"Luther maintained that without music, man is little more than a stone; but with music he can drive the Devil away."
- John Eliot Gardiner in Bach: Music in The Castle of Heaven
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Ding-dong merrily on high! What is it that every Canberra suburb needs but until now didn't know it needed? Why, a digital/electronic carillon!
Today I continue this column's acclaimed occasional series of inspired ideas for every suburb's spending of its impending gift of up to $2 million.
The Canberra Liberals have promised that if elected they will give every Canberra suburb up to $2 million to spend on itself. There is nothing any sleek First World Canberra suburb really needs and so it is a matter, really, of what extravagances each suburb will spend its Canberra Liberals' bribe money on.
Life's better with music (without it we are only stones but with it we can drive the Devil away) and last week's column looked at how the Liberals' shekels might be used to have music combat the deathly silence of Canberra's suburbia. I sang the praises of suburban brass bands and bagpipers. Now in that same music-seeking vein, I point to electronic/digital carillons.
The companies that make and install them (the real bells of electronic carillons can be put into an existing building or be installed in a nifty purpose-built tower that becomes a work of public art in its own right) are everywhere online, singing the praises of the undeniable evocative beauty of the sounds of bells. And a jolly good electronic carillon can be bought for $2 million.
So suburban Canberrans, preparing to wisely spend your $2 million, why not do some digital/electronic carillon Googling homework now? Why not make a start with YouTube's What is an electronic carillon?
Of course lots of us who are migrants from the Olde Worlde grew up within earshot of church bells. In my English village there was ding-donging bossily on high from the belfry high in the tower of the church every Sunday morning, summoning everyone to church. There was ding-donging merrily on high for weddings and then tolling solemnly on high for funerals.
Of course we are very secular here and now in this Australia but as you will see when you do your homework these new carillons can be tuned to ding-dong a zillion secular sounds; melodies, fanfares, tolls, peals, anything.
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I can imagine a suburb's carillon performing the simple role of cheering the hitherto melancholy suburb up by pealing recitals of the tunes of the Greatest Hits of popular artistes, of, say, Billy Joel, The Beatles, Elton John, etc. (but not, please God, of The Seekers).
Then, as well, the suburb's carillon could, ding-donging merrily, do spontaneous rejoicing over great occasions. Had they been in place, our suburbs' carillons could have evocatively jingle-jangled with delight at that moment when our Nathan Lyon took his 500th Test wicket.
A few days earlier, our suburbs' carillons could have pealed the glad tidings of great joy that the offensively ambitious Zed Seselja had failed to get his party's pre-selection for the Senate.
Then (and oh the terrible spiritual sterility of suburbia as we know it now!) at this time of the year a suburb's carillon would be busily filling the air with Christmas carols and even, in cultured suburbs like my own, with those soul-tingling choruses from JS Bach's Christmas Oratorio.
Thus each suburb's carillon's repertoire and performances would reflect that suburb's people's tastes and requests, ringing out our city's fabled diversity to the listening world.
In some outer, newer, working-class suburbs (out, say, in pioneering Gungahlin) the carillons would probably have to hammer out a lot of Jimmy Barnes, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
In older, leafier suburbs like my own where every citizen has an Arts degree, the carillons would jingle-jangle finer things.
In my mind's eye I see and hear my suburb's day getting off to a wide-awake start with at dawn the pulse-quickening "Dun dun dun duuun!" of the opening of Beethoven's 5th.
I see and hear my suburb's spirits being lifted at any time by the carillon's clang-thundering of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus and by the carillon's singing and trilling of The Rejoicing from Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks.
The suburb that doesn't find itself spontaneously singing and dancing to its carillon's playing of the Hallelujah Chorus will be a very inexuberant and clinically depressed suburb indeed. It will show itself in urgent need of free psychotherapeutic exuberance counselling - that counselling, too, paid for by the same caring Canberra Liberals' government that has given every suburb its own carillon.
And if I am able to influence things, my suburb's carillon will play lots of the music of JS Bach. He was a disciple of Luther and thought it a truism that, yes, music (of the right kind) drives the Devil away. So much of Bach's music is crusadingly Beelzebub-repelling.
Our suburbs need this Devil-repellent. The Devil and his works are everywhere in suburbia. We see him for example in the tyranny of the motor car (with at this time a trend to giant planet-damaging SUVs of Satanic size).
We see it too in the satanic hardening of the hearts of NIMBYs against having the disadvantaged live within a suburban cooee of their, the NIMBYs', satanically ostentatious mansions.
Let the music of JS Bach ring out in suburbia. There is much suburban work for it to do.
Ian Warden is a Canberra Times columnist
Ian Warden is a Canberra Times columnist
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