June 19, 2023 • 39 mins
If you search for “freemasonry songs” on Google, you will get very interesting results. WB Nathan St. Pierre joins us to share how there was a time when music had a much larger role in Freemasonry — and his research in preserving this unique Masonic history.
All songs performed by WB Nathan St. Pierre and used with his permission.
Song order:
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All songs performed by WB Nathan St. Pierre and used with his permission.
Song order:
- "Guardian Genius of Our Art Divine"
"Some Folks Have with Curious Impertenence Strove"
"Come Lend me Your Ears Loving Brethren Awhile"
"Once I Was Blind and Cou'd Not See"
"You People Who Laugh At Masons Draw Near"
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast,the only five star rated Masonic podcast endorsed
by the Grand Lodge of New York. Any opinions, thoughts, or viewpoints
shared during this program or that ofthe individual and do not reflect the official
position of any Grand Lodge appendant orconcordinate body from which that member may hail.
I'm your host, brother, MichaelArc, co founder of Craftsman Online
dot com. I'm very excited aboutthis. I know I say this for
(00:36):
every episode, but I really am. Because we've discovered Masonic songs. If
you search for freemasonrysongs on Google,you're going to get some pretty interesting results.
We're lucky to have a special gueston this week. Worshipful Brother Nason.
Saint Pierre, who's from the Lodgeof nine Muses number seventeen seventy six
here in Washington, DC, joinsus to talk about how there was a
(00:57):
time when music had a much largerrole in Freemason, especially in our degrees,
and of course the unique research workthat he's done to uncover some of
this history. So let's just startwith that main point there. I think
a lot of guys listening to thispodcast are going to sit here and go
wait, we used to sing songsin lodges. Oh yeah, oh the
lodges were they weren't. The lodgeswere singing so many songs that it was
(01:21):
getting published in the actual like Londonnewspapers parodies of the Masonic songs making fun
of the Freemasons for being too loudwhen they were having their meetings up.
Absolutely one and part and parcel ofthe same thing. Here's the part that
I find interesting. And throughout thispodcast episode, we're going to share some
(01:42):
examples of songs that you have foundand recorded, so you'll hear singing and
we'll break from time to time soguys can get an idea of this.
But we're not talking about singing thestar spangled banner, which is featured in
some of the degree work in somejurisdictions. We're actually talking about songs that
have to deal with Freemasonry. Sowho wrote these songs and where did they
(02:04):
go? So it's really funny asyou mentioned the star spanal banner, because
the star spanal banner actually is partof this same songwriting tradition that creates these
Masonic songs. Because the melody forthe star spanal a banner comes from another
song called to Anacreon in Heaven,which was the sort of big festful like
(02:25):
Here's how Lost of Are really wasa drinking song for the Anacreontic Society in
England. And and there's a styleof songwriter or or a shouldn't say stylish,
say a practice of songwriting. That'sa Latin word called contrafacta. And
we all know what this is.Many of our elementary teachers know called them
(02:46):
piggyback songs. Right. It's whereI'm going to take the melody for this
one thing and I'm going to changethe words, and then it's going to
become this other thing. And it'svery familiar to people because or maybe people
don't even realize that bah bah Blah, Act Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
and the Alphabet song all are thesame melody, and that melody is Mozart
(03:07):
And that doesn't matter. That's notimportant. What is important is it was
considered creative. It was considered itwas considered moving something forward, to take
a tune that everybody knew, addyour own spin on it, add your
own flavor, and then communicate thatbecause what sometimes happened, and it actually
(03:27):
sometimes happens now is the sort ofsuperimposed the lyrics become more associated with that
melody than even the original ones were. So so the singing of the star
swill banner just to kind of swingall the way back is part of that
same tradition, because we have anational anthem that is a piece of contra
facta. Because Francis scott Key tookthe melody for to an acroon in Heaven.
(03:53):
He wrote his poem right in multipleverses that the four McHenry right.
And so it is continuing that practiceof contra fact and in fact, it
was so so very common. Um. In my book chapter that I wrote
(04:15):
on this, I talk about there'sa letter from Benjamin Franklin to his brother
where his brother had written a song, and ben Franklin said, it's it's
a shame that you wrote your ownmelody, because if you had just taken
that very clever you add and asto some other thing, then people might
actually be singing your song. Andit's you know, so by contemporary standards,
we think that's very silly, becausewe like, no, we don't
(04:38):
want the same thing old had,We want something new come up with.
But at that time, it wasabout taking the familiar and adding your own
to it. In a way,music was a meme, and infect music
isn't meme. I do think that, but and I use that in the
Richard Dawkins way of a thought virus. Right, So an internet meme that
passes around is sort of the sameway. It becomes funny because you're familiar
(05:02):
with what it's referencing. So whenyou had your own sort of sprinkles to
it, it sticks better because you'relike, oh, yeah, I can
relate to that. And what's interestingis upon further digging because one of these
I think I shared it with you, and in the ones that we can
sample. When to this confusion,no end soon appeared the sovereign Grandmaster's word
(05:26):
Sardin was here then teamed mother chaoswith maternal throws. And so the grand
lodge of this world a rose derrydown down down, dairy down, then
heaven and earth with jubilly wrung,and all the creation of masonry song but
(05:49):
low to adorn and complete the gaball Alladam was made the grandmaster of all
dairy down, down, down,dry down. Turns out that that's a
very very old English refrain that usedto single signal to the listener that what
(06:12):
you're listening to is meant to betaken very tongue in cheek and so like.
So it's an example of so ifMason's are taking that melody and then
they're writing a saws over it,there is that hidden layer of oh,
and when they hear this, they'regonna think, you know, X,
Y or Z. In the sameway that if you and I were to
write, now, write a songabout the New York Yankees and do it
(06:38):
to the tune of baby Shark,we we might be playing on on you
know, various baseball rise because youknow, baby Sharks kind of associated with
the Nationals, and so like,there could be a narrative underneath of what's
really happening. Meanwhile, like atthe surface, it's just oh, they're
just singing about the Nationals to thetune of Baby Shark. It's so interesting
(06:59):
that that was the common practice then, because we know that's how a lot
of our ritual was written. Theyliterally took parts out of the Bible or
Shakespeare, for example, and justthrew it in there. They didn't have
to source or cite things like wedo today. It was just very,
as you said, a common practice. And I think nowadays, I think
young people we'd go, oh,that's we call that sampling where they take
an old song from the eighties andhip hop. Now it's now the backbeat
(07:23):
for a big hit or a remixof some sort of course, yeah,
who were the men that were writingthese songs and what was their inspiration?
So the men who were writing thesesongs were like the George Clooney's of the
day. They were the actors atthe Drury Lane Theater, at the Theater
National, right, there's there's extensivedocumentation that many of the famous ballot opera
(07:48):
performers of the day we're also membersof the Masonic lodges that we're meeting the
theater district. And in fact,in seventeen thirty there was a ballad opera
that was quite successful written by aFreemason called The Generous Freemason, that enjoyed
some popularity in the theater scene ofEngland at the time. And so what's
(08:15):
very interesting about the history of Masonicsong is that it's intimately tied to the
history of the English theater and likeso much so that like these citations are
in Groves Dictionary of English Musicians andthings like that, like these are just
a well documented connections between Masonic lodgesand the theater performers. And the earliest
(08:43):
Masonic song that we have that wecan still sing because the melody is still
available to us is the Entered Apprenticessong, which was written by Matthew Burkehead
And when Matthew Burke had died,it's documented six of his paul were Mason
Masons who were actors in the inthe drew in the theater because like it
(09:05):
was just so much a part ofum and just to give the listeners an
idea of what time fair period we'retalking about her we are talking about from
about seventeen twenty all the way upuntil about seventeen thirty. The ideas that
we're talking about sort of the beginningof what we understand as Grand Lodge Masonry
(09:28):
in England. And these songs,the practices of singing songs wasn't unique to
England, so we have Irish songsfrom the same time, we have Welsh
songs from the same time and affectsome of the most awesome If you're into
mystic the mystic aspects of freemasonry,the esoteric stuff, the stuff that we
(09:50):
don't have to like superimpose alchemy ontop of it, because it's already there
and wonderful. Those types of thingsare coming out of Wales in the early
seventeen thirties. There's an awesome bookcalled the Book m that's filled with all
these Masonic songs. And very recentlyI was able to sort of triangulate that
(10:11):
those songs came to the mainland throughan architect named Brother Oakley. And so
here's this Welsh brother who's literally justyou know, going on about across to
go see Mason's in London, andhe comes to London, he hears them
singing, and he goes, hey, you know what we sing in Wales
too, sing you a bunch ofsongs? And he did, because all
(10:33):
of a sudden, in you know, seventeen forties, these Welsh songs are
now being published in Singing was Masonicculture, it was, it was part
of it, our ancient brother andwe know they used to meet in taverns,
so that makes sense that you know, other people in the bar they
would have heard them, the guysdownstairs talking singing. Well, when would
(10:56):
they break into song? During themeetings or was this something they would do
afterwards at the bar or when theywere just celebrating and just having a moment
of brotherhood. Andrew Pink he's onewho's written quite a bit for the Grand
Lodge of England. And Andreas Onaforcehe's also written about this, and both
of these brothers and scholars have comeup with some taxonomies that I like in
(11:20):
terms of like, when we lookat this and we're talking about hundreds of
Masonic songs, most of them aregonna be for like for formal convivial use.
That's essentially the festive board, whichvery much was considered part of the
meeting to those brethren, right.But so brother Wannafors has identified it four
(11:46):
categories. Functional which provides entertainment.This is where you get some of those
ones that I was alluding to earlierwhere maybe like it's tongue in cheek to
make people you know laugh and youknow ever so, yes it's a Mason
song. Yes there's there's secret toor mystery to it or what have you,
but yes it is a part ofus. So we've got a lot
of songs from that time about justhow Mason's are great. Other people they're
(12:09):
just dumb. Why don't other peopleunderstand how great Masons are? But they
pret Masonic virtues. So the reasonwe're so awesome isn't because we joined the
club. That's not why. Thereason why is because we're Mason's. And
because we're Mason's it means we areX, y, and Z. So
this kind of goes back to whereI was joking with you a month ago
(12:33):
where I said, imagine if Masonbelieved the words they said, right,
because that's what's happening here is youhave a song where we're edifying our virtues
and we're talking about awesome, howgreat an institution Masonry is to be brother
to a king, right, andthat's and all of these sorts of things
that it's because they're saying we're Mason'sbecause we actually believe that Masons are these,
(12:58):
you know, these virtues that wethat we talk about in our rituals.
We believe it. And then thefinal category is externally demarcating. So
that's essentially othering that happens to theMasons within London society at the time of
right, where we don't understand theMasons, we don't get what's going on
there, like well, so theyget sort of, you know, othered,
(13:22):
and so to counter the othering thatwas happening, they created a bunch
of songs that talked about like,oh, well, the reason why those
people don't like us is because thosepeople don't get it. Them laugh because
they're dots. Some folks have withcurious impatent and strove from Freemason's posms their
secrets to move. I'll tell mything. Their endeavors must prove which nobody
(13:48):
can denyed, deny, which nobodycan denyed of the type secret when we
are possessed our tongues and explain whatis lodged in our breasts, the bless
and so great it cannot be expressed, which nobody can d nighty night,
(14:11):
which nobody can d night. I'menjoying this. It's the music of Freemason's
Masonic songs. And we have avery talented guest who has lent his voice
and you're hearing some of his musicthroughout this podcast episode. Worshipful Brother Nathan
Saint Pierre of the Lodge of theNine Muses here in Washington, d C.
(14:35):
Here's what I find interesting about this. You had mentioned that Masonic music
was a big part after the GrandLodge era, which would have been after
seventeen seventeen in England, and that'swhen a lot of our ritual was beginning
to be codified literally through the monitorsthat were being published and shared in the
exposs and all the lodges were basicallycopying what now we would know as the
(14:58):
lectures that were part of it.How was it that music didn't get inserted
into degrees or some of our ritualthat's practiced. Oh, but it absolutely
did. I mean the early constitutionsthat we have that are that are dictating,
like the history of masonry. It'salways talking about though, so we
all know about uh Tubalcane and andthat's sort of but Tubalcane comes from a
(15:20):
family that also has Jebil and Jewbildoes music and Tubalcane doesn't dull and the
idea is and all of the booksthat are written that that track what we
call the traditional history, it's alwayssaying that what happened was this is skill,
this is masonry. Masonry and skillare very similar because mcdall comes from
(15:45):
Adam, Adam being the perfect creationfrom God and then an Innesstness says,
and it was created with geometry imprintedon his heart. So essentially, like
from the creation masonry has existed,and so then from Adam it passed through
a succession of ages unimpaired, right, so on and so forth too.
(16:07):
Here we are now chatting over theinternet like and how cool this is,
but we're talking about the same thing. And so the fact that that jubile
is listed as creating music, sothey inscribe that on pillars, one that
can withstand flood and one that canwithstand fire, which may be similar to
(16:30):
some other things that Mason's monitored textshave heard. But so they inscribe that,
and then the flood happens, andthen after the flood that those pillars
get found. So that's how thisall passes down, so on and so
forth. Now, some histories godown to Africa and include Hermestrius Majistice.
(16:52):
Some go to Greece, and that'show we can get things like you know,
the great Pythagoras was a mason,right, And it's because we're all
we're not saying like so and sowas initiated to a lodge of you know,
free excepted Masons of you know,the Grand Lodge of Nebraska or whatever
like. We're saying that they're partof a mystery tradition that we acknowledge as
masonry because it comes from the Creatorand so it's and so what the early
(17:17):
Masons we're calling this was the artdivine art, genius of our artsy God
unto living sons of sees no seessees the rooms of these two pot and
(17:48):
smile made a beauties. That's wherethe craft comes from. It was it
was, or the divine science orin that sort of thing. So this
idea that we as Masons can participatein the act of creation, that was
(18:11):
divinity itself. So as long aswe are acknowledging this tradition, we're participating
in the ancient and gentle craft,the art divine that which is and the
extent that we ignore that and wethink, oh, we just have secret
headshakes and we're an up boys clubwho has dinner together and sometimes you know,
smoke cigars. If that's happening,the early Masons would have called them
(18:33):
false brethren, and they actually wrotequite a bit about these false brethren or
the ni knife and Forkers, andhow they weren't actually even like considered part
of the fraternity even though they wereinitiated. But you know, we're a
lot more cosmopolitan now, I liketo think to that point. Earlier this
year, with Brother Angel Mullar,we were able to travel back in time.
(18:53):
He did a guided meditation and wedid a trip back to an eighteenth
century lodge in England that was goingthrough the Egyptian right, so to speak,
and that was really neat to youknow, in your mind to envision
what it would have sounded like orfelt like. And I can only imagine
what it must have felt like fora brother to go to a lodge meeting
then versus what it's like going toa lodge meeting now. And I'm not
(19:15):
beating up modern freemasonry, because youknow, things change and they evolve over
time. But there seemed to bea lot more focused on the brotherhood aspect
of freemasonry, and music was wouldyou say, was kind of a working
tool that was able to bring thebrothers together that way. Would we say
as harmony as the strength and supportof all well regulated institutions, especially this
(19:37):
of ours, And that's monitor textWe can say that right, and it's
it's and it's because they really aredriving into a very fundamental principle. And
it goes back to Pythagoras, wherePythagoras, there's the legend, goes on
a hand bills and he noticed,oh, this one is twice as big
as this one, and it makesa tone, and that's exactly one octave
(20:02):
higher. Oh, let me seeif I can you know further this experiment.
And then we get the monochord,and then we get blah blah blah,
and we get pythagoraean ratio. Musicwas math like. He didn't see
them as different, like Pythagoras waslike he is our ancient friend and brother.
Like he saw music as the languageof creation, and uh to go.
(20:23):
Come back to kirtecnulty when he talksabout the seven Liberal Arts and Sciences,
he talks about maths a progression,like as a winding staircase where you
cannot and he in fact rearranges theorder. You need grammar to get to
rhetoric, because you need to learnwords because before you can argue with them,
(20:45):
and then once you can law,once you can say something, then
oh, now I'm going to persuadeyou. Now I have now I have
drama, so now I have rhetoric, right, And so in the same
way you start with mathematics, andthen geometry is math in space, and
then when we get to music,that's math in time, and then when
(21:07):
we get to astronomy, that's mathin space. So everything is built on
the first one and so and sothat's why actually music is right up there
with astronomy. And so when afund is in the sixteen hundreds, Johannes
Kepler he did some math out becausehe was he was a big Pythagoras guy,
and he was like, they gotthe Pythagoras was out of stuffing with
(21:27):
these ratios, and he did somemath out and he found that the orbits
of matched Pythagoras's intervals, like prettyclosely, right, because Pythagoras took that
one step further and said, well, there's harmony on earth, there must
be harmony in heaven. So that'swhere we get the idea of the harmony
of the spheares. Okay, sothe harmony of the spheres was an actual
(21:48):
philosophy or belief that in the sameway that when you move something on earth,
it makes sound, because sounded simplyvibration. Well, since that moving,
they must be making a sound.Well, we can't hear the sounds
that they make because it's so big, So what sound is it? Well,
it must be similar to the soundsthat we hear on earth, because
(22:10):
the math is what the math is. Now I should point out that Kepler
was later proven wrong, but it'sstill you know, is it worth pointing
out that here's an astronomer, right, that's the top of our ladder of
the sciences, right, But he'sbuilding on the idea of Pathagoras, who
was speaking from music. I lovethis. This is like getting taken to
(22:33):
school, and I like the partthat the point that you made. I
was a very successful d in mathstudent for most of my junior high and
high school career, but also wasin band, and that point was brought
to me, like how are youstruggling in math when you play a musical
instrument, don't you? And I'mlike, oh, okay, never really,
brother, Michael, I gotta sayI have a PhD in music.
(22:53):
Okay, I got a d inmath, And I tell my students now,
I say D is for pluma andI got the same thing that you
did, because you know, everyone'slike, oh, well, there's a
math and music and actually, andI always just kept my mouth shut said
nope, no, because you knowwhat. But but we got to remember
that Pythagoras is talking about music aslike sort of the platonic ideal of music,
(23:18):
not like hey, I'm gonna puton you know, Winnie Houston,
I want to dance with somebody becausegoldarn it, I'll get up every single
time. You know, Like that'snow where he's going with that. He's
talking about, you know, musicwith a capital M, so to speak.
If that's if I can sort ofrescue our brother there. Once I
(23:41):
was blind and could not see,and all was dark around, but provddan
state pity me and soon a herfriend I found through secret pets. My
friend me led such pets as babblersnever dread with a fun the la fa
la la la la la la laall stumbling blocks. He took away that
(24:07):
I might hate, walk secure andbrought me a longer break of day to
Wisdom's temple door, where there weball admittance out to mystic has on all
load ground with a full la lala fa la la la la la la.
(24:27):
Well, the other point that youhad made and I want to kind
of backpedal to that as well andrevisit it. As you talked about tradition
with a capital T, what didyou mean by that? So? Um,
there was a There's an author,Hobsam who was writing in the I
Believe the Hades, and he wrotea book called The Invention of Tradition,
(24:48):
and essentially he kind of took asort of sarcastic look at tradition, meaning
like the capital T, and inhis main argument was, if you look
deep enough, every tradition is inventedat some point for the purpose of increasing
the importance by drawing it further backin time, Like if we can say
(25:15):
we've always done this, it givesit up more strength than just oh,
we're going to start doing this now. Lie. What his point is is,
eventually go back far enough, youwill find that somebody somewhere said,
you know, all right, we'regoing to do this now. Now.
What's interesting I bring up Hobsbomb becausethe first example that he provides in his
(25:37):
book is the Freemasons, and it'sjust it's just perfect. When I talk
about the tradition with the capital T, I'm talking about was what was the
mythopoeic history, the traditional history thatall Masons in the early Grand Lage era,
and these are Masons that are comingout of as we know, co
(26:00):
mingling with the actual Mason's who fourhundred years before that had their Mason's word
and the other things. Right,there's there's this commingling happening in early seventeen
hundreds and it's a very you know, interesting time politically for England, Like
there's there's just a lot going on. But all of these guys all put
(26:21):
in writing and distributed throughout the EnglandBrish files that Adam was created by God
with geometry and printed on his heartthat is like that is as bread and
butter as in the beginning God createdlike that was you know that that's part
(26:42):
of their their world. So muchso that in seventeen fifty six, when
Lawrence H. Dermot pushes the Ahimanraison, which is sort of like the
ancients version of Anderson's constitutions, hishistory or pardon me, his history is
(27:06):
prefaced with the greatest story of thedog at my homework. Ever, because
he's quarter, he's making fun ofAnderson. Because Anderson says, in the
beginning God created Adam. And bycreating Adam, God created masonry. So
Lawrence terms say, like, fine, I'm going to show you that masonry
actually predates the creation. Here's howOh no, my dog just got out
(27:33):
of my desk and just ran awaywith this document that I just spent writing.
Oh and on top of that,I should mention that it was dictated
to me by an angel in mysleep, and all of these things like
and so on and so forth.And he's it's you know, it's it's
tongue in cheek. But then ultimately, once he starts the history, it's
in the men. He got greatAdam. What's right? So so in
(27:56):
other words, like even though likeI'm making fun of you for saying,
oh, masonry goes all the wayback literally the moment that's masonry, Like,
uh, I'm still gonna I'm stillgonna buy it, like it's it's
how do you say, it's professionalwrestling, it's k fame Like yeah,
you're like, really is broken?I buy it? Like I'm there with
you. And so um, That'swhy I say tradition with a capital T
(28:18):
is because I mean I think Ithink the academic mason or the thinking man's
Mason is gonna say no, weprobably don't go all the way back to
the creation. But at the sametime, I as a Freemason, I'm
gonna stand here right in front ofyou and say we over the past about
(28:45):
twenty years, like, there's there'sbeen different waves. We called it traditional
observance, we've called it observant masonry, We've we've called it like there's there's
lots of different terms that come outfor this idea of we're gonna look to
the past to look to the future. Right. Well, what happened was
a lot of great scholarship happened,and a lot of brothers, young,
(29:07):
younger Masons were getting interested. Butone of the downsides was in the absence
of people really reading what happened,like what's early masonry? What is there?
We just sort of kind of createdour own thing, like, oh
well, traditional observance means I'm gonnawear a tuxedo. Traditional observance means we
have dinner afterwards. Traditional observance meanswe smoke cigars. Tracial observance means there's
(29:32):
whiskey, like tradial observance means andall of those things were not like and
it left a bad taste actually alot of people's mouths, and it created
a like TiO. There was atime when it was almost like, oh,
we don't want to want to talkabout that, because though those people
or whatever my take on it istraditional observance has nothing to do with the
(29:55):
activities that the lodge does. Beyondthat, traditional means you observe that there
is a tradition. You observe thatwe are coming from this thing that once
upon a time people felt so stronglyabout that they said, this goes all
the way back to the maker.And so as Lion said, that's again
(30:21):
my sound bite of imagine if Mason'sbelieved what they said. And in Anderson's
Constitutions seventeen twenty three, the firstdocument to be sponsored by a Grand Lodge
included four Masonic songs, one ofwhich was a musical setting of the traditional
(30:44):
history Adam the first of Humankind,and that is one of the MP three's
that you have Adam the first ofyou many kind created with dement three imprinted
on Misron your mind instructed suits,project good and save that improved the liberal
(31:18):
science and the art of artect yourwhich they loved, and to their spring
did bart because it really did startwith Adam and go all the way to
King George and here we are now. But this is one of the first
(31:41):
ones that we get and it's amainstay for like a very long time.
That's what I mean by tradition witha capital team is we're saying that by
participating in this thing of freemasonry,we're participating fully in it. And that
means that in the cafe Abe worldof you know, freemasonry or wrestling or
(32:04):
however you have it, I believethat when I enter an apprentice, pass
a craft, or raise the master, that I am doing as has been
done unto me. That's I guessmy very long winded answer to your question
about imagining when you go into aspace like what must it have been like
to go to lodge back then,is I've recently really started to get excited
(32:27):
about the idea of imagining that it'swhat it's like now. I'm trying to
turn that corner and I want tostay positive with you know, modern freemasonry,
because we definitely you know, havea whole bunch of new issues that
have now entered modern men and it'smade its way to the craft. Yes,
I think that a simple thing wouldbe is you know we could just
start singing at our festival boards.Amen, Yes, in between the toasts
(32:51):
and just start bringing back some ofthat big tea tradition. That's it.
Yes, because and we have Imean, there's science on this. The
most excite times happen when we singtogether, and like every part of the
brain lights up and whatever, andthere's so much science and this is why,
like one of my favorite things aboutit, I love to go to
concerts, I mean, like rockshows, and I just love live performance.
(33:15):
One of my favorite things is whenthey'll do impromptu a cappella, make
the crowd sing Bohemian Rhapsody at thetop of their lungs, just because they
can, and because it's one ofthese transcendent experiences where you're like, I'm
part of thirty thousand people and areall doing the same thing together. So
yes, one, get our eight, nine, ten, fifty guys and
(33:38):
have them all sing the Robert Burnsat you at the end of every and
doing something that hasn't been done inalmost two hundred years, right, And
that's that's the coolest thing. Somusic never really left freemasonry. It never
really left the craft. It's justyes, Freemason's left music. That's it.
Yeah, I love that you advocatefor that. In fairness, and
(34:00):
about the around the eighteen thirties,it starts to sort of come back.
But because Masonry was dealing with alot of other things at that time.
You know, you got the Morganaffair, you got the anti Masonic Party,
you're talking about the United States here, You've got you've got a public
opinion around masonry that's shifting. Okay, So Mason Masonic song didn't go away,
(34:27):
but the content changed dramatically and becamea lot more about the fraternal aspect
of Masonry, like so and sois good because so and so is a
brother, and we're all together andwe're having a good time, and you
know, and that sort of thing, which is wonderful. I mean,
brotherly love is one of the principaltenets of our order. But it was
(34:51):
at the sacrifice of the things thatmay have raised a curious eye in terms
of like, oh, I'm singingabout you know how Noah was amazing.
You people who life that Masons drawme attend to my ballad without dy sneer
(35:14):
and I fell pastions. You soonshall see what a fine arttists me soonry.
There's none button atheist can never denybut that this great art came a
(35:36):
first trumana high since God himself fileproof to be the first great master of
masonry. But then as we moveinto Antebellum and then into the nineteenth or
parton me into the twentieth century,they they did, it changes through and
(36:00):
that's when you get play else himand that and those things that come into
the lodge. So it's it's almostlike playing to this idea of those people
who would have been initiated at thattime would have remembered a time when we
sang, and so a lot oftimes you get texts that are at during
the mid eighteen hundreds to the twentiethcentury, you get texts based on him
(36:22):
tunes, which is also fine,But that's I think I don't quote me
on this, but I imagine that'swhere the idea of the lodge organist would
come from. Well, let's talkabout I think one of the important takeaways
I always have in the third degreeis when we talk about the Master's word
and that it's lost and it's upfor future generations to find it and it
(36:44):
kind of plants that seed in ourhead that you know, we're here on
this level of time YadA, YadA, YadA, and that we really need
to start preserving the craft for thosefuture generations. You mentioned a couple other
brothers that have done research or workinto this space. Who's out there preserving
these songs or in keeping this historyin tax so that future of brothers can
(37:07):
be singing these songs. There's anotherbrother because he's also a college fraturnity,
brother of mine and find me officeSinfonia a fraturnity, and he's done some
good work on songs in fraternal societies. He talks about Mason's um because he's
a Mason. But uh, butthen, um, you know there's Andrew
Pink in England and Andrea's on afours. This scholarship has existed, I
(37:30):
think it just it really did justfall out of practice, and so I
have been working since about twenty seventeento bring it back. There are some
exciting things on the horizon. Uh. We've been working on a book with
the song notation and the text andthe historical um, some historical notes on
(37:55):
when it would have been performed,when it was found, who wrote it.
Why you know, if if thoseare details that we know, I
like to provide it. And theother thing that I liked to provide was
when I found the song, Here'swhere I found it, and here's the
year that was published. So here'swhat they would have had access to and
that sort of thing. So I'llgive you an example when we when if
you were to google, you know, like I'm a sonic songbook from say,
(38:19):
you know, eighteen h six,you would find a wonderful songbook that
would say, like to the tuneof the Old Brown Derby. Well,
nobody was born after seventeen forty five, knows the Old Brown Derby? Right?
But enter worshipful of Saint Pierre.When are you looking for this book
to be released as soon as possible? I would my dream. I would
(38:45):
love it to be released somewhere neara Saints John's Day, so whether it's
near June or whether it's near December, because one of the richest song music
traditions was around the Saint John's Feast. That's where a lot of songs appen.
Let's singing for the feast, dancingwell. I love that you have
(39:07):
shared your passion. I know I'vegotten a chance to hear you speak,
and have gotten to meet with youand sitting lodge with you, and I
just am so thankful that you tookthe invitation to join us. Our guests
this week on the Craftsman Online Podcast, Brother Nathan Saint Pierre, thanks so
much for coming on. Oh it'sglad to be here. Thank you.
If you've enjoyed this episode and youwant to hear more, you can tell
(39:28):
Siri or Alexa to play the CraftsmanOnline Podcast. We are available on all
streaming platforms, with new episodes everyMonday morning until next time. Let peace
and harmony prevail.
Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast,the only five star rated Masonic podcast endorsed
by the Grand Lodge of New York. Any opinions, thoughts, or viewpoints
shared during this program or that ofthe individual and do not reflect the official
position of any Grand Lodge appendant orconcordinate body from which that member may hail.
I'm your host, brother, MichaelArc, co founder of Craftsman Online
dot com. I'm very excited aboutthis. I know I say this for
(00:36):
every episode, but I really am. Because we've discovered Masonic songs. If
you search for freemasonrysongs on Google,you're going to get some pretty interesting results.
We're lucky to have a special gueston this week. Worshipful Brother Nason.
Saint Pierre, who's from the Lodgeof nine Muses number seventeen seventy six
here in Washington, DC, joinsus to talk about how there was a
(00:57):
time when music had a much largerrole in Freemason, especially in our degrees,
and of course the unique research workthat he's done to uncover some of
this history. So let's just startwith that main point there. I think
a lot of guys listening to thispodcast are going to sit here and go
wait, we used to sing songsin lodges. Oh yeah, oh the
lodges were they weren't. The lodgeswere singing so many songs that it was
(01:21):
getting published in the actual like Londonnewspapers parodies of the Masonic songs making fun
of the Freemasons for being too loudwhen they were having their meetings up.
Absolutely one and part and parcel ofthe same thing. Here's the part that
I find interesting. And throughout thispodcast episode, we're going to share some
(01:42):
examples of songs that you have foundand recorded, so you'll hear singing and
we'll break from time to time soguys can get an idea of this.
But we're not talking about singing thestar spangled banner, which is featured in
some of the degree work in somejurisdictions. We're actually talking about songs that
have to deal with Freemasonry. Sowho wrote these songs and where did they
(02:04):
go? So it's really funny asyou mentioned the star spanal banner, because
the star spanal banner actually is partof this same songwriting tradition that creates these
Masonic songs. Because the melody forthe star spanal a banner comes from another
song called to Anacreon in Heaven,which was the sort of big festful like
(02:25):
Here's how Lost of Are really wasa drinking song for the Anacreontic Society in
England. And and there's a styleof songwriter or or a shouldn't say stylish,
say a practice of songwriting. That'sa Latin word called contrafacta. And
we all know what this is.Many of our elementary teachers know called them
(02:46):
piggyback songs. Right. It's whereI'm going to take the melody for this
one thing and I'm going to changethe words, and then it's going to
become this other thing. And it'svery familiar to people because or maybe people
don't even realize that bah bah Blah, Act Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
and the Alphabet song all are thesame melody, and that melody is Mozart
(03:07):
And that doesn't matter. That's notimportant. What is important is it was
considered creative. It was considered itwas considered moving something forward, to take
a tune that everybody knew, addyour own spin on it, add your
own flavor, and then communicate thatbecause what sometimes happened, and it actually
(03:27):
sometimes happens now is the sort ofsuperimposed the lyrics become more associated with that
melody than even the original ones were. So so the singing of the star
swill banner just to kind of swingall the way back is part of that
same tradition, because we have anational anthem that is a piece of contra
facta. Because Francis scott Key tookthe melody for to an acroon in Heaven.
(03:53):
He wrote his poem right in multipleverses that the four McHenry right.
And so it is continuing that practiceof contra fact and in fact, it
was so so very common. Um. In my book chapter that I wrote
(04:15):
on this, I talk about there'sa letter from Benjamin Franklin to his brother
where his brother had written a song, and ben Franklin said, it's it's
a shame that you wrote your ownmelody, because if you had just taken
that very clever you add and asto some other thing, then people might
actually be singing your song. Andit's you know, so by contemporary standards,
we think that's very silly, becausewe like, no, we don't
(04:38):
want the same thing old had,We want something new come up with.
But at that time, it wasabout taking the familiar and adding your own
to it. In a way,music was a meme, and infect music
isn't meme. I do think that, but and I use that in the
Richard Dawkins way of a thought virus. Right, So an internet meme that
passes around is sort of the sameway. It becomes funny because you're familiar
(05:02):
with what it's referencing. So whenyou had your own sort of sprinkles to
it, it sticks better because you'relike, oh, yeah, I can
relate to that. And what's interestingis upon further digging because one of these
I think I shared it with you, and in the ones that we can
sample. When to this confusion,no end soon appeared the sovereign Grandmaster's word
(05:26):
Sardin was here then teamed mother chaoswith maternal throws. And so the grand
lodge of this world a rose derrydown down down, dairy down, then
heaven and earth with jubilly wrung,and all the creation of masonry song but
(05:49):
low to adorn and complete the gaball Alladam was made the grandmaster of all
dairy down, down, down,dry down. Turns out that that's a
very very old English refrain that usedto single signal to the listener that what
(06:12):
you're listening to is meant to betaken very tongue in cheek and so like.
So it's an example of so ifMason's are taking that melody and then
they're writing a saws over it,there is that hidden layer of oh,
and when they hear this, they'regonna think, you know, X,
Y or Z. In the sameway that if you and I were to
write, now, write a songabout the New York Yankees and do it
(06:38):
to the tune of baby Shark,we we might be playing on on you
know, various baseball rise because youknow, baby Sharks kind of associated with
the Nationals, and so like,there could be a narrative underneath of what's
really happening. Meanwhile, like atthe surface, it's just oh, they're
just singing about the Nationals to thetune of Baby Shark. It's so interesting
(06:59):
that that was the common practice then, because we know that's how a lot
of our ritual was written. Theyliterally took parts out of the Bible or
Shakespeare, for example, and justthrew it in there. They didn't have
to source or cite things like wedo today. It was just very,
as you said, a common practice. And I think nowadays, I think
young people we'd go, oh,that's we call that sampling where they take
an old song from the eighties andhip hop. Now it's now the backbeat
(07:23):
for a big hit or a remixof some sort of course, yeah,
who were the men that were writingthese songs and what was their inspiration?
So the men who were writing thesesongs were like the George Clooney's of the
day. They were the actors atthe Drury Lane Theater, at the Theater
National, right, there's there's extensivedocumentation that many of the famous ballot opera
(07:48):
performers of the day we're also membersof the Masonic lodges that we're meeting the
theater district. And in fact,in seventeen thirty there was a ballad opera
that was quite successful written by aFreemason called The Generous Freemason, that enjoyed
some popularity in the theater scene ofEngland at the time. And so what's
(08:15):
very interesting about the history of Masonicsong is that it's intimately tied to the
history of the English theater and likeso much so that like these citations are
in Groves Dictionary of English Musicians andthings like that, like these are just
a well documented connections between Masonic lodgesand the theater performers. And the earliest
(08:43):
Masonic song that we have that wecan still sing because the melody is still
available to us is the Entered Apprenticessong, which was written by Matthew Burkehead
And when Matthew Burke had died,it's documented six of his paul were Mason
Masons who were actors in the inthe drew in the theater because like it
(09:05):
was just so much a part ofum and just to give the listeners an
idea of what time fair period we'retalking about her we are talking about from
about seventeen twenty all the way upuntil about seventeen thirty. The ideas that
we're talking about sort of the beginningof what we understand as Grand Lodge Masonry
(09:28):
in England. And these songs,the practices of singing songs wasn't unique to
England, so we have Irish songsfrom the same time, we have Welsh
songs from the same time and affectsome of the most awesome If you're into
mystic the mystic aspects of freemasonry,the esoteric stuff, the stuff that we
(09:50):
don't have to like superimpose alchemy ontop of it, because it's already there
and wonderful. Those types of thingsare coming out of Wales in the early
seventeen thirties. There's an awesome bookcalled the Book m that's filled with all
these Masonic songs. And very recentlyI was able to sort of triangulate that
(10:11):
those songs came to the mainland throughan architect named Brother Oakley. And so
here's this Welsh brother who's literally justyou know, going on about across to
go see Mason's in London, andhe comes to London, he hears them
singing, and he goes, hey, you know what we sing in Wales
too, sing you a bunch ofsongs? And he did, because all
(10:33):
of a sudden, in you know, seventeen forties, these Welsh songs are
now being published in Singing was Masonicculture, it was, it was part
of it, our ancient brother andwe know they used to meet in taverns,
so that makes sense that you know, other people in the bar they
would have heard them, the guysdownstairs talking singing. Well, when would
(10:56):
they break into song? During themeetings or was this something they would do
afterwards at the bar or when theywere just celebrating and just having a moment
of brotherhood. Andrew Pink he's onewho's written quite a bit for the Grand
Lodge of England. And Andreas Onaforcehe's also written about this, and both
of these brothers and scholars have comeup with some taxonomies that I like in
(11:20):
terms of like, when we lookat this and we're talking about hundreds of
Masonic songs, most of them aregonna be for like for formal convivial use.
That's essentially the festive board, whichvery much was considered part of the
meeting to those brethren, right.But so brother Wannafors has identified it four
(11:46):
categories. Functional which provides entertainment.This is where you get some of those
ones that I was alluding to earlierwhere maybe like it's tongue in cheek to
make people you know laugh and youknow ever so, yes it's a Mason
song. Yes there's there's secret toor mystery to it or what have you,
but yes it is a part ofus. So we've got a lot
of songs from that time about justhow Mason's are great. Other people they're
(12:09):
just dumb. Why don't other peopleunderstand how great Masons are? But they
pret Masonic virtues. So the reasonwe're so awesome isn't because we joined the
club. That's not why. Thereason why is because we're Mason's. And
because we're Mason's it means we areX, y, and Z. So
this kind of goes back to whereI was joking with you a month ago
(12:33):
where I said, imagine if Masonbelieved the words they said, right,
because that's what's happening here is youhave a song where we're edifying our virtues
and we're talking about awesome, howgreat an institution Masonry is to be brother
to a king, right, andthat's and all of these sorts of things
that it's because they're saying we're Mason'sbecause we actually believe that Masons are these,
(12:58):
you know, these virtues that wethat we talk about in our rituals.
We believe it. And then thefinal category is externally demarcating. So
that's essentially othering that happens to theMasons within London society at the time of
right, where we don't understand theMasons, we don't get what's going on
there, like well, so theyget sort of, you know, othered,
(13:22):
and so to counter the othering thatwas happening, they created a bunch
of songs that talked about like,oh, well, the reason why those
people don't like us is because thosepeople don't get it. Them laugh because
they're dots. Some folks have withcurious impatent and strove from Freemason's posms their
secrets to move. I'll tell mything. Their endeavors must prove which nobody
(13:48):
can denyed, deny, which nobodycan denyed of the type secret when we
are possessed our tongues and explain whatis lodged in our breasts, the bless
and so great it cannot be expressed, which nobody can d nighty night,
(14:11):
which nobody can d night. I'menjoying this. It's the music of Freemason's
Masonic songs. And we have avery talented guest who has lent his voice
and you're hearing some of his musicthroughout this podcast episode. Worshipful Brother Nathan
Saint Pierre of the Lodge of theNine Muses here in Washington, d C.
(14:35):
Here's what I find interesting about this. You had mentioned that Masonic music
was a big part after the GrandLodge era, which would have been after
seventeen seventeen in England, and that'swhen a lot of our ritual was beginning
to be codified literally through the monitorsthat were being published and shared in the
exposs and all the lodges were basicallycopying what now we would know as the
(14:58):
lectures that were part of it.How was it that music didn't get inserted
into degrees or some of our ritualthat's practiced. Oh, but it absolutely
did. I mean the early constitutionsthat we have that are that are dictating,
like the history of masonry. It'salways talking about though, so we
all know about uh Tubalcane and andthat's sort of but Tubalcane comes from a
(15:20):
family that also has Jebil and Jewbildoes music and Tubalcane doesn't dull and the
idea is and all of the booksthat are written that that track what we
call the traditional history, it's alwayssaying that what happened was this is skill,
this is masonry. Masonry and skillare very similar because mcdall comes from
(15:45):
Adam, Adam being the perfect creationfrom God and then an Innesstness says,
and it was created with geometry imprintedon his heart. So essentially, like
from the creation masonry has existed,and so then from Adam it passed through
a succession of ages unimpaired, right, so on and so forth too.
(16:07):
Here we are now chatting over theinternet like and how cool this is,
but we're talking about the same thing. And so the fact that that jubile
is listed as creating music, sothey inscribe that on pillars, one that
can withstand flood and one that canwithstand fire, which may be similar to
(16:30):
some other things that Mason's monitored textshave heard. But so they inscribe that,
and then the flood happens, andthen after the flood that those pillars
get found. So that's how thisall passes down, so on and so
forth. Now, some histories godown to Africa and include Hermestrius Majistice.
(16:52):
Some go to Greece, and that'show we can get things like you know,
the great Pythagoras was a mason,right, And it's because we're all
we're not saying like so and sowas initiated to a lodge of you know,
free excepted Masons of you know,the Grand Lodge of Nebraska or whatever
like. We're saying that they're partof a mystery tradition that we acknowledge as
masonry because it comes from the Creatorand so it's and so what the early
(17:17):
Masons we're calling this was the artdivine art, genius of our artsy God
unto living sons of sees no seessees the rooms of these two pot and
(17:48):
smile made a beauties. That's wherethe craft comes from. It was it
was, or the divine science orin that sort of thing. So this
idea that we as Masons can participatein the act of creation, that was
(18:11):
divinity itself. So as long aswe are acknowledging this tradition, we're participating
in the ancient and gentle craft,the art divine that which is and the
extent that we ignore that and wethink, oh, we just have secret
headshakes and we're an up boys clubwho has dinner together and sometimes you know,
smoke cigars. If that's happening,the early Masons would have called them
(18:33):
false brethren, and they actually wrotequite a bit about these false brethren or
the ni knife and Forkers, andhow they weren't actually even like considered part
of the fraternity even though they wereinitiated. But you know, we're a
lot more cosmopolitan now, I liketo think to that point. Earlier this
year, with Brother Angel Mullar,we were able to travel back in time.
(18:53):
He did a guided meditation and wedid a trip back to an eighteenth
century lodge in England that was goingthrough the Egyptian right, so to speak,
and that was really neat to youknow, in your mind to envision
what it would have sounded like orfelt like. And I can only imagine
what it must have felt like fora brother to go to a lodge meeting
then versus what it's like going toa lodge meeting now. And I'm not
(19:15):
beating up modern freemasonry, because youknow, things change and they evolve over
time. But there seemed to bea lot more focused on the brotherhood aspect
of freemasonry, and music was wouldyou say, was kind of a working
tool that was able to bring thebrothers together that way. Would we say
as harmony as the strength and supportof all well regulated institutions, especially this
(19:37):
of ours, And that's monitor textWe can say that right, and it's
it's and it's because they really aredriving into a very fundamental principle. And
it goes back to Pythagoras, wherePythagoras, there's the legend, goes on
a hand bills and he noticed,oh, this one is twice as big
as this one, and it makesa tone, and that's exactly one octave
(20:02):
higher. Oh, let me seeif I can you know further this experiment.
And then we get the monochord,and then we get blah blah blah,
and we get pythagoraean ratio. Musicwas math like. He didn't see
them as different, like Pythagoras waslike he is our ancient friend and brother.
Like he saw music as the languageof creation, and uh to go.
(20:23):
Come back to kirtecnulty when he talksabout the seven Liberal Arts and Sciences,
he talks about maths a progression,like as a winding staircase where you
cannot and he in fact rearranges theorder. You need grammar to get to
rhetoric, because you need to learnwords because before you can argue with them,
(20:45):
and then once you can law,once you can say something, then
oh, now I'm going to persuadeyou. Now I have now I have
drama, so now I have rhetoric, right, And so in the same
way you start with mathematics, andthen geometry is math in space, and
then when we get to music,that's math in time, and then when
(21:07):
we get to astronomy, that's mathin space. So everything is built on
the first one and so and sothat's why actually music is right up there
with astronomy. And so when afund is in the sixteen hundreds, Johannes
Kepler he did some math out becausehe was he was a big Pythagoras guy,
and he was like, they gotthe Pythagoras was out of stuffing with
(21:27):
these ratios, and he did somemath out and he found that the orbits
of matched Pythagoras's intervals, like prettyclosely, right, because Pythagoras took that
one step further and said, well, there's harmony on earth, there must
be harmony in heaven. So that'swhere we get the idea of the harmony
of the spheares. Okay, sothe harmony of the spheres was an actual
(21:48):
philosophy or belief that in the sameway that when you move something on earth,
it makes sound, because sounded simplyvibration. Well, since that moving,
they must be making a sound.Well, we can't hear the sounds
that they make because it's so big, So what sound is it? Well,
it must be similar to the soundsthat we hear on earth, because
(22:10):
the math is what the math is. Now I should point out that Kepler
was later proven wrong, but it'sstill you know, is it worth pointing
out that here's an astronomer, right, that's the top of our ladder of
the sciences, right, But he'sbuilding on the idea of Pathagoras, who
was speaking from music. I lovethis. This is like getting taken to
(22:33):
school, and I like the partthat the point that you made. I
was a very successful d in mathstudent for most of my junior high and
high school career, but also wasin band, and that point was brought
to me, like how are youstruggling in math when you play a musical
instrument, don't you? And I'mlike, oh, okay, never really,
brother, Michael, I gotta sayI have a PhD in music.
(22:53):
Okay, I got a d inmath, And I tell my students now,
I say D is for pluma andI got the same thing that you
did, because you know, everyone'slike, oh, well, there's a
math and music and actually, andI always just kept my mouth shut said
nope, no, because you knowwhat. But but we got to remember
that Pythagoras is talking about music aslike sort of the platonic ideal of music,
(23:18):
not like hey, I'm gonna puton you know, Winnie Houston,
I want to dance with somebody becausegoldarn it, I'll get up every single
time. You know, Like that'snow where he's going with that. He's
talking about, you know, musicwith a capital M, so to speak.
If that's if I can sort ofrescue our brother there. Once I
(23:41):
was blind and could not see,and all was dark around, but provddan
state pity me and soon a herfriend I found through secret pets. My
friend me led such pets as babblersnever dread with a fun the la fa
la la la la la la laall stumbling blocks. He took away that
(24:07):
I might hate, walk secure andbrought me a longer break of day to
Wisdom's temple door, where there weball admittance out to mystic has on all
load ground with a full la lala fa la la la la la la.
(24:27):
Well, the other point that youhad made and I want to kind
of backpedal to that as well andrevisit it. As you talked about tradition
with a capital T, what didyou mean by that? So? Um,
there was a There's an author,Hobsam who was writing in the I
Believe the Hades, and he wrotea book called The Invention of Tradition,
(24:48):
and essentially he kind of took asort of sarcastic look at tradition, meaning
like the capital T, and inhis main argument was, if you look
deep enough, every tradition is inventedat some point for the purpose of increasing
the importance by drawing it further backin time, Like if we can say
(25:15):
we've always done this, it givesit up more strength than just oh,
we're going to start doing this now. Lie. What his point is is,
eventually go back far enough, youwill find that somebody somewhere said,
you know, all right, we'regoing to do this now. Now.
What's interesting I bring up Hobsbomb becausethe first example that he provides in his
(25:37):
book is the Freemasons, and it'sjust it's just perfect. When I talk
about the tradition with the capital T, I'm talking about was what was the
mythopoeic history, the traditional history thatall Masons in the early Grand Lage era,
and these are Masons that are comingout of as we know, co
(26:00):
mingling with the actual Mason's who fourhundred years before that had their Mason's word
and the other things. Right,there's there's this commingling happening in early seventeen
hundreds and it's a very you know, interesting time politically for England, Like
there's there's just a lot going on. But all of these guys all put
(26:21):
in writing and distributed throughout the EnglandBrish files that Adam was created by God
with geometry and printed on his heartthat is like that is as bread and
butter as in the beginning God createdlike that was you know that that's part
(26:42):
of their their world. So muchso that in seventeen fifty six, when
Lawrence H. Dermot pushes the Ahimanraison, which is sort of like the
ancients version of Anderson's constitutions, hishistory or pardon me, his history is
(27:06):
prefaced with the greatest story of thedog at my homework. Ever, because
he's quarter, he's making fun ofAnderson. Because Anderson says, in the
beginning God created Adam. And bycreating Adam, God created masonry. So
Lawrence terms say, like, fine, I'm going to show you that masonry
actually predates the creation. Here's howOh no, my dog just got out
(27:33):
of my desk and just ran awaywith this document that I just spent writing.
Oh and on top of that,I should mention that it was dictated
to me by an angel in mysleep, and all of these things like
and so on and so forth.And he's it's you know, it's it's
tongue in cheek. But then ultimately, once he starts the history, it's
in the men. He got greatAdam. What's right? So so in
(27:56):
other words, like even though likeI'm making fun of you for saying,
oh, masonry goes all the wayback literally the moment that's masonry, Like,
uh, I'm still gonna I'm stillgonna buy it, like it's it's
how do you say, it's professionalwrestling, it's k fame Like yeah,
you're like, really is broken?I buy it? Like I'm there with
you. And so um, That'swhy I say tradition with a capital T
(28:18):
is because I mean I think Ithink the academic mason or the thinking man's
Mason is gonna say no, weprobably don't go all the way back to
the creation. But at the sametime, I as a Freemason, I'm
gonna stand here right in front ofyou and say we over the past about
(28:45):
twenty years, like, there's there'sbeen different waves. We called it traditional
observance, we've called it observant masonry, We've we've called it like there's there's
lots of different terms that come outfor this idea of we're gonna look to
the past to look to the future. Right. Well, what happened was
a lot of great scholarship happened,and a lot of brothers, young,
(29:07):
younger Masons were getting interested. Butone of the downsides was in the absence
of people really reading what happened,like what's early masonry? What is there?
We just sort of kind of createdour own thing, like, oh
well, traditional observance means I'm gonnawear a tuxedo. Traditional observance means we
have dinner afterwards. Traditional observance meanswe smoke cigars. Tracial observance means there's
(29:32):
whiskey, like tradial observance means andall of those things were not like and
it left a bad taste actually alot of people's mouths, and it created
a like TiO. There was atime when it was almost like, oh,
we don't want to want to talkabout that, because though those people
or whatever my take on it istraditional observance has nothing to do with the
(29:55):
activities that the lodge does. Beyondthat, traditional means you observe that there
is a tradition. You observe thatwe are coming from this thing that once
upon a time people felt so stronglyabout that they said, this goes all
the way back to the maker.And so as Lion said, that's again
(30:21):
my sound bite of imagine if Mason'sbelieved what they said. And in Anderson's
Constitutions seventeen twenty three, the firstdocument to be sponsored by a Grand Lodge
included four Masonic songs, one ofwhich was a musical setting of the traditional
(30:44):
history Adam the first of Humankind,and that is one of the MP three's
that you have Adam the first ofyou many kind created with dement three imprinted
on Misron your mind instructed suits,project good and save that improved the liberal
(31:18):
science and the art of artect yourwhich they loved, and to their spring
did bart because it really did startwith Adam and go all the way to
King George and here we are now. But this is one of the first
(31:41):
ones that we get and it's amainstay for like a very long time.
That's what I mean by tradition witha capital team is we're saying that by
participating in this thing of freemasonry,we're participating fully in it. And that
means that in the cafe Abe worldof you know, freemasonry or wrestling or
(32:04):
however you have it, I believethat when I enter an apprentice, pass
a craft, or raise the master, that I am doing as has been
done unto me. That's I guessmy very long winded answer to your question
about imagining when you go into aspace like what must it have been like
to go to lodge back then,is I've recently really started to get excited
(32:27):
about the idea of imagining that it'swhat it's like now. I'm trying to
turn that corner and I want tostay positive with you know, modern freemasonry,
because we definitely you know, havea whole bunch of new issues that
have now entered modern men and it'smade its way to the craft. Yes,
I think that a simple thing wouldbe is you know we could just
start singing at our festival boards.Amen, Yes, in between the toasts
(32:51):
and just start bringing back some ofthat big tea tradition. That's it.
Yes, because and we have Imean, there's science on this. The
most excite times happen when we singtogether, and like every part of the
brain lights up and whatever, andthere's so much science and this is why,
like one of my favorite things aboutit, I love to go to
concerts, I mean, like rockshows, and I just love live performance.
(33:15):
One of my favorite things is whenthey'll do impromptu a cappella, make
the crowd sing Bohemian Rhapsody at thetop of their lungs, just because they
can, and because it's one ofthese transcendent experiences where you're like, I'm
part of thirty thousand people and areall doing the same thing together. So
yes, one, get our eight, nine, ten, fifty guys and
(33:38):
have them all sing the Robert Burnsat you at the end of every and
doing something that hasn't been done inalmost two hundred years, right, And
that's that's the coolest thing. Somusic never really left freemasonry. It never
really left the craft. It's justyes, Freemason's left music. That's it.
Yeah, I love that you advocatefor that. In fairness, and
(34:00):
about the around the eighteen thirties,it starts to sort of come back.
But because Masonry was dealing with alot of other things at that time.
You know, you got the Morganaffair, you got the anti Masonic Party,
you're talking about the United States here, You've got you've got a public
opinion around masonry that's shifting. Okay, So Mason Masonic song didn't go away,
(34:27):
but the content changed dramatically and becamea lot more about the fraternal aspect
of Masonry, like so and sois good because so and so is a
brother, and we're all together andwe're having a good time, and you
know, and that sort of thing, which is wonderful. I mean,
brotherly love is one of the principaltenets of our order. But it was
(34:51):
at the sacrifice of the things thatmay have raised a curious eye in terms
of like, oh, I'm singingabout you know how Noah was amazing.
You people who life that Masons drawme attend to my ballad without dy sneer
(35:14):
and I fell pastions. You soonshall see what a fine arttists me soonry.
There's none button atheist can never denybut that this great art came a
(35:36):
first trumana high since God himself fileproof to be the first great master of
masonry. But then as we moveinto Antebellum and then into the nineteenth or
parton me into the twentieth century,they they did, it changes through and
(36:00):
that's when you get play else himand that and those things that come into
the lodge. So it's it's almostlike playing to this idea of those people
who would have been initiated at thattime would have remembered a time when we
sang, and so a lot oftimes you get texts that are at during
the mid eighteen hundreds to the twentiethcentury, you get texts based on him
(36:22):
tunes, which is also fine,But that's I think I don't quote me
on this, but I imagine that'swhere the idea of the lodge organist would
come from. Well, let's talkabout I think one of the important takeaways
I always have in the third degreeis when we talk about the Master's word
and that it's lost and it's upfor future generations to find it and it
(36:44):
kind of plants that seed in ourhead that you know, we're here on
this level of time YadA, YadA, YadA, and that we really need
to start preserving the craft for thosefuture generations. You mentioned a couple other
brothers that have done research or workinto this space. Who's out there preserving
these songs or in keeping this historyin tax so that future of brothers can
(37:07):
be singing these songs. There's anotherbrother because he's also a college fraturnity,
brother of mine and find me officeSinfonia a fraturnity, and he's done some
good work on songs in fraternal societies. He talks about Mason's um because he's
a Mason. But uh, butthen, um, you know there's Andrew
Pink in England and Andrea's on afours. This scholarship has existed, I
(37:30):
think it just it really did justfall out of practice, and so I
have been working since about twenty seventeento bring it back. There are some
exciting things on the horizon. Uh. We've been working on a book with
the song notation and the text andthe historical um, some historical notes on
(37:55):
when it would have been performed,when it was found, who wrote it.
Why you know, if if thoseare details that we know, I
like to provide it. And theother thing that I liked to provide was
when I found the song, Here'swhere I found it, and here's the
year that was published. So here'swhat they would have had access to and
that sort of thing. So I'llgive you an example when we when if
you were to google, you know, like I'm a sonic songbook from say,
(38:19):
you know, eighteen h six,you would find a wonderful songbook that
would say, like to the tuneof the Old Brown Derby. Well,
nobody was born after seventeen forty five, knows the Old Brown Derby? Right?
But enter worshipful of Saint Pierre.When are you looking for this book
to be released as soon as possible? I would my dream. I would
(38:45):
love it to be released somewhere neara Saints John's Day, so whether it's
near June or whether it's near December, because one of the richest song music
traditions was around the Saint John's Feast. That's where a lot of songs appen.
Let's singing for the feast, dancingwell. I love that you have
(39:07):
shared your passion. I know I'vegotten a chance to hear you speak,
and have gotten to meet with youand sitting lodge with you, and I
just am so thankful that you tookthe invitation to join us. Our guests
this week on the Craftsman Online Podcast, Brother Nathan Saint Pierre, thanks so
much for coming on. Oh it'sglad to be here. Thank you.
If you've enjoyed this episode and youwant to hear more, you can tell
(39:28):
Siri or Alexa to play the CraftsmanOnline Podcast. We are available on all
streaming platforms, with new episodes everyMonday morning until next time. Let peace
and harmony prevail.
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