Metrical philistinism makes writers spout gibberish

Owen Pallett recently analysed Katy Perry’s song “Teenage Dream” using music theory: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/03/katy_perry_s_teenage_dream_explaining_the_hit_using_music_theory.html

He explains at the outset: “In the days since Ted Gioia published his essay in the Daily Beast, alleging that music criticism has devolved into lifestyle reporting, with little or no attention paid to how the music itself works, I've been challenged by friends on Facebook to write a ‘not boring’ piece that explains a successful pop song using music theory.”

This philistinism about music theory—i.e. indifference to how music actually works—is closely related to the philistinism among English teachers about metre, which is the music of speech. C.S. Lewis warned that we are coming to acquiese in a “hair-raising barbarism” on the subject, to the point that professors of English and students finishing degrees at Oxford could not recognize and accurately pronounce a line of verse.*

Consider Exhibit A: Strunk & White. That is, William Strunk’s The Elements of Style as revised by E.B. White in 1959. This is a very traditional guide for writing, still referred to today for its brevity and clarity. In chapter V, E.B. White sets the tone: “In this final chapter, we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind?” He then takes as an instance of this mystery the famous line from Thomas Paine, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Why is it so effective? Why has it shown such durability? He tries rearranging the words or paraphrasing, and rightly throws out these alternative sentences as rubbish, but gives no positive explanation of why the true line works. Then the metrical philistine comes out: “We could, of course, talk about “rhythm” and “cadence,” but the talk would be vague and unconvincing.”**

There is the whole English metrical tradition dealt with in pretty summary fashion. Here is a famous author (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan), a member of America’s cultured elite, educated in the English department at Cornell University, and a complete barbarian about metre. Apparently, metre is without relevance to ‘what is distinguished and distinguishing.’

In the spirit of Owen Pallett’s recent essay, I offer an explanation of this line using metrical theory, which is anything but ‘vague’ or ‘unconvincing’. It’s probably too optimistic to hope that it will be ‘not boring’; but it will, at least, be brief.

First of all one does not need to be an Anglo-Saxonist to recognize this as an octosyllabic line, itself a common (though not the most common) form of English verse, with a iambic rhythm and inversion at the start.

/	x	x	/	x	/	x	/
These	are	the	times	that	try	men’s	souls.
DUM	da-	da-	DUM	da-	DUM	da-	DUM

A respectable piece of English: the iambic rhythm, so like the human hearbeat (da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM) has been the standard pattern of English verse for five centuries. The inversion makes the line begin and end with a stressed syllable, emphasizing that it is itself a complete paragraph.

But there is more to it than this. Tom Paine’s famous line is, in form, a verse of Beowulf.

Beowulf is written in the oldest known form of English verse: the alliterative metre. It was the main form of English poetry for a thousand years (c. 500–1500), and with good reason. Its metrical units are based on the natural forms of English speech; and, where rhyme comes naturally to Romance languages, alliteration comes naturally to English. The effect of the alliterative metre is richness and fullness of sound.

Each line of alliterative verse consists of two half-lines, each with two ‘Lifts’, that is, stresses which fall on long syllables, and a reasonable number of ‘dips’ or unstressed syllables.† One Lift from the first half-line alliterates with the first Lift of the second half-line.

/	x	x	/	x	/	x	/
These	are	the	times	that	try	men’s	souls.
DUM	da-	da-	DUM	da-	DUM	da-	DUM
long	long	short	long	long	long	long	long
Lift	dip		Lift	dip	Lift	dip	Lift

In the first half-line, ‘these are the times,’ the stresses fall on the first and last long syllables; in the second half line, ‘that try men’s souls,’ every syllable is long, with the stresses falling on ‘try’ and ‘souls.’ That the whole second half-line consists of long monosyllables lends it greater weight. The full line thus takes the form of an E-type alliterative half-line (Lift dip Lift) and a B type (dip Lift dip Lift). The alliteration falls on the T (note that the words beginning with TH do not alliterate with T; this is obvious if one attends to sound rather than spelling): these are the Times / that Try men’s souls. There you have a line that would not be out of place in Beowulf.

The point of all this is not that the line just happens to conform to a set of rules for an antique metre. These ‘rules’ for different poetic forms are not arbitrary formulas invented by professors; they are the patterns of sound and rhythm which have shown themselves to speak naturally to the English ear. Words put in this form sound good; they stick in the brain; they beg to be repeated; they are easy to remember. They became established poetic forms for this reason.

The traditional forms of English poetry are the testimony of what great writers for centuries have found to be ‘distinguished and distinguishing.’ Perhaps the antinomian spirit of our age maddened the English teachers of past generations into chucking them out as ‘restrictive.’ But what they did was chuck out any practical guide for young writers about how to make their writing sound good. They have no replacement; instead they adopt a tone of awe, call it the goddess Style, and wrap it in obscurities, as White does: “These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story ... there is no satisfactory explanation of style ... the young writer will often find himself steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion...” The ‘enlightened’ moderns, in literature as in so much else, turn out not to be the ones throwing open the curtains to bring in the light of knowledge, but the darkest obscurantists and mystery-mongers.  

Metre, of course, does not exhaust what makes writing good: it deals only with sound, not with sense. It may appear mostly relevant to verse. But it is easily applied to prose; and when one wants to elevate the tone or make a point stick—make it memorable, make it quotable—one has a practical guide in the English metrical tradition. Blank verse, rhyme, the alliterative line: these are to writing what the arch and the pillar are to architecture. Not that one must literally build up a line to order (‘ten syllables every second one stressed...’). Because these rhythms are natural in English, they tend naturally to occur in speech and writing, as I expect Paine’s line did. Where one wants to drive a line home, one often has only to tweak it: substitute a word here, or invert there, and it will land sweetly on the ear.

There you have it. Barbarism in metre has meant that where we once had a practical guide to what sounds good, we now can only offer our sacrifices to the mysterious and fickle goddess Style.

* See Lewis’s “Metre,” in Selected Literary Essays http://books.google.ca/books?id=sa48AAAAIAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

** It is only fair to say that E.B. White’s contribution to The Elements of Style is very inferior to Strunk’s. I suppose the publisher wanted a big name attached to their reissuing of an antiquated, out-of-print style guide; and so without White none of us might have heard of Strunk. But White’s ‘revision’ appears to me wholly unnecessary and, although I have not consulted the original version, I guess that he accomplished more a partial subversion than a revision of Strunk.

† I refer the interested reader to C.S. Lewis’s “The alliterative metre,” in Selected Literary Essays.

Two kinds of outrage, two kinds of scholarship: MGH versus SSHRC

A major German daily newspaper recently ran a story telling that some cheeseheaded bureaucrat in the state government of Bavaria has proposed to bring the Monumenta Germaniae Historica project into a single humanities research cluster, alongside, for instance, the research group on the philosopher Leibniz, ostensibly in order to save on administrative costs.

Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Historical Monuments of Germany) is a historical research project which has been going on for about a century and a half. Its chief purpose is to edit and publish medieval historical documents which illustrate the history of Germany: which includes in its scope all the German-speaking countries, France (at least to the time of Charlemagne), northern Italy, and the Papacy. It is one of the Great Historical Enterprises. The Benedictine monk David Knowles published a wonderful book of that title in 1962; he relates the history of four enterprises to edit and publish historical texts: the Maurists (French), the Bollandists (Belgian), the Rolls Series (English), and Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Among the four, however, MGH is the only one which has continued to consistently produce works of an excellent standard of scholarship up to today.

In actual fact the proposal to merge the MGH with other humanities research projects is a proposal to destroy the MGH. Once its identity and definite aim have been destroyed, it will cease to function, scholars will cease to contribute to it—for free, mind you: the administrative cost of the MGH maintains a handful of staff who run the office; the actual work is normally done for free by outside scholars. Melt down the identity of the MGH, scholars stop contributing, and you end up with a useless anachronism, accomplishing nothing, but going on getting funds for another decade… which is the normal end product of such outside interference by bureaucrats.

Happily, this may not happen. Germans respect scholarship—especially history, where they are unrivalled—and care deeply about its contribution to German culture today. Hence a daily newspaper can carry a story like this, and, though in another country it might not make a stir, in Germany it surely will. Germans will get uppity to protect their history. So MGH may be yet be safe.

I bring up the MGH to contrast it with another kind of scholarship which is far more popular in humanities departments in the English-speaking world. And I can illustrate it with another newspaper stir.

Do you remember a few years ago a story in the Globe and Mail about a professor who got funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to study the history of strippers in Vancouver? Canadians were (so said the newspapers) outraged that the government was taking taxpayers’ money and using it to fund such ludicrous work.

I happen to have read this professor’s work and it is a textbook example of what is wrong with history departments in Canada. In fact it shows quite clearly the truth of what John C. Wright wrote about Leftism here: http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/03/the-unified-field-theory-of-madness/

“All behaviors, no matter how obviously disgusting and wrongheaded and warped, no matter how unsuccessful by any measure, … by this perverse Leftist logic must be granted honor and glory precisely because they are dishonorable. … Not once or twice or some random percent of the time, but in every case and in one hundred percent of the time, driven by the inexorable logic of their theory, the Left must reward and laud the destructive and self destructive behaviors of the vice-ridden and barbaric and backward men within the nation.”

This professor writes about the history of the profession of stripping in Vancouver, chiefly in the first half of the twentieth century. The way she presents it, every woman who strips is an artist, a crusader for sexual freedom, a martyr: in short, a hero and role model. To everyone else, she doles out blame or praise following precisely the criteria outlined above: in proportion as the person is unsuccessful, barbaric, and immoral, is he rewarded with praise; in proportion as the person is successful, civilized, and moral, is he blamed, punished, insulted, and shamed. Christians who tried to close strip clubs and banish stripping from the city are the chief villains in the story. They get the Cruella De Vil treatment. The police come in for a fair share of it. One would think that the patrons of the stripping business, without whom it could never exist, would earn some part in the heroism of the strippers: but oddly enough, the men who frequented strip clubs get little credit for supporting this fine art, because they bear the mark of Cain of being mostly white, straight, and middle-class. Instead it’s the strip club owners themselves, and the people who worked in the business as stage hands, cleaners, and so forth, who carry some of the reflected glory of the strippers.

Not only does this professor exhibit Leftist inversion of good and evil in the content of her history, she even does it in the manner of her writing. She consciously adopts coarse language and peppers her writing with four-letter-words; she also (what is very fashionable in academia today) uses slang from queer culture without explanation. She has also been quoted in other contexts criticizing Disney for its depiction of women and praising pornography as “having the moral high ground.”

In short, this professor is a perfect Tenured Radical. This is a most egregious example of what the government has been funding, and the rest of us have been enduring, as ‘scholarship’ in Canada.

The MGH presents a useful illustration of the difference between constructive and destructive scholarship. By editing and publishing medieval documents, written chiefly on thousand-year-old parchment, MGH preserves them for later generations and also makes them widely available (especially since most of them are now posted for free online: http://www.dmgh.de). In doing this it performs a service to all of us, because it makes knowledge of the past possible. (C.S. Lewis said that we urgently need intimate knowledge of the past in order to have something to contrast to the present.) Moreover as a project receiving German tax money, the MGH can justify itself because it contributes to building up German identity, German pride, and the continuance of German tradition.

This SSHRC-funded research on strippers, like much of the work that goes on in humanities departments today, publishes and preserves no documents, and therefore does not make any knowledge of the past possible beyond the interpretation of this one professor. Fair enough; we cannot all be editors of texts: but the Leftist method makes the work itself entirely destructive. It inverts good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood; it promotes perversion as health, vice as virtue, failure as success... What’s more, by vilifying whites, law-abiders, Christians, and in general everything traditional and civilized, it contributes to the overall academic project of destroying Canadian identity and tradition. And, not least, Canadian pride: for once more it presents a story of bigoted, barbaric Canadians persecuting the righteous saints of a minority group. For pornographers and strippers, the laurel crown; for the rest of us, sackcloth and ashes.

And both of these projects are allotted government funding.

Canadians are sometimes accused of anti-intellectualism, especially under the reign of Stephen Harper, because they aren’t screaming themselves hoarse to acclaim the work of SSHRC-funded scholars like this one. “Look at the Germans, who love their academic projects and want their government to fund them!” Well, look at German scholarship and then look at what passes for scholarship in Canada. Better say that Canadians have a sound estimate of its value, and rightly want their money back.  

A modern classic: the Phantom of the Opera

The mark of a classic is that it is universally loved. Not that literally everyone loves it: but that it is loved across all social divisions. Men love it, women love it, children love it, adults love it... This is unlike works of art that are good through speaking well to one particular audience: as action movies speak to men, romantic comedies to women, etc. Even the works that expert critics love need not be classics, because there are genres which only appeal to critics: and in the past century the educated classes have become infected with a snobbish contempt for art that is comprehended and enjoyed by the masses (I speak the more freely of this prejudice because I share it), and so the critics are often inoculated against appreciating the classics when they arrive. Has there ever been a time when the gulf between what the critics enjoy and what the rest of the people enjoy was wider or more painful to cross?

Digressions aside, the point is that the works that are really popular with everyone, even if the critics disdain them at the time, are recognized as classics by later ages. It’s fun sometimes to consider: what has our own age produced that will turn out to be classics?

I submit for inclusion on that list, the longest running Broadway show of all time, the stage musical The Phantom of the Opera.

Universally loved? Wikipedia tells me that Phantom is the highest grossing entertainment event in history. That ought to do it. But I have also observed that The Phantom of the Opera is easily enjoyed by men and women, adults and children.

The latter fact I’ve discovered from personal experience. When I was a wee lad in the second grade I had a friend who was seized by an obsession with Phantom. He played the soundtrack on an endless loop. He sang the songs in his room. He decided to stage the show for the neighbourhood.

Then my father took me to see the stage show. I was maybe eight years old, and it exploded my little eight-year-old brain. It awed me, amazed me, excited me, confused me, frightened me to the point that I cried in my dad’s arms. That night seeing Phantom was the first time a work of art deeply moved me. It may have been the most intense experience of my childhood—certainly I remember it more vividly than anything else from those years.

            Needless to say, after that my friend had little trouble getting me on board for his staging of the show. It never happened, but I was hooked on Phantom for years...

I saw the stage show again in my early twenties (note that a bunch of guy friends also paid to see it). I loved it just as much, and perhaps more, since its intensity did not overwhelm my faculties. More recently I became hooked on the soundtrack again, listening to the whole thing in one go sometimes.

What is it that makes Phantom appeal to everyone? Well, it’s clear that it’s not the raw material, the Fantôme story. Most people have probably never heard of the original French novel, which is because it (apparently) stank. The early film versions weren’t especially popular. And on the face of it, the plot seems to lend itself to either a horror or a romance treatment: either of which is fine, but does not have the universal appeal we see with Phantom. Clearly, there is something special about the Andrew Lloyd Webber version that elevates this material to classic standing.

Let’s analyze this further. What is it that appeals to women? The stage Phantom takes the story in the direction of romance. It is all about the love triangle between the Phantom, Christine, and Raoul. She’s loved by two men: one is dashing, rich, and good, the other is brooding and dark, but she just can’t seem to get him out of her mind... There, done. You’ve got the ladies. But how does a love triangle story set in a Paris opera house bring in the fellas?

Speaking as a fella I offer three key ingredients that, when cooked, produce a Phantom that appeals to men and boys, too, and is therefore a classic. For Men, it’s the three Ms: Music, Mood, and Murder.

Music. This perhaps does not need to be said, and in the event I can say little about it since I have no musical training at all. But clearly the Music is key. The Music, mind you, not the lyrics. The dialogue, whether spoken or sung, is one of Phantom’s real weaknesses. Except for a few high points, listening closely to the lyrics is a sure way to spoil your enjoyment, and happily is far from necessary. The Music does it all for you.

Part of why the Music works so well is that it is orchestral and operatic. Shows that use pop- or rock-style music, like Rent, can easily come across as corny. Shows that use primarily vocal music, like The Sound of Music, don’t reach the intensity of Phantom. For that you need the power and seriousness of an orchestra.

Mood. This is a love triangle plot, right? Well, I bet I couldn’t have told you that after I saw it when I was eight. To a boy, this is the plot: you are in a haunted opera house. That is what makes the stage show so effective: you are actually in the opera house. And that is why it is so inimitable in other media; the 2005 film, for instance, could never capture it.

As you can ignore the lyrics and still enjoy Phantom, so you can ignore the plot, too. What matters is the Mood. The wonderful opening scene does it all: the echoes, the creepy voice coming from nowhere, the number 666, and then the blast of the organ... it’s already won you over. Then it’s one spooky scene after another: the mirror, the underground lake, the graveyard...

The underground lake sums it all up. The entrance through the mirror... the long descent into the earth... the boat ride across the foggy lake... What man or boy can hold off the awe and the attraction of a subterranean lair? And for the ladies, a romantic Venetian boat ride is in the bargain.

Murder. The fellas may not approve of murder, but we sure are interested in it. Say what you will about it, the fact that Phantom has lots of grisly deaths is part of what makes it a classic. Consider it in the tradition of Macbeth.

But when I say Murder, I really mean the Chandelier. Does anyone who has seen the stage show ever forget the moment when the Chandelier falls?

I’ve been calling Phantom a classic, but it’s clear from our scientific analysis that it cannot possibly stand as a literary classic. Unlike Shakespeare, Phantom cannot easily be read for pleasure. It really must be seen, or at least heard: as reading in private is to seeing Shakespeare performed, so listening to the soundtrack in private is to seeing Phantom performed.

If I’m right and Phantom is received by future ages as a classic of the twentieth century, it’ll have to be performed. But perhaps Western civilization will collapse, and we will no longer have the resources to put on these big fancy shows. Then Phantom will be a lost classic. Maybe they’ll have the music, but that won’t be enough—people will say, “ah, Phantom, why did they like it so much? just a turn-of-the-century fad...”