The Eiffel Tower: A Little Philosophy Of Music

In a movie I recently saw, called Tár, there’s a poignant scene where you get a peek at a recording of Leonard Bernstein giving a lecture on music. What he says is that music essentially is movement, that the meaning of music lies first and foremost in the way it progresses and changes – in its fluctuation, its rise and fall – and the feelings this awakes in us. The idea is as simple as it is brilliant and I have always considered the Nits song The Eiffel tower as a little lesson in this particular postulate of the philosophy of music.

It is so quiet, like a faint rustle, in fact it hardly seems to move, yet in its slight, slow progression The Eiffel Tower seems to want to capture the essence of musical movement, making it as diaphanous and flimsy as possible. The – in my eyes – magnificent video Nits projected with the live rendition of this song, is nothing but a perfect illustration of Bernstein’s lesson: the girl on the swing in a summer garden, a meadow or a landscape filled with trees, softly moving to and fro, looking pensive, melancholic and probably experiencing the multitude of feelings the sweetly swinging, balancing rhythm whispers to her, just as the music does so gently. Just being happy in her movement, feeling happy in the sound of the music.

On The Eiffel Tower the camera became a full member of the musical cast, which is not unusual for a Nits song. The video projection itself is an interlaced cluster of different movements: not only the girl is swinging dreamily, the camera is also swaying, the images themselves move, the trees are waving, the whole is just a beautiful sequence of motion.

It’s as if Nits too were trying to communicate to us what music means to them, in the most subtle touching of their instruments, it’s almost as if the music stands still, is treading water, but the tiniest sparks of movement are there and in them lies the meaning and the beauty of the music. A poetic lesson in what music is. Nits revealed us so much about music in their advanced language of what is conveniently called pop. The instrumental music of the song appears to be hovering – from the height of the Eiffel Tower – over the vast landscape of manmade sounds called music, which seems to have come down to us from the heavens, like an angel descending, music falling down from the skies, an image that is not far removed from the celestial and cosmological metaphors often used by philosophers to describe the nature of music. Music notes softly fluttering down like feathers of a bird. That’s what this song sounds like.

And then the music descends into the towns and streets below, mingles with what artists have created in beauty that can be seen and touched, with smells and tastes of all that our senses can take in. That’s how Nits’ music came to be. Its kinetic patience and sense of observational detail are legendary.

The music of The Eiffel Tower trembles as the most fragile of emotions. It balances out all the extremes to arrive at a peaceful reflection on life, so typical of the graceful frame of mind of Nits. The song intimates how everything slowly disappears and turns into dust, music staying behind as the one solace in the knowledge that what originates, grows, flourishes and lives through movement, one day has to die. This unescapable drama is so aphoristically and appropriately expressed by the language of the drums. They escort the airy, weightless sounds of the music back to earth. Rob Kloet’s beating of the drums is always to the point and on the mark. Its trenchant sounds and solemn rhythm guide the song to its natural and inevitable ending.

It is why – since I first heard it – The Eiffel Tower has always remained my favourite Nits song.

Joke Roelandt, June 2023