Esoteric Elements in the Early Music Revival: The Dolmetsch Circle, Marco Pallis, and Traditionalism, from Haslemere to the Himalayas

Abstract

Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940) and Mabel Dolmetsch (1874–1963) are well known for their work in reviving early instruments and performance practices of western Europe. Marco Pallis (1895–1989), a musician and mountaineer who undertook multiple expeditions to the Himalayas and adopted Tibetan Buddhism in 1936, counted among their students and patrons. One of Pallis’s teachers, the lama Geshe Wangyal (1901–1983), visited him in England and also met the Dolmetsches. Pallis became a significant contributor to Traditionalism, a school of religious thought founded by René Guénon (1886–1951). Based on the perennial philosophy, Traditionalism searches for sources of primordial tradition to redress the West’s perceived losses of spirituality, and expresses critiques of modernity. Pallis became aware of the work of another key Traditionalist writer, Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947), through Arnold Dolmetsch. Arnold’s well-known resistance to modernity and technological “progress” is attributed mainly to the ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement, but the possibility of a Traditionalist influence invites consideration. Examining letters from Pallis to the Dolmetsches, other archival sources, and Pallis’s published writings, this article proposes that esotericism and particularly Traditionalism played a more significant role in the early twentieth-century early music revival than has previously been acknowledged.