| Memoir of Philip Rawson (1924-1995) |
| David Lumsdaine |
| Introduction |
| Maxwell Steer |
| Foreword |
| Jonathan Harvey |
| Music as a model of the Human Psyche |
| Paul Robertson |
| This article traces the roots of Western musical system in the esoteric tradition. The symbolism of the Enneagram is shown to relate both to psychology and music through the key system. This connection is then further developed to indicate its potential relevance for contemporary neurological discoveries regarding musical response, processing and recognition. It is suggested how specific musical language may be the direct outcome of physiological and neurological change, and that abstract games (particularly chess) may utilise common mathematical values. |
| The Cosmic Keyboard: Tuning the Calendar |
| Kevin Jones |
| There are some quite remarkable parallels between the structure of the western calendar and the organisation of tonal music. Both are functions of attempts to order the cosmos which demonstrate the heavenly symbolism intrinsic to the most fundamental aspects of earthly existence, so often ignored by contemporary rational and materialist minds. Whether musical precepts affect our perceptions and priorities in interpreting the heavens, or the other way round, we should learn to acknowledge and cherish this relationship, which is recognised as quite acceptable in the equivalent contexts of non-western cultures. Recognition of such cosmic harmony should revive an essential missing dimension in our musical perceptions, and restore the idea of symbolically recreating heaven on earth. |
| Siberian Shamanism & Improvised Music |
| Tim Hodgkinson |
| Mysticism appears in music either as musical content or as an intervention into the process of music-making. This article discusses the latter in terms of the experience of the improvising musicians Tim Hodgkinson and Ken Hyder. During their search for a method of improvising without predetermined structural constraints they began to look at the state of mind of performers, and this led them to investigate shamanism. They began to use a ritual preparation for performance. Traveling to Siberia and meeting shamans, they tried to discover the basis of the fluctuating tempi typical of shamanic music. Forced to abandon preconceptions about shamanic performance being like Western artistic performance, they were led to understand shamanic music as a negotiation between voluntary and involuntary aspects of cognition. The most important element they as Westerners were able to draw from shamanic culture was the very close connection made between the natural environment ( considered as sound ) and the inner states of a person's being. |
| The Body Electric: Shamanic Spirit in 20thC Music |
| Michael Tucker |
| Recently there has been a strong revival of interest in the phenomenon of shamanism - the pre-Judaeo-Christian, nature-based religion of ecstatic states of mind described by Mircea Eliade in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. With its emphasis upon altered consciousness, shamanism offers archetypal visionary insight concerning the nature of the psyche. It has come to be seen to have much in common with the key Jungian notion of individuation or fully developed and integrated consciousness. Following consideration of shamanic musicality within so-called traditional cultures this century (Tuva, Saamiland and Native America) various aspects of 20thC Western music, including both Art and Pop music, are examined in the light of shamanic ideas. It is argued that Jazz, in particular, has much in common with shamanic experience. In conclusion, the pan-tonal and pan-rhythmic music of Norwegian saxophonist /composer Jan Garbarek is examined as exemplifying the healing presence of the shamanic - or individuated - spirit in 20thC music. |
| Towards a new sonic consciousness - a profile of Frank Perry |
| Eddie Franklin |
| Frank Perry is a composer-improviser who uses percussion instruments which produce sustained non-percussive sounds of immense richness and timbral density to evoke sensations of peace, insight and heightened spiritual awareness. From a background as a free-form jazz drummer in the late 60s backing Keith Tippett, Roland Kirk and many others, Perry has developed a technique of klangfarbenmelodie using large gongs, Tibetan bowls and instruments of his own manufacture. A trance medium with a penetrating esoteric insight, he pursues a rigorous spiritual discipline and makes considerable use of astrology in his compositions. These are of a considerable complexity which however is always subordinated to a holistic awareness of the spiritual in performance. |
| See Through Music (Notes from an unpopular composer) |
| Maxwell Steer |
| The raw material for both the creative artist and the mystic is the subconscious. Both wrestle with the void of incoherence, returning with nuggets of Meaning by which esoteric collective consciousness evolves. Underpinning the article is the idea that within us lies a numinous reality encountered at a profound level through any non-literal activity. What indigenous peoples would consider magic is so commonplace within Western techno-civilisation it has engulfed areas previously assigned to 'otherness'. But there remains an unfilled yearning for transcendence, for escape from rational consciousness. The advance of capitalist techno-culture having destroyed collective consciousness of anything beyond the material world Western thought has lost its power to contextualise Meaning at a metaphoric or magical level, which alone can act as a safe vehicle to the fullest sense of collective and personal wholeness. The article explores the issue of the sacred in art and the cognitions by which we value experience. |
| Memoir of Philip Rawson (1924-1995) |
| David Lumsdaine |
| Introduction |
| Maxwell Steer |
| Foreword |
| Jonathan Harvey |
| Music & Inner Meaning |
| A conversation between Jonathan Harvey, Michael Tucker & Maxwell Steer. |
| The discussion centres on psychological depth in the arts, and takes as its starting point Michael Tucker's book Dreaming With Open Eyes (HarperCollins 1992) which explores the role of the 20thC artist as shaman. The participants compare the many attitudes to the numinous in the contemporary arts. |
| Signifying the Spiritual in the Music of Yes |
| Alan Moore |
| The music of Yes doesn't portray a specific, coherent spiritual philosophy; but particular musical features common to an output extending through twenty years can be interpreted as signifying 'the spiritual'. These are largely tied to explicit references in the lyrics, and operate across different domains: texture, timbre, production techniques, harmony and rhythm. |
| Laya in Indian Music: Monody & the Shapes of Time |
| Philip Rawson |
| The essay begins by negating a common fallacy that heavy beat is the prime vehicle of feeling in music; then continues by describing the role of essentially linear laya as the prime vehicle of feeling in Indian music. It goes on to describe the nature and properties of the basic structures of Indian music, including râgâ and tala, along with the distinctive role of laya in developing extempore monodic composition based on these structures. This involves considering the nature of time itself, and how in performance laya works by generating a specific order of shapes through and of time, Finally it discusses how laya as time-process can evoke in the audience well defined inner states (rasas), each based on setting into resonance (dhvani) traces of particular feeling-filled experiences, eventually combining the particular states into an ultimate rasa, which is a mode of mystical insight. |
| Taste, Snobbery & Spiritual Discernment |
| Joscelyn Godwin |
| The writer uses his own autobiography as a professional musician in order to illustrate how musical tastes and prejudices are formed and discarded. He describes his life as a choirboy, a composer, an adherent and a rejecter of the avant-garde, and a seeker after the spiritual aspects of music. He questions the Platonic doctrine that music has an effect on morality, and retracts his own lack of authentic inspiration, and suspects that it is generally shared by modern composers. But the classics of the Western tradition continue to serve him as a source of quasi-religious wisdom. He realises that this 'spiritual style' at which he has arrived is an individual affair, and urges the reader to make a similar self-analysis. |
| Symphonic Mind: States of Consciousness in Orchestral Performance |
| Richard Gonski |
| Most musicians and music-lovers would agree that music is a phenomenon that affects the spirit and nourishes the soul. Yet this aspect of music-making is rarely, if ever, discussed in the world of classical music. In his article Richard Gonski identifies some of the conditions that can give rise to a higher states of consciousness during orchestral concerts and rehearsals, and suggests some priorities for the modern day Symphony Orchestra. |
| Mysticism & Music in the Experience of Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Composers |
| Ivan Moody |
| Is it possible to arrive at a definition of mystical music? Taking the OED definition of the word mystic as a basis, the premise behind several works which could be described as mystical by contemporary Orthodox Composers (Pärt, Tavener, Adamis, Moody) is examined. The idea of initiation (the attaining of a hidden body of knowledge, or gnosis) emerges as being of great importance, and the geometric, two-dimensional style of ikon painting is refered to as a point of comparison. The role of repetition and the use of symbols (in Stravinsky & Adamis) are discussed. While no objective conclusion as to the nature of mystical music is thought possible, a subjective one, employing the words of Fr Matta el-Maskeen from another context, is suggested. |
| Trompette d'un Ange Secret: Olivier Messiaen & the Culture of Ecstasy |
| Robin Freeman |
| St Francis is the culmination of Olivier Messiaen's spiritual and musical autobiography. Yet critics have on the whole shied away from discussing personal meaning within Messiaen's mystical view of Catholicism. Robin Freeman draws together a host of illuminating detail about Messiaen's beliefs and personal devotional life, and their relation to his formative period. This occurred during a renewal of religious art in France which included the painter Rouault, playwrights Peacuté, Guy and Claudel, novelists Mauriac and Beinanos, and the philosopher aesthetician Maritain. All were part of an attempt to recuperate the ardour and longing of Wagnerian opera for religious music, as were Tournemire and Vierne, whose Cathédrales clearly prompted the manner of Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur. Robin Freeman places Messiaen's oeuvre in a context of which those, who have viewed it as a merely musical phenomenon, may have been unaware. |
