Squaring with the Truth: Peter Maxwell Davies and Vesalii Icones

Abstract

SQUARING WITH THE TRUTH: PETER MAXWELL DAVIES AND VESALII ICONES NIRMALI FENN N DECEMBER 4, 1963, THE VATICAN COUNCIL II (VCII) passed a decree permitting the Mass to be conducted in the vernacular.1 Such a reform had the potential of transforming the way in which communicants engaged in worship and challenged the distinctive ritualization strategies of the Mass for which the priest ritualized the traditional Eucharistic meal. In the Mass, the actions of eating flesh and drinking blood are symbolic—a theatrical act to preserve the memory of sacrifice. The language reform favored comprehension of such symbols and provoked widespread debate. For theologians, such as Dom Gregory Dix, the fundamental quality lost by the implementation of this reform was mystery—“the Eucharist is a holy mystery to be experienced, not something to comprehend with the mind and reduce to rational categories.”2 Following a similar logic, the British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies condemned the language reform by writing a powerfully damning response in the form of a music theater piece for dancer, cello and ensemble titled Vesalii Icones (1969).3 The year of the VCII decree occurred during a period when Davies was using music theatre as a vehicle for musical protest. His focus was O 138 Perspectives of New Music on what he perceived as religious corruption within the Catholic Church, which was spearheaded by his opera Taverner (1962–68) that dealt with the forced betrayal of a musician’s artistry for the sake of Church dogma. Through Vesalii Icones, Davies conducted an attack on the Council’s language reform; ultimately, he believed the use of the vernacular as a language to convey the sacred jeopardized the mystery behind the sanctity of the ritual that is the Catholic Mass. The objective of this paper is to unravel why Vesalii Icones heightens mystery, and how increasing mystification increases revelation. First, I will focus on the most ritualistically overt sound in Vesalii Icones—the ringing of the Sanctus bells. These bells mark the boundary points of individual musical movements. However, I will argue that these bell solos are “contaminated” by composed music, which as examples of imported secular music, dissolve the demarcated boundaries between musical movements and the sacred from the profane. Second, I intend to reveal the presence of recursive structures operating at a sectional and macro level. The consequence of these structures is to destabilize the structured ritual framework. To reinforce this observation, I will draw on the anthropological work of Don Handelman, referring to research from his two papers Ritual in its own Right and Models and Mirrors.4 By citing Handelman, I intend to demonstrate that the structure of Vesalii Icones effectuates a curve that is intensified by the lack of demarcated boundaries and the use of recursions. Effectively, the piece folds in on itself, torquing from a point of intense introspection, which represents the point of ultimate concealment. Following the point in which the ritual achieves maximum introspection, the drama suddenly springs outwards in a display of unabashed exhibitionism with the dancer flinging off his garments—this is the moment of revelation. 1) THE VCII LANGUAGE REFORM AND THE PREMISE OF VESALII ICONES The VCII language reform reevaluated the operational nature of the Mass and challenged the communicative function of ritualistic language. The council’s intention was to foster the communal aspects of the liturgy. By supplanting Latin as the language of Catholic ritual, it was assumed that the vernacular language would provide the laity with a means to identify the intention directing the action.5 However, as ritual scholar Roy Rappaport raises, there are distinctions in the communicative capacities of languages. Vernacular languages have the potential to subvert, but liturgical languages are languages removed from “everyday” social systems, thereby possessing the potential to convey the sacred and the timeless: Squaring with the Truth: Peter Maxwell Davies and Vesalii Icones 139 the words of liturgy can connect that which is present to the past, or even to the beginning of time, and to the future, or even to time’s end. In their invariance itself the words of liturgy implicitly assimilate the current event into an ancient or ageless category of events, something that...