Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
A transcendence, for me, that took place in hearing Eliot’s words in the context of Christ Church Cathedral; if the great raison of the Quartets is to rediscover Christian ethics that have been lost and found and lost again and again, then there is no place more apposite than here for their recital, a place of amniotic safety for such principles. Having only previously read the Quartets as an undergrad within the confines of boardroom-like seminar rooms at my university and in my uniformly soulless prefabbed bedroom in halls of residence, I’d kind of always seen them as a lofty academic experiment in poetic form with little that struck viscerally. Tonight, I felt as though I was hearing them for the very first time. Or, at least, as though I was really beginning to know them for the first time.
Far from beginnings, though, is the weighty air of the archaic that permeates the whole evening’s entertainment. We gathered in an 800-year-old cathedral to listen to a poem that was published in its entirety over 70 years ago, in the year of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death, followed by a 160-year-old String Quartet; the whole thing seemingly an indulgent orchestration at the behest of the former President of the Oxford Union/Fellow of All Souls College/Conservative MP/Defector to the Labour Party [1] that is Robert Jackson, whose delivery at times is reminiscent of Eliot’s own. Eliot’s ethereal recorded reading of the Quartets is characterised, amongst other things, by a lugubrious rise in alarm renewed in every line like a high-powered engine climbing gears. As Jackson’s RP voice boomed out around the echoic interior of the cathedral, the poem transfigured into something of a Modernist homily politely received by its indubitably elderly congregation. Even Modernism itself is old hat and under the hill now. In the interval, when the reading was over, most telling of all was the sight of Jackson’s anthology used during the reading safely nestled under a box of butter scotches.
And yet, there was something immediate and present and truly alive and in every way relevant about the words that I just hadn’t heard before until tonight. It is a dreadful shame that there wasn’t a younger contingent in the audience, and I’d urge anyone deterred by the apparent stuffiness of the occasion to go if they get the chance: there is value and new life in these lines yet [2]. I thank Jackson for proving this.
Though little definitive historical evidence supports the claim that Eliot took direct inspiration from Beethoven’s Op. 132 Quartet when he (Eliot) wrote his Quartets, it’s amazing to see how the two sets of fragmentary and contradictory pieces dance with each other. As you’d expect from the soloists of the Oxford Philomusica, we were treated to a Himalayan exhibition of power and grace in a masterful performance of Beethoven’s tornadic music that attempted to go beyond music. Together, the bipartite performance made for an astonishing and unsettling totality that carried itself with the urgency of the need to breath. Overall, this is was a music heard so deeply that it was not heard at all, but you were the music.
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1. All of these roles, you’ll notice, vertiginously steeped in capital H History.
2. Eliot puts the sentiment best:
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.