Misanthropic Musicology on the Beenleigh Line Part 1

Look at that marvelous specimen.

I've of late taken it upon myself to listen to as much of a single composer in one week as I can. Further to this I've decided that the composers could be both your typical dead white guy and the vast, incredible history of marginalised and women composers, who much like many of the fiddlers I've researched here, are widely overlooked in the so-called syllabi of music institutions. Having said that, these ramblings probably won't offer you much when it comes to historical info except for whatever I can remember/make up about the composer I'm hereby listening to.
Last week it started, early in the morning on the train to my braindead drone job along with the other drones - and the odd sweaty meth head - on the sometimes sweltering, oftentimes refrigerator-like Beenleigh line. This steel snake slowly scrawls it's path from Beenleigh - an economically depressed town between Brisbane and the shit hole referred to as the Gold Coast - to the city centre and beyond north to a destination I try to avoid as much as Beenleigh whose name shall go unuttered. The train passes Fairfield where I currently reside,  a suburb which boasts the centre of the Brisbane avant -garde, a whirlpool of inspiration and fresh produce, Fairfield Gardens shopping centre. Monday last week I embarked on a listening mission through the expressionist jungle of Alban Berg's work, slowly enveloping my psyche with operatic horror in the guise of Wozzeck and Lulu while struggling through an existential crisis of my own triggered by the site of yet another loud phone conversation in the quiet carriage, and only deepended by yet another me generation debtslave taking his road bike on a crowded 3 car train at rush hour. 

The greatest accompaniment though to the worsening doom as I approached my place of work, is Alban Berg's highly unique violin concerto, written in the grips of so much grief he couldn't even be fucked with a third movement, and better for it too.
To polish off the week I entranced myself to queer nirvana with the recently unleashed genius recordings of Julius Eastman.

Now for week 2, and I'm embracing the work of Hildegard Von Bingen, 13th century nun mystic composer goddess seeress extraordinaire. Beautiful, peaceful music that's depth even makes the MacDonalds-ravaged corpus opposite me appear beatific. Mystick with a capital fucking M I dare say. Spotify is sodden with von Bingen and this week will be spent offering you very little infortmation at all.
Ah Tuesday, Tyr's day, started with a healthy breakfast of coffee and Von Bingen performed beautifully by the Tiburtina Ensemble.

Carriage is remarkably ordinary on my old mate the Beenleigh line though the guy opposite me is wearing a distressingly heavy jacket for a sub-tropical spring morning. Should I call the hotline? Does he have an axe under there? There was a guy at park rd station the other day with an axe. Nobody seemed to mind. Anyway back to Von Bingen. Were we taught about this genius of the voice at university? Her glorious mystical voicings gliding over droning ancient vielles and other medievals noise makers? No we were taught only that fat tonsured brown mumu wearing men chanting in cellars full of homebrew invented and innovated it all. Clearly this is wrong on some level. The nuns clearly had a card or 2 in the game and what a wonderful hand it was. Hildegard naturally came up against resistance in her time, copping the usual man-splain about a woman's place even in the clergy. But as often is the case - and very contrary to the excellent Mercyful Fate classic "Nuns Have No Fun" which pioneered the repeated use of the word "cunt" in song - nuns seem to be pretty serious motherfuckers compared to their male counterparts.


While the blokes are usually busy paying off yet another victim of their vulgarity, the nuns are getting kicked out of the Philippines for organising farmer's unions (see recent story about said Australian nun) or throwing sweet boozey Christmas parties at RSLs like the Josephine nuns who used to book me to play at their Christmas party each year til my playing got too weird for them. Nuns seem pretty fun to me despite their religion and I imagine Von Bingen was a bit of a ledg (after considerable debate over gallons of Doom Bar earlier this year, my wife and some friends of ours decided this is the most appropriate abbreviation of "legend" as used in the Australian vernacular alright). One element of her work that seems too scarce is the instrumental writing though. Beautiful, ancient-sounding works that, while clearly being antecedents to Western classical music are also clearly of a time and palette alien to ours.


And now I reach Fortitude Valley, Brisbane's den of sin, a harmonious Hildegard harpathon saving my mind from collapse after once again seeing the pathetic attempt at a cultural reference used by the local council in the guys of mosaic tiles reading "The Go-Betweens".

The Von Bingenathon continues on yet another ride on one of the 7 locomotive wonders of the world, the Beenleigh line. Now knee deep in a recording by Vox Animae of Hildegard's Ordo Virtutum. Still beautiful, still mystical in a Christiany kind of way. Being more of a Pagan/Heathen type myself (look forward to Antifa fire bombing my next gig after that admission) I find the churchiness of it all a bit much but it has a cleansing quality while a large man in a fedora stairs sadly out the train window. Perhaps he can see his reflection in the perspex. Now that's hardly Christian of me. It's clear that Hildegard's work in its pre-contrapuntal droneyness is well worth a listen on any train line.


Oh the humanity. Tonnes of it on the Beeno this morning. Can't even get a fucking seat and there are school children, spoilt, self entitled progeny of Generation Xstacy who don't get off priority seating for adults because their "parents" haven't taught them real manners. Just like noone will teach them to have an understanding of the profundity and power of music and its vast history because a tinny beat and a buck is all that matters. Well while their poor education keeps me standing on this wonderous locomotive, bouncing about while occasionally making sunglass contact with the other sad drone opposite me who appears to have as much of an aversion to irons as I do. Good for him. I applaud you comrade. He has no idea I'm writing about him.

Anyway once again my listening is interrupted by a diseased nose expression but this morn I take a break from Hildegard  (hail Mary full of grace) for a no less pious piece of Irish fiddling by Martin Hayes accompanied by Dennis Cahill, Live in Seattle, as hipped to me by the ever knowledgeable Kahl Monticone (of Brisbane hitmakers Jive Canyon and The Quartet For The End Of Time which also feature me, yes, me).


Gorgeous soulful playing and a mix of airs and dances which is a little unusual from my Irish fiddle listening experience. Speaking of Airs listen to all of Loren Connors' or I'll come after you.


But I digress, despite my own listening lack of disciplining this is a week in honour of that Hildegard of Bingen, the original sister of mercy, master of harmonies on ancient drones. She probably had views people would be pretty upset with now. Maybe the quietus could write about her in their Nazi infiltration expose. Don't get me wrong I don't like Nazis, but I think this word is bandied about a bit too much. Being a Nazi properly requires a lot of discipline and I don't remember any of these alt-right twats appearing to be about anything other than money and Judeo-Christian conservation, whatever that is. I mean the marriage of Jesus and coin is as old as Constantine, but I imagine a woman like Hildegard who took the veil at a time where it would be the only way for a woman to do anything other than punch out (this is Australian vernacular for "creating in large quantities" not KOing) babies and clean muck and cook, would've been proper disciplined.
Anyway Hildegard's biggest fans have made this exquisite little record named Kiss of Peace boasting some stunningly moving vielle droning and pitch perfect near vibratoless female voices of the most suitably ethereal kind. Think this is the best so far.



Ah Roma street station, rose of the Brisbane city central train circuit, gateway to The Saints' old stomping ground of Petrie Terrace. Hildegard would've liked the Saints if she were a 1970s stones ginger wine sucking suburban punk instead of a medieval nun. Suppose she would've hammered back her fair share of Jesus' blood in her time.


Really sweltering on this locomotive liturgical music gateway today, a Brisbane summer storm brewing that hopefully brings some sort of revelations style outcomes for the shit hole I work in 40 hours a week, amen. I'm jonesing for a full album of Hildegard instrumentals. The album I'm currently sponging up while sweating under my knees boasts an "improvisation". Hopefully it does what it says on the tin.


The death of improvisation in Western classical music is one of the saddest things ever committed to the history books. What colossal fuckwit decided this was no longer appropriate I have no idea. Don't suppose there was a committee but it obviously fell out of fashion, and unlike fluro or lengthy well-kept beards it's never come back, not really anyway. Obviously you might say free improvisation is that coming back with a vengeance but I know most free improvisers would rather not have their practice associated with this  (not me included, controversial). When will this train ride ever end? I frequently improvise inappropriately when playing classical music. In fact it's like my calling card. I highly recommend it. The composers are dead and two world wars traumatically decimated the world order their works were born in. This doesn't make the work worthless, but it makes preserving it, conserving it, thoroughly pointless. 
When searching recordings of Hildegard's works a curious little comp by the Aldi of classical records Naxos called "Music From the Time of the Templars" comes up.


I'm listening to it now, deep in bowels of the 7th locomotive wonder of the world opposite a young man with the kind of moustache you just wish was written into the criminal code somewhere and a shirt with a lobster embroidered on it which I'm pretty sure is some crypto-fascist symbol that'd trigger Antifa into needing some antacid. Speaking of crypto-fascist, Nazis loved the Knights Templar. Wewelsburg castle was designed to resemble elements of a Templar, well, temple and in his not terribly thrilling book (which resulted in this more interesting though more than slightly concerning German documentary) "The Occult Roots of Nazism" Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke gets all worked up about obscure trash occult racists in pre-Nazi Germanic territories including one pre-Hitler who started some secret order dedicated to reviving this era. Maybe that order is behind this recording. I don't really care. The recording itself is actually quite interesting, full of varied Medieval madness both haunting and irritatingly jaunty. As a historical document I suppose this has value, and no doubt Hildegard's bits are beautiful, and hell I love a bit of Medieval, I even threw a Medieval dress up party for my 30th Birthday back when I lived in Accra, disturbing our neighbours with cardboard knights and trans-human jousting tournaments.



Back to the Templars though whose main purpose really was guarding a so-called holy grail noone has ever seen and killing as many Muslims as they can. So this compilation is basically an NSBM record for polite upper class people I guess. I don't know if Hildegard would've been too keen on that. Her music seems too inward, too spiritual to have been a person concerned with crusades, but she worked for the guys carrying them out. I work for an electricity company, does that mean I caused global warming? The existential crises in the quiet carriage. I quite like stories of secret societies, and dig the way underground bands and artists historically have formed their own (and no not the Nazi ones The Quietus, though that Order of the Nine whatevers you went on about sounds pretty interesting). Maybe if Hildegard had been an industrial goth in early 80s England she'd have been in Thee Temple of Thee Psychick Youth instead Thee Temple of Whatever. Being a nun is pretty kvlt.

Momentarily on the disgusting Gold Coast line listening to a slightly avant-garde take on Hildegard for some ECM release. Finding it largely annoying as I'm not much of a voice-only type anyway, let alone choirs of dissonant, slurring voices. Guess they're going for some improvised take on the Vitutum thingy from earlier in this exciting locomotive listening adventure. Think I'm almost Hildegarded out, thank God tomorrow is Friday.


Light blasted back carriage. For once a school kid got up and let a tired worker sit down. He should be given a medal. Anyway there's something uncomfortable about mentioning children while listening to liturgical mystical chants by Hildegard. A new Hildegard album came out today. I almost trip over in dog shit at the sight of it on my way to board the 7th locomotive wonder of the world. Unfortunately it's just Ordo Virtutum again. I imagine if I wasn't so lazy and actually looked Hildy up again I'd find she has a fairly limited surviving oeuvre, but since I'm a raging Rallizes Denudes fan I don't mind if I hear the same song over and over and over again.


Ah the shitty city skyline, steel phallus temples rising from the gritty brownsnake (Brisbane river) like 1000 plastic cup middens in the guts of a dying whale. Back in ear country the ethereal sounds of Sequentia again and an album with a title that should be recycled by an NSBM band "Celestial Hierarchy".


Fuck off with your hierarchy Hildegard. But the music is beautiful as usual. Lilting simple polyphony, voice and flute, harmonious voices a capella or against organ or vielle drone, ritualistic and at times dark in shade and tone but always of course looking to the light. Voices soar ever up, and fall once more in that human yearning for something higher in conversation with the Gods, always with the beast nipping at your heels. Unless you're Iron Maiden, then you ride the beast into battle or space or some pyramids or some shit. I guess this week has shown me that Hildegard is kind of like the Iron Maiden of medieval polyphony, consistent,  unchanging, but ever reliable in quality. This train ride is interminable but the termination is undesirable, Bowen Hills Station. The crackiest station in central Brisbane, often full of police, sometimes empty, with limited shade but plenty of shadiness.
Beenleigh line you silver rusted graffiti bedecked piece of shit, deliver me home for it is Friday and the weekend is jampacked with Scrapes gigs and shenanigans galore. Being a warm Friday arvo I've decided Hildy ain't gonna cut it so I've decided the brilliant new Makaya McKraven is a better accompaniment while this locomotive lumberjack cleaves another wound into the tracks like the overpriced inordinately slow cunt it is. It really is a fantastic kaleidoscope of grooves and textures this record, and featuring warm cello scrapes at times from Tomeika Reid no less. Horn parps and screams interject and afro-grooves tear all and sundry a new one when it isn't sitting back in boombap. Minimal hiphop infused instrumentals. If only I can beam this into everyone's head on the train, easing their brain while a literal dust storm blows in off what remains of the outback. I'll keep this colossal grooveathon rolling while I acquire liquor and head home and I'll stop writing now because I can no longer be bothered.


Next week on Misanthropic Musicology on The Beenleigh Line: Pauline Oliveros I reckon.
Until then.