Music and the Arts Banner Image

 

Prologue (Tower Of Babel) Lyrics
1971 Version

Socrates:

Wherefore, O men of Athens,
I say to you:
Therefore, acquit me or not
But whichever you do
I shall never alter my ways
Never adjust my approach to this maze
Never reform til the end of my days
Even if I have to die many times.

Thomas Aquinas:

God is apprehended by imagination, intuition, reason,
              touch, opinion, sense, and name - and so on.
While on quite the other hand, we find we can't begin to
Understand him, so to some it seems a shame
To go on
But he is all things in all
And he is nothing in any
He is often found in one thing small
Conversely, he is often missed in many.

Martin Luther:

God almighty has made our rulers mad
God almighty has turned our people bad
For the German nobility, with typical agility,
Have so applied their skill at egregious laws
That the people are lead astray; they feel beholden to obey
I may be just the German way, but God, it gives one pause.
     

DaVinci: Gibbon:
The rise of man...
Was natural...
   
Man is so levitable!
   
   
Instead of admiring
Man's filling of the void.
We should rather be surprised
That God had man so tyrannized

... Man will be strong
So long   
The decline of Rome...
Was natural...
And inevitable...
   
Instead of inquiring
Why Rome was destroyed...
   
  
We should rather be surprised
   
That Rome remained so strong
  
So long

Frederic Nietzsche:

What...
Is noble
Nowadays?

Jean Paul Sartre:

Atheistic existentialism
which I represent is
More coherent - I do believe it...

Buckminster Fuller:

Man is a complex of patterns, of processes...

Jean Paul Sartre:

There is no such thing as human nature,
not in all or few men,
Since there is no God to conceive it...

Buckminster Fuller:

Man is a complex of patterns, of processes...
I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am.
I know that I am not a category
I am not a thing - a noun
I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process-
An integral function of the universe.

All:

So high
In my
Lovely Ivory Tower of Babel
            (babble, babble, babble, Babble, babble, babble, babble)
high above the
Rabble
            (rabble, rabble, rabble, Babble, Rabble, babble, babble, rabble, babble)
Greatest mind of history
Solving life's sweet mystery
So listen to me (so listen to me)
Know how life should be (know how life should be)
Oh, what does it matter if they don't agree?

[All then sing their parts at the same time, ending with a chorus of:]

Ahhh-ahhh
Ahhh-ahhh
Ahhh-ahhh
Ahhh-ahhh