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This started
out as an OT thread about dancing, singing puppets, but a question's popped up,
which makes this definitely a T thread:
Was Glenn
Gould a Freemason?
(There are people on this List who know
his shoe size! so one of you must know this answer. Paid obit notices almost
always feature the Masonic symbol if the deceased was a Mason.)
Anssi Korhonen from Suomi/Finland talks
about the links between "The Magic Flute / die Zauberflote" and the
ancient Parsival legend.
Eric mentions that throughout
"Magic Flute's" history, people have been lukewarm, cool and even
hostile about its story and its libretto -- a lot of people haven't found it
very "magical." W.H. Auden hated it so much he even wrote a new
libretto, although I've never been able to find it, and it's just possible no
one actually ever performed his New, Improved "Magic Flute." (If you
know anything about the Auden libretto, PLEASE e-mail me! I'm dying of
curiosity.)
"Magic Flute" may have its
flaws and weaknesses, but it's also beloved and has great staying power. (Ingmar
Bergman's film version, albeit in Swedish, is a real joy and delight, and I
think even kids would like this one.) Even though Emanuel Schikaneder's responsible for the words and the
story, I think most Mozart lovers would consider it a heresy and a slap in the
face to The Master to "fix" "The Magic Flute" now.
Fortunately (IMHO) we're stuck with it forever.
The naughty little secret about
"The Magic Flute's" story and libretto is that Mozart and Schikaneder
(he owned the theater and partnered with Mozart to produce these shows for a
newly emerging popular audience) were Freemasons, at a time when Freemasonry was
under widespread attack from the governments of Europe. Schikaneder and Mozart
decided to write a blockbuster popular opera, with fantastic dragons and
thaumaturges and Evil Queens and pyramids and fire, which would actually be
Secret Code to educate the public subliminally about Freemasonry's benevolent
messages of brotherhood, equality and enlightenment. The secret society of
Freemasonry is the key to most of what's confusing and odd about "The Magic
Flute."
In their own ritual, Freemasons trace
their origins to the builders of Solomon's Temple. But they seem really to trace
back to the 12th and 13th century age of the great European cathedrals, and were
originally the guild of itinerant stonemasons who developed the tricks of this
remarkable architecture, and scrupulously kept these secrets to themselves --
the origin of the "secret brotherhood" aspect of Freemasonry that
endures centuries after Freemasons ceased to be actual stonemasons.
What's also endured is the non-Masonic
world's persecution, suspicion and villification of Freemasonry.
"Brotherhood" and "equality" seem like pretty innocuous
civic virtues to us today, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood stuff, but in the Europe
of Mozart's day, these were very clear and radical ideas that directly
threatened the despotic system of royalty and aristocracy.
The last thing a Duke wanted was to
spend his evenings at a lodge where he was equal to watchmakers, lawyers, cheese
merchants and hired musicians; these were people he was accustomed to having
flogged and abused in a variety of pleasant and profitable ways, guaranteed by
law and a millennium of feudal tradition.
Increasingly, Freemasonry and its
liberal ideas were infecting the newly emerging middle-class and professional
classes of Europe. This was still very much the Age of Victimized Peasants, and
the Brotherhood of Tsars, Electors, Princes, Landgravs and Kings meant to keep
it that way. Freemasonry was widely outlawed and persecuted throughout
Europe.
Was Freemasonry really all that
dangerous, or were the aristocrats just being paranoid? Just after Mozart died,
a rabble muttering things about brotherhood and equality, whose leadership was
very heavily Freemasons, rebelled against their lawful king, defeated his army,
and freed themselves from his rule. U.S. paper currency bears Masonic symbols
and references to this day (a favorite topic on lots of websites).
And Freemasonry remains to this day one
of the most popular whipping boys of conspiracy theorists. Put
"Freemasonry" and "Masonic" in Google, and stand back, you
gonna see Some Whack Stuph, and a lot of it. Mel Gibson's father tells anyone
who'll listen that the Second Vatican Council ("Vatican Two") was a
secret conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons, intended to destroy the true Roman
Catholic Church.
Yet Freemasonry thrives in Catholic as
well as Protestant countries; Italy's
P2 Masonic Lodge was the center of a government-toppling tabloid scandal in
1981. In the UK, policemen, particularly with career ambitions, are widely
believed to be largely Masons. But in North America and Europe (and probably
Asia and Africa and Oceana and Latin America and Antarctica too), whenever
people suspect that "they" are secretly running things in some
nefarious way, a lot of the time "they" means Freemasons.
If a Mason plays by his own rules,
outsiders are never supposed to be able to recognize him as a Mason; Masons are
forbidden from wearing rings and lapel and necktie pins and other obvious
symbols and signs. But of course there's a brisk trade in all this gaudy neon
fruit salad, and any amateur detective can spot lots of Masons on Main Street or
on the subway. Masons are supposed to reveal themselves to each other (so the
popular gossip says) by code phrases and a special hand gesture.
So what about Gould? And who else among the musical stellar that we chat
about were Masons? Bach? Beethoven? (He met Mozart once.) Any great pianists?
In professional and academic musical
circles, is Freemasonry as imbedded as it is among British coppers and American
revolutionaries and the Italian government and the Vatican and bankers and
journalists and soccer players and airline pilots and restaurateurs and train
conductors and jurists and bus drivers and
Elmer ("No, I'm not one")
Elevator
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