Century-old Music Leads to Reflection about Today

The thoughts below are what I was referring to in my last entry when I said I was thinking about something, but it would be a few days before I got it developed. Well, it took longer than I expected, but here's what was behind my "promise."
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The other day one of our community archivists found a fascinating piece of music in some old files. Called “St. Walburg’s Academy Grand Jubilee March,” it was by S. Mazurette, and was “composed expressly for and respectfully dedicated to the pupils of St. Walburg's Academy, Covington, KY." The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the academy in 1888. This tickled my research bone. Who was Mazurette and how did he happen to compose a piece for our small academy in Covington?

When I discovered that Salomon Mazurette was a Canadian, born in Montreal in 1847, it raised even more questions. Did someone local know him and commission the piece? Turns out the composer lived and worked in Paris. Did he  know his contemporary Frank Duveneck, a Covington-born artist who at one time lived around the corner from St. Walburg Monastery? He became a renowned painter who taught in Germany and lived in Paris for a while. Could Duveneck have crossed paths with the internationally recognized Mazurette in Europe? Or could it have happened in Cincinnati where the artist  taught and the musician may have come on  tour or to see his music publisher?

This jubilee march written almost 125 years ago has raised questions that reveal how small a world it was, even a century ago.  It shows that the connections we make today thru Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media are not new, just accelerated. You may have heard that there are just 6 degrees of separation between any one individual and any other one individual on the planet. Though not proven to scientific satisfaction, this theory still points to the reality that each individual touches other individuals who in turn touch others, and this creates the fabric of humanity. One thread can’t be pulled without affecting others; together we form the connective tissue of the human race.

Many philosophers, poets, and theologians have expressed this reality. Poet John Donne wrote that “No man is an island…every man is part of the continent”.  St. Paul says the body consists of many members, and “if the whole body were just an eye, how would there be any hearing?”   

Who would have anticipated that finding a century-old piece of sheet music would lead to reflecting on the connections between individuals across time and space? Today’s social media have exponentially increased both the number of  links as well as our awareness of them. There is a downside, however. There is evidence that while individuals purposely increase the number of people with whom they link, they are, at the same time, unintentionally decreasing the depth of these relationships. (Can one equally nurture 50 – 1000 “friends”?)

For me, the dusty music discovery leads to this contemporary question: Can I use Facebook and other digital communications in a way that deepens my humanity and increases the quality of my relationships? This is one link I’m really going to be looking for.

a KY monk