‘That Tartarus may not Engulf them’

The world is full of time-honoured wonder, full of established brilliance overlooked in the blast of the new. I remember as a truculent teenager feeling out of step when friends were obsessed with latest suburban pop and I was discovering the joy of Revolver. How could George Michael ever compete with the sense of tumbling through alternate realities you got while listening to Tomorrow Never Knows? The latest band hyped to gills by NME usually seemed listless when compared to the classics. From God Save The Queen to Return of Django, I was time travelling when everyone else was hunting in the now.

Maybe it is a weakness, but I am still an occasional classicist. I can still find as much reward in the past as others grab from the frontlines of the fabled cutting edge. Until a few weeks ago, all I knew of Gabriel Fauré was he was French, dead and the composer of a cello piece I adore. Today I am discovering the glory of his harmonic structures and the gentle grace of his Requiem.

Listening to Fauré’s Requiem gives the intimate reaction to grandeur you get from walking into a cathedral. You hear an aspiration of bliss, the desire for a beyond. It a call for light in the abyss. You need no faith to respond to its beauty. It can be a hymn to the White Hot Room, a prayer to God or simply a work celebrating the power of love over entropy. For a man fighting the Black Dog, the phrase ‘that Tartarus may not engulf them’ is resonant, the splendour of its setting sustaining.

As I face my fears, turn my head to sharp wind of the future, I am stronger and my life richer for this music and all the other treasures living beyond their day in history.