There was a moment in the nineteenth century when all hell broke loose in the world of classical music. Mainly, because someone decided that sometimes, things did not have to be resolved.
Richard Wagner was not having an easy time in his personal life when he became inspired by a Mediaeval Germanic poet who had died back in the thirteenth century, named Gottfried Von Strassbourg.
In the middle ages, Von Strassbourg had written a poem about a princess, promised to some King she did not know, who falls in love with the captain of the ship charged with delivering her. Stirring stuff.
He set about writing a libretto and music in 1854.
The man was a maelstrom: he had already fronted the May uprisings in Dresden, in May 1849, making grenades to use: it was one of the many uprisings at this time and would prove one of the chief catalysts for the unification of Germany in 1870.
He was forced to flee Dresden, leaving his wife, to avoid arrest. And in his new home in Zürich he met the wife of a wealthy silk trader, Mathilde Wesendonck.
During the composition of Tristan and Isolde, his wife found a letter he had written to Mathilde and suspected the worst. She was devastated despite Wagner’s protestations the relationship was innocent.
Is a problem like this ever really resolved?
Eventually Wagner took a decision: he persuaded his wife, who had a heart condition, to go away to rest at a spa; and the silk trader bore his wife to Italy. Everyone was separate. But as to resolution: that was another matter.
Is it any wonder, then, that his music took a similar turn? The opening bars of Tristan and Isolde are evasion itself.
Ever since composers left the silver trail of plainsong behind them, they had used conventional harmony; music in four parts built within the scales you hear when children do their piano practice.
Every harmonic phrase worked like a sentence: a beginning, a middle and an end. And the end could be reached in a set number of ways, and it felt like a full stop.
In Tristan,Wagner threw the full stop away for phrase after phrase. He drew out epic harmonic passages which simply evaded resolution.
It accorded the legend he loved a heroic stature, and broke ground which laid the way clear for people like Arnold Schoenberg to step over the line, and write music which lived outlandishly outside our tonal system, in a strange land called Atonal.
Once Schoenberg had crossed the Rubicon, and stepped outside the system that demanded conclusive resolution, what then?
Why, new systems, of course: strictures and corsets entirely woven by new men of the twentieth century.
There are some I love, like Stravinsky and Glass, and some I hate, like Berg. There are some who have used the shifting sands of the land outside tonality to express untold anguish, reflecting some of the great unspeakable sufferings which have haunted our century and the last.
It is a brave new world, and each new composer carries out an impossibly lonely search for resolution and finds it, not using those centuries-old musical full stops, but in myriad other ways, each to his own.
It’s a personal thing: but I never feel at home with music which is so free with tonality. I adore it, I sing it, I attest to it: but something in me longs for that old solid full stop we hear in Bach, in the same way we yearn for a fire burning in the hearth on a chill winter’s night.
In these days between Christmas and New Year, a story winds on, just like Wagner’s phrases: evading all attempts at resolution until well into the new year.
It is the story of those Magi: the wise men, travelling across the vast lands of the Middle East, purportedly following a star.
They were not Israelites; they were not from the land of David.
Would we, equally unconnected, pack up, at the sight of a star, and start travelling towards whoever lay underneath it? We might just as well chase the end of a rainbow to find a crock of gold.
So what force drew them out of their land to resolve an impossibly nebulous situation?
The Magi were thought to have been from the same caste as Zoroaster.
Zoroastrianism, which originates from prehistoric Iran, talks about one God: but also advocates asha, which means truth and order.
Asha was the course of everything one could observe in the universe: sunrise and sunset, the pattern of the seasons and of humanity’s ways of living; and of course, the pattern of the stars and the planets as they hurtle past each other in this vast universe.
If these were so central, then, it is little wonder these three were looking up and spotted this unusual star when it first rose.
Has anyone stopped to think that three strangers, from this reflective and graceful religion, homed in on this event? It had significance for Judaism and later for Christianity: but that three men born into the caste of Zoroaster saw this star, and acted on it with such resolution, almost beggars belief.
But, if we are to believe the stories, believe it they did.
If we take our cue from Syrian Christians, they were named, not Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar, (thought to be inventions of a Greek manuscript about 500 years after the birth of Christ) but Larvandad, Gushnasaph and Hormisdas.
And where did they travel, while a baby lay in a manger, and the Nativity story continued to evade resolution?
If they were coming from Persia they might land at a port – say, Eilat -and then use the main Jerusalem motorway.
It was called the King’s Highway, stretching from Eilat to Damascus. And while it was a longer route to Jerusalem than the one through the mountains, it had the advantage of being a great deal more straightforward.
And at this moment – on December 28th -that is exactly where we must leave them, somewhere on the King’s Highway, not yet at that fateful and ill-advised meeting with a King who is about to make things rather uncomfortable for all concerned.
Whether in music or in story, it is always a cliffhanger: that failure to resolve into a traditional, satisfying conclusion.
This almost intolerable suspension of events, while the wise men are bringing ever nearer both gifts and the wrath of a King, is pure suspense: life in suspension.
The wise men, with their iron resolve, have yet to find resolution.
Kate Shrewsday 
Larvandad, Gushnasaph and Hormisdas, hey?
Sound like things which need a prescription from the doctor.
Very interesting reading, Kate.
LOL it does rather, doesn’t it? Just want to get the Kings to their destination and the baby safely off to Egypt…
Your posts always head in a direction I never expect. From Wagner to the Wisemen. Thanks for making me consider things in a new way.
Thank you, Kristine 🙂 Hope you and Shiva are enjoying that quiet time over the Christmas break.
The pivotal point for me in this post:
“But, if we are to believe the stories, believe it they did.”
I can’t get past the “if.”
When we went to the Star of Bethlehem presentation, the presenter clarified some of the details that have been tossed around for 2,000 years. It’s likely that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, in a manger, on Christmas day . . . and that the wise men weren’t kings, they were astrologers trained by Zoroaster. And there were more than three who followed a “star” that wasn’t a star at all ~ it was a convergence of planets. Etc.
I expect it’s a bit like playing telephone as kids . . . something’s been lost in the translation of stories passed around for years before being written down.
I know what you mean, Nancy: any story from any ancient chronicle has different translations, different layers, different interpretations, and different elaborations. I always harp back to Robertson Davies when I think about the old legends: for him the old stories, drawn from so many sources and times, developed a life of their own. The story, regardless of its provenance, could teach us things. I’m paraphrasing, and it is a very long time since I read his stuff. But essentially: the story’s the thing.
oh wow! a real kate post, varied and interesting. and then you come to the end and say “no, not yet, I want more”.
Sidey, thank you 🙂 Your theme had me thinking for days before I could start writing- a really excellent one for this season between Christmas and new year. Thanks – those themes give us bloggers a chance to really use the little grey cells!
Hi Kate. A hard subject to touch on, if we try to make scripture and history tally!
You avoided that very well, taking the wise men as presented.
I enjoyed reading this.
I think Joseph was said to take the child and his mother to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod
kicked the bucket. Because Joseph was wary about Herod’s successor, he then went to Nazareth.
Love Dad.
Of course you’re right, dad!! May correct that one right away if its all the same to you…. I was only blogging about that a few weeks ago…mind like a sieve 😀
“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?”
T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi
Resolution unresolved (thinking of Sidey’s weekend theme), or perhaps irresolution resolved (to be lived with)? 🙂
Ah, a hard time we had of it….
One of my favourites of all time. Eliot was such a deep one. And central to the theme, thanks so much, Ruth – especially those words. They were resolute, and the stories say it took 33 years to resolve…
Well, Kate, what an interesting journey you take us on; the music, the magi, and resolution. I enjoyed how you wove this together. I always wonder about the magi, the wisemen – one of our daughters always referred to them as the “three wise guys”. I never feel they get their due in the nativity telling and I am always interested in another idea, take, whatever one calls it on their part in the Christmas story. Why did they come from so far away – and why don’t we know more about it? What part does it play in Christianity beyond their gifts and reverence? What are we missing that can make us all better?
They have just a walk-on part, don’t they, Penny? I love the Life Of Brian, where they visit Brian’s stable instead of Christ’s, and Terry Jones, all dressed up as Mary, says to no-one in particular:” Well, weren’t they nice?”
They could do with a tome all their own, you are quite right. To me, the core of this is that two religions, two completely separate disciplines from different geographic locations, Iranian and Jew, were said to arrive at the same conclusion. Even simply taken as a metaphorical story, that’s strong stuff
It’s a zoroastrian cabal.
Hurrah, Sir G! A comment! And I might have known it would be clarifying s complex topic. If this was espionage they certainly set the cat among the pigeons. And their ultimate aim is something veiled by two thousand-odd years.
Oh, so many good comments here already. what cd i possibly add that would stand out?
i am saving my limited wit to comment on orphan blogs that could really use a comment once in a blue moon! (Easier to make an impression that way).
I meant to suggest that Xians think they’re Xians worshipping a Jewish god, but, in fact — they are Zoroastrians worshipping Ahura Mazda.
“Makes one wonder what one is, really”.
(Name that quote).
Happy New Year. it’s a rabbit.
Ah, Sir G, you stand out wherever you go….curses. Might have guessed you’d set an ungooglable challenge. Wild guess: Python?
Happy New Year to you. You broaden horizons so beautifully 🙂
How did I miss your Resolution?!
Mine is very different……( http://pseu1.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/the-partys-over/ )
Oh, I just loved that, Pseu.
I traditionally hate the New Year: and my post is just one great big long evasion really. However with the help of my blogging friends I feel a whole lot more positive about the year to come: so I think those resolutions will come a little easier this year.
Of course I only started reading you a little while ago, so I don’t know the background to your starting a blog etc, but it is wonderful o think it has helped your state of mind. You certainly come over as a positive force to be reckoned with and one who grasps life gleefully, saying ‘come on, come and have fun,’ with a great big grin on your face. (What I don’t understand is how you fit it all in…wife and mother, teacher and dedicated blogger etc. )
Erk. It is 8:47 and we are all still in pyjamas, woefully unbreakfasted, because I posted late this morning… thank you for those lovely words, Pseu. Something nice to head into this new year 🙂
I’ve always found the story of the Magi to be an intriguing one. We so often see them standing by the manger in traditional Nativity scenes, when in fact they would have been on their long journey. Such mystery!
Exotic figures, Susan…and what about those gifts? There is so much to think about when these three come to mind…