The Lessons of History

Commissioned by Invoke

Instrumentation: string quartet (includes singing)

Year composed: 2019-20

Duration: 12.5'

Near the completion of their eleven volume book set, The Story of Civilization, Pulitzer Prize winning authors Will and Ariel Durant condensed what they had noted in almost 10,000 pages into one 100 page book, The Lessons of History. The book summarizes the past circa 5,000 years of history through 12 perspectives: geography, biology, race, character, morals, religion, economics, socialism, government, war, growth and decay, and progress. Through these perspectives we’re given examples of past societies and their practices and the results of those practices suggesting future probabilities. 

The music composed is structured to mimic the “lessons” of the book. With the book stating, “The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction,” the piece goes back and forth between two contrasting sections each ending at a climax after hearing their respective themes 12 times—12 occurrences representing the 12 perspectives. Though the piece undergoes a repetitive nature it seldom repeats any material entirely the same. “Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete…Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.” With this in mind many of the repetitions are shortened as “The historian always oversimplifies.” Though repetitions are prevalent, the piece avoids the practices of minimalism. The music repeats in the same way history has repeated, “only in outline and in the large.” With history’s repetitions between time periods and practices, the book rightfully asks, “Is progress real?” The piece is written to ask the same question as nothing in the work, despite its ranges of expression, actually changes. If one were to reduce the work to one line, i.e. one instrument in one voice, they’d hear two musical sentences, one repeating after the other, for as long as the duration of the work. 

It is important to note that the music—the motives, themes, and harmonies—was not influenced by the book but the formal structure of the music—the occurrences of the motives and themes. The piece ends with all instruments playing the same pitch signifying the present which is the past rolled up into this moment. 

I've dedicated The Lessons of History to my late father, Glen, who was an avid reader and expressed strong interests in history. He likely would agree with Aldous Huxley when the English writer stated, “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”

Read more here.