[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[F_MINOR] Shocking Secrets of "Zauberflote" Society!!! Was Elvis one? [story, photos page 4]



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
 

**************************************************
Signoff instructions, and user preference interface

F_minor Website
**************************************************