If you want to know someone, ask them about their musical preferences.
Their answer should illuminate your path and rate of advance into the unknown forest of their Soul.
Take me for example. I’m as eclectic as they come. I enjoy Hava Nagila, North Korean martial music, landsknecht lieds, Romanian folklore, Gustav Holt, the Beatles, Nini Rosso, Romanian rap, Fleetwood Mac, Air, Verdi, Conejo, Talking Heads, RATM, and… John Dowland.
There is no rhyme or reason to my playlist. I am what you would call an eccentric. You should call me exactly that. I have earned it. Trust me, I have.
The thing is music is the only immediate bridge to the Past. Music captures the sounds, morals, sense, and atmosphere of the times better than anything else.
Take Verdi’s Traviata Overture. This was composed, played, and applauded for years on end, during the creation of Italy as we know it today. Modern Italy came to be on Giuseppe Verdi’s music. Italy exists today because of Verdi as much as it does because of Cavour or Victor Emmanuel II.
Can you not hear the Risorgimento taking over the whole Peninsula on these magnificent notes? Can you not hear Garibaldi’s Thousand Red Shirts liberating Sicily from the Neapolitans on its rhythm?
I was born in this day and age. I did not choose to, nor do I regret it. There is nothing to do about it. No point having any regrets. But if I could choose the age of my reincarnation, I would have a difficult time to decide. So many good choices, eh…
One of the strong contenders for 1st place would be the 16th century. You see this century is one of the last times in History when a Man could be Romantic and aspire to greatness in the presence of his Queen and Monarch. So much so that a Man would wager and lose ALL on Romance.
I am a betting man, perhaps more than most. I know I have the microbe so I keep it repressed, bottled up deep inside me so as to not repeat the mistakes of my ancestors.
But as a betting man, I understand that certain things are worth it All.
Love is such a thing. Life to me is singular. And because of its singular nature, of its singularity, I have chosen to dedicate my Life to One. One wife. One daughter. One mother. One job. One shot.
Do you know who else had the same idea about 430 years ago?
The Lord of Essex. This man loved his Queen. This lord loved the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I of England. And he died for it.
In 1597, four years before his execution, John Dowland, a famous composer and lutenist, set one of Essex’s poems to music: “Can she excuse my wrongs with virtue’s cloak?” To me it’s clear that Essex wrote the poem, since Dowland named his song “The Earl of Essex’s Galliard”. Here are the lyrics:
1. Can she excuse my wrongs with virtue’s cloak?
shall I call her good when she proves unkind?
Are those clear fires which vanish into smoke?
must I praise the leaves where no fruit I find?
No, no: where shadows do for bodies stand,
thou may’st be abused if thy sight be dim.
Cold love is like to words written on sand,
or to bubbles which on the water swim.
Wilt thou be thus abused still,
seeing that she will right thee never?
if thou canst not overcome her will,
thy love will be thus fruitless ever.
2. Was I so base, that I might not aspire
Unto those high joys which she holds from me?
As they are high, so high is my desire:
If she this deny what can granted be?
If she will yield to that which reason is,
It is reasons will that love should be just.
Dear make me happy still by granting this,
Or cut off delays if that I die must.
Better a thousand times to die,
then for to live thus still tormented:
Dear but remember it was I
Who for thy sake did die contented.
I sometimes wish I was born then and there. Then again, perhaps I was born at the right time and place. And I’m just a silly malcontent.
Götterdämmerung 