Saint-Francois d’Assise, and to perform my friend Michael Finnissy’s fiendishly demanding Xunthaeresis in Bath Abbey, were all as formative to my personality as curating the Australian premieres of Gavin Bryars’ Jesu’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet in Melbourne’s Grant Street theatre and John Cage’s Musicircus in the National Gallery of Victoria.

These encounters with the ethereal nature of sound, permanently etched into my mind, are made even more poignant by deep-rooted recollections of my students composing and performing their music, and my children playing an entire program of string quartets to an audience in Balmain Town Hall. Even today, a quarter of a century later, I still get a lump in my throat and tears welling up uncontrollably when I recall Ben’s stunning performances during Canberra’s First International Recorder Competition, Toby playing the Kol Nidrei of Bruch to mesmerised listeners, Jesse performing Spring from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with a local youth orchestra, Molly playing her heart out while raking in the money from a huge crowd as the cutest busker on Sydney’s Circular Quay, and Rosie playing with a group of her VCA friends at their graduation ceremony.

Given the state of digital streaming technology it is easy to imagine an infinite array of shards from these and all the other music I have heard or performed, intentionally or otherwise, edited and compressed into a single polyphonic composition. Quite legitimately, such an artefact could claim to represent the soundtrack of my life, with intersecting arcs referencing the lives of others – both loved ones and strangers. A contrapuntal aspect of a broader and far deeper humanity.

To arrive at an inclusively authentic soundscape we would also need to edit in sounds from nature - such as the hammering of tropical rain on dirt, bird song, the soughing breezes of summer in counterpoint with the drone of wasps in lime trees, cicadas in chorus, waves breaking on the seashore and deafening lightning cracks, as well as the unmitigated racket from a fabricated environment that bombards our senses day and night without us knowingly being aware of its intrusively intimidating clangour.

As my life is a 70 year-old score many of the sounds that were common in my youth have since become extinct or are becoming endangered species. The clip clop of the horse-drawn carts from Fosters Brewery for example. The cries of the Sun-Herald newspaper vendors at Flinders Street station. The distinctive click click of a rotary dial telephones and manual typewriters. The distracting hum of the movie projector…

And then there is the patois inflected with familiar dialects that weave their way like golden threads through the rest of the tapestry. Never to be forgotten, the calming words of my mother advising me how best to deal with village bullies who seemed to be drawn to me like bees to honey. The tender wit of old Bill Euston as he chided me for my reserve before launching into a theatrically impromptu recitation of a speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The first recognisable though quirky words uttered by my children as babies. The imperious tone of Mademoiselle [Nadia Boulanger] as she summoned me into her salon for a lesson in two-part counterpoint. The hushed intensity of Max Davies walking me bar by bar through the score of his St Thomas Wake while pointing out the various references to plainchant and other “found” sonic objects.

The great Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo wrote one of the most bitter-sweet poems in 20th century literature:

Everyone is alone on the heart of the Earth. Pierced by a ray of sun. And suddenly its evening.

Life is so fleeting. What seems interminably slow in youth rapidly hastens - passing us by in the single flutter of a hummingbird’s wing. And while it is true that both our coming into this world and our leaving it are solitary rites of passage, our individual journeys through life do not need to be quite as forlorn. Creating an enlivening and spiritually uplifting soundscape for one’s life is no mere accident. Harmony is a way to coherence. But it must be composed. The making of harmony is a deliberate act. Sadly it is far from clear we even appreciate what being human actually means, least of all the concept or the capacity to create a universal accord.

The age of individualism is over. In its place we have erected a pandemic of social alienation in an era of narcissism. Each individual is increasingly detached from the kind of society that might otherwise provide a sense of purposeful identity and of true meaning.

The result is pure noise. Fifteen seconds of fame for everyone. Lies in the ether. A cacophonic tower of Babel where science is disparaged, the arts are considered of no consequence, politics dwells in the gutter, and even ordinary common sense can not be heard over the clamorous din.

It should not be this way. And it does not have to be this way. We deserve better. But change starts with each one of us deciding that it need not be so.

With willing hearts, receptive minds, and an impulse for cooperation, our species could become an advanced civilisation of the kind we now dream about in science rather than in fiction. Accessing profound insight we could unite around a common desire to survive and to make genuine progress – not in terms of a short-sighted competition for more resources, nor one that suckles our current obsessions with fame and fortune. For when these are not forthcoming we increasingly retreat into palliative cocoons in our efforts to treat mind-numbing despair. Resorting to trite television rituals and guidance from virtual friends we have never met, this path leads uncompromisingly to a joylessly hedonistic collapse of the social order.

An empathic society, generous in spirit, determined to learn and to adapt, drawn to a devotion of truths briefly forgotten yet now brought more fully to mind, could help resolve these dilemmas. We might fulfill a greater fate even now. The opportunity to recapture some element of intelligence, enabling the restoration of concord among the human family, is too grand a challenge to reject out of hand. It is even greater a crime to ignore.