Toward a “Masonic
musicology”
Some theoretical
issues on the study of Music in relation to Freemasonry
Hacia una “musicología masónica”
Algunas cuestiones teóricas
sobre el estudio de la música en relación
con la masonería
David Vergauwen
Universidad
Libre de Bruselas, Bélgica
Recepción: 30 de noviembre de 2018/Aceptación:
15 de diciembre de 2018.
doi: https://doi.org/10.15517/rehmlac.v10i2.34940
Keywords
Ritual; Freemasonry; Music Theory; Ethnomusicology; Masonic Musicology.
Palabras clave
ritual; masonería; teoría
de la música; etnomusicología;
musicología masónica.
Abstract
The paradigm called ‘New Historicism’ and its many spin-offs like ‘New Musicology’, proclaims that an art historian should no longer
limit itself to solely the study of an artwork, but should instead focus on its
historical and sociological “context”. By means of a new tool that we shall
label “Masonic musicology” will argue
that the logic used by New Musicologists
and of even Ethnomusicologists also
applies to the study of music in relation to freemasonry. Studying a composer’s
involvement with freemasonry, can lead to inspiring new interpretations of a composer’s
work. The goal of this article is threefold; first, it determines some
interesting findings other scholars have put forward. Secondly, it is a
theoretical framework for the undertaking of similar studies. Thirdly, it relates
this theoretical framework to other up-to-date paradigms, to thus encourage scholars
not to treat the masonic connection in art as the taboo subject it sometimes is.
Resumen
El paradigma llamado “nuevo historicismo” y sus muchas ramificaciones
como “nueva musicología”, proclama que ya no se debería de limitar el estudio a la obra de arte en
sí misma, sino centrarse en el “contexto” de su historia y sociología.
Mediante una nueva herramienta que llamaremos “musicología masónica”. Se
argumenta que la lógica utilizada
por los nuevos
musicólogos, incluso los etnomusicólogos, también puede aplicarse
al estudio de la música en relación con la masonería. El estudio de la participación de un compositor en
la masonería puede conllevar nuevas interpretaciones de la música de dicho compositor. El objetivo de este artículo es
triple; primero, presenta algunos
hallazgos interesantes sobre este tema;
en segundo lugar, ofrecer un marco teórico para estudios similares; y en tercer lugar,
conecta este marco teórico con otros paradigmas actualizados para que ya no sea tabú tratar la conexión del arte con la masonería.
Introduction
Any scholar interested in music in relation to the
masonic phenomenon will easily perceive the divide between two competing
methodologies. On the one hand, there are studies that emphasize the context of
a piece of music, whereby cultural, economical and
political backgrounds are worked into an analysis to provide a clear picture of
what it was that made the piece relevant. On the other hand, there is a tendency
to insist on essentialism, which roughly explains music as a closed narrative,
made up by notes, keys, formulas, stylistic elements, instrumental colouration, etc. and freemasonry as an even more closed
circuit of codes, symbols, rituals an iconography. Therefore, music in relation
to freemasonry, is discussed in terms of keys having a certain hidden masonic
meaning, masonic symbols that can be translated into notes and musical formulas
that can be said to represent anything within a masonic context, if properly
argued. Even worse is the well-known and among some people beloved number game,
where bar numbers, strong beats or any other musical feature is counted, analysed and forced into an overall narrative in which the
author will equate certain meanings with numbers, thereby lending his or her analysis
an aura of scientific objectivity; it all adds up - the numbers don’t lie.
We have become accustomed to
perceiving the latter method as a thing of the past. And yet, if we consider
some of the numerological oddities that have been written in the past about
Mozart’s ‘Die Zauberflöte’,
one can be amazed by the extent by which this kind of thinking infiltrated the
way scholars still talk and write on the subject[1].
H.C. Robbins Landon is amongst Mozart scholars hardly a nobody. Yet, he too
went on quoting masonic numerology, incorporating it in his own description of higher
degrees that Mozart or his circle probably never knew. He then went on to point
out these numbers in the score of ‘Die Zauberflöte’[2].
This was then subsequently taken up by other authors quoting Robbins Landon as
an authority. Tjeu Van den Berk in his book on the
same opera claims the number eighteen as particularly significant and although
he makes some jokes on the expense of earlier numerologists (including Robbins
Landon), in the end, his own analyses relies heavily
on precisely this material[3].
Such claims have not yet ceased to make an impact, even on the most serious of
scholars. The 3rd
International Conference on the History of Freemasonry in may 2011 welcomed a paper about Mozart’s last symphony as a
contrapuntal temple in which images of temples and spiral staircases were said
to have been worked into the music[4].
It is quite clear that unless these authors can produce clear empirical
evidence that the numbers and correlations they present were premeditated or
thought to be of significance by contemporary commentators, their claims must
be conceived to be tenuous at best.
A scholar wanting to address the
issue of music in relation to freemasonry, has roughly two choices. He can
either focus on his intend to discover the “hidden meaning” behind a composer’s
score and interpret that meaning in terms of his masonic affiliations, or he
can try to find a way to explain why that piece had a particular masonic
association by looking at its historical context. This article will argue that
only the latter has a good chance of integrating the study of masonic music
within current academic tendencies within disciplines like musicology or
history. We will label this way of thinking “masonic musicology”, which must be
understood as a methodology that helps the scholar to deal with the particular
problems and pitfalls of studying music in relation to freemasonry. In this
article we will present examples of noteworthy studies that were inspirational
in our own research on Belgian masonic music[5].
Two things should be clear from the
start. First of all, I am not saying that solid studies on music and
freemasonry are things of the recent past. That would be needlessly
underestimating many early studies in this field that are still valuable today.
I am merely suggesting that in order to keep up with contemporary scholarly
practice, musicologists studying freemasonry should seek to make their
contributions relevant to other disciplines. They can do so by leaving behind
the old practice of “revealing” hidden symbolic meanings in scores and finding
their inspiration elsewhere. If anything, this article is an appeal to
musicologists wanting to study freemasonry to seek inspiration in other fields,
such as ethnomusicology or cultural anthropology. Some older studies already
did just that, even if the majority didn’t[6].
Second of all, although the term “masonic musicology” might be new, the
practice it describes is not. Indeed, this article will quote many examplary studies of music within the context of
freemasonry, none of them wielding the term “masonic musicology”. I am simply
bringing these studies together to uncover their common denominator, while
trying at the same time to highlight where and why these studies were relevant
contributions to other scholars, sometimes working on totally different topics.
It is precisely the question of how and when the study of masonic music could
be relevant in our understanding of the history of music or the history of
freemasonry in general, that concerns us.
What is ‘Masonic
musicology’?
The academical research into the history of
freemasonry has only recently – since little more than two decades or so -
caught up with the cutting edge of mainstream contemporary historical
scholarship. This kind of research has evolved from dull in-depth ‘histories’
of particular masonic lodges into a full-fledged research into the social,
religious, political and artistic position of the masonic phenomenon in its
historical context. However, the history of freemasonry is still a field that is very much “under construction”.
It is still seeking to define itself, still in the process of uncovering its
own methods, source materials and research terrain. Because this field is by
nature cross-disciplinary, scholars of other disciplines, such as philosophy,
history, sociology, religious studies and anthropology, have happily joined in.
All these scholars having only one thing in common: an interest in the history
of freemasonry.
This interest can be attributed to
the many new tools Post Modernism has
provided us. Only a few decades ago, scholars might have considered studying
anything in relation to freemasonry as too speculative, too arbitrary, too
shaky. It might even have caused problems for some scholars to associate
themselves with the field of masonic history, since a study of eighteenth-century
masonic music might have implied that the scholar in question was somehow
associated with or even supportive of freemasonry today. Even worse: he might
himself be a freemason. In the last few decades a tolerance amongst academics
has emerged that permits a serious scholar to venture into this previously
unspeakable terrain to pursue lines of inquiry earlier generations would have
regarded as professional suicide.
So, with the interest in the history
of freemasonry blosseming and the academic field
opening up to new lines of thought, it is not surprising that art historians
too, started to take an interest in the history of freemasonry. After all
architecture is a dominant theme within freemasonry, making it important for
art historians to study the architecture of houses, temples, gardens and other
various building features within the context of freemasonry[7].
Unfortunately less persistent were the attempts to
enter music into the equation. Taking into account all studies concerning music
and freemasonry, and eliminating all Mozart-related contributions, one is left
only with a very diverse collection of studies making all sorts of points,
using all sorts of methods, resulting in all sorts of quality. In our attempt
to introduce the tool called Masonic musicology, we will try to offer an
insight into the research possibilities for any kind of research of music in
relation to freemasonry.
When Art historians in the early
eighties refused to make an a priori
distinction between a cultural product and the times in which it was produced,
a new methodology called New Historicism was
coined.[8]
At first the movement consisted of a group of literary scholars, specialized in
Elizabethan and Jacobean Renaissance Literature[9]. During the nineteens the movement
spread its wings and it was soon taken up in other fields. In 1992 Jean Howard
famously wrote that the past “is not
simply ‘found’ in archives”, but is a construct made up of textualized
traces assembled in various configurations by the historian/interpreter[10].
The individuals the historian studies could not escape the urge to try and make
sense of the world around them. This means they were constantly relating their
own personal experiences to other economic, political, religious, artistic,
etc. experiences. In making sense of the world, every individual makes an
infinite amount of connections between his own experiences and the world around
him. This is what Stephen Greenblatt labelled the circulation of social energy[11].
To offer a concrete example of this circulation of social energy, we might
consider Richard Wagner’s last work, Parsifal,
first produced in Bayreuth in 1882. This is a bühnenweihfestspiel as Wagner
himself famously called it, about a young man, in search of his humanity, who
after many trails ends up being initiated into an all-male crypto-monastic
brotherhood of the Grail. Now imagine you are a nineteenth-century freemason,
trying to make sense of this work and its music. Is it so hard to imagine that
your own experience with masonic initiation rites colours
your view, your interpretation, your ‘making sense’ of Parsifal? Or the other way around: does a work like Parsifal influence a non-mason’s idea of
the masonic ritual? One does not need Wagner to be a freemason (he wasn’t!) in
order to accept that his Parsifal was
such a success amongst freemasons, because of their own experiences with ritual
practices. Such was the case in Brussels, where the first Belgian Wagner
Society was founded as early as 1872 and continued to thrive within an elite
circle of haut-bourgeois liberals, many of whom were
freemasons. Wagner’s music continued to be played at masonic meetings up until
the First World War[12].
So far for New Historicism. At the end of the nineties its musicological
spin-off, called New Musicology, was
established within the scientific community. In 2000 Susan McClary officially
declared “war” on every “purely musical” interpretation of music. Her work, and
that of her fellow New Musicologists,
was a quest for cultural interpretations of Western art music[13].
New Musicologists try to establish
the conditions for the production and reception of artworks, looking for the
elements that allowed cultural activities to “make sense” in the eyes of their
contemporaries. This was of course nothing very new. Taking their cue from
Greenblatt’s New Historicism, New Musicologists established a paradigm
that would explore in music history the kinds of processes Raymond Williams
calls “structures of feeling”, Frederic Jameson the “political unconscious”,
Roland Barthes “mythodologies”, Thomas Kuhn
“paradigms”, Kaja Silverman “dominant fictions” or
Ross Chambers “social contracts”[14].
So
musicologists started to search for the ‘social knowledge’ (mythologies,
symbols, conventions, etc.) an audience must have had when they tried to make
sense of an artistic product. In doing so, they are turning their backs on the
traditional method of hermeneutics that focuses on explicating deliberate
meanings. Now according to New Historicism
there is no one master-narrative, no monolithic explanation of events. To quote
Greenblatt himself: “It is important to
resist the temptation to reduce all cultural phenomena into a single master
discourse”[15].
A single song can be interpreted in multiple ways, can be put against so many
backgrounds, that one can say that the
background, the narrative and
ultimately the meaning of a song
cannot exist[16].
This leads McClary to rigorously declare that music “is assembled of heterogeneous elements that lead away from the autonomy
of the work to intersect with endless chains of other pieces, multiple – even
contradictory – cultural codes, various moments of reception, and so on. If
music can be said to be meaningful, it cannot be reduced to a single, totalized,
stable meaning[17].
This interpretive freedom made it
possible for other academic fields to develop their own brand of historicism, art history or musicology.
To offer new perspective on old materials, even the principles of ethnomusicology began to be applied to
the canon of Western classical music[18].
Now here is a field of expertise that can be of remarkable significance to the
study of masonic music. If you think about it, the interests of an
ethnomusicologist do not differ that much from those of a musicologists
of freemasonry. They both study a particular ‘tribe’ with its own unique
culture, its own habitat and habitus. They both try to figure out
what music means to them and how they employ it. Getting an ‘inside
understanding’ is important to both of them.
One concrete and noteworthy area of
research where ethnomusicology might be considered of crucial importance, is
the study of rituals and the role of music therein. The performance of rituals
strikes at the very core of masonic activity. Many noteworthy scholars like Jan
Snoek and Henrik Bogdan have rightfully devoted numerous well documented
contributions on the subject[19].
Some scholars trying to make sense of the masonic rituals they are studying,
have tried to find inspiration in the works of cultural anthropologists like
Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner. Geertz was an anthropologist whose field
work included the study of social interactions within well-defined communities.
This led to his magnum opus ‘The Interpretation of Cultures’,
published in 1973[20].
Geertz himself described his aim as “the
study of other peoples’ cultures (…) involves discovering who they think they
are, what they think they are doing and to what end they think they are doing
it”[21]. Once Geertz’s work was taken up by
sociologist, a field called “cultural sociology” was born, in which the
principles applied by anthropologists in their study of the behaviour
of other cultures, could be used in the sociological study of the many
subcultures within western society[22].
The work of Jeffrey Alexander in particular analyses many of the social and
political practices we have come to know today in terms of ‘rituals’ or
‘performances’[23].
It is therefore not hard to understand why historians of freemasonry tend to be
interested in the work of Clifford Geertz and his fellow cultural
anthropologists. In his work on a particular ritual, known as a ‘lodge of
sorrow’ in Belgium, Jeffrey Tyssens understandably
referred to cultural anthropology with Geertz and Turner as an inspiration for
his own study[24].
If it has become established
practice to employ methods thought up by cultural anthropologists to the study
of masonic rituals, does it not stand to reason that a musicologist interested
in masonic music might find inspiration in the methods of ethnomusicologists[25].
After all, the practice of studying music in relation to ritual practices
within that discipline is already decades old and many individual studies have
pointed out how music can play an important (and even crucial) part during a
ritual[26].
It would never occur to an ethnomusicologist to study the music without the
ritual. It is however standard practice for historians of freemasonry to study
the ritual without the music. The music of a masonic ritual is often regarded
as mere decoration and very few historians will stop to consider that music
might not only dictate the natural ‘flow’ of the ritual, but that it might also
‘perform’ in the sense that the music does not illustrate the ritual, it is a
part of it.
A good case in point is the Belgian
lodge of Sorrow, given in Brussels on 10 February 1866. It is one of the
rituals studied by Jeffrey Tyssens[27].
He could not have studied the cantate written especially
for this occasion, since it was thought to be irretrievably lost. It was not
until the rather recent recovery of the composer’s autograph in the collection
of the Royal Music Conservatory in Brussels that further research was made
possible[28]. With
the score published and performed, it was possible to study the place and the
purpose of the music in this ritual. One of the most striking features of this two-part
cantate was that the first part effectively voiced
the sorrow of the attending freemasons by the loss of their departed king. The
end of this first part is an actual prayer in which the bass singer asks the
freemasons the stand, before he leads them in prayer asking Jehovah to admit
the soul of the dead king to paradise. It is interesting to note that at that
point in the ritual, the music is not illustrating anything, it is trying to
actually achieve something: the attending masons are trying to sing the
deceased ruler into heaven. This is an act that has many parallels in other
cultures, like the Thai Mon, who play the Phleg Prachum Phloeng
when the body is given over the flames, in order to sing the deceased to eternity.
In the second part of the cantates, however, the
masons take a more relaxed attitude, where they are invited to witness a small
play acted out in which the soul of the dead king enters into a dialogue with
Jehovah himself. Here the freemasons will find out whether their actions in the
first part can be deemed successful and the outcome of this little drama is
later commented upon.
So here we have a clear distinction
between the more passive attitude in the second part of the cantate
and the more active role they have in the first. In the first part the masons
are asked to perform part of their ritual by singing, while in the second part
they are simply expected to sit back and wait for the outcome of their actions.
In anthropological terms, the music of this ritual teaches us what those
freemasons thought they could do to participate in the spiritual
transfiguration of their deceased figure head. This is exactly what masonic
musicology should be all about: making sense of freemasonry by means of the
music they use.
While ethnomusicology might be a great
inspiration when dealing with the music that accompanies masonic rituals, masonic
musicology is a much broader term that draws inspiration from all kinds of ways
in which we have come accustomed to study music. Composers who are freemasons,
for example, are often very conscious of the philosophical choices they make.
This might in turn colour their political and social
views. One brand of musicology that is very focused on the way a composer’s
identity can find its way to his or her music, is “queer musicology”. In 1990
queer musicology arrived at a conference of the American Musicological Society, which resulted, in 1994, in the
first edition of The New Gay and Lesbian
Musicology by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood and Gary C. Thomas[29].
There are indeed some similarities between these queer musicologists and any
musicologist who wants to study music in relation to freemasonry. Just like the
New Gay and Lesbian Musicologist the masonic musicologist needs to be sensitive
about the philosophical and cultural choices ‘his’ musicians made (make) in
life.
For instance, if Philip Brett argues
that it is up to the New Gay and Lesbian Musicologist to a) discover new facts
(Was Schubert gay?) and b) study themes as homophobia and homosexuality in
relation to musical analyses, then it must be said that the task of the Masonic
Musicologist is not at all that different. He also needs to a) discover new
facts (Was Beethoven a freemason?) and b) study masonic themes in relation to
musical analyses (including anti-masonry). In that way, masonic musicology can
be understood as a spin-off of New
musicology. It is a tool especially sharpened to tackle the sometimes
unique problems of dealing with music that is in any way associated with
freemasonry. Let’s now turn away from the theoretical issue to tackle the
objectives of this methodology, by way of a couple of examples.
What is the objective of ‘Masonic musicology’?
The
object of Masonic musicology must be
twofold. In the strict sense it involves either the discovery of new historical
facts and data or new and revealing interpretations of those facts. Extensive
research in archives can ‘out’ a
composer as a freemason and confirmation of this membership can shed a new
light on his intellectual or artistic discourse. It might even offer some
insight into the audience this musician was composing for and this in turn
might have dictated his musical style, format or language. So, establishing a
composer as a freemason can have serious repercussions for anyone attempting a serious
analysis of his musical style. It could also work the other way around. A study
of a composer’s style and social network could result in him being labelled a
‘possible’ or even ‘probable’ freemason, without having documentary certainty.
In the wider sense, Masonic musicology must address two
valuable question, namely: 1) how is a composer’s membership to a masonic
fraternity relevant to his music? 2) how is the reaction of a masonic audience
relevant to a composer’s reputation and his music? Some music can be
‘experienced’ as being ‘masonic’ in spirit. How does this relate to the composer
and his music? In what follows, we want to analyze the relevancies of such
claims. In doing so, we will give three examples of how a masonic interpretation can have a huge impact on the understanding
of a composer, his work and his culture. In the first example we will talk
about a freemason (Mozart) as the author of an established masonic inspired
opera (Die Zauberflöte),
in the second example we will talk about a composer who was most probably not a
freemason (Händel) as the author of an opera with a
loose masonic connection (Orlando). Lastly,
we will talk about another freemason (Meyerbeer) as the author of an opera with
only a very loose masonic connection (Les
Huguenots).
Most freemasons today would still consider Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte
to be a masonic piece. They have good reason to do so, since freemasonry is
arguably the most obvious
intellectual background of this opera[30].
One could point out that its authors were all freemasons, that Mozart wrote a
great deal of other masonic music, one could even call upon many themes in the
opera that were being discussed amongst freemasons in Vienna at that time (i.e.
Egyptian religion, ancient mysteries, attitudes towards freethinking, etc.)[31].
One could argue that even some contemporaries regarded freemasonry as a key to
the opera. Or one could simply point out the parallels between a masonic
initiation ritual and the initiation ritual that is being observed in the opera[32].
In the face of this overwhelming evidence, it is difficult to maintain that
Freemasonry was of little or no importance at all in the creation of this work.
Some authors do try to debunk the
masonic-interpretation-thesis by pointing out that the opera is clearly a fairy tale and not a masonic allegory[33].
But such a claim should address the issue why one interpretation must exclude
all others. In other words: why can’t it be both? One should remember that New
Historians and New Musicologists do not believe there to be one single master
discourse. So, from that point of view the argument that one interpretation
cannot be correct, because another interpretation might make more sense, is
nonsense. Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has a clear masonic narrative, but this
does not exclude other interpretations. Moreover, freemasons did recognize a masonic connection in
this opera, since some German masonic songbooks, like the ones by Höheim (1795) and Mahncke (1798)
quickly borrowed or adapted songs from Die
Zauberflöte, which shows that this opera was, in
Jay MacPherson’s words, at least Mason-friendly[34]. So even if, by some strange
interpretation, the masonic connection was not made by the authors of the
opera, it was soon recognized by its audience.
Considering Händel’s Orlando as a masonic piece is a
different issue altogether. In his attempt to label this opera as ‘masonic’
William Gibbons concentrated on the figure of Zoroastro, the sorcerer whose
character is clearly modelled after the Persian prophet Zoroaster[35].
In exploring where the character for Händel’s opera
originated, Gibbons mentions a whole lot of seventeenth and
eighteenth century books and plays where a figure like Zoroastro (and with a similar name) is using his
supernatural powers to educate and instruct a young pupil in some sort of
spiritual or moral quest. Chief amongst those publications is The Travels of Cyrus, published in Paris
in 1727 by Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686-1743), better known as the prominent
freemason Chevalier Ramsay. Gibbons then explores the success of Ramsay and his
publication in London, especially the circle around the Royal Society.
Following a strong argument in which he credits Nicola Haym
with the authorship over the libretto of Händel’s Orlando, he then establishes a
connection between Haym and Ramsay, right about the
time the libretto is supposed to have been compiled.
Digging deeper, Gibbons then traces the success of the
Zoroaster character within masonic circles, arriving at the conclusion that Händel and Haym were capitalising on Ramsay’s success by incorporating what
seems to have been understood as ‘masonic themes’ into their opera, ensuring
the curiosity about this work amongst freemasons. Indeed, there was no shortage
of freemasons amongst Händel’s patrons; the Duke of Mantagu and prince Frederick being the most prominent ones.
In short, according to Gibbons, Händel and Haym were consciously targeting a masonic audience with Orlando, or at least an audience
interested in or curious about freemasonry. This might be one of his article’s
most significant conclusions. Gibbons then wraps it all up by pointing at some
other details and symbols in the opera that would have “made sense” to an
English freemason around 1730, adding further weight to the afore mentioned
conclusion that this marketing strategy was in fact a conscious move by the
authors of the opera.
Readers of this article who wanted to find out whether
Händel was a freemason or not, will be disappointed.
It is obvious that William Gibbons did not consider it a goal to ‘out’ either Händel or Haym as a freemason.
Indeed, it is even implied that they were most probably not freemasons. The
value of the article transcends this rather dull proposition of ‘was he?’ or
‘wasn’t he?’. It rather shows that freemasonry was a cultural force to be
reckoned with. At least, Händel and Haym believed their influence to be strong enough to
incorporate alleged masonic themes into the opera, hoping that would result in
more performances. Gibbon’s analyses offer valuable insights into cultural
history, masonic history, the reception history of this opera and so on. This
is exactly what masonic musicology should be all about.
A very similar case could be made for the opera Zoroastre by
Jean-Philippe Rameau and indeed Graham Sadler has tried on more than one
occasion to qualify the work as “L’Opéra maçonnique avant Mozart”[36].
Again, whether or not Rameau was a freemason or not is only of secondary
importance (he probably wasn’t). More important is what themes might have been
considered “masonic” by at least some part of the audience. If these themes
were indeed recognized as being ‘masonic’, we can then proceed to find out
where they came from and whether or not they were a conscious effort on behalf
of the composer or his librettist. The results of this study can therefore be
considered a significant contribution to the field French cultural history,
halfway the eighteenth century.
In the cases of both Rameau and Händel
it is impossible to say whether they were freemasons on the basis of their
music alone. Without solid documentary evidence no one should make a claim for
any composer (or indeed anyone) to have been a member of the fraternity. The
fact that their opera’s appealed to freemasons and incorporated some masonic
themes or elements does not instantly turn their authors into freemasons. As I
have said before, without solid evidence, one can only assign various shades of
“greys”: from “possibly” to “probably” to “very probably” to “almost
certainly”.
A totally different line of inquiery
must be used when approaching Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Grand Opéra Les Huguenots of 1836. Meyerbeer was a
German Jew working in Paris who was probably initiated into freemasonry some
time during the 1830s. Just like Mozart, Meyerbeer took the fraternity very
seriously and at the time of his death he was Souverain Grand Inspecteur Général
and had earned his 33rd degree. Meyerbeer’s appears in the records
of many Parisian lodges as a membre d’honneur and visited two of them on a regular basis[37].
Just like the typical liberal bourgois politics,
liberal freemasonry Grand Opéra,
Meyerbeer himself was very much a product of the Orléans-regime (1830-1848) in
France.
A serious scholar could attempt to hold Meyerbeer’s
masterpiece against the political and social culture of his time to see what
the role of freemasonry could be in his work[38].
Given the fact that Meyerbeer and his librettist Eugène Scribe, started working
on this project around 1831, the opera must be seen against the backdrop of the
revolution of 1830[39].
The opera about religious violence culminating in the Saint-Bartholomew
Massacre of 1572 was a strong statement against the pro-clerical policies under
Charles X and his tendency toward the fusion of state and religion. It was the
time where non-catholics were being discriminated
against and where sacrilege was being punished by death[40].
This sort of political thinking was swiped away by the revolution of 1830 and
his religious politics were certainly a factor of the downfall of Charles X,
the last of the Bourbon kings.[41]
Typically themes such as freedom and tolerance are very explicitly promoted
within freemasonry, while intolerance, prejudice and irrationality are
condemned. This seems to be the case in the opera as well. Would it not be
valuable to explore the masonic network around Meyerbeer and to discover what
they were talking about during the 1830s? Would it not be valuable to point out
in detail the similarities between the message of the opera and the teachings
of freemasonry, using examples that must have inspired Meyerbeer himself? Would
it not be valuable to study the reactions of freemasons in response to this
opera?
What is the value of Masonic musicology?
Masonic musicology’s first concern must be to study
the relations between music, its reputation and society. Freemasonry, like any
other discourse, cannot help but influence the world around herself. She might
have helped in shaping new artistic styles, in spreading new ideas or in
stimulating social or political movements. Freemasonry also influenced enough
composers for them to write ‘masonic music’, but masonic musicologists should
not limit themselves to the music of Mozart and other well-known composers who
were clearly freemasons. As the examples of Händel
and Rameau make clear, one can study masonic culture by using their music and
still come up with interesting results for other scholars in other fields,
whereas a historian who limits himself to a dull in-depth history of his lodge,
might not be of similar interest to other scholars. There are many connections
to be found by looking at the way in which freemasonry interacted with music.
And contributions within masonic musicology might be valuable for historians
studying other topics, like nationalism or cultural identity.
Hermine Weigel Williams, for instance, analyzed the
masonic music of Jean Sibelius against the background of the Finnish struggle
against Russia (1917-1945). Sibelius was initiated in Helsinki in 1924. From
the turn of the century onward, Sibelius had dared to support events that
championed nationalism and freedom for the people of Finland. When writing his
masonic music, he was actively participating in a dream that had become
reality. Joining freemasonry was just another way to express his love for liberty
and his country. It inspired him to rewrite his famous Finlandia for male chorus on a text by his fellow-mason Wäinö Sola, shortly after the Russo-Finnish Winter War of
1939. Although the Finlandia-Hymn was
never used for any ritual function for the lodges of Finland, it was sung often
enough at the conclusion of masonic meetings and it nearly became the Finnish national
anthem at one point[42].
Therefore, one cannot escape the conclusion that
masonic musicology can teach us much about how music participated in shaping
notions like nationalism and civil society in eighteenth-nineteenth-and
twentieth century culture. Being able to make a ‘masonic connection’, means we
as scholars are given the chance to paint a better picture of the people we
study and the art we came to inherit from them. Freemasonry however, is no
clear set of values, codes of symbols. Freemasonry, like every other social
enterprise, changes and varies over time. Mozart’s freemasonry was totally different
from that of Sibelius. Freemasonry does not have an essence in that way that
every mason who ever lived has the same ideas about it. After all, freemasonry,
like art, is a means in which people are trying to make sense of the world
around them. This, in turn, means that finding a masonic connection in a study
about a work of art, a composer or a network of musicians, is like being
offered a window into the ideas that surround this particular piece of art,
composer or network. Find out what freemasons were up to and you might be able
to get a better understanding of what the music you are studying is all about.
It would be a pity if we were to ignore such a line of inquiry simply because
the connection with freemasonry might prove to be a subject too sensitive or
too tricky to pursue.
Conclusion
This article holds the position that if the
musicologist wants to contribute to the research of the masonic phenomenon, he
would profit from following the example of the historian, who has in recent
times given up writing detailed histories of individual lodges. Instead, he has
tried to attain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon by incorporating into
his own methods those of other disciplines. Musicologists and musicians, by
nature, have tended to focus on notes, scores, instruments and acoustics and
have seldom ventured outside of their own comfort zone. Some of them have done
so in the (fairly) recent past: the new musicologists, the queer musicologists
and others have tried to find ways to study their topic of choice in relation
to music. A masonic musicologist’s ambitions should be nothing less.
A masonic musicologist should in no
way give up analyzing musical scores. He should however refrain from doing so
by trying to “unlock” some sort of musical code, to reveal some hidden
symbolism or to count notes and make them fit a preconceived numerological
agenda. In such instances, the analyses will refer to little outside the
musical score itself and it will be difficult to prove that the codes or
symbols one discovers there, exist outside the mind of the discoverer. We all
know that freemasons have a reputation of secrecy, of using codes, symbols and
rituals, but that does not mean that scholars studying this phenomenon should
be encouraged to see symbols or codes everywhere they look, even in musical
scores.
A more interesting way of dealing
with masonic music, its musicians, its patrons, its performance history, its
musical thought, etc. is to focus on the world and the culture that produced
it. After all, music can only be said to be meaningful, once it is performed.
That is to say: when others have tried to make sense out of it and have in some
way responded to it. In studying music in relation to freemasonry, the
musicologist should open up the field by trying to build bridges to other
areas: the study of rituals, the study of cultural practices, the study of
nationalism, etc. – all examples that have led to concrete and sometimes even
fascinating results. This means skimming through the theoretical literature of
ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology, civil society, etc., looking for
inspiration. Finding out how masonic music “works” or how masonic themes can
resonate through music or why they were important to either the author(s) or (a
small part of) his public can shed new light on our understanding of
freemasonry in particular or cultural history in general. Only then will the
work of the masonic musicologist be more likely to be taken into account by
others and be deemed relevant.
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[1]
Johannes Duda, Gunther Kerner and Dieter Dalchow, W.A. Mozart
– Die Dokumentation seines Todes
(Pähl/Obb: von Bebenburg, 1966).
[2] H.C.
Robbins-Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year
(New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 127-132.
[3] M.F.M. Van Den Berk, The
Magic Flute: Die Zauberflöte: An Alchemical Allegory (Leiden:
Brill, 2004). There is a separate section in the book discussing the number 18.
[4] Neva Krysteva, “Mozart: The contrapuntal temple in the last
symphony” (Paper presented in the 3rd
International Conference on the History of Freemasonry, The George
Washington Masonic National Memorial, Alexandria, Virginia, 27-29 may, 2011).
[5] David Vergauwen,
Kolommen van
Harmonie. Muziek en Vrijmetselarij in het Brussel van de Negentiende Eeuw (Brussel: ASP, 2015), 193-207.
[6] A good
example is the often-quoted study of Nettle on Mozart’s masonic music: Paul Nettle,
Mozart and Masonry (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1957).
[7]
Freemasonry and architecture: James Stevens Curl, The Art & Architecture of Freemasonry (New York, 1999).
Freemasonry and art: Christophe Loir and Jacques Lemaire, Franc-Maçonnerie et Beaux-Arts (Bruxelles: 2007); Helmut Reinalter,
Freimaurerische Kunst – Kunst der Freimaurerei
(Innsbruck: 2005); Jeffrey Tyssens ed., Schatten Van De Tempel
(Mercatorfonds, 2006). Freemasonry and Garden
Architecture: Alf Hermann, Geheimes Louisenlund. Einblicke in Europa’s Bedeutendsten
Freimaurerpark (Kiel, 2010); Jan Snoek, Monika
Scholl & Andréa Kroon eds., Symbolik in Gärten des 18. Jahrhunderts. Der Einfluss unterschiedlicher philosophischer Strömungen, wie auch der Freimaurerei
(Den Haag, 2006); Franz Wegener, Der Freimaurergarten (Norderstedt, 2008). Freemasonry and film: Jean-Louis Coy, Forces Occultes. Le complet judéo-maçonnique
au cinéma (Paris, 2008).
[8] Stephen
Greenblatt ed., “The Forms of Power and the Power of Forms in the Renaissance”,
Genre 15 (1982): 5.
[9] Jürgen Pieters, Moments of
Negotiation. The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt (Amsterdam, 2001), 25.
[10] Jean
Howard, “The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies”, inNew Historicism and Renaissance Drama, :
Richard Wilson & Richard Dutton eds. (London/New York, 1992), 19-32.
[11] Stephen
Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations:
The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley, 1988), introduction.
[12] Vergauwen, “Wagner und die Freimaurer
– Die Wagner-Mode in Brüssel (1870-1900)”, Wagnerspectrum 2 (2012):
201-210.
[13] Susan
McClary, Conventional Wisdom. The Content
of Musical Form (Berkeley/London, 2000), 1-2.
[14] Again refering to: Susan McClary,
“Conventional Wisdom”, 4-5; and also: Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977); Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a
Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, 1981); Roland Barthes, Mythologies trans. A. Lavers
(New York, 1972); Thomas S. Kuhn, The
Structure of Scientific Revoutions (Chicago, 1962);
Kaja Silverman, “The Dominant Fictions”, in Male Subjectivity at the Margins, ed. Kaja Silverman (New York, 1992); Ross Chambers, Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction and
the Power of Fiction (Minneapolis, 1984).
[15] Greenblatt,
Shakespearean Negotiations, 3.
[16] Greenblatt,
“The Forms of Power”, 5.
[17] McClary,
“Conventional Wisdom”, 7.
[18] Bruno Nettl, “Mozart and the Ethnomusicological Study of Western
Culture: An Essay in Four Movements”, in Desciplining Music: Musicology and its Canon, Katherine Bergeron & Philip V.
Bohlman eds. (Chicago, 1992), 137-155.
[19] Henrik
Bogdan, Western Esotericism and Rituals
of Initiation (New York, 2007); Bogdan. “The Sociology of the Construct of
Tradition and Import of Legitimacy in Freemasonry”, in Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western
Esotericism, Andreas Kilcher ed. (Leiden/Boston:
Brill, 2010), 217-238; Snoek, Initiations.
A methodological approach to the Application of Classification and Definition
Theory in the Study of Rituals (Pijnacker, 1987);
Snoek, Initiating Women in Freemasonry:
The Adoption Rite (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Jens Kreinath,
Snoek & Michael Stausberg, Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts (Leiden/Boston:
Brill, 2007).
[20]
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of
Cultures (New York, 1973).
[21] Geertz,
“Passage and Accident: A Life of Learning”, in Available Lights: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics
(Princeton, 2000), 16.
[22] Jeffrey
Alexander & Philip Smith, “Introduction: The Rise and Fall an Rise of Clifford Geertz”, Interpreting Clifford Geertz. Cultural
Investigation in the Social Sciences, eds. Alexander, Smith & Matthew Norton
(New York, 2011), 1-8.
[23] Alexander
ed., The Meaning of Social Life: A
Cultural Sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) and “Cultural
Pragmatics: Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy”, Sociological Theory 22, no. 4 (2004):
527-573.
[24] Tyssens, In Vrijheid Verbonden. Studies over Belgische Vrijmetselaars en hun Maatschappijproject
in de 19de eeuw (Gent, 2009), 161-200.
[25] Jaap
Kunst, Musicologica: A Study of the Nature of Ethnomusicology,
Its Problems, Methods and Representative Personalities (Amsterdam, 1950).
[26] For
example: Deborah Wong, “Mon Music for Thai Deaths: Ethnicity and Status in Thai
Urban Funerals”, in Asian Folklore
Studies 57, no. 1 (1998): 99-130; Joseph C. Hermanowicz
& Harriet P. Morgan, “Ritualizing the Routine: Collective Identity
Affirmation”, Sociological Forum 14, no.
2 (1999): 197-214. Jan Houben, “The Ritual Pragmatics
of a Vedic Hymn: The «Riddle Hymn» and the Pravargya
Ritual”, Journal of the American Oriental
Society 120, no. 4 (2000): 499-536; Dana Rappopor,
“Ritual Music and Christianization in the Toraja
Highlands, Sulawesi”, Ethnomusicology
48 (2004): 378-404 and many more.
[27] Tyssens, “A Lodge of Sorrow for King Leopold I of Belgium
(1866): Masonic Patriotism and Spirituality on Trial”, Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism 3, no. 2 (2012):
248-264.
[28] Vergauwen, “‘Aux Mânes d’un F[rère] qui fut Roi’: a Cantata by K.L. Hanssens On the Death of King Leopold I of the Belgians”, Journal for Research into Freemasonry and
Fraternalism 3, no. 2 (2012): 265-287.
[29] Philip Brett,
Elizabeth Wood & Gary C.Thomas
eds., Queering the Pitch. The New Gay and
Lesbian Musicology (London/New York, 2006).
[30] Jan Assmann, Die Zauberflöte: Oper
und Mysterium (München/Wien, 2005), 20.
[31] Helmut
Perl, Der Fall “Zauberflöte”.
Mozarts Oper im Brennpunkt der Geschichte (Zürich/Mainz, 2000); Assmann,
Die Zauberflöte.
[32] Jacques
Chailly, The
Magic Flute Unveiled. Esoteric Symbolism in Mozart’s Masonic Opera (Rochester,
1992).
[33] David
Buch is the principal disbeliever of the Masonic Thesis. However, his view is a
minority view and his attempts to shield the opera from any masonic
contextualisation is very deliberate. It takes a conscious effort on his behalf
to misread the evidence and draw his conclusions: Buch, “Die Zauberflöte, Masonic Opera and Other Fairy Tales”, Acta Musicologica 76
(2004): 193-219. The claim is repeated in Buch, Magic Flutes & Enchanted Forests. The Supernatural in
Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater (Chicago, 2008),
333.
[34] Jay
Macpherson, “The Magic Flute and Freemasonry”, University of Toronto Quarterly 76, no. 4 (2007): 1075.
[35] William
Gibbons, “Divining Zoroastro: Masonic Elements in Händel’s Orlando”, Eighteenth-Century
Life 34, no. 2 (2010): 65-82.
[36] Sadler,
L’Opéra maçonnique avant Mozart, 13-17, and “Zoroastre”, New Grove Dictionary
of Opera 4, 1244-1246.
[37] Gérard Gefen, “Les Musiciens et la franc-maçonnerie”, Fayard (1993) :
152-154. The
two lodges he frequented in Paris were: Reconnaissance
par les émules d’Hiram and
Les Trinosophes.
[38] Unfortunatly such an attempt has not yet been made.
[39] Robert
Ignatius Letellier, The Opera’s of Giacomo Meyerbeer (Cranbury,
2006), 131-132.
[40] Jean-Baptiste Duvergier,
Collection complète des Lois, décrèts, ordonnances, réglemens
et avis du conseil-d’état, (1925, Tome XXV),
73-76.
[41] Vincent
W. Beach, 1825: The Decisive Year of
Charles Xs Reign (Boulder Colorado, 1967), 20.
[42] Hermine
Weigel Williams, Sibelius and His Masonic
Music. Sounds in Silence (Bloomington, 2008), 3 and 84-93.