A lullaby in memory of the late Professor Nils-Axel Mörner

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

In response to the obituary of Professor Nils-Axel Mörner here, Robert Austin commented:

“Speaking of Bob Carter [the late geologist and friend of scientific truth], I still use Lord Monckton’s Bob Carter’s Peal as the ringtone for my cellphone. It is a lovely little piece, a moving tribute to Bob Carter and a recurring reminder of those scientists who have bravely taken the hard road of challenging climate dogma.

“No pressure, but any chance of a Mörner peal, Christopher?”

The late Professor Robert Carter.                  The late Professor Nils-Axel Mörner.

Mr Austin’s suggestion is an excellent one. Here, then, is the Laughing Angels’ Lullaby, a berceuse en carillon for the concert grand piano, dedicated to the immortal memory of Professor Nils-Axel Mörner.

The piece, performed on a Shigeru Kawai 7 ft grand piano, exploits the particularly mellow resonance of that fine instrument when played in the key of C Major. The piano becomes a galloping, chuckling, gently repetitive peal of bells, exemplifying the continuous, bubbling merriment that Niklas brought to everything he did and everyone he met. O how I miss him already!

Beware of listening to the Laughing Angels’ Lullaby while driving, for it exploits a powerful soporific technique first developed by the Baroque harpsichordist François Couperin in his Ballet des Moucherons Ecossais to delight the Princes at the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV and then to put them to sleep at bedtime. If they had been diligent at their studies, Couperin would play it to them at breakneck speed and they would leap and dart about the music room whooping and buzzing like Scottish midges, falling suddenly and deeply asleep one by one.

A note from the Italian Ambassador at Versailles indicates that the Moucherons, when played live anywhere near a candle flame, silently snuffs it out. The ladies of the Court were terrified the first time it happened and it became a regular party piece in the salon. I have not experimented with that idea yet, though there is some evidence that Gavronsky (Gavreau) and Levasseur, who researched subsonic waveform propagation for the French Army at Marseilles in the 1950s, investigated it.

The pattern of Couperin’s insistent ostinato that I have adapted and deployed throughout the Laughing Angels’ Lullaby was imitated by one or two Classical composers, notably Schubert and Liszt. The technique took two years to learn before I could use it for composition.

Listen to this piece not only to remember Niklas Mörner but also to get to sleep if you are enduring a bout of insomnia. Lullabies composed using Couperin’s beautiful, double-handed ostinato as their thread have the reputation of giving those who hear them a good and peaceful night’s sleep. May Niklas sleep the long and easy sleep of the just.

He shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary him, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember him.