Tunes Consumed: the Poutine Silver Platter

Have you heard the tale of the Guild of Funerary Violinists? It is a sad one, one where mishaps and conspiracy loom at every corner of its tangled web. Take a seat, and allow me to explain.

The art of funerary violin began in the late 1500’s, and for nearly three centuries flourished as a mainstay to funerary ceremonies. It was music designed not to soothe the relatives or attendees (as it might today). Rather, this music was made to carry the souls of the dead into their afterlives, and beyond that, it reflected the times in such a way that it was meant to relate the greatness of the higher classes to the pale ears of the lower classes. One might say because of this, that it is both the saddest music in the world and a masterly compositional tradition without equal.

To put it into perspective, the tradition of Funerary Violin was so widespread throughout Catholic areas of the world, and it was such common practice, that members of the Guild in terms of sheer numbers were almost on par with priests of the time. There wasn’t a town or village without a Funerary Violinist, and understandably so for who in their right mind of the upper eschelon would want their beloved to sink down into the underworld?

As it would happen, for reasons unknown, in 1833 nearly all traces of this 200-year old tradition were locked away, incinerated, or altered beyond recognition. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that this previously unbeknownst tradition finally began to trickle back into the world of the living. Recordings were found even after the dark shroud of oppression had set in, and a man by the name of Rohan Kriwaczek has pieced together what remains known about the music along with recordings from the early 1900s.

On the topic of the oppression of this unfortunate art form, Rohan had this to say: “Had it survived until today who knows how it would have reflected our current disowning of death as a painful memory, but it is certain that it would have proved more profound and deeply cathartic than the contemporary tendency towards recorded music played on a ghetto blaster. But then maybe a spiritless age deserves a spiritless death. It is not for me to judge.”

As a Funerary Violinist himself, Rohan takes the idea very seriously, and not just because he wrote a book on it, or anything. His own personal website even offers funerary services if you happen to live in the South-Eastern portion of England, and if not, I guess you’ll have to ghetto-blast a CD.

What follows are a few tracks from the (incomplete) recordings of Littlejohn, an unfortunate man who was never able to fulfill his life’s work after tripping over a cat on the way down some flights of stairs and fracturing his skull. That very mishap is more than just a tragedy: it actually serves to sum up the very history of the art.

Sad, isn’t it?
Orlando Addleston, for Micheal Wise Esquire (1681) - III. Allegretto
Kaspar Ignaz Faustmann from Todesmusik (1722) - Intrada
Kaspar Ignaz Faustmann from Todesmusik (1722) - Trauermarsch II
(Performed by Herbert Stanley Littlejohn)

P.S. The real kicker is when you realize that the entire history of this art is a fiction, a gimmick for one artist to get by on. It’s a really, really elaborate fiction, and that in itself is the inspiring part. The publisher himself was even torn about whether or not to put it out there, and even today bookstores are at a loss as to which shelf to place the book on. It’s not history, and yet it’s not a fictional narrative. It’s a dry, humourless, ironical tale of an art that never was, but perhaps should be.