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Symposium 2000 Newsletter
World Peace through Reverence for Life
September 30 - October 15, 2000
Thurston Moore, Editor April, 2000 Number 15
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Items in this issue
Fabulous Concerts on Opening and Closing Days of Symposium
2000
Concert for World Peace - The Voices of Bahá
Symphony No. 1 - "Paths of Peace"
Pope John Paul II's Apology Echoes the Words of Albert
Schweitzer
Nuclear Weapons on Hair-Trigger Alert
Vanderbilt Schools Announce Speakers
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"A musician must make music,
an artist must paint,
a poet must write,
if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
What a man can be, he must be."
?Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970)
Motivation and Personality, 1954 |
Fabulous Concerts on Opening and Closing Days of Symposium 2000
Concert for World Peace
The Voices of Bahá
September 30 - 7:30 pm ? Langford Auditorium, Vanderbilt University
The Bahá´í Faith is an independent world religion, founded in
Persia in the 19th century, with adherents in virtually every
country. Bahá'ís around the world represent nearly all nationalities,
classes, trades, and professions. Its membership of over 5 million
comprises people living in more than 116,000 localities in over
188 countries and 45 territories –166 of which are independent
nations –and unites men and women of various religious and ethnic
origins. More than 2,100 ethnic, racial, and tribal groups are
represented.
The Bahá´í teachings encourage: the fostering of good character
and the development of spiritual qualities; the eradication of
prejudice; the achievement of a dynamic coherence between the
spiritual and practical requirements of life; the development
of the unique talents and abilities of each individual; the equality
of women and men; and the establishment of universal education.
The Bahá´í International Community has accredited consultative
status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)
and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Also affiliated
with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and since 1948
with the UN Office of Public Information, it has representatives
with the United Nations in New York, Geneva, and Paris.
The Voices of Bahá
The Voices of Bahá is an international touring choir, with members
from dozens of countries around the world. The majority of its
members come from the United States and Canada.
Their first performance was in Carnegie Hall in November 1992.
In October 1993 they toured Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova, appearing
in the finest concert halls in those countries, including the
Moscow Conservatory and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall. In Russia
they performed and recorded with the Maly Moscow Symphony Orchestra.
The choir was so well-received in Russia that a major television
network, the Mir Inter-Governmental Radio and Television Network,
contracted them to return to Russia for live concerts and television
broadcasts throughout the former Soviet Union countries.
Since then they have performed in the U.S. on several occasions,
including Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, St. Louis,
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Little Rock, and Nashville.
In July and August of 1996 they toured Europe again, performing
in 10 countries and traveling from London to Moscow, where they
were recorded by the Mir Network for radio and television broadcasts
throughout 13 countries.
They toured Europe for the 4th time in the spring of 1997, performing
in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Brussels, Lausanne, Vienna,
and Florence. In July and August of 1997, they performed concerts
in an eight-country tour of Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Macao, The
Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The Spring of 1998 saw the 7th tour of the group since 1993, when
they performed in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Greece.
In the summer of 1999 they toured the United States on a riverboat
along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, performing in cities from
Cincinnati to New Orleans.
The group performs in a variety of styles of choral music, ranging
from western classical music, to African-American Gospel, traditional
Persian music, and the music from many different cultures.
Often the concerts of the Voices of Bahá are in aid of charitable
causes, such as UNESCO, UNICEF, United Nations, and various other
causes. All the singers in the group are members of the Bahá´í
Faith, and hope through their music to promote the ideals of world
peace and the unity of mankind.
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World Premiere
Symphony No. 1 "Paths of Peace"
Dedicated to the Life and Work of Albert Schweitzer
Commissioned by Thurston Moore, Executive Director, Symposium
2000 and The Nashville Symphony
October 15 - 7 pm
Michael Alec Rose, the composer, writes:
Dr. Schweitzer's philosophy of peace should not have surprised
me by its tough-mindedness, but it did. A man who chose to give
up the comforts of his European youth, who likewise put aside
his early and brilliant explorations of theology and music, all
so that he could establish a hospital in remotest Africa – I should
have known that to such a man, there could be no easy way of knocking
down the intractable obstacles to world peace.
In Schweitzer's thought, it is the wedding of uncompromising realism
about human cruelty and undiminished faith in human compassion
towards suffering that strikes me as so fine. His thought extends
beyond wishful thinking; it is completely removed from sentimentality
or metaphysical abstraction. His urgent call for "reverence for
life" takes into account the bleak pessimism that tempts any student
of history. Dr. Schweitzer was hopeful for the future of our race,
but his hopefulness was not vague by any means: he sought actively,
politically, materially, a radical transformation of the way we
live and think and act. His philosophy was one of action, his
life one of boundless activity, and his heart supremely capable
of embracing paradoxes of the human condition that make so many
other thinkers despair.
All through the composing of "Paths of Peace," I held the image
of this hero somewhere in thought and let it do its unconscious
work on me. After the symphony was completed, I opened up the
pages of Schweitzer's own critical biography of J. S. Bach, the
250th anniversary of whose death we also commemorate in this concert.
There, I discovered that what mattered most to Schweitzer about
music was its symbolic power. The language he used to analyze
Bach's cantatas –rhythms of felicity, motives of grief, joy, terror,
firmness, lassitude, tumult, exhaustion, and beatific peace –may
seem a bit quaint to us; but in fact, these descriptions faithfully
reflect the musical aesthetics of Bach's own time.
I felt an eerie pleasure when I found Schweitzer's list of Bach's
"characteristic ideas and feelings." It was like opening a bible
at random and happening upon a verse that speaks with a special
aptness to your life at that moment. For here I was looking at
something very like an inventory for the symbolic ingredients
of the five movements of the symphony I had just composed. I even
took a shot at describing the opening movement using Schweitzer's
set of terms, and it was just about on target. Here's how it goes:
The opening song unfolds in three waves, progressing from lassitude
towards firmness, with transitions of tumult in between. This
first song sequence gives way to another song, similarly shaped,
but more joyful than the first. It is overtaken by the first,
whose fourth wave leads to a rhythm that hovers near felicity,
giving way at last to grief and terror. Peace of a sort follows,
though it is a far cry from "beatific," really just a respite
from the ongoing drama of the two main songs. In the last few
minutes of the first movement, joy contends with exhaustion, and
new advocates of firmness are heard from.
I ask the listener to bear in mind that the foregoing description
is an obvious exaggeration. The emotional states of music can
never be pinned down so readily. My point is that this first movement
is drawn –as Schweitzer claims that Bach's cantatas are drawn
–as a landscape of themes cast in various shades of feeling, more
or less at odds with each other, which in the course of their
interactions show some inklings not only of compatibility, but
of actual and absolute identity with each other.
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The second movement is an elegy, a meditation on the sweetness
and the grief of memory. A song, taught to me by two elegant ladies
who learned it as little girls in synagogue in Germany in the
1930s, has a ghostly presence in this movement, and tries to materialize;
but the risk of bearing false witness or invoking false sentiment
is very great, and the reverence for lost life is an almost unbearable
burden for music to sing. Still, to refrain from singing would
be worse. These words –"burden," "refrain" –are also musical terms
for melodic constancy, or intermittent repetition. The tale must
be told, ever and again. I hope the two ladies, who have my heartfelt
thanks, will be pleased by the telling.
The third movement celebrates Dr. Schweitzer's life most directly.
It is clear to me that wherever he went, whatever he did, the
world was a better place, more alive, fraught with hope, transparent
with possibilities, always, endlessly with work of the greatest
importance to be done. He placed the highest premium on the freedom
and well-being of the individual living thing, of whatever color
or culture, or even species. The various interlocking dances of
this movement move to a vision of peace that is the enemy of quiescence,
the foe of resignation and despair: the movement is here, the
time is now, humanity is ripe, peace is in reach, hold out your
hand.
The fourth movement brings together two texts of very different
character and spirit. The soprano voice sings the last portion
of Osip Mandelstam's poem "Whoever Finds a Horseshoe," and the
baritone voice sings the last portion of Norman Nicholson's poem
"A Turn for the Better." Mandelstam is felt by many poets and
critics to be the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century.
He was a Jew who had a deep love for the ethos of ancient Greece,
and this combination made him a natural enemy of Stalin, who hounded
him ultimately to his death in the Soviet labor camps. Norman
Nicholson was a Christian poet of rural England, who often sang
of the joys and tensions of small-town life in the twentieth century.
In the poem I've chosen, Mandelstam offers up a shattering lament
for his age, all the more haunting for its strangeness and opacity.
Nicholson gives us a paraphrase of a scene from the infancy gospel
called Protevangelium, an amazing moment when time stops and the world has a chance
to start anew, all because of the birth of a child. The specific
Christian context for this poem seems to me to be the very last
thing that the poem is about. All I have to do is remember the
first cry of my own daughter to recognize that hope starts over
again when every child comes into the world. But Mandelstam's
words both undermine Nicholson's vision and give it a sharper
voice: redemption can no longer be a parochial matter of doctrine,
removed from the ravages of history. (It pleases me no end that
Nicholson's paraphrase is of an apocryphal gospel.) Hope must paradoxically embrace horror, as Nicholson
embraces Mandelstam in this movement, as the wondering baritone
joins the grieving soprano.
Nicholson's cry of a child is a summons for the fifth movement.
The desire for peace, called into action, may require a kind of
innocence, but Schweitzer shows how much must be suffered before
such innocence can be achieved. The children of Blair School of
Music's advanced Suzuki program join the orchestra in this finale,
and their innocence is pitted against the orchestra's knowledge
and experience (this is the fifth movement, after all!). In the end, the paths to peace are both
sunlit and thorny. They lead us up, and there is no end to them.
"Paths of peace" is a phrase adapted from the classic maxims of
the rabbis, where it is part of a description of the Torah, or
God's teaching: "its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its
paths are peace." What the Torah teaches about peace can be found
by many paths. Dr. Schweitzer showed us a very compelling one.
Music offers another, tragically estranged from or distorted by
politics, but somehow infinitely resourceful to the human spirit.
I hope that my symphony can serve its turn.
My thanks to Thurston Moore for making the commission of Symphony
No. 1 possible, and to Alan Valentine, Executive Director of the
Nashville Symphony, for believing in this project from the start.
I am grateful to Maestro Schermerhorn and the Nashville Symphony
for their generous encouragement and support of my music.
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Pope John Paul II's Apology Echoes the Words of Albert Schweitzer
During mass at the Vatican Basilica on March 12, 2000, designated
as a "Day of Pardon" by Pope John Paul II, the Holy Father made
an apology for the wrongs committed by Roman Catholics over the
centuries, including implicitly the terrible inaction and silence
in the face of the Holocaust.
In 1964 The Deputy, by playwright Rolf Hochhuth, opened on Broadway, starring renown
actor Emlyn Williams as Pope Pius XII. The question raised in
that award-winning play is: how could Pope Pius XII, Christ's
Deputy on earth, fail to speak out against the mass murder of
six million Jews and, by his silence, fail to give voice to Christianity's
most fundamental principles.
The play was controversial, yes, but by its undoubted courage,
sincerity, and emotional commitment, The Deputy has done what scores of books failed to do: to touch the raw
nerve of Christian conscience.
The play was published in book form by Grove Press in 1964 and
Albert Schweitzer accepted the author's invitation to write the
preface. Here are his words: |
Rowohlt Verlag
Reinbek near Hamburg
Dear Sir:
My cordial thanks for sending me "The Deputy." I was an active
witness of the failure which took place in those days, and I believe
we must concern ourselves with this great problem of the events
of history. We owe this to ourselves, for our failure made us
all participants in the guilt of those days. After all, the failure
was not that of the Catholic Church alone, but that of the Protestant
Church as well. The Catholic Church bears the greater guilt for
it was an organized, supra-national power in a position to do
something, whereas the Protestant Church was an unorganized, impotent,
national power. But it, too, became guilty, by simply accepting
the terrible, inhuman fact of the persecution of the Jews. For
in those days we lived in a time of inhumanity of culture, the
beginning of which dates back to Friedrich Nietzsche at the end
of the preceding century. The failure was that of philosophy,
of free thought, as well.
To stay on the right path of history we must become aware of the
great aberration of those days, and must remain aware of it, so
as not to stumble further into inhumanity. It is significant,
therefore, that the drama "The Deputy" has made its appearance.
Not only is it an indictment of an historical personality who
placed upon himself the great responsibility of silence; it is
also a solemn warning to our culture admonishing us to forego
our acceptance of inhumanity which leaves us unconcerned. Thought
in our time is still founded in inhumanity. The history of the
world in our time is still inhuman through and through, and we
accept this as a matter of course.
Hochhuth's drama is not only an indictment of history, but also
a clarion call to our time which stagnates in naïve inhumanity.
With best wishes,
Sincerely yours,
Albert Schweitzer
Lambaréné, Gabon
June 30, 1963
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Nuclear Weapons on Hair-Trigger Alert
This was brought to our attention by Ed Elkin
Like most people, I haven't worried much about nuclear war since
the fall of the Soviet Union. I was shocked to learn, however,
that even though the cold war is over, there are still thousands
of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert. Worse,
with the collapse of Russian military strength, Russia relies
even more on nuclear weapons than it did before. The United States
and Russia give themselves just 15 minutes to evaluate signs of
attack on their radar, and then launch massive retaliation.
Add to that the risks of systems failure due to crumbling command
and control infrastructure in Russia, and you have the potential
for a horrifying mistake.
I don't even like thinking about this stuff –it gives me nightmares
–but we have to do something. I have signed a petition that asks
our leaders to immediately begin a process of de-alerting U.S.
nuclear weapons and negotiating reciprocal de-alerting in Russia.
The time is ripe: Representative Edward J. Markey has introduced
a de-alerting resolution that already has many cosponsors. The
President can start this process tomorrow given the political
will and popular support. To support "Back from the Brink" I urge
you to sign the petition as well. |
P.S. This is no joke. In 1995 Russia mistakenly identified a scientific
rocket as a US nuclear warhead aimed at Russia. President Yeltsin's
black suitcase was activated. Eight minutes later the rocket fell
into the sea. That story had a happy ending. We can't risk the
future of the world on our good luck holding.
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Vanderbilt Schools Announce Speakers
In our Newsletter No. 12 we had an article on the speakers scheduled by five Vanderbilt
Schools for Symposium 2000.
Now the School of Engineering has announced that their speaker
will be Dr. William J. Madia, Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee.
The School of Medicine has announced that Dr. Els Mathieu, a long-time volunteer for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans
Frontières, has been chosen as their speaker for Symposium 2000.
Doctors Without Borders, recipient of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize,
is an independent international medical relief agency that aids
victims of armed conflicts, epidemics, and natural and man-made
disasters, and others who lack healthcare due to geographic remoteness
or ethnic marginalization.
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Among Our Sponsors
Major events at Symposium 2000 are being co-sponsored by
these Vanderbilt University Schools:
• Blair School of Music
Mark Wait, Dean
• The College of Arts & Science
E. F. Infante, Professor and Dean
• The Divinity School
E. Jackson Forstman, Acting Dean
• Peabody College
Camilla P. Benbow, Dean
• School of Engineering
Kenneth F. Galloway, Dean
• School of Medicine
John E. Chapman, M.D., Dean
• School of Nursing
Colleen Conway-Welch, Professor and Dean
Symposium 2000 Website sponsored by spaceformusic.com |
Tennessee Players, Inc. 304 West Due West Avenue
Madison TN 37115-4511
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