English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Opening and the Norns' rock: Böcklin's Isle of the Dead 0:00 The beginning of modernity, the beginning of the solitude of the individual in relation to any community.
0:30 Precisely, what characterizes this modernity from a musical point of view is the shift from modal music to tonal music. The shift to modal classical music or modal jazz is felt as a bold move. But in fact, it's a strange kind of innovation, because it consists in going back to an earlier stage.
1:13 My soul is cracked. So the cracked bell, that's me, that's the narrator, that's the poet. And you'll see the loss of voice, but in the literal sense. "And when in its troubles, it wants to fill the cold night air with its songs." Look, the mood here is a crescendo, over the course of a very short sonnet. "It often happens that its weakened voice seems like the thick death-rattle of a wounded man who is forgotten." Do you know what a death-rattle is? When blood comes to obstruct the throat, there.
1:43 "It seems like the thick death-rattle of a wounded man who is forgotten, at the edge of a lake of blood, under a great heap of the dead, and who dies without moving, in immense efforts." So, there's a question, I'll answer it more quickly.
2:24 which comes from Victor — I have no further detail than this pseudonym, so I'll respect it — who tells me, regarding the scene of the Three Norns that we showed in the prologue of Twilight of the Gods, and with the rock behind the Three Norns there, that it reminds him of Böcklin's painting, the famous painting by Böcklin, Isle of the Dead. And he puts it to me as a question. Böcklin's Isle of the Dead? I confess to you, Victor, that I hadn't thought of it, but reading it under your pen, I say to myself that it's not such a bad idea.
2:58 Excuse me, when I say that, it means it's intelligent. But what I'm saying is, it wouldn't surprise me if an artist like Chéreau had thought of it, that this set design was inspired by that kind of painting. Of course, the spirit is very different, there's no expanse of water, there's no navigation — well, there is the Rhine after all, but there's no sea or lake. But indeed, the shape of the rock in relation to the character, and that aspect which represents something both stable and menacing at the same time, don't you think?
An article on the musical history of the West 3:33 It does recall, yes, it does recall Böcklin's Isle of the Dead, so much so that I even wonder whether there isn't a more or less explicit inspiration here. There you go, thank you for asking the question and for that spirit of observation. Now I come to this opposite example, the question we just saw from Dominique Bertrand, whom I sincerely thank — you'll see, to get back from the visual, from the pictorial, to music — sends me a link pointing to an article, but of such length that I won't be able to cover it exhaustively tonight.
4:13 On the other hand, I'd like to read you just the beginning to whet your appetite, and we'll leave the link on our site so you can refer to it. It's a long article, but it has the advantage of condensing twelve centuries of history. The musical history of the West, with music as the guiding thread. The history of the West, even outside the musical sphere, with music as the guiding thread, and Rabelais as guide.
4:44 Well now, that's quite tempting. There it says — I'll respect it — dedicated to Alain Didier-Weill, who lent me his surprising ear throughout this research. Duly noted. So here's the information. The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine, the writer, the author, relates a historical event from the ninth century. The ninth century, that's almost still the dark ages. We're just barely starting to come out of it with Charlemagne, but barely. It relates a historical event: a sung prayer, which is at the origin of the naming of the notes of the musical scale.
5:16 Their naming — Do, or Ut originally, which later became Do — Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si. This scale, this ladder that defines relations of pitch, defines what is called Western music, as opposed to the pentatonic scale, which instead defines extra-European music, whether in the Far East or in sub-Saharan Africa, for example. Or the blues scale, which is yet another different thing.
5:48 This event can be interpreted as the first stage of a process of mutation, specific not only to Western music but also to the whole set of cultural values that underlie it. I told you I wouldn't comment too much on side matters, because it would take us very far. Up to the historical upheaval that will distinguish this culture from all others: the entry into modernity. This is very gratifying for me, because Dominique echoes something I keep coming back to recurrently, trying to define in what way our modernity is truly ours, the one that made us who we are.
6:30 Because, once again, it's a concept for a reality that people trace back to the Renaissance, whatever you like, but the other modernity, the one that follows, once again, from the English industrial revolution and then the French political revolution — the two occurring within that tight temporal handkerchief that is the eighteenth century. Precisely, what characterizes this modernity from a musical point of view is the shift from modal music to tonal music. Let me give you an example. Almost all the music we hear is tonal, meaning it's always moving around, I stay in the key of C the whole time.
7:29 When I move away from C, it creates a little tension and I resolve it by coming back at the end. And there you go, like a good dancer, we land back on the ground. On the ground, on solid footing. So there is a direction, one note among all the others. There's one that is the note of rest. In modal music, I'll play you a modal progression.
8:09 You'll notice that it sounds a bit like trumpet fanfares in sword-and-sandal epics. When in the amphitheater the gladiators are about to kill each other and the trumpets start to sound. And it goes... You see? Because it has to point somewhere — it's archaic, it's ancient. It's not yet Western music. In the history of classical music and its evolution, and in the history of jazz and its evolution — which often reproduces, in a much shorter time, almost all the stages of classical music, I'll come back to that another time, I'll say it here for free for now — the shift to modal classical music or modal jazz is felt as bold, as modern, as something daring.
Debussy's whole-tone mode, an innovation that goes backward 8:55 Let me give you an example with an innovator like Debussy. That was the C scale. Debussy prefers, to the C scale which governs Western music, as he puts it, roughly from the seventeenth century up to the end of the nineteenth, the so-called whole-tone scale. It's this one. You see, I haven't played any real theme, but already it sounds like Debussy, doesn't it, for those who know.
9:30 To demonstrate this now, I'm going to sketch out a little Debussy piece built entirely on this scale. It's from Children's Corner — The Little Shepherd. You see, these chords wouldn't follow one another like this in tonal music.
10:13 Here, you can chain them together. You see, it's music that departs a bit from tonal music. Mozart, for example. Yes, it's innovative.
10:45 But in fact, it's a strange kind of innovation. I'm speaking imprecisely on purpose, to make myself understood. It's a strange kind of innovation, because it consists in going back to an earlier stage. Because almost all the music on the planet was modal for almost all of history. The novelty was the bold shift to tonality, starting in the seventeenth century, from the moment equal temperament was created. I don't want to get too technical. But let me continue with the text, which tells us something, an anecdote that isn't yet present.
From Gregorian monody to the polyphony of Notre-Dame 11:23 Up to the historical upheaval that will distinguish this culture from all others, namely the entry into modernity. According to this musical reading, this mutation, the transition from modal form to tonal form, unfolds over eight centuries in four stages. Now, don't worry, I'll only give you the first one, but it's fascinating, under the title 'The Prayer.' The historical origins, that is, of this first stage. The first stage, ninth century — so this goes back once again to nearly a time of darkness — is of a spiritual order.
11:54 Concerning the voice, and the theme of the lost voice — note well, the lost voice in the literal sense, 'Ah, I've lost my voice,' you see — it's a sung prayer, whose symbolic richness projects onto the other stages an exceptional and meaningful dimension. That sounds a bit mysterious, he's announcing in advance what's coming. So don't worry, it will become clear. Alas, unknown even to most musicians, this era also corresponds to the transition from monody — 'Per omnia secula seculorum,' with ten people singing that, note for note.
12:28 It's like a single line, they all sing at the same pitch. That's monody — 'mono-ode,' 'ode,' a single song. There aren't several voices crossing one another. Whereas when I do this instead... It's quite simple, it's the beginning of a very beautiful Haydn movement. There are two voices, there's the one doing this... and the one doing that. That's polyphony, that's not monody.
13:06 And that's what I'm doing. There. There's only one voice at a time. That's monody. All Gregorian chant in the Middle Ages, well before people dared, all of a sudden, to make the voices diverge from one another, like a blossoming. Look, look at the ribbed vaults in cathedrals from that very same period.
13:40 The Romanesque column, like this, will suddenly branch out into several lines, like this, going off in different directions, daring this liberation from monody that is polyphony. I permit myself to mention here to Dominique Bertrand that I devoted a whole talk to this passage, which is quite overwhelming in a way, and which was above all brought about by the school — in the history of music, it's a nodal point — the so-called School of Notre-Dame, because it happened at Notre-Dame de Paris and at Saint-Denis.
14:12 Saint-Denis was, at that time, just as important in Christendom as Paris. It's where our kings were buried, don't forget. It was at Notre-Dame and Saint-Denis that what was called at the time the novum organum appeared — this new instrument that is polyphony, this new way of making music. And there is a wonderful album I recommend called The School of Notre-Dame, with compositions by Léonin — easy to remember, Léonin, teacher of Pérotin the Great — Léonin then, who excelled in this novum organum.
14:49 And on the same album, there's the Gregorian 'Per omnia secula seculorum,' etc. And suddenly there's a second voice, and a third, independent one. It's quite overwhelming. I recommend this album, you'll find it in the Nature or Landscape series on our site, when you click on video, on our YouTube channel if you prefer, the channel called Dorénavant, Philosophizing with Dominique Pagani, you'll find the Nature or Landscape series, and you take hashtag 5.6.
Paul the Deacon loses his voice: the hymn Ut queant laxis 15:24 There, that's the number of this video, hashtag 5.6. Besides, it's easy to spot, because the thumbnail shows the rose window of Notre-Dame — I paid it a tribute, the fire had just badly damaged that cathedral. According to legend, Paul the Deacon, cultural advisor to Charlemagne — you see, this isn't a recent thing — leading the solemn Easter Mass, you see, leading the Easter Mass before the Holy Roman Emperor of the West, according to legend, Paul the Deacon, cultural advisor to Charlemagne, while leading the Easter Mass, loses his voice — you see, the lost voice, that was literal — he has an extinction of voice, at the most dramatic moment of the ritual.
16:07 Well now, we've just done a whole series with Mignon, with the crackle of the telephone in Kafka, the voice of the bell with its winged sound, both joyful and threatening. And now here comes, almost the opposite, but it's the same problem: the loss of voice. You'll see, it's not a permanent loss, far from it. So, according to the legend, the deacon loses his voice at the most dramatic moment of the ritual. What is the most dramatic moment?
16:37 You can guess: in the Easter ritual, it's the moment of Good Friday, the moment when Christ gives up the ghost on the cross. So, at the most dramatic moment of the ritual, which itself marks the most dramatic moment of the liturgical year, the crucifixion. And then, after the resurrection of Christ — well, it's by plunging the Paschal candle into the water, that was a custom, they took the lit candle and it was extinguished in the water to symbolize death, symbolizing Christ's descent into hell to deliver Adam from the curse of original sin — that he loses his voice.
17:10 It's at the moment when he puts the candle into the water, finding himself unable to speak. This matters, because at the time, if the priest doesn't pronounce the words, the sacrament isn't accomplished, and the faithful are quite bothered and more than frustrated. He loses his voice, finding himself unable to pronounce the ritual words, symbolizing the rising up and thus the resurrection. I lose my voice at the moment of the crucifixion, so how will I pronounce the resurrection?
17:42 "Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum," isn't that so? And "resurrexit." He then turns — as if imploring salvation — toward Saint John the Baptist, there's a statue, Saint John the Baptist, in almost every church, he turns, as if imploring salvation, toward Saint John the Baptist — Saint John the Baptist, not Saint John the Evangelist — and recovers his voice, completes the ritual, and composes the prayer that follows, whose melodic phrases each begin, on each ascending degree of the scale, with verses whose first two letters will form the notes of the scale.
18:18 You see? "Ut queant laxis, resonare fibris, mira gestorum," ut, re, mi — "famuli tuorum," 'we, your servants' — it doesn't matter whether we know the meaning, as you can imagine, since only the first two letters are kept. "Solve polluti," 'dissolve the stain of the accused lip,' please, Saint John, "Sancte Iohannes" — the 'Sancte Iohannes,' Iohannes with I-O, that's the old spelling — gives the Si, the last note of the scale, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si — it's not Do, the final Do only repeats the first one to make an octave — it's Si that comes last, you see?
18:59 In modern French, there's a translation that captures well what has just happened, this miracle: 'So that your faithful may sing the wonders of your deeds with a relaxed voice,' no longer anguished as it was, 'cleanse the fault from their stained lips. O Saint John!' It's worth clarifying here that Paul, the deacon to whom this happens, isn't at all concerned here with the scale, or with naming the notes — he's singing. If the first six phrases are sung on the ascending degrees of the scale, the ascent stops on the second-to-last phrase, the last one, 'Sancte Iohannes,' which gives the Si, coming back down from the Sol. It would take six centuries, a long maturation, to name the seventh degree, and to see the notion of the scale appear in the modern, tonal sense — in short, the lost voice.
Baudelaire's The Cracked Bell and the solitude of the modern individual 19:54 So I'll stop there — the rest is fascinating, even more fascinating, but I refer you to the article, which is very long. And I thank a thousand times — I knew the anecdote, but I didn't know this particular article, which is very thorough, and which brings me information I didn't have otherwise. It connects so well, in a completely independent way — I'm sure Dominique didn't think of it — with a talk I once gave about Baudelaire's cracked bell.
20:25 The first time I wanted to illustrate our modernity with a text, it was 'The Cracked Bell.' Ah, this isn't Kafka's bell, which produces a winged, joyful sound, as if it wanted to pierce the eardrum — no, it's quite the opposite, isn't it? There's the good bell, the one that rings for all the faithful living their everyday life, the village people, as opposed to the castle, if you like. 'Blessed is the bell with the sturdy throat' — you see, we're not far off, for now the throat, there's no loss of voice.
21:02 'Blessed is the bell' — the one we hear every day and every hour, and even every quarter hour — 'with the sturdy throat, which, despite its age, alert and in good health, casts its winged and joyful cry faithfully' — one, two, three, four, five, six, indeed — 'like an old soldier keeping watch under his tent.' 'Sleep, good people, you have the Church and the army protecting you.' The Church and the army — two crowds to which Freud devoted a magnificent article, isn't that so? Two crowds without women, at the time — there were women in the army, fine — the Church and the army, protecting you.
21:38 The Church, the bell, and the army, 'like an old soldier keeping watch under his tent.' Full stop, new line. That was the quatrains. Here now are the tercets of this sonnet. 'As for me, my soul is cracked.' So the cracked bell, that's me, that's the narrator, that's the poet. And you'll see the loss of voice, but in the literal sense. 'And when, in its troubles' — he's speaking of his cracked soul — 'and when in its troubles' — at the time, 'ennui' meant terrible anguish, it's not that I'm bored, that's the seventeenth-century meaning, even though he's writing this in the nineteenth.
22:12 "And when in its troubles, it wants to fill the cold night air with its songs." Look, the mood here builds — it's a crescendo, over the course of a very short sonnet. "It often happens that its weakened voice seems like the thick death-rattle of a wounded man who is forgotten." Do you know what a death-rattle is? When blood comes to obstruct the throat, there. "It seems like the thick death-rattle of a wounded man who is forgotten, at the edge of a lake of blood, under a great heap of the dead, and who dies without moving, in immense efforts."
22:44 We had started in bliss, hadn't we? 'It is bitter and sweet, during winter nights, to listen, near the flickering, smoking fire, as distant memories slowly rise, to the sound of chimes singing in the mist.' And then, all of a sudden, it ends in nightmare, within the span of a single sonnet. There you go. To show you just how much — and I thank Dominique — this connects with my own preoccupations, the ones I wanted to share with you, by showing that this was the beginning of modernity, the beginning of the solitude of the individual in relation to any community.
23:16 Now of course, this is progress compared to instinctive communitarianism, the kind that makes you follow the group no matter what, even if it does the worst things, because it's always better than feeling alone — but one first had to go through this descent into the hell of solitude, of the individual separating himself. This isn't someone who is alone out of a romantic love of solitude, no — this is Baudelaire, not Lamartine, the era had changed. His image is that of a wounded man, at the edge of a lake of blood, under a great heap of the dead, dying without moving, in immense efforts, whom everyone abandons, whom everyone forgets.
23:56 A wounded man who is forgotten. There you go — we were given this wonderful piece of information, for which I once again express all my gratitude to Dominique Bertrand. The Lost Voice — that's a beautiful title that sums it all up nicely. There we go!
