Beethoven's Skull: Dark, Strange, and Fascinating Tales From the World of Classical Music and Beyond

by Tim Rayborn

  The odd and mysterious thing is how a piece of music might mean the world to one person and elicit no response at all from another. The same song might make one person happy and another sad. We bring our own experiences and emotional baggage to the mix, of course; maybe you just broke up with someone and heard a particular song on the radio when it happened, while another person had their first kiss to that same song. But even allowing for different experiences, the stark difference in reactions is a strange phenomenon. This is one reason why arguments over favorite music can become so heated. An attack on one’s preferred music feels very much like an attack on oneself.

  Probably for as long as we’ve been human, we’ve been aware of this mystery, and how music can be used for good or bad. The presence of music in religious and magical rituals is pretty much universal and may well derive from the same sources as superstition. Somewhere, sometime ago, someone made a sound or sang some notes and saw a result. Maybe the clouds parted. Maybe a friend in pain felt a little better. Maybe the primitive musician felt transformed.

  However it happened, music has become inseparable from religion and magic, whether in folk rituals, shamanism, or High Mass. Here are some fascinating stories from different cultures about the use of music in magical, ritual, and religious contexts. From Celtic bards raising boils on an enemy’s face to the danger of being seduced by fairy tunes and lost to the world, music has been viewed as powerful and dangerous, and many have attempted to control it, from Plato to the Soviets.

  It is difficult for a modern listener to comprehend how powerful the ancient art of singing and storytelling would have been. In the days before TV, movie theaters, Internet, and even widespread literacy, it must have been a mesmerizing experience to gather around a fire and hear a master performer relate tales of the origins of the world or the exploits of great heroes and gods in story and song. The aforementioned prehistoric cave paintings and sounds associated with them may well be an ancient form of this kind of storytelling ritual. Indeed, many of these old tales are mythic, containing legends of valor and heroism, as well as moral lessons and warnings of the dreadful fates of those who transgressed the laws of the gods. This chapter will look at different cultures’ perceptions about the magical qualities of music and its effects on the mundane world.

  The myths of Orpheus

  The story of Orpheus has been immortalized in poetry and music, notably in the operas of Monteverdi (L’Orfeo from 1607) and Gluck (Orfeo ed Euridice from 1762). In fact, dozens of operas have been written with Orphic themes since 1600, including works by Telemann, Haydn, Offenbach, Darius Milhaud, and Philip Glass, among many others.

  Orpheus was a supreme musician and poet said to be able to charm all things with his magical songs, even the rocks and trees. His lyre was a gift from Apollo, and his mother, the muse Calliope, taught him to sing. He aided the hero Jason and his Argonauts by playing better and louder music than the sirens, who desired to lure sailors to their deaths. They sang so beautifully that they caused ships to divert toward their voices, crashing into rocks; talk about disrespecting your fans. With Orpheus on board, Jason and his crew successfully resisted the sirens’ call to doom.

  The most famous story (dating from the time of Virgil) told of the death of his beloved wife, Eurydice; it is a model of tragedy. On their wedding day, she was accosted by a lecherous satyr. In her efforts to escape, she stumbled onto a nest of vipers, was bitten on the heel, and died. Orpheus was heartbroken and sang sad tributes to her that made even the gods weep. He was able to travel to the Underworld, where his song was so sweet that it moved Hades and Persephone to allow Eurydice to return to the mortal world, on condition that he walk in front of her and not look back until they were both again in their own realm. Orpheus mistakenly looked back to her when he had safely returned to our world but she had not yet. She vanished, and they were separated forever.

  Later, he was ripped to shreds by a group of Maenads, followers of Dionysus (we will investigate them later in this chapter). Different stories give different reasons for this. One account says that he gave up devotion to all gods save Apollo, and the Maenads killed him for dishonoring their master. Another relates that after Eurydice’s death, he swore off all other women (favoring only young men instead), and some female followers of Dionysus killed him in revenge for being spurned. Even in death, he could not be silenced. His head continued to sing and his lyre made music; both floated down a river to the Mediterranean—that must have been quite something to see and hear! The sea carried them far away to the island of Lesbos, where its people placed his head in a shrine. The muses collected his lyre and carried it to the heavens, giving it a place among the stars—a fitting end to the tragic life of mythology’s greatest musician.

  A boil on your nose: the power of the Celtic bards

  Modern sensibilities and some well-meaning New Agers have tended to romanticize the peoples known as “Celtic” who once inhabited large parts of Europe. Later, the term described the inhabitants of Gaul (ancient France), northern Spain, the British Isles, and Ireland. In response, the more scholarly minded have tried to point out the harsh realities of the age, showing that while the Celts may not have been as savage as the Romans portrayed them, they certainly had their dark side; they had a liking for taking the heads of their enemies as trophies, for example.

  There is also a trend among some modern scholars to hypothesize that the “Celt” is largely a modern invention (dating to the eighteenth century), and that the ancient peoples to whom we have given that name really had no unified cultural identity at all. Others view this perspective as too extreme, and the answer—as always—probably lies somewhere in between. For the purposes of this book, we’ll assume that there were Celts who had some kind of a shared identity—and linguistic commonalities—even if these were more limited to local tribes and communities.

  Within Celtic social structure there were various degrees of authority, presided over by the Druids. Huge amounts of ink have been spilled theorizing about these venerable people. Some of these ideas are very good, while others are complete rubbish. This is due to the unfortunate fact that the Druids left no writings about themselves; we only have what the Greeks and Romans said about them. But we do know that a very important part of the Druidic system was the class known as the bards. A Druid began his or her profession by training as a bard, and over many years of study and preparation progressed to the status of Druid.

  Ancient Celtic culture was essentially non-literate (though a script, called Ogham, was invented later) and relied on oral traditions to keep its memories alive; bards were crucial to this process. There are several nuances of the term, and it could mean different things in different places (in Ireland and Wales, for example). Eventually, the Irish bards were “downgraded” to being mere entertainers.

  Bards were keepers of the lore of a community—myths and legends, histories, genealogies—and as such, had to commit huge amounts of information, especially poetry and songs, to memory. This was a laborious process that took years to accomplish and was always ongoing. They were also expected to compose new works of praise to their lords and patrons.

  Bards held magic in their words, and this power could both heal and harm. Their poems and songs could make the fortune of their patron or take it away. The anger of a bard was not something one wanted to rouse, for he might compose a satire (glam dicen in Gaelic) about the guilty party. This was not just a mocking poem, a Celtic Don Rickles kind of thing—“I tell ya, that chieftain is so obese, he needs to come into the hall twice just to get all the way in!” The stakes were much higher. It was said that a bard’s words and songs could raise boils on an enemy’s face, or cause serious illnesses, even death. The bard was not just reciting a poem condemning an enemy, but rather creating a kind of magic spell that would have real-world effects.

  As such, bards had quite a bit of freedom of speech and artistic expression, almost unheard of in the ancient world; no one wanted to piss them off! Bards ha
d a kind of diplomatic immunity and could expect hospitality wherever they traveled. Killing a bard was a complete no-no, as it could bring a curse and bad luck on the one who dared to do it, as well as on his whole tribe. Even if a lord was not superstitious about the magical effects of their work, he could still have his reputation ruined by an onslaught of invective, which in those days was just about as unwelcome a fate as death. A superior bard could also undo and displace his lesser colleagues. The poem “Journey to Deganwy,” attributed to the sixth-century Welsh bard Taliesin, includes the following lines:

  I will enter the hall

  My song I will sing,

  My verse I will proclaim

  And the king’s bards I will cast down.

  In the presence of the Chief

  Demands I will make

  And chains I will break

  Taliesin’s most famous poem, “Primary Chief Bard,” tells of the importance of bardic culture and how it has existed since the beginning of time. Using a first-person narrative, he declares:

  Primary chief poet I am to Elffin

  And my native country is the region of the summer stars

  John the Divine called me Merlin

  But all future kings shall call me Taliesin …

  I was with my king in the heavens

  When Lucifer fell into the deepest hell

  I carried the banner before Alexander

  I know the names of the stars

  From the north to the south …

  I was in Africa before the building of Rome

  I came here to the remnant of Troy …

  I was instructor to the whole universe

  I shall be until the judgement on the face of the earth …

  There is not a marvel in the world

  Which I cannot reveal.

  The Christian overlay in this poem may be a later addition. Indeed, pagan bardic power gradually waned with the coming of Christianity, and bards began to be downgraded to the status of storytellers and court poets since the Christian Church wanted to hog the mystical duties for itself. Despite this decline, the prestige of bards was long preserved in Celtic tradition. Undoubtedly there was still a little apprehension about crossing them, even if the new religion no longer imbued them with power. As late as the thirteenth century, the Welsh poet Phylip Brydydd boldly told his patron, “I made fame for thee,” a clear example of just how important a poet still was to the leader’s reputation. Phylip may also have been implying that with his words, he could take that fame away.

  The importance of music and poetry in Celtic cultures (real and imagined) never completely waned despite English attempts to suppress it from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. A Celtic artistic revival began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though it was heavily romanticized and even subject to outright forgery. This revival continues today, with countless Celtic music festivals, Irish pub sessions, mega-hit Riverdance-type shows, and dozens of other examples. The Celts of today have drawn on their unique musical, magical, and poetic traditions and enriched the world. As an old Gaelic proverb says: Thig crioch air an saoghal, ach mairidh gaol is ceòl—“The world will pass away, but love and music will endure.”

  Fairy music and its dangers

  First of all, when we talk about fairies (often spelled “faeries” and also known as the fey) in the Irish and British context, we’re not thinking of Tinker Bell and the gossamer-winged tiny beauties of Victorian imagination. The fey of ancient times (and well into the Middle Ages) were primal powers, fearsome and dangerous, but sometimes helpful if appeased. They could look just like a normal human, or take any of hundreds of other shapes and forms. In ancient times they were like gods and known as the Sidhe (pronounced “shee”). With the onset of Christianity they were condemned as demons. In the minds of many, they were perhaps downgraded from gods to nature spirits, but they lost none of their power to strike awe and even terror into the hearts of the common folk who feared what might happen if their supernatural neighbors were disturbed or angered. This belief persisted well into the nineteenth century in some rural areas of Ireland and Britain.

  Fairy lore is immense in scope and would require a massive tome (or three) to do it justice. But there are many interesting accounts about fairy music and its effects on mortal listeners, not always pleasant in outcome. In these tales—many told by those who claimed to have heard it—the music is described as otherworldly, enchanting, haunting, and intoxicating. It often leaves the human listener with an unbearable longing. One example illustrates this clearly:

  A man once entered a small house in County Clare, and there he saw a young woman sitting by the fire, singing a sad and melancholy song. It didn’t have words or even a melody that repeated. Curious, he asked her about what she was singing. She replied that once she had heard an enchanted fairy harp and it had affected her permanently. She said that anyone who heard it forgot love and hate and could hear no other sound except that harp. If the spell were ever broken, the unfortunate mortal would die. Well, that’s one way to ensure you stay in the top ten.

  A similar tale was told about fairy food; it was widely believed that if a mortal tasted it, he or she could never go back to eating human food again and would prefer to wither away and die. Thus, the common people warned their children never to try fairy delicacies if they were offered, and never to listen for long to fairy music if they thought they heard it. Those who ignored such advice and risked hearing this music could be made to dance against their will beyond exhaustion, or else be lulled into eternal sleep, even death, by the sounds that no mortal was meant to hear.

  On the Isle of Man there is a long folk tradition of interaction with fairies, and in the nineteenth century many claimed to have heard their music firsthand. One elderly man recounted how, on two separate occasions, he heard fairy music coming from the vicinity of an old abbey; in each case he had listened for nearly an hour, but he seemed to escape any negative effects from his eavesdropping. There are many similar accounts, including from a few musicians who overheard fey tunes, memorized them, and then played them later on their fiddles and harps. Whether they suffered any consequences from this is unknown, but at least one man claimed to have been struck blind by the little people after seeing them dancing one night. They were so offended by his presence and presumption that they swore he would never look upon them, or anything else, again.

  These activities were not limited to Britain, as stories of dangerous “little people” and their music can be found in many places around the world. A 1596 Elizabethan book, Of Ghostes and Spirites, Walking by Night, which is a translation of a work by Swiss theologian Ludwig Lavater, briefly describes mysterious music from various parts of the known world:

  Olaus Magnus in his third booke and eleuenth Chapter De Gentibus Septentrionalibus, writeth, that euen in these our dayes, in many places in the North partes [Scandinavia], there are certaine monsters or spirites, which taking on them some shape or figure, use (chiefly in the night season) to daunce, after the sounde of all maner of instruments of musicke: whom the inhabitants call companies, or dances of Elves, or Fairies. Somewhat also is to bee reade touching this matter in Saxo Grammaticus, in his historie of Denmarke. Such like things are those which Pomponius Mela reporteth in his third booke of the description of Aethiopia, that in Mauritania beyonde the Mount Atlas, many times in the night season are séene great lightes, and that tinkling of Cymballs, and noyses of Pipes are also heard, and when it is daylight no man appeareth.

  There is an unsettling account of possible fairy music in America that dates from 1812. In Vermont on a July morning, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth McCallum set out on horseback to visit family friends who lived some miles away; the journey required her to ride through a thick forest. Upon arriving at their home, she excitedly told her hosts that she had heard the most amazing and beautiful music deep in the woods that seemed to block out everything else. She described the exact spot where she had heard it. The family listened with interest
, knowing her to be trustworthy and not prone to flights of fancy.

  After lunch, she was eager to return home and tell her parents about what she had heard, but she never arrived. As night descended, her worried family sent out a search party and found her horse, alive and well. But Elizabeth was discovered dead in the same spot where she had reportedly heard the unearthly music. She showed no signs of injury or attack, and the cause of death was not determined. Perhaps she suffered a stroke or some other brain problem, and the music had been a symptom. But why would she have died in the exact spot where she had first heard it? Only the forest knows.

  In dealing with the fey, the message was clear: proceed at your own risk!

  Bacchanalian rites in ancient Greece

  Well, that got your attention. Now you’re thinking: excessive amounts of alcohol, bountiful food, pretty dancing women in skimpy clothing or less, or muscled men in mini togas hand-feeding you grapes. That will shake you out of your complacency and remind you why you’re actually reading this book: for the salacious bits and the dark stories! Parties! Orgies! Drinking! It’s ancient Greek spring break! So, what exactly were these decadent rites, and were they as naughty as we believe (and secretly hope)? Let’s find out.

  In ancient Greece, the god Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) was associated with vegetation and the cycles of the seasons, including how plants “die” in winter and are reborn in spring; the god symbolized that process, as did several other deities in the cultures surrounding the Mediterranean. The dying-and-resurrecting god motif is very old, certainly dating back to ancient Egyptian times. The cult of worship around Dionysus may have begun on the island of Crete before 1,000 BCE, probably inspired by even older fertility and life-cycle myths. It was absorbed into the larger culture of Greece after that, certainly within the next five hundred years; things moved much more slowly back then.