We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Note the "of"s: bonds of affection... chords of memory... chorus of the Union... better angels of our nature.
Hear the music: chords... chorus... angels. The angels will touch the chords and the chorus will swell.
Given the prominence of the phrase "mystic chords of memory," you probably don't want to write "mystical cord." You've added an "-al" to "mystic" for no discernible reason, and you've changed the musical "chord" to some sort of ligature. I think of the tangle behind the computer, then of an umbilical cord. Unless you're playing with the shift from "chord" to "cord," perhaps using Lincoln's "bonds of affection" — "bonds" and "cords" are things that connect — you don't want to get that close to a famous phrase. It can't look accidental.
And this almost surely was accidental — a "tow the line" for "toe the line" type of misunderstanding. The word "cord" only appears in the headline. "Mystical," however, appears in the article:
[T]hrough no fault of his own, [Charles] simply cannot provide the semi-mystical link to the past that his mother came to represent to the whole world.
Oh! Elizabeth was only semi-mystical! (Is that anything like "semi-fascist"?)
But we see "link" and that suggests the other word of connection "cord," but the headline-writer almost surely changed "link" to "cord" because he had a feeling that "cord" sounds better after "mystical," and he had that feeling because of Lincoln's "mystic chords." Writers, please, you need to be conscious of why you have the feeling that words go together and notice when something is off.
Some chords of memory are mystic, and some are dissonant.
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It's asking too much today to expect professional writers to actually pause and consider the words and phrases they choose.
Thirty-nine days after Lincoln’s conciliatory inauguration address the Confederates began their bombardment of Fort Sumter, answering his words with cannon fire.
If you find yourself writing “mystical cords” or “tow the line”, you’ll have a hard road to hoe, as you wait, with baited breath, for a good editor.
If you find yourself writing “mystical cords” or “tow the line”, you’ll have a hard road to hoe, as you wait, with baited breath, for a good editor.
Mystic Pizza (2008) Julia Roberts.
1988 not 2008 sorry
House style when I was copyediting: eliminate the -al ending when possible. Adds nothing but an extra syllable. Microbiologic, not microbiological. Epidemiologic, not epidemiological. Hierarchic, not hierarchical. Bibliographic, not bibliographical.
The trick is knowing when the -al is unnecessary and when it is essential.
The extra -als look like lazy writing or careless editing to me, and are always irritating.
Into the Mystic
"And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And magnificently we will fold
Into the mystic"
V. Morrison
I see "mystic" and I hear Van Morrison.
Also--I question whether Charles is without fault in the breakage of the semi-mystical link. If he wasn't such a wierdo Elizabeth would have turned things over to him long ago.
Harmonious euphonia vs being dragged. For me, the choice is an easy one.
I stand with Lincoln.
Reading Lincoln’s speech, I think it’s possible he used chord in the sense of a string on a musical instrument, not simply a group of notes played together. That would make the transformation from chords to cords more understandable.
They didn't know. But consider that the transatlantic cable, first laid in Lincoln's time, I believe, was at one point the cord linking America with Britain. Chords of memory may unite a country, but a cord across the ocean may put two countries into contact. You can say "cord" in the singular. "Chord" is too one note.
"Mystical" may be a bigger problem. It's too close to "magical" and makes one think of the queen as magician or fortune teller or ghost. I would have dropped either word. "Mystical" doesn't fit. "Mystic" is a word that served Lincoln's purpose, but that can be melodramatic in other contexts.
"Mystic Pizza" is set in Mystic, Connecticut. Mystic, Connecticut is named after a Pequot word — "'missi-tuk' describing a large river whose waters are driven into waves by tides or wind" — and not the English word "mystic."
"Reading Lincoln’s speech, I think it’s possible he used chord in the sense of a string on a musical instrument, not simply a group of notes played together. That would make the transformation from chords to cords more understandable."
I thought about that. He also just said "bonds," so he could be carrying that image forward.
But I can't believe the text hasn't been carefully edited and that question firmly resolved.
By the way, I knew someone who got an important letter about a manuscript where the sender wrote that it "strikes a cord" and there was some real anxiety about trusting someone who would make a mistake like that. We thought it made the sender look really dumb.
And what seems like the way memory works: Does your memory have strings like an instrument, on which any tune could be played? Or does your memory have its particular chords, a special sound of its own that exist within our mind and can be evoked?
I say chords.
And what seems more capable of mysticism: chords or strings on an instrument? I think it's chords that can feel mystic, not the musical instrument itself.
I wonder what musical instruments Lincoln was familiar with. Did he play the fiddle or the banjo or anything like that? I've never thought about what music Lincoln enjoyed.
My first thought was to click through to see if the writer was old enough that he would have studied Lincoln's first inaugural speech in school and know the reference. My guess is no-- he's a few years younger than me (early 30s) and the only Lincoln speech we ever learned about was the Gettysburg address (it was his only speech that "mattered"). I bet this was him making up a new image that sounded good, with the vague suspicion he had heard something similar before but not knowing from where.
"Abraham Lincoln was one of America’s most unmusical presidents. He could neither play an instrument nor carry a tune, yet he had a passionate love of music.... It was a form of therapy, a panacea, a way to touch the soul of beauty. Friends noted that his reaction to the mysterious powers of music was often intense and highly personal. Certain songs would “mist his eyes and throw him into a fit of deep melancholy.”... For the young man in America’s frontier wilderness, songs such as “Kathleen Mavoumeen,” “Old Rosin the Beau,” and “Annie Laurie” had their own special poignancy and charm.... [T]he spirited banjo tune “The Blue Tail Fly” was a special favorite with the president.... ...Washingtonians, young and old, enjoyed the greatest operas of Gioacchino Rossini, François-Adrien Boieldieu, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Carl Maria von Weber, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Ludwig van Beethoven, and President Lincoln saw most all of them. Friends noted that his reaction to the mysterious powers of music was often intense and highly personal. Certain songs would “mist his eyes and throw him into a fit of deep melancholy.” Lincoln attended the opera more than thirty times during the four years he was in the White House. He had never heard an opera before his election to the presidency. ... When Lincoln attended his first opera on February 20, 1861, two weeks before his inauguration, it was the American premiere at the Academy of Music of Giuseppe Verdi’s Masked Ball—the story of a monarch’s brutal assassination.... After the fall of Richmond, crowds gathered at the White House far into the night. They waved flags and serenaded victory with Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and vaudeville star Dan Emmett’s “Dixie.” “Let’s have it again!” cried the president, who first heard “Dixie” at a minstrel show in Chicago. “It’s our tune now!” he said...."
Link.
Sorry for the repeated sentence in that block of text.
It was broken out and enlarged in what I cut and pasted. But it's the most interesting part. Imagine if that were said of a presidential candidate today: he has an intense and highly personal reaction to music and certain songs mist his eyes and throw him into a fit of deep melancholy. You'd think he was too unstable to be President. We're trusting this freak with the nuclear codes?!
Lincoln or his speechwriter could have been referring to the ancient Greek mysticism of "music of the spheres," that there is a perfect musical resonance of the universe that humans would be able to connect into if they knew the right notes or chords. They were trying to put into words the power that music had, and came up with the idea that there must be a particular mystic chord or progression that resonated through time and space, connecting all who are, had been, or would be.
https://www.sensorystudies.org/picture-gallery/spheres_image/
Later, Hildegard of Bingen leaned heavily into this idea as well, though as a Christian mystic.
https://aleteia.org/2017/09/17/meet-hildegard-of-bingen-a-benedictine-renaissance-woman/amp/
Also, the Gettysburg Address was written to be spoken aloud. The -al would introduce an unnecessary glottal stop and disrupt the verbal music. Writing for the stage or the podium is different than writing to be read.
Emilie said...
House style when I was copyediting: eliminate the -al ending when possible. Adds nothing but an extra syllable. Microbiologic, not microbiological. Epidemiologic, not epidemiological. Hierarchic, not hierarchical. Bibliographic, not bibliographical.
So the Beatles should have recorded "TheMagic Mystery Tour?"
“And what seems like the way memory works: Does your memory have strings like an instrument, on which any tune could be played? Or does your memory have its particular chords, a special sound of its own that exist within our mind and can be evoked?”
My understanding of memory is related experiences sharing neural pathways linking them together. So the chord/cord analogy resonates strongly with me.
Imagine if that were said of a presidential candidate today: he has an intense and highly personal reaction to music and certain songs mist his eyes and throw him into a fit of deep melancholy. You'd think he was too unstable to be President. We're trusting this freak with the nuclear codes?!
There was a famous king whose musical prowess was well known…
“I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord”
But I guess there were no nukes to worry about then and expressions of passion for the Lord was not a sign of instability.
“And what seems more capable of mysticism: chords or strings on an instrument? I think it's chords that can feel mystic, not the musical instrument itself”
I think it’s likely an intentional transition from bonds/strings on an instrument/grouping of notes. A chord/cord connecting different thoughts, as how our memories are interwoven, if you will.
We play chords on the chords/strings of our memory.
I'm decimated, literally, that a Politico writer might misuse an incorrect phrasing, not understanding or knowing its source. You know?
I am intrigued by the old song “Old Rosin the Beau." A pun with Bow and Beau. But what is it to rosin your Beau? Is this a bawdy reference to old fashioned personal lubricants?
This might say more about me than about American musicology.
There's a good chance the article writer did not write the headline. In the time of dead trees, it had to fit the space available, so it was composed last. I did most of the pasteup of my college weekly and wrote most of the headlines. It was more difficult than you'd think, even for the editors, to grab readers by the...eyeball in the right length of words.
"I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord"
Might have been a cord, you know, a string on his harp.
"our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave ... will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched"
Lincoln is obviously conflating cords/bonds with musical chords. Apparently when we touch a mystic chord of memory it will swell the chorus of the Union, as it did at some previous point in time.
This is poetry and has no literal meaning. the cord/bond/chord issue is a rhetorical gesture to carry his argument.
"Misty watercolor memories..." came first to mind...
We need to toe that cord back to the editor and have him fix it.
Grant might have been even worse when it came to music. "I only know two tunes. One is Yankee Doodle Dandy. And the other isn't."
Queen Elizabeth offered a paranormal Bluetooth connection to the past that held together the U.S.-UK alliance
Politico seems to have missed the memo on this one;
“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”
'The Tweet received over 10,000 likes and retweets before it was removed.'
This musical confusion is why people are always misspelling vocal cords as "vocal chords."
The mystic chords of memory. The phrase is iambic, so it flows easily off the tongue. It’s nicely alliterative, with the repeated m. And the c in mystic slips right into the hard c in chord. It is written to be said aloud.
Might have been a cord, you know, a string on his harp.
In literary criticism any interpretation is possible, but the primary meaning had to be a "chord." Consider the poem "The Lost Chord" set to music by Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan:
...
I know not what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.
It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It linked all perplexèd meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the organ,
And entered into mine.
...
Contemplating Lincoln, it is illustrative of the failure of US public education. Andrew Carnegie, to take one example, was "educated" at a free school in Scotland until he was 12. Lincoln never attended any school but was self educated. Wealthy parents in England often had children educated at home by tutors. I think the public school system in the US is a failed institution and many parents who can afford it will chose an alternative like private schools or "pod schools," which are a variation on home schooling.
For the love of Annie Laurie/
I'd lay me doon and dee
Scots Wha Hae!
And, if it's no Scottish, it's crap!
--gpm
>>Might have been a cord, you know, a string on his harp.
Love it. Because that dichotomy was running through my head during this whole discussion.
--gpm
Well in context in the song it’s clear that Cohen meant chord, not cord
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
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