Paul Lodge on Philosophy and Music

Paul Lodge is Professor of Philosophy at Oxford College and a professorial fellow of Mansfield Faculty, Oxford. He’s additionally a musician and songwriter who units philosophical poems to music. On this interview, we focus on his background, his latest mission Cantat Ergo Sumus, and whether or not philosophy makes for good songs.

DP:
Professor Paul Lodge, welcome to Every day Philosophy and thanks for agreeing to this interview! I’m very pleased and honoured to have you ever right here. To start out with, let’s briefly inform our readers what it’s that brings you right here at this time. May you briefly inform us what your mission Cantat Ergo Sumus is about?

Thanks very a lot for inviting me. I began writing and performing songs after I was in highschool, with the lyrics written by my youthful brother Richard. This continued into our time as undergraduates once we had been contemporaries at Oxford. Nonetheless, after shifting to New Jersey in 1992 to check for my PhD at Rutgers College, I discovered myself with out a lyricist. It was at this level that Cantat Ergo Sumus was initially born – although the title got here a lot later.

The concept of philosophy entered my consciousness as a youngster primarily via references that I got here throughout in standard tradition. I don’t keep in mind there being some extent at which I self-consciously tried to imitate this method, however in early 1994 I discovered myself turning to the concept of taking the phrases of philosophers themselves and setting them to music. And I had the obscure thought that sooner or later sooner or later I would to attempt to do one thing extra public with them. Nonetheless, Solely three of the songs that make up Cantat Ergo Sumus come from that point. It wasn’t till 2019, when performing different music on a invoice with Oxford band Flights of Helios that it took off once more. They preferred a number of the materials they heard and had been significantly enthused by the concept of philosophy and music coming collectively. We determined to collaborate and that time I wrote the remainder of the songs. Then, with the assistance of a grant from The Oxford Centre for Analysis within the Humanities (TORCH), we began to work on the album that needs to be launched within the subsequent few months.

DP:
Even with my damaged Latin, I can inform that “Cantat Ergo Sumus” isn’t the identical type that Descartes selected for his “cogito ergo sum.” It’s not “I sing there for I’m,” however extra one thing like “it sings subsequently we’re.” Is that proper? And why did you select this explicit type as a reputation in your mission?

I had toyed with Canto Ergo Sum as a straight play on Descartes, after which Cantamus Ergo Sumus (we sing subsequently we’re) to mirror the collaborative factor. However, finally, I went for the impersonal ‘cantat’, intending as you say ‘It sings subsequently we’re’. Right here I took the lead from Heidegger and his makes an attempt to seize the best way wherein our sense of present in a world with different beings needs to be taken to emerge as one facet of a extra elementary impersonal occasion of ‘worlding’. I hope folks could discover their expertise of music resonates with the best way wherein I’m attempting to point with this a mysterious sense of the songs coming from nowhere and bringing us to be as performers and listeners.

DP:
In your mission, you are taking the lyrics from traditional texts of philosophy. In some I’m jogged my memory a little bit of Bob Dylan, maybe. How does this technique of setting a chunk of textual content to music work? Do you all the time select tunes and devices from the folk-rock custom, or do you attempt to discover a person tune and magnificence for each bit of textual content? Does the Daodejing, as an example, not want a special musical model than, say, Nietzsche or Hildegard von Bingen?

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is definitely from one other mission – Preludes To Wordsworth – which I’ve simply launched as an album. These are all settings of poems by Wordsworth and produced by Ryan Michaels who works out of Nashville. However clearly the identical situation applies. The overwhelming majority of my songs have phrases by others, primarily written by my brother Richard. I begin out with simply an acoustic guitar. Provided that I normally carry out solo, the songs have to have the ability to stand alone in that approach. However there’s a bit extra to it than that. My goal is to maintain them easy and memorable, in one thing like the best way that hymns are supposed to be. I additionally write in a short time; both the tune is available in 10 minutes and works or I abandon issues, typically coming again, typically not.

The written model doesn’t actually differ in keeping with the content material; and they’re most naturally labelled ‘folks/folk-rock songs’. Nonetheless, the recordings I’ve accomplished most not too long ago have been produced by others and people folks have had just about free reign. The Wordsworth songs mirror Ryan’s background as part of husband and spouse country-rock duo Haley and Michaels; the Cantat Ergo Sumus album may be very a lot a product of the thoughts of Phil Hanaway-Oakley, who’s the bass participant with Flights of Helios. A few of the songs are near the demos I gave him. However others have gone in very completely different instructions, with quite a lot of them sung by different folks. For instance, my piece based mostly on the Daodejing is ready in opposition to a sample generated on an old-style analogue synthesiser – i.e., the sort with leads and no keyboard – after which turns right into a form of home/rave factor towards the top; and the Hildegard von Bingen tune begins out very dreamy and ‘Vaughan Williams’, with wonderful violin by Angharad Jenkins; however a darker psychedelic guitar units in towards the top to take us to a extra sinister place. I like what arose in all these instances, however others need to take the credit score.

DP:
Once I learn your biographical observe, it occurred to me how comparable our influences and literary tastes are, yours and mine. Most likely it’s a generational factor: Pink Floyd and Genesis, Monty Python and Douglas Adams, and even Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. What do you suppose was the affect of those explicit sources of inspiration in your musical work?

A non-trivial a part of the best way wherein philosophy entered my consciousness was as a youngster via references that I got here throughout in standard tradition. As you say, such as you I used to be raised on reruns of Monty Python’s Flying Circus with its philosophers’ soccer match and philosophers’ tune, and The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy, on the centre of whose plot is the declare that 42 is the reply to the final word query of life, the universe and every part. However maybe greater than something it was the allusion to philosophical concepts in music that peeked my curiosity. I spent hours listening to existentially laden idea albums resembling Pink Floyd’s Darkish Aspect of the Moon and Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Darkish Aspect of the Moon strikes from one existentially important facet of human existence to a different; life; time; dying and put up mortem existence; cash; conflict; and insanity. And ‘The Lamb’ is an much more complicated existential odyssey. I will need to have listened to them tons of of occasions; the fixed waves of music and phrases again and again left an inevitable impression.

Though Shut To The Edge by Sure is impressed by Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, I got here to his writings a bit later, and through a special route – the happenstance of discovering a replica of his e book The Glass Bead Recreation in our faculty library and my pretentious want to learn what was billed as some of the vital philosophical novels of the 20th century. I used to be about sixteen and that was at a time when a part of me was explicitly looking for philosophy.

DP:
Notably when working with non secular sources, or with very outdated and extensively revered texts, do you ever have the sensation that you just may, indirectly, be treating them disrespectfully by setting them to trendy music? Does it demean Hildegard von Bingen in any option to be listened to as pop music, reasonably than in opposition to the background of a Gregorian chant?

It’s not one thing I’ve nervous about. Hildegard von Bingen’s music is offered already in one thing like its unique type; and I all the time encourage folks to take heed to the interpretations by early music teams such because the amazing Sequentia. However our settings of the songs with a extra overtly mystical character aren’t actually ‘pop’; and the hope is that they take folks to one thing like the identical place as was initially supposed.

DP:
Are some texts simpler to set to music than others? I think about {that a} poem that already has a rhythm and a rhyme needs to be simpler to show right into a tune than one thing like a passage from Heidegger or Aristotle.

Most philosophical writing is not possible to set to music in the best way I’m doing it. I’m attempting to write down songs that stick within the head; to try this they should be comparatively quick and have easy rhyme schemes, or one thing very near rhyme. So I wouldn’t attempt to do one thing with a passage of prose from a treatise by Aristotle, for instance. And most of the philosophical poems that we’ve got are simply far too lengthy. Heidegger is likely one of the thinker’s whose concepts curiosity me most; however his poetry competes with that of the Vogons.

DP:
We will take heed to your piece “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” on the Web (I hyperlink it beneath). This one relies on a poem by Wordsworth, and I hear that you’re releasing a complete album this month that consists of settings of Wordsworth. What’s it about Wordsworth that you just discover philosophically fascinating, and what makes him a very good match in your music?

Sure, thanks for the plug. Preludes To Wordsworth is now out and will be streamed on all the traditional streaming websites. That has a barely completely different provenance. I began the mission in the course of the first of the Covid lockdowns within the UK. Wordsworth’s household personal Rydal Mount within the Lake District, which is the home he lived in for the final 37 years of his life. They’d supposed to have a good time his 250th anniversary by coming collectively and doing readings of his works. However for apparent causes that was not possible. As a substitute Christopher Wordsworth Andrew created a webs mission ‘Wordsworth 250 – For the love of nature’ and invited folks to submit their very own readings. The positioning has quite a lot of well-known actors resembling Brian Cox, Hugh Bonneville, and William H Macy and well-known UK celebrities resembling Stephen Fry, Davina McCall, and Caroline Quentin; however largely it’s folks like me. I heard the decision for readings on BBC Radio 3 one morning and thought I’d have a go at setting one of many poems. This primary tune – To–, on Her First Ascent To The Summit Of Helvellyn – was well-received by Christopher and so I stored going and wrote 10 in all.

That stated, ‘romanticism’ and the form of ‘nature mysticism’ that’s attributed to Wordsworth are of nice curiosity to me. I keep in mind finding out Kant for the primary time and feeling positively disposed to the concept that the topic/object distinction isn’t elementary because of this. A method to consider romanticism is as an try to maneuver past that; and that the poetic mode of discourse is intrinsic to that. Wordsworth is maybe much less philosophically self-conscious than others resembling Keats and Coleridge on the subject of such points; however they’re clearly hovering round and a number of the poems I’ve set appear to talk to them.

DP:
There’s some custom to setting philosophy to music. I’m considering of M.A. Numminen singing Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, for instance. How do you see your personal mission inside this custom? Are you persevering with the identical form of work, or is your mission considerably completely different in scope and goals?

I don’t actually have a way of M.A. Numminen was attempting to do. However I consider myself extra as a tune and dance man.

DP:
Other than the enjoyable of it, I’m questioning what precisely you goal to attain with these initiatives. One may see them as popularising philosophy and bringing it to new audiences, however do you suppose that that is actually an efficient option to go about it? Will anybody have the time, inside the area of a tune, to meditate on the lyrics and to get philosophical inspiration from it? What makes a three-minute tune a very good automobile for philosophical thought?

The principle hope is that the songs may lead some folks to have interaction with philosophy who wouldn’t in any other case and that they is perhaps autos for conveying philosophical thought in that sense. Existentially laden songs had been an efficient approach of drawing my consideration in that path, so there’s a minimum of some proof of idea. As I steered above, I believe that may be most probably to occur insofar as folks received to know the songs via listening to them greater than as soon as. I don’t have expectations that the attain can be all that nice, however I wouldn’t measure the success or failure in these phrases. I actually don’t consider the songs as methods to convey philosophical concepts in a clear approach. They’re invites to seek out out extra.

DP:
The place can readers discover your newest compositions and different initiatives?

As I discussed above, the Wordsworth album is now out and there to be downloaded from my Bandcamp page and streamed on Spotify, AppleMusic and so on. There are additionally CDs to purchase if anybody has the potential and would love one. I launched the album at an exquisite little live performance within the drawing room at Rydal Mount of Sept. seventeenth. And I can be performing it once more in and round Oxford over the subsequent few months; fairly probably returning to the Lakes subsequent 12 months. A few the Cantat Ergo Sumus songs have been launched too, though these are only on Bandcamp. However the album ought to seem quickly. Lastly, my webpage has extra music and particulars than anybody may need, together with my contact particulars. There are even some philosophy papers to learn!

DP:
Professor Lodge, thanks a lot for this interview!

No; thanks for the chance to share a few of my ideas and focus on these latest initiatives. I hope they are going to be of curiosity to a few of your readers.

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Paul Lodge is Professor of Philosophy at Oxford College and a professorial fellow of Mansfield Faculty, Oxford. His printed analysis is focussed on the philosophy of G.W. Leibniz. He has edited a number of volumes of papers on G. W. Leibniz, together with an version and translation of his Leibniz’s correspondence with De Volder (Yale, 2013), and, with Lloyd Strickland, Leibniz’s Key Philosophical Writings: A Information (Oxford, 2020); and has printed quite a few articles on Leibniz’s philosophy.

He’s additionally a musician and songwriter, and amongst his latest initiatives is Cantat Ergo Sumus, which consists of settings of philosophical poems. For extra on Paul’s philosophy and music, see www.paullodge.com.

Cowl picture provided by Paul Lodge.

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