The John-Henry Westen Show - Music is ABSOLUTELY CENTRAL to Tolkien’s Catholic vision in Middle Earth

00:00:00.000 The power of music is undeniable and cuts through everything and it will influence you.

00:00:05.400 It will cast a spell, so to speak, on you.

00:00:08.560 This is why Plato, I think, and the Republic made it very clear that music and poetry should be strictly monitored.

00:00:24.520 Hello my friends and welcome to another episode of the John Henry Weston Show.

00:00:27.700 You remember a couple of weeks ago we were talking with Paul List, a fascinating book about Tolkien,

00:00:34.960 but really about the prediction of Tolkien into AI.

00:00:40.460 And that seemed so incredible, but it was unpacked for us by Paul in a way I think many of you found so fascinating.

00:00:48.080 Listen to this.

00:00:49.220 Part of what we talked about is music.

00:00:53.720 And Tolkien's use and understanding of music.

00:00:58.720 And it's brilliant, so brilliant that it explains how Beethoven, while being deaf, could still compose music.

00:01:10.020 You're going to want to stay tuned to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show.

00:01:12.740 Hey my friends, you've heard about the Eucharistic revival that's going on.

00:01:19.480 The pilgrimage is going to culminate in Indiana at the Eucharistic Congress.

00:01:24.080 Well, we've got amazing news for you.

00:01:25.840 We are holding a traditional Latin math steps away from the main Congress Center

00:01:30.420 because we learned at first there was no traditional Latin mass, not on the schedule.

00:01:35.220 And we thought, oh no, what we can do.

00:01:37.440 One of our donors said, can you fix that?

00:01:39.580 We found Victory Field right across, steps away from where the Congress is being held to hold the Latin mass. 0.86

00:01:44.320 And guess what?

00:01:45.140 We learned that since then there were some announcements of other Latin masses

00:01:49.800 that are going to be in the area on different days.

00:01:52.760 And so it's really awesome.

00:01:54.580 So if you are in the traditional Latin mass, you thought, oh, I can't go to the Congress because they don't have one there.

00:02:00.280 They do have them there now.

00:02:01.680 And it's just wonderful.

00:02:04.000 This is Father Fasching.

00:02:05.120 He's going to be there.

00:02:06.380 And this is Father James Altman, who's going to be there.

00:02:09.140 They're going to be celebrating masses for us.

00:02:11.160 Lifeset's going to be inside the Congress as well, as is Vicki Yamasaki.

00:02:15.980 Vicki, go ahead. 0.95

00:02:16.740 Yeah, we're just so excited.

00:02:18.620 We hope you join us and sign up for this free event, free lunches because of a generous donor.

00:02:27.520 As he said, I'm actually going to be at the Eucharistic Congress, and I'm going to walk away from my booth so that I can enjoy this traditional Latin mass and these three great speakers that will offer insights into why it is that so many Catholics no longer believe in the real presence.

00:02:52.700 As we know, in our Catholic culture, in our Catholic teaching, there's a phrase, as we pray, so we believe.

00:03:01.240 And through the traditional Latin mass, it inspires such depth of prayer.

00:03:06.800 No funny business going on up there.

00:03:08.220 People believe, and so we're trying to inspire that belief in the real presence, because without which, we do not have life within us.

00:03:15.320 Thus, what we're doing will actually be throwing fuel on the fire of revival, a belief in the real presence of the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the Holy Eucharist.

00:03:26.220 Amen.

00:03:26.660 Amen.

00:03:27.560 Father, I'm thrilled for the opportunity to remind you what you can be doing to renew your own personal devotion to the Eucharist.

00:03:36.340 And also, how to get others to remind them to deepen their faith in worshiping our Lord in the Eucharist.

00:03:44.400 So, based on my own experience, it's just going to be a great opportunity to remind people of what the Church teaches us, that our lives are supposed to revolve around the Holy Eucharist.

00:03:54.360 So, I'm looking forward to it.

00:03:55.740 I'm going to walk right across the street to Victory Field and join you for this beautiful traditional Latin mass on July 19th and hear from these three fantastic speakers.

00:04:12.240 And maybe you can catch the other traditional Latin mass the day before with Archbishop Cordelion.

00:04:21.160 And now, that's a little further away.

00:04:23.960 That's just under two miles at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, smaller parish.

00:04:30.860 It can seat about 400.

00:04:32.660 So, you better get a seat early there.

00:04:35.360 Victory Field seats about 10,000.

00:04:38.280 So, register soon.

00:04:40.240 We can't wait to see you.

00:04:42.320 Join us, our friends, at Victory Field on July 19th, right steps away from the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana.

00:04:51.480 God bless you and look forward to seeing you there.

00:04:55.060 Paul, I know we didn't go anywhere, but I couldn't let you go without doing this because I needed a follow-up right away.

00:04:59.520 So, thank you again.

00:05:00.780 Absolutely.

00:05:01.440 Thanks, John.

00:05:02.000 So, let's begin again with the sign of the cross.

00:05:04.240 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

00:05:07.660 Amen.

00:05:07.820 Amen.

00:05:08.680 And St. Cecilia, pray for us.

00:05:11.920 So, first of all, tell us, Tolkien wrote about music in the book.

00:05:18.240 Where and how?

00:05:19.540 Well, music is the essence of the whole creation called Arda.

00:05:24.160 It all spawns from his first chapter, which is, I think, in the Silmerlian, I think probably the most beautiful prose ever written in any language.

00:05:34.480 It's the story of the creation of Tolkien's world, which is actually the creation of a single human soul.

00:05:42.460 That's what it is.

00:05:43.140 But music, so music is the actual substance, the song that is generated.

00:05:49.720 There's a theme from Iluvatar, who's God, by the way.

00:05:57.820 He gives a theme to these angelic creatures, the Ainur, which become the facets of the soul, according to the scholastics.

00:06:04.560 He proposes to them a mighty theme, and then he invites them to embellish upon it.

00:06:10.320 And they do.

00:06:11.200 And then Melkor comes in and starts to rebel and try to, and competes with it.

00:06:16.940 Melkor, by the way, is original sin. 1.00

00:06:20.020 He's not the devil.

00:06:20.840 People have thought, oh, he's Satan.

00:06:22.580 No, he's original sin.

00:06:24.740 And he stains us, so we're all stained, so the souls are stained with original sin.

00:06:29.340 So music is the heart of that.

00:06:31.320 So after all the rebellion and all the counter with Iluvatar, between Iluvatar and Melkor, original sin, 0.93

00:06:37.480 and all the despondency and all the chaos that goes on from the song,

00:06:41.940 as the Ainur, these angelic creatures, are trying to sing, 0.97

00:06:46.020 he stops it after several reiterations of a different theme.

00:06:50.840 And then he gives to them a vision of what they'd made, they had made, and he gives them a concept.

00:06:57.280 And this is Tolkien's very elegant way of saying a conception, okay?

00:07:01.860 And the void that he talks about, the void, is an unfertilized egg, okay?

00:07:06.200 So he gives them a vision, and then he says he gives it reality by giving it the flame imperishable,

00:07:12.980 the Holy Spirit, and it becomes real.

00:07:14.940 And that thing, Arda, in a very young form, like a fertilized egg, and becomes a fetus, an embryo, and a baby, a child, is all music.

00:07:29.100 It's all from the original theme, which, by the way, we all have original themes, and irreplaceable and precious to God.

00:07:37.180 And so it's all made of music.

00:07:40.660 So music is very, very, it's almost like the laws of physics.

00:07:44.140 I would say that in music, in Tolkien's world, music would probably take the, play the part of the electromagnetic spectrum, electromagnetism.

00:07:55.480 It holds everything together, binds everything together, all the, you know, the atomic structure, the molecules, are all bound together by the electromagnetic spectrum.

00:08:05.900 And that's basically what Tolkien's music is.

00:08:08.780 It's kind of like the electromagnetic spectrum.

00:08:10.860 So it's really, really, really important.

00:08:13.000 And, of course, it's the most universal language of all languages, and Tolkien was a philologist.

00:08:18.400 He spoke at least 12 languages.

00:08:19.980 So in his mythology, he would not fail to use the most critical, the most beautiful, the most universal of all languages.

00:08:29.940 And against that language, the most beautiful of creation, is machine code, ones and zeros.

00:08:35.660 That's the language of the machine.

00:08:37.320 It's binary code.

00:08:38.220 That's the one ring.

00:08:39.520 This is very interesting.

00:08:40.480 I have a friend, Eric Jenis.

00:08:42.940 He's a great musician, classical composer, and he's been all over the place doing great things.

00:08:48.580 But I remember him telling me, gosh, decades ago, that music is language.

00:08:56.360 And he was actually referring also to the types of music, and he would say, like, heavy metal is disgusting.

00:09:02.880 It's like swearing.

00:09:04.620 Whereas, you know, classical music is the music that you should have, and he was just describing different things.

00:09:11.180 And he was very opposed to having these ruckus forms of language, the language of music, because they are destructive.

00:09:21.780 And I said, well, what about, you know, heavy metal that has, like, Christian themes?

00:09:27.880 And he said something quite graphic.

00:09:29.880 He said, and I'm sorry, Eric, for outing you here, but something like, well, what about if there was a stripper stripping to Bible verses?

00:09:37.000 That wouldn't make it any better.

00:09:38.280 No, that's a great, that's a great, that's a great analogy.

00:09:41.360 Yeah, music is very, very, it's fundamental to everything.

00:09:45.640 It's actually, it's the language of motion.

00:09:49.400 It's a physical property that's unchangeable and immutable throughout the creative, created material world.

00:09:59.500 Anywhere in, on the dark side of the moon, the harmonic overtone series still works the same.

00:10:05.020 Okay, wait, wait, wait, you have to, what does that even mean?

00:10:07.880 How is music motion?

00:10:10.800 It's motion because it's waves.

00:10:12.880 Without motion, you can have motion without sound, audible sound, but you can't have sound without motion.

00:10:20.520 You have to have sound waves.

00:10:22.000 It's not audible, it's moving.

00:10:24.320 So you have, so we'll take your musical friend, if he's playing, we'll just say the violin or the guitar, stringed instrument,

00:10:30.200 when you pluck the string, it's obviously going back and forth, osculating, and you hear that note.

00:10:35.940 So let's say it's the violin, and we'll just pick the A string, okay?

00:10:39.160 And you pluck the A string, and it's vibrating, and it's playing, and you hear the A,

00:10:42.720 but if you listen closely, and it's easier on a piano,

00:10:45.720 if you listen closely, you can hear the other notes of the harmonic overtone series.

00:10:51.860 There are tones that are over and above the bass notes.

00:10:54.340 So if you pluck a C, you might think that all you hear is C because you haven't trained your ear,

00:11:00.820 but if you really listen, you can also hear the major third, you can hear the perfect fifth,

00:11:05.420 you can hear the minor seventh, which causes modulation, makes it possible,

00:11:10.800 but you can also hear the minor ninth, okay?

00:11:13.640 So you've got the minor ninth chord.

00:11:16.500 Give us one of those chords so that we can understand even a little bit, the easiest of them.

00:11:21.800 So when you're playing C, what chord do you hear that you could play with your hand?

00:11:28.360 Oh, you would play, oh, on the piano.

00:11:30.060 You would play C, E, G, those are all white keys,

00:11:35.400 and then you'd play B flat, which is a black key.

00:11:37.960 Now, this is harmony.

00:11:39.880 You don't need the ninth for modulation.

00:11:42.060 Modulation is the progression from key signature to key signature,

00:11:45.520 tonality to tonality by way of this harmonic engine called modulation.

00:11:53.940 Today, in today's music, they call any progression from one key to the other,

00:11:58.880 they call that modulation.

00:12:00.540 It's not.

00:12:01.280 It's true modulation when you confirm where you are with the dominant seventh chord.

00:12:05.720 So you'd take a dominant seventh chord, say, from G.

00:12:09.540 You would build the dominant seventh chord on the key of G, or let's just use C, okay?

00:12:15.640 You'd go from C, C, E, G, B flat,

00:12:19.200 and what you have between the C and the G is a perfect fifth,

00:12:22.560 and it's very stable.

00:12:23.980 It's acoustically very stable.

00:12:25.340 It's smooth.

00:12:26.140 It's pure.

00:12:27.040 I mean, it's not so much an equal temperament because equal temperament's bad.

00:12:30.920 I mean, it's just terrible.

00:12:31.720 But they hated equal temperament in the old days, okay, because it was characterless.

00:12:37.600 But between, here's the engine, between the E and the B flat,

00:12:42.720 there's what's called the diminished fourth, I mean, diminished fifth or augmented fourth.

00:12:48.680 But in music, it's also called the devil's tone because it's very agitated,

00:12:53.640 and it wants to move.

00:12:55.740 Your ear wants to be drawn somewhere else,

00:12:59.140 particularly against the perfect C and the G.

00:13:02.680 So it wants to go someplace.

00:13:04.000 So where it goes is that the third goes up a half step to the F,

00:13:07.560 and that becomes the new key signature.

00:13:09.340 And the B flat goes down a half step because the magnet wants to draw it in

00:13:15.360 because it's ugly and it wants to be drawn in.

00:13:17.460 And now you've got a new key signature,

00:13:19.080 and you've modulated from C to the key of F, okay?

00:13:22.780 And Tolkien uses that very well.

00:13:26.820 In fact, in the waxing and the waning of the trees, I point out in my book,

00:13:29.520 they actually wax and wane according to the chromatic scale,

00:13:34.040 but they also wax and wane according to modulation.

00:13:37.760 So it's all about music.

00:13:38.760 And that's just very much the tip of the iceberg.

00:13:42.360 So, yeah, but it's a great tip of the iceberg

00:13:44.260 because that helps people to understand.

00:13:46.940 It's the physics of hearing when you're talking about the waves.

00:13:51.840 And then it's associated also in music with what,

00:13:57.140 even if you have some elemental knowledge or experience with playing piano,

00:14:02.100 you can at least get in the C,

00:14:04.220 you can hear the C, the E, and the G together that,

00:14:08.240 you know, when you play that and you, all the...

00:14:10.280 And that's just, that's just a triad.

00:14:12.220 That's just a standard triad.

00:14:13.420 But when you add the B flat,

00:14:14.620 now you've created a harmonic tension that wants to be resolved.

00:14:19.020 That tension between the E and the B flat is so ugly

00:14:23.660 against the perfect intonation calmness between the C and the G.

00:14:30.240 And it has to, it wants to modulate.

00:14:32.420 And it does.

00:14:33.140 That's how we've created our key signatures

00:14:35.100 is through what's commonly called the circle of fifths

00:14:38.400 because it's easier for students to remember that

00:14:40.600 because a fifth down is the same note as a fourth up.

00:14:43.720 But I've actually stated in my book that I prefer spiral of fourths

00:14:47.580 because that's actually what happens.

00:14:50.020 And I also, I also describe it as the solution

00:14:53.580 for the golden triangle or the Fibonacci spiral

00:14:55.900 because that is actually the,

00:14:58.260 we're looking at the Fibonacci spiral,

00:15:00.520 that they're, they spiral at the same ratios

00:15:03.700 as, as the, the, the fourth.

00:15:06.780 It's, it's the ratio of the Fibonacci spiral is that.

00:15:10.580 So we're looking down the barrel of a spiraling how,

00:15:13.360 that's how we move through space.

00:15:14.560 We're moving spirals.

00:15:16.080 Okay.

00:15:16.560 So it's a two-dimensional,

00:15:17.900 the Fibonacci spiral that everybody's fascinated with,

00:15:20.420 the perfect ratio,

00:15:21.300 the golden triangle is in all our architecture

00:15:23.700 and great, great proportional classical architecture

00:15:27.420 that we've seem to have forgotten these days

00:15:29.300 when our brains fell out during the Enlightenment.

00:15:33.800 But, but, but that is actually a two-dimensional picture

00:15:38.360 of how, looking down the barrel of the spiral

00:15:41.720 as it gets smaller.

00:15:43.120 Okay.

00:15:44.020 And, and I, I, I point that out.

00:15:46.000 I, I, you know, it's, you can, you can argue with me,

00:15:48.520 but the numbers are there,

00:15:49.960 the ratios, they align at least.

00:15:52.260 So music is the most universal language.

00:15:55.720 It pierces all, you don't need grammar.

00:15:57.820 You don't need even, you don't even need a lexicon.

00:15:59.760 You don't need anything.

00:16:01.000 The lexicon that you're using

00:16:02.360 and the grammar that you're using

00:16:04.000 are things like counterpoint,

00:16:10.520 which is the laws of counterpoint.

00:16:12.660 They're the laws of how four, two or more voices 0.98

00:16:16.080 actually move horizontally in time

00:16:18.920 and how they interact with each other.

00:16:21.060 And that's polyphony.

00:16:21.740 That's the basic polyphony of like Palestrina and Victoria,

00:16:25.160 which is all I listen to now.

00:16:26.340 I don't even listen to classical.

00:16:27.200 That's the most beautiful, when, when, when you hear it

00:16:29.580 and you hear it done well, you feel like you're in heaven.

00:16:32.140 Absolutely.

00:16:32.840 So there's counter, well, yeah, there's counterpoint.

00:16:35.300 That's, that outlines your horizontal association.

00:16:40.180 That's polyphony of how they interact with each other

00:16:42.980 against the cantus firmus, which is, we'll call it the melody.

00:16:46.640 It can be on the top or the bottom, depending on how you do it.

00:16:50.040 But, and then there's, there's other elements in your, in your grammar,

00:16:53.700 which is also chord progression.

00:16:55.460 Okay.

00:16:56.180 And that's the basic horizontal, the notes that you're hearing at the same time,

00:17:00.600 basically simultaneously, it might be suspended or whatever,

00:17:04.740 but you're hearing them basically simultaneously and then how they progress.

00:17:08.240 And so these are the things that, that, that makeup will say the grammar and the vocabulary,

00:17:14.620 so to speak of this language and it's piercing.

00:17:18.380 Um, it, you can't avoid it.

00:17:19.900 It, it's, it's so fundamental to reality.

00:17:22.720 It's everywhere and we can't avoid it.

00:17:24.420 Uh, birds can't sing out of tune, by the way.

00:17:27.120 Oh, no.

00:17:28.280 I mean, the whole world, the whole natural world sings in tune.

00:17:32.260 Okay.

00:17:33.760 So tell, okay.

00:17:35.000 So this has a lot to do with also Gregorian chant and the difference between Gregorian chant

00:17:41.960 and the modernist music that you hear at church.

00:17:44.960 Well, that's a big leap.

00:17:46.220 I mean, that's a big leap because you've left out the Renaissance.

00:17:49.580 I mean, cause Gregorian chant goes back to Gregory the Great, Elise and, and before,

00:17:54.020 but, and those are all done in modes.

00:17:56.300 Those are before the key signatures that those are all in modal system.

00:18:00.020 Ah, okay.

00:18:01.020 Okay.

00:18:02.020 Which is, which is a, which is the ancient system, uh, is still built from the harmonic overtone

00:18:06.260 series.

00:18:06.760 It's okay, but it just doesn't have flaps and whatever.

00:18:10.220 It's just, it's six different, I think it's six different scales.

00:18:13.560 If so, in other words, if you just the white keys on the piano, if you just play a C major

00:18:18.620 scale, I can't remember, I can look it up, but I don't try to remember everything.

00:18:22.580 I know where I can find it.

00:18:23.660 It might, I think it's the Ionian scale.

00:18:26.220 And that just sounds like the C major, but the Dorian scale on the D. Okay.

00:18:30.040 The Dorian scale is different because now the half, the, the beginning of is different.

00:18:34.860 So now all the half steps have moved.

00:18:36.560 The half steps have moved now a whole step down.

00:18:40.180 So it sounds totally different.

00:18:41.660 And then the, and then you're, and then the next note, the E, that's a whole different,

00:18:45.600 I don't know if it's Phrygian or, or whatever, but I used to know all that off the top of my

00:18:49.620 head.

00:18:50.620 My head's full of a lot of other stuff.

00:18:52.360 So, um, so, so that's the modal system.

00:18:55.280 And then what we did from that, we actually developed a modulation according to the, we

00:19:01.420 actually figured out for this anchor modulation.

00:19:05.100 We had done that already, but then that's how we developed the key signatures.

00:19:08.680 And that's how we developed the modern scale.

00:19:10.520 People don't realize that the modern scale is a process of modulation.

00:19:14.800 It's two scales, two, three, two, three note scales that are a product of the harmonic overtone

00:19:21.040 series, according to the division, equal division of the string and how they vibrate.

00:19:24.920 And we put two of those together and then we, and now today we actually, we give it an artificial,

00:19:31.580 uh, uh, sharp seventh, well, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, a seventh rather than a flat seven.

00:19:39.320 So if that creates a leading tone, so it brings you back to the key of C, otherwise you just

00:19:44.640 keep spiraling and Tolkien uses that.

00:19:46.940 Tolkien uses that in the, in the waxing and waning of the trees of light when the, when

00:19:51.680 Arta was in a state of grace, but the trees are killed.

00:19:54.600 When Melkor, original sin brings in from the outside, mortal sin, mortal sin and the big 0.97

00:20:00.680 spider creature, and she kills the trees of light and the mind is darkened. 0.99

00:20:06.680 And then the trees, of course, the, the trees then give off a last silver, uh, silver flower

00:20:12.600 from Telpurion, the silver tree and the last golden fruit from, from Laurelin and Owle, the,

00:20:19.000 the interior, uh, power of growth, because they're all according to the facets of the soul.

00:20:24.520 Owle is growth.

00:20:25.560 He makes the vessels for them and puts them and they become the fallen light of the sun

00:20:29.960 and the moon.

00:20:30.600 But the spirits that he does, Tolkien doesn't tell you this, you've got to figure it out.

00:20:34.520 The spirits then, Owle will take and he will make new bodies for them.

00:20:39.960 Just like he made dwarves a long time, very early before.

00:20:43.960 And he infuses the new spirits with these, the new bodies with the spirits of

00:20:48.760 Telpurion, the tree, and, and Laurelin, the golden tree.

00:20:53.560 And they become Tom Bombadil and Goldberry.

00:20:55.800 And that's who Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are.

00:20:57.800 That's the big mystery that nobody's ever figured out.

00:21:00.040 And they are the fallen rational will.

00:21:02.760 Tom is a rational will.

00:21:03.720 That's why he can do anything he wants.

00:21:05.320 And the rational intellect, conscience, which is Goldberry.

00:21:08.520 And that's where Goldberry gets her name from the last golden fruit. 1.00

00:21:13.320 The fruit was a berry.

00:21:14.360 Yeah, Tolkien's a master, a master with words.

00:21:19.320 And he's a great humorist and loved to have fun with what he did.

00:21:24.280 For instance, in one of the, what we've always, conventional wisdom is always considered like

00:21:32.600 the Greek gods, the Valar, they're not.

00:21:34.680 They're the 14 facets of the soul, according to the scholastics.

00:21:38.040 They're the veg, the three vegetative souls, the nine, yeah, the nine interior and exterior 0.99

00:21:46.200 senses that we have, the five in exterior sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

00:21:53.400 And, and then the interior senses that we have, which is memory, sense, memory,

00:21:59.720 imagination, and cognitive sense.

00:22:01.720 Okay.

00:22:02.200 And then on the, and then off to the side, we'll say is the concupiscibles,

00:22:06.680 which is concupiscence and irascibility, the irascibles and the concupiscibles,

00:22:11.400 not concupiscence yet until after the fall, but then above the,

00:22:16.920 above and beyond that, which makes us in the image of God,

00:22:21.320 are the rational will and the intellect, Tom Bombadil and Goldberry.

00:22:24.600 So when they fall, having suffered death through mortal sin,

00:22:28.200 they can't live in the undying land anymore.

00:22:29.960 They have to come to middle earth, which is the material brain.

00:22:33.160 And that's where they dwell as Tom Bombadil and Goldberry.

00:22:36.120 And the whole mythology is about Tom calling the cardinal virtues.

00:22:40.360 He's going to clean up his act.

00:22:41.320 He's going to get rid of this.

00:22:43.000 He's going to get rid of the ring and he's going to clean up his act.

00:22:45.720 And he's going to become a saint.

00:22:46.840 And that's what he does.

00:22:47.480 And he reverts and he comes back to the church and ultimately becomes a saint.

00:22:51.480 But the conventional, uh, Cartesian, because let's face it,

00:22:56.440 most people who have tried to make an attempt of interpreting Tolkien's work,

00:23:01.480 have they've been, they've been educated in the John Dewey Cartesian machine of the enlightenment.

00:23:06.840 They're filled with, with errors of the enlightenment.

00:23:09.480 So it took somebody to educate himself as a scholastic, which I've done.

00:23:13.480 I taught myself music as a written language so I could actually read Beethoven scores,

00:23:17.480 read them and show you what he's, how he's written.

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00:24:18.040 That, that I need to get into because you were telling me before about Beethoven being

00:24:25.880 deaf but nonetheless being able to still write music.

00:24:29.560 He didn't need his ears because it was a language to him.

00:24:31.720 Every, all, and the thing of it is, really sad thing about it is,

00:24:35.880 Franz Schubert was just catching on to the secret,

00:24:38.360 Beethoven's secret, before he died, but he died of syphilis.

00:24:41.720 And he never, we could have had wonderful things from Franz Schubert.

00:24:45.880 We did have wonderful things from Schubert, but if you listen to something like his,

00:24:51.960 his great B flat sonata for piano, it's just, it's amazing.

00:24:56.520 And you can tell he's catching on, but he died.

00:24:59.400 And then all the other, they're great composers, don't get me wrong, you know,

00:25:02.680 the Strauss's and the, and the Brahms and the Chopin and, and Mendelssohn and all these guys.

00:25:09.080 They were wonderful and Liszt too.

00:25:11.480 But they didn't get the secret.

00:25:13.000 They never figured out the secret.

00:25:14.600 I figured out the secret because I studied the whole thing as a language.

00:25:17.800 And then you can figure it out because you've got these, you've got two things.

00:25:21.480 You've got stable ratios.

00:25:25.240 They're constant.

00:25:26.040 They don't change.

00:25:27.000 Our words change, but the, the Marxists always want us to change words so we can never get a,

00:25:31.560 we're constantly in a fog of meaning, constantly in a fog of meaning.

00:25:35.320 That's where the communists want us.

00:25:37.240 That's where they, that's where most of us are.

00:25:39.240 That's why we have to hang on to the original etymological origins of our words.

00:25:43.880 If you don't hang on to that, you lose your language and then you lose your history

00:25:47.720 and you lose your way, totally lose your way.

00:25:49.720 I don't even know who you are anymore.

00:25:51.240 Next thing you know, you're cutting body parts off and claiming you're the other gender, 1.00

00:25:55.560 you know, and then wanting to die and then joined with machines.

00:25:58.440 And we can all just be machines.

00:26:01.000 Help us to understand a little bit more about this music as a language.

00:26:04.520 How do you read music?

00:26:09.560 Well, it wasn't, it wasn't possible.

00:26:14.040 I'll say it wasn't really possible in the, with the modal system.

00:26:17.720 Okay, because there wasn't the, they weren't using modulation to go from mode to mode to modulate.

00:26:26.760 So they were more or less stuck in the, the cantus firmus was laid out, beautiful.

00:26:31.640 And then the, then the polyphony goes through according to Joseph Fuchs's grand parnusium,

00:26:37.640 actually, which I've done, I've studied them and I did them myself.

00:26:41.160 You know, one winter when I was teaching myself music, all the great composers had to study Fuchs and do the exercises.

00:26:47.080 Okay.

00:26:47.880 Um, so how, how it, it, it is, it works as a, as a language.

00:26:53.640 When you have consistency, you can figure out very rapidly.

00:26:58.200 Now, when you've got the possibility of one key signature against one or two other key signatures,

00:27:04.920 according to how they're related, now you've got relationship.

00:27:08.520 Now you can choose a key to say, I want this to represent, uh, um, my father or, or, or my, uh,

00:27:18.840 maybe, maybe I'll have, uh, the dominant key be my father.

00:27:22.680 Maybe I'll have, uh, um, maybe I'll have, uh, uh, the, uh, the subdominant key, um, be, uh, my mother.

00:27:33.000 Maybe I'll be the, the tonic signature, the tonic key signature.

00:27:37.320 But then you've also got the motifs and those are really critical.

00:27:40.120 And those are a little like, uh, easy, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, that's a motive.

00:27:46.440 Okay.

00:27:47.240 That's the same motive used again.

00:27:51.640 And it travels around.

00:27:52.520 Now you can put the personal, the personal character.

00:27:56.600 You, you follow that motive and you follow that.

00:27:59.080 It's like an event.

00:28:00.440 The music becomes an event and it's a real event that's laid out and carved in physical law.

00:28:08.040 Okay.

00:28:08.440 And you can't escape it.

00:28:10.200 Um, and that's how Beethoven's music was so much more penetrating and first person

00:28:15.400 because he would say he would write, uh, my, I lost my son in, in battle and they brought

00:28:21.880 his body home and I'm, and, and, and this is how I feel.

00:28:26.520 And you feel it as opposed to somebody like, uh, Tchaikovsky or wonderful, whatever.

00:28:33.400 But as opposed to, oh, I'm so sad.

00:28:36.200 Listen to me cry.

00:28:37.800 This is how sad I am.

00:28:38.760 Can't you tell I'm crying?

00:28:40.840 You know, can't you share my pain and my grief?

00:28:43.880 I mean, no, not really.

00:28:46.120 I mean, I'm sad that you're, you're crying, but it's not penetrating.

00:28:48.920 Where Beethoven, you actually experienced your son's death, so to speak in the battlefield.

00:28:54.120 And it's firsthand.

00:28:55.320 And that's how he wrote a language that is universal and doesn't, like I said, you don't

00:29:01.080 need to know the grammar.

00:29:02.120 You don't need to know, uh, um, the vocabulary or the rules or punctuation.

00:29:06.920 You don't need to know they affect you, uh, above and beyond kind of like the harmonic

00:29:13.000 overtones, the overtone notes are above and beyond the base note.

00:29:16.520 Uh, the music affects you in a way that you can't avoid.

00:29:19.720 And music is extremely potent.

00:29:21.800 And that's why I, I remember, I think it was, I can't remember.

00:29:24.840 It was early or 90 something or other.

00:29:27.480 I remember the first time I heard rap music, I cried.

00:29:32.600 I wept because I knew the end was near.

00:29:35.800 I knew I could tell how evil, I could tell how destructive it was.

00:29:39.960 I could tell how debasing that it was.

00:29:42.200 But you're talking rap music minus the lyrics.

00:29:47.400 Um, the lyrics are bad.

00:29:48.440 The lyrics are bad.

00:29:49.080 Yes.

00:29:49.320 But, but, but there's really no, I mean, back then there was a little bit more music involved.

00:29:53.880 It wasn't just a real heavy base and, and whatnot and layered over with multiple layers of vulgarity

00:30:01.000 and pornography and violence.

00:30:02.520 Um, but I heard it and I knew what was going to happen.

00:30:05.800 I, I used to love classic rock and roll.

00:30:07.880 I, my favorite rock and roll band was probably Yes.

00:30:10.680 Very complicated progressive band and Supertramp and Jethro Tull.

00:30:15.880 And, you know, some of the, some of the, uh, the, the rock bands that actually required some,

00:30:22.520 you know, intellect to, to appreciate.

00:30:25.160 I really appreciated that.

00:30:26.360 And a lot of the, uh, influence that made those things great too, was also the African-American

00:30:32.280 influence on that through jazz and, and R and B was very heavily helped to form rock and roll.

00:30:39.000 And I knew that this new form in rap would take away, would, would, would totally distract

00:30:45.720 the black influence on pop.

00:30:48.120 How, and it has, and how could you see that dominating even because if what you're saying

00:30:54.200 and, and, um, I love listening to music, I'm not a good, and I don't, you know, I don't,

00:30:58.680 I scrape the violin and the viola.

00:31:00.360 I mean, I'm, I can play all right, but how did you know, or how could you sense that rap,

00:31:07.480 even though it was so, uh, uh, bass would take over?

00:31:11.640 Well, it wasn't just bass and the fact that the notes were low.

00:31:14.280 It was bass.

00:31:15.000 It was debasing.

00:31:16.200 Yeah, it was debasing.

00:31:17.240 It was just because the power of music is undeniable and cuts through everything and it

00:31:21.880 will influence you.

00:31:23.880 It will cast a spell, so to speak on you.

00:31:27.000 This is what, this is why Plato, I think in the Republic made it very clear that music

00:31:31.400 and poetry should be strictly, uh, monitored.

00:31:36.360 Okay.

00:31:36.840 Because it has such an influence on, on the youth that's been known for forever.

00:31:41.480 This is not just, you can't just claim something's harmless.

00:31:44.920 There's nothing that's harmless.

00:31:47.080 Out there, especially something that's so universal, so fundamental as a physical law in

00:31:52.200 language.

00:31:53.080 Um, you can portray all kinds of demonic and they are demonic and filth.

00:31:59.560 And then you combine that also with so many people saturating their imaginations at such a young

00:32:05.080 age with pornography.

00:32:07.000 You're just making orcs in Tolkien's terminology and Uruk-hai, you know, which are even worse.

00:32:13.720 But music is a language because it's consistent.

00:32:17.000 The, the, the relationships between the chords, the relate, even the, even in the vertical and the,

00:32:22.280 because you travel in a, you've got harmonic progression vertically by the notes that you

00:32:27.240 pick for, for your, for your melody.

00:32:29.720 But then also very stably in your horizontal, your chord progression, however that is laid out.

00:32:34.920 And, and once you understand, um, particularly if you can, I remember one time I did a,

00:32:40.680 I actually analyzed Beethoven's, uh, Moonlight Sonata because everybody loves it.

00:32:45.640 It's a great piece, although everybody plays it way too slow.

00:32:47.560 They don't, they don't take into account the actual marking that Beethoven had, which is cut

00:32:52.280 time, you know, and it has to be twice as fast as that. So anyway, um, but, and everybody has always

00:32:58.200 said, oh, it's him lamenting that he's losing his hearing. It's not, that's got nothing to do with it.

00:33:03.720 What, and I showed harmonically what he was actually lamenting about was he was born into the

00:33:07.960 lower class. He couldn't, he could never marry into the aristocracy, the women that were more 1.00

00:33:13.640 cultured that he could appreciate. He was a van Beethoven, not a von Beethoven. Now this is really,

00:33:19.480 this is what it covers. So he's lamenting in the first movement, he'll never break away. And that's

00:33:23.480 that baseline and those triplets that are always gnawing at him. He'll never get away. He'll never

00:33:28.040 be other than a peasant.

00:33:43.640 Okay. No matter what you do with music, you'll always be a peasant. You'll never be able to marry 0.98

00:33:57.800 her. Never be able to marry her. Okay. So in the second, the second movement is a scherzo and it's

00:34:03.000 a, it's a masquerade. It's a charade. It's a, it's a, it's a pretend kind of thing.

00:34:21.480 And at that time he had just moved from Bonn, his hometown to Vienna, the heart of music. And he

00:34:28.040 actually pretended to be a von Beethoven and guess what? He was found out. And the third movement

00:34:36.280 is running away. And when you listen to it, you realize that's exactly what's going on. I showed

00:34:41.720 harmonically how that happened. And I was dealing with some professional pain. This was back in the

00:34:47.240 day of chat rooms. Yeah. Wow. Um, so in terms of music today, um, is there a fix for music today?

00:34:59.080 Is there something we can do or parents should do, uh, with regard to their children's music?

00:35:05.000 Yeah, they should definitely not let them listen to this modern, uh, um, formulated, uh, pop music.

00:35:12.200 It should not definitely not, uh, anything destructive. A pop music is destructive on another

00:35:17.560 level. It's just total, it's numbing. It's just, it, it desensitizes you to real music. Um,

00:35:24.200 the Western world, uh, suffered a great, great catastrophe, uh, in the late 19th century, early

00:35:33.720 and on into the 20th century called the avant-garde. And that was brought on by the fact, as I point out

00:35:40.200 out of my book, that mathematicians had already usurped the position of philosopher because we

00:35:45.000 started to look for truth in numbers and not in the creator, not in Christ. And we turned to numbers

00:35:51.480 and that's, what's going to kill us. These, that we made a machine. You know, that was a whole intent.

00:35:55.800 Leibniz made that he had a vision. Leibniz who invented binary code thought that, you know, that he,

00:36:01.880 the true, we could find truth in numbers. And, and that's another way that they just pulled themselves

00:36:07.000 and removed themselves from Christ. But we have to protect our children's imaginations at all cost.

00:36:14.280 It's a very precious, precious thing, not in the golem way, but it is a very, very valuable thing 1.00

00:36:20.520 that our children have an innocence in their mind. And children are stupid. I'm sorry to say, 1.00

00:36:25.640 but they have no wisdom. They have no idea what's going on. I mean, a male's brain isn't fully developed 0.86

00:36:31.480 until about 24. A female's brain is a little earlier than that. But I mean, you're, you start 0.99

00:36:37.640 to be capable of reason to some degree, six or seven years old, and then you develop it. But now we're

00:36:43.400 sending our kids to the Marxist Dewey machine, which is industrial education, which has rejected

00:36:50.040 Aristotle, has rejected Aquinas. And now it's just an industrial education. So you can make money

00:36:58.600 and be a cog in the wheel, and ultimately burn in hell. That's exactly what they want. And we need 0.99

00:37:04.680 to protect our kids. And we need to start our kids off listening, Palestrina, Victoria, Bach later,

00:37:12.440 and you know, after the Renaissance in the Baroque. What do you make of Mozart? I like Mozart. I mean,

00:37:17.400 I think that he, unfortunately, his later works are more Beethoven. But I mean, I like him. He's,

00:37:23.160 there's some, like I say, he's no Beethoven. Beethoven, but Beethoven probably wouldn't have

00:37:31.800 been so much Beethoven without Mozart's late influence on him. He actually studied with,

00:37:36.840 well, he was going to study with Mozart, and then Mozart died before he could study with him. But

00:37:42.760 then he studied with Handel after that. And Salieri, Salieri gets a bad rap in the movie. Salieri wasn't a

00:37:50.520 bad guy. He was just a music teacher. But they had to make him the villain, you know, in the movies.

00:37:56.520 So anyway, protect your children. Teach them that music is a language. Teach them that it's important

00:38:01.880 what they subject themselves to. Teach them how to write. When we look at, back when we used to be

00:38:08.680 creative, we don't have a creative soul in our body anymore. Because we've changed art from a universal

00:38:15.240 communication now with the universal language. We've changed it to expression. All art is just

00:38:22.280 expression now. And that's all. And when it's individual expression, it can't be art. The only

00:38:28.120 person you're talking to is yourself. At best, maybe somebody else who's helped you write it.

00:38:33.640 But it's so everybody is on this individualism. And music, art can't be about, it has to transcend.

00:38:39.480 It has to transcend the individual. And it has to be something that has universal appeal. And when we,

00:38:46.360 the avant-garde was all about atonalism. Just break away from the reality of the physical law

00:38:53.640 and truth of modulation and harmonics. Break away from that. And then we went into micro tones and

00:39:01.000 everybody thought they were really special because they were dealing with quarter tones instead of

00:39:04.920 half tones and all those. And it's just all. And then you go to a concert and there would be some

00:39:09.880 modern atonal composer. And it was a joke. And you'd have all these dewy educated people.

00:39:15.640 Oh, wasn't that wonderful? Oh, wasn't that lovely? And it's so great to listen to. It's horrible.

00:39:19.960 How can you even hear? No, I, you know, I don't need to try to pretend like I enjoy this to try to make

00:39:24.600 myself look intelligent. Right? I'm intelligent enough to know and honest to know this sucks.

00:39:30.200 Right. Okay. This is awful. And I, this is a waste of paper. It's a waste of great talent in, in, 0.98

00:39:36.440 in musicians. It's a waste of money. And then, and then our, all art fell into that. The whole abstract,

00:39:44.440 uh, individualism, uh, all fell into that. And it's, it's, it's really sad, but now we're at a point where

00:39:51.160 it's actually, uh, it's actually being used to destroy the mind. All this formulated music that's just

00:39:58.760 just, there's no real community. It's just, it's just a distraction. And then the outright evil,

00:40:05.800 satanic, violent, pornographic stuff that we drum into our minds. And we have to start treating our

00:40:12.600 minds as a precious, um, object that's, that we use. It's the object of thought. It's the organ of

00:40:19.560 thought. And if we don't treat it properly, uh, it doesn't work, you know, and we have to make it work.

00:40:27.000 And, and music can, you can really, if you, if you educate your kids and you only, and you let them,

00:40:32.040 and you wean them on like Palestrina, Bach, uh, Victoria, um, uh, Renaissance, Gregorian chant,

00:40:40.840 Gregorian chant, uh, Renaissance, uh, Baroque and classical too. And even some of the romantic

00:40:47.720 stuff is good. Brahms is, is great. Uh, you know, um, Chopin, Schubert was kind of in between.

00:40:54.040 Schubert is fantastic. Um, most, you know, all that stuff, that's great. But the minute they get

00:40:59.320 into this formulated pop stuff and worse, it's a liability and you need to pull them away from it.

00:41:06.840 And the kids don't know, and they're going to think, oh, you won't let me, but you know, 0.99

00:41:10.120 my friends all listen to it and they're not stupid. And, you know, and all this, and it's just 0.95

00:41:13.800 difficult being a kid. I have a vineyard and the things that you learn when you're pruning vines,

00:41:19.160 you're pruning them back. So they don't go there. Why? Because you want them to,

00:41:23.640 you want them to have fruit. You want them to be fruitful. You don't just don't want them to be

00:41:28.840 vines all over the place. And that means a lot of times you have to say no.

00:41:31.960 I have to say no.

00:41:33.160 Interesting. Yeah.

00:41:34.680 Well, I loved what you said about weaning them on because music sticks with children from their

00:41:41.240 infancy. And that playing Palestrina A is good for the moms. Gosh, if you're ever,

00:41:47.800 because there's a lot of depression that goes on when you're a new mom. And

00:41:52.280 listening to Palestrina is very soothing for you, but it does wonders for your baby as well.

00:41:57.480 And when you say this, I got to say this, when you said that music lasts, music is the thing that lasts,

00:42:03.080 Tolkien knew that. And so in the mythology, Fionor, who's the great maker who made the Silmarils,

00:42:08.920 by the way, his sons, Tolkien has them. They're actually his education. They're the quadrivium and the

00:42:15.640 trivium. The trivium and the quadrivium, his sons are. Okay. And it's really interesting the way he

00:42:22.120 is subtle things like that, subtle the way he gives hints. But music, Maglor, the great musician

00:42:29.480 of his education, the music is the only one of Fionor's sons that never, that doesn't die. In the

00:42:35.640 mythology, in the third age, when they destroy the ring, he still might be there. There's no evidence

00:42:41.240 that he ever died. But all the rest of the education, all the rest of his classical education,

00:42:46.440 logic, rhetoric, grammar. Then there's music. Then there was geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy.

00:42:58.200 Yeah. And he names astronomy, he names it the dark one. Little things like that. Or the nose,

00:43:04.040 the sense of the nose, the sense of smell. His name is Oromay, a play on aroma. And he had a mighty horn.

00:43:14.280 And Rhetoric, the son of Fionor, followed Oromay's horn, meaning that it was prone,

00:43:25.080 Rhetoric was prone to snobbery, you know, nose, you know, following his nose, you know,

00:43:30.120 Tolkien was a master. He was very, very, he's a brilliant man. So he had a brilliant and fruitful

00:43:38.040 sense of imagination. And he gave us the most beautiful, most profound,

00:43:44.760 most prophetic, and most important literature in the history of literature. And we, and now here it is,

00:43:50.360 and my mission, God-given mission, is to bring Tolkien right in the midst of the conflict,

00:43:57.160 right in the fight, uh, between good and evil. And we're gonna, there's Tolkien unmasking with

00:44:05.720 Andulene, Flame of the West, fighting on our side. And like I said, the powers that be in the hierarchy

00:44:12.840 are gonna have their hands full, contending with Tolkien, because Tolkien has a huge influence.

00:44:17.640 Beautiful. Paulus, thank you so much. Thank you very much. God bless you. God bless all of you.

00:44:23.720 We'll see you next time. Go pick up Mount Doom, The Prophecies of Tolkien Revealed. I'll see you next time.

00:44:39.160 Go pick up Mount Doom...

The John-Henry Westen Show - July 09, 2024

Music is ABSOLUTELY CENTRAL to Tolkien’s Catholic vision in Middle Earth

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