Tonos Aureos - "Golden Sounds"
An introduction
Tonos Aureos is a listening club for parents of students attending Classical School of Wichita. We gladly welcome all other interested music lovers who wish to learn more about the canon of Western Classical Music. We meet on the third Monday of every month from 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. in the main sanctuary of Morningstar Community Church (11010 E Kellogg Dr).
The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good. (Gen. 2:11-12a)
And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. (Rev. 21:21)
Weak things must boast of being new…. But strong things can boast of being old. — G. K. Chesterton
Gold figures heavily into the story told by the Scriptures. It is the most prevalent precious metal mentioned in the Bible. As early as Genesis 2, before the fall, we are told of the part of the garden called Pison, where there is gold. We are also told that the gold of that land is good. The closer one gets to God’s presence in the Tabernacle or later in the Temple, other precious metals fall away and gold is everywhere. Gold is defiled by God’s people when they replace God’s presence with the worship of a golden calf idol in Exodus 32. Proverbs 25:11 says, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”
Gold is precious because it is highly malleable, has weight, is not easily counterfeited, and naturally resists corrosion. Governments that care about sound fiscal policy and equal weights and measures back their currency with gold.1 A business or individual considered the most exemplary example in its field is considered the “gold standard.” “Emirates Airlines is the gold standard for international travelers.” Olympic competition awards a gold medal to the first-place athlete or team.
Gold is a symbol in mythology of prestige and power. A major plot point of Richard Wagner’s fifteen-hour opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen revolves around gold. The gold is stolen from the Rhinemaidens by the dwarf Alberich, who renounces love and fashions the gold into a ring of immense power. The ring is passed around to various characters throughout Wagner’s Ring Cycle before being destroyed by Brünnhilde near the end of Götterdämmerung.
Ages are often spoken of as golden. The golden age of American cinema is considered the 1930s to the 1950s. The golden age of commercial flying is the 1950s through the 1960s. Golden age thinking can also be abused. We go awry when we idolize previous ages and fantasize about a return to what we perceive to be a utopian, unspoiled era. The wrong assumption is that returning to an (allegedly) pristine era would solve all the problems in our sullied, modern age.
What if there was no such thing as a “golden age” that needs to be reinstated? What if there are only ordinary ages that contain golden things, things that resist the passage of time to be enjoyed and beloved by people of later ages? Golden ages are a mirage. Golden things from history are real and worth retaining, conserving, and curating by the following ages. The identification of “musical golden things” and sharing them with others is what we are after with Tonus Aureos.2
I am indebted to Joshua Gibbs for this line of thinking concerning golden things. Mr. Gibbs has been on my radar for some time. In his latest book, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity, Gibbs posits that all cultural things can be placed into one of three general categories: “uncommon things,” “common things,” and “mediocre things.”3 Gibbs’ taxonomy is a helpful companion to the categories that Ken Myers proposed long ago in his book All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes of “high culture,” “folk culture,” and “popular culture.”4
According to Gibbs, mediocre things are cultural artifacts that are low and unrefined. They are things marketed to us to stoke an insatiable desire for more of the same. They are cultural potato chips that, once you pop, you can’t stop.5 Popular music, blockbuster films, and anything that appeals only to one’s baser appetites falls into the category of “mediocre things.”
Common things are the widest category, full of what we might call “everyday things.” Gibbs writes, “Much of our lives are spent in the relative comfort and familiarity of common things: common foods, common tasks, common clothes, common care for health and hygiene. Common things are not extraordinarily good, just plain good.”6 Near the end of the Pixar movie Ratatouille, a highfalutin food critic is completely undone by the excellence of a simple, common food from his childhood. The taste of grandma’s apple pie, the feel of snuggling freshly bathed baby skin, the great hymns, a painting painted for you by a dear friend, and the music of Bill Monroe or Tony Rice exemplify common, “plain good” things.
Uncommon things have somehow managed to survive and thrive, despite the long ravages of time. As Gibbs writes, “Man was created to subdue the earth, yet the earth finally subdues every man. Time devours absolutely everything. Nothing survives. Nothing lasts. And yet—quite miraculously—a few things do actually last.”7 These uncommon, lasting things include things like the greatest works of literature, sculpture, architecture, painting, and music. Such things are “golden things.” There are many golden things throughout all of the periods of Western classical music. Our group endeavors to seek out those things, understand them on their own terms, and have our musical loves shaped by them.
May God grant a musical reformation so that people (especially Christians) turn reflexively from lesser, mediocre musical sounds and expand their love for tonus areos—golden sounds.
Pastor Derek Hale
Co-founder and presenter at Tonos Aureos
Finding such a government these days would be as likely as finding a unicorn.
Tonos Aureos is Latin for “golden tones” or “golden sounds.”
Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity (Concord, NC: CiRCE Institute, 2023), 34.
Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture (Westchester, Ill: Crossway Books, 1989), chapter 8.
With apologies to the always delicious Pringles.
Gibbs, 28.
Gibbs, 3.