Tea at Trianon: The Disappearance of Song

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Disappearance of Song

Anthony Esolen explores the use of song in John Ford films, saying:

Men and women, in Ford's movies, are titanic mysteries, kings and queens walking the earth in ordinary garb; endlessly fascinating to one another and so powerful in their masculinity and femininity that talk of equality misses the beauty and the danger altogether. How can you talk of equality when you encounter a whirlwind and an earthquake? The marriage of such creatures is always an unadulterated good, as it portends both creation and procreation: a farm, a village, a culture, and children.

Notable, therefore, in Ford's movies is song. I don't mean simply music; I don't know whether any of the scores he commissioned can come up, say, to the haunting music of Miklos Rosza in William Wyler's Ben-Hur. But while nobody does much singing in that biblical epic, in the work of Ford -- which, as I've suggested, is irrepressibly biblical and epic no matter where it is set -- people are forever singing. How Green Was My Valley is a tapestry of Welsh hymns and folk tunes: "Cwm Rhondda," "Men of Harlech," and "Bryn Calafria" are the three I happen to know, though there are many others.

Why are the people singing? Because they have something to sing about. They sing their union as a people. They sing their faith. They sing the beauty of man and woman, as they gather to celebrate (with good strong drink) the wedding night approaching. They sing for the birth of children.