By The Landlord
“Or do you hope, when sing the violins,
And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins,
To drive some mocking nightmare far apart,
And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart?” – Charles Baudelaire, The Dance of Death
“They are the last romantics, these candles:
Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,
And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,
Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints. ...
I watch their spilt tears cloud and dull to pearls.” – Sylvia Plath, Candles
“As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an aged face.” – Joseph Campbell
“It is better to light one small candle of gratitude than to curse the darkness.” –Confucius
“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” – Anne Frank
“Thus hath the candle sing'd the moth.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
“Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.” – William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” – Thomas A. Edison
“You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” – Bob Hope
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” – Margaret Fuller
“A thousand candles can be lit from one candle, however the life of the original candle is not shortened in the least.” – Dalai Lama
Grand candelabras to the simple, individual and privately spiritual, symbolic, metaphorical or purely functional, the aromatic to the gothic, these waxy, dripping lanterns have been illuminating the dark, cavernous eons of our ancestral human life for thousands of years. That is until the relatively recent advent of gas lamps and later electrical power, but they've never gone fully out of fashion as decorative or olfactory balms. Our history may have had far dimmer times, but sometimes more enlightened ones.
My first at-hand connection between candles and music came when I was a young, non-cherubic choirboy in the local church in Stretford, Manchester, where in those days there was quite a big choir of boy sopranos and older fellows piping out the lower registers. We were far from angelic despite all of us being donned in blue or red cassocks and white cotton surplices and ruffs. And on my first midnight mass at Christmas, we also carried the sacred, if tricky combination of hymn book in one hand and in other, a small white candle stuck into the top of an orange, the latter fruitfully symbolic of Jesus being the light of the world.
As Silent Night, and later Oh Come All Ye Faithful coiled up into the air with a strangely beautiful fragility, and we paraded through the dark church like unsteady ghosts, our modern eyes guided only via these tiny lights. And then, of course someone, though fortunately not me, tripped on a step. The unlucky, or possibly mischievous chorister in question, in tipping forward, then managed to set light to a more senior singer's garb, and with lightning speed, flames began to shoot up his back heavenwards, setting surplice, and surplus to that, more dramatically alight. After a mad, comical, vicar-verger-chorister scramble and dash to the holy font and several scoops from the special wine cup later, the victim was sufficiently doused in the baptism liquid, and got away with no more than a bit of a shock and a temporary scalding. But what do you expect when you give a bunch of young lads, candles and oranges? Holy smoke indeed.
Despite how a poorly supervised wick-and-wax has probably been the cause of most of the building fires in history prior to the careless cigarette, candles remain elegantly beautiful and atmospheric items, and arguably everything looks better under the soft glow their illumination, skin tone given an especially complementary hue. Well, unless you're a moth.
And in our brilliantly illuminated modern world, it’s hard to imagine the darkness and what that may have done to the superstitious and fear-filled human psyche. As Bill Bryson has written: “We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.”
In song form then, let's hope this topic will illuminate some particularly poetic lyrics, detail, meaning and emotions.
What does a candle stand for and how might it colour the mood of a song? A sense of mutability, mortality, time’s remorseless melt, a fragile beauty, flickering life, symbolising people, or years going by? Illuminated faith, hope, sharing, or a life burned brilliantly and brightly until it fizzles, or is snuffed out? Perhaps some are burned at both ends.
As above various quotations, there are many ways to use candles in metaphor, notably in the enlightening way they can share light without losing anything of themselves, and when burning as a group, it brings something greater than the mere sum of their parts.
Candles have meaning in numbers, such as the seven-armed candelabrum or menorah of the Jewish Bible, while the Paschal candle, decorated with a cross and embedded with five grains of incense, is a hefty long burner used in various denominations of western churches, and there's even a triple version in Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches.
Of course the candelabra is an ornate holder of multiple candles, weather made from brass, gold, glass, or any other material, it many signify something religious, but more often opulence and power. Liberace of course, loved to display one on his pianos.
Liberace
But candles come in many forms and took time to developing. In more basic burning days, a lit wick was put in pool of oil or animal fat was used from the Paleolithic period. In Babylonian and middle Minoan cultures, as well in the tomb of Tutankhamun had wicks made from plant materials dipped in animal fat, though the first evidence of candles found in Italy with a depiction of a candlestick in an Etruscan tomb at Orvieto in the 7th century BC. Beeswax was the primary material but later cheaper paraffin wax has become more common. The 19th century saw considerable improvement in designs, with in 1825 Frenchman M. Cambacérès introducing the plaited wick soaked with mineral salts, which when burnt, curled towards the outer edge of the flame and incinerated by it, thereby trimming itself. Ingenious.
Candles take many forms, shapes and colours, and early alarm clocks even used their imprecise burning time to trigger timings. Here are a few examples:
Candle clocks
Relaxing candle?
Matcha latte candles
Aromatic …
Finally though, I can't resist lighting up that classic Two Ronnies sketch set in the hardware shop, in which a request for four candles long burns in the memory for British audiences of a certain age.
But how long with this topic burn for, and how brightly? A few days perhaps. So then, it's time to hand to this week's guest, the ever enlightened Marco den Ouden! Place your illuminated ideas in comments below for the deadline at 11pm on Monday UK time, and playlists published next week. Got a light?
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