The Magic of Tone and the Art of Music

[Dover]

Rudhyar's mature work:

Available now online:
http://khaldea.com/rudhyar/mt/

Excerpt:

The following quotations are taken from a French translation of The Historical Memoirs of Su-Ma-Tsien (or Chou Ma Tchien) who flourished about 100 B.C. The Memoirs contains a long section devoted to music, others to the great rites, the calendar, astrology, and historical events. Yet strangely the work is hardly ever mentioned in more recent books on Chinese music. The quotations are from the French translation of the sinologist Edouard Chavannes. I am responsible for the English translation.

Correct teachings find all their principles in musical tones. When the tones are correct, men's conduct is correct. Sounds and music are what agitates and stirs arteries and veins; what circulates through the life-essences and gives to the heart harmony and rectitude. Thus the note kong moves the spleen and brings man in harmony with perfect holiness; the note chang moves the lungs and brings man in harmony with perfect justice; the note kio moves the liver and brings man in harmony with perfect goodness; the note tche moves the heart and brings man in harmony with perfect rites; the note yu moves the kidneys and brings man in harmony with perfect wisdom.
Music is therefore that which, within, sustains the perfected heart; that which, without, establishes distinctions between the noble and the vile. Above, it is used in the ancestral temple for the sacrifices; below, it is used towards the regeneration of the people.
All tones have their origin in the heart of man; the emotions of the human heart are the generative causes of these tones. When the heart affected by objective realities is moved, it gives a form to its emotions by means of sounds. Sounds answering the ones to the others, produce variations ; when the variations have been produced, that is precisely what we call musical tones. By harmonizing the tones so as to perform them and by adding to them shields and axes, feathers and ox-tails one obtains what is called Music.
Music was born from tones. Its source rests within the human heart while it is being moved by objective realities. Thus where the heart experiences an emotion of sadness, the sound it emits is contracted and soon loses its intensity; when the heart experiences an emotion of pleasure, the sound it emits is easy and flaccid; when the heart experiences an emotion of joy, the sound it emits is high and freely released; if the heart experiences an emotion of anger, the sound it emits is harsh and violent; if the heart experiences an emotion of respect, the sound it emits is open and modest; if the heart experiences an emotion of love, the sound it emits is harmonious and soft. Those six manifestations are not mere natural functions of the heart; it is only after having been affected by objective realities that the heart is moved. Wherefore, the ancient kings watched over the objective causes of the heart's affections.
Thus rites were used to guide the will of man; music to harmonize the sounds he emits; laws to unify his actions; chastisements to prevent his perversity. Rites, music, chastisements and laws have one and the same aim. By them the hearts of the people become as one; in them originates the method of right government.
All tones are born from the heart of man. Sentiment being stirred within manifests without as sound; when the sounds have become beautiful, they become musical tones. Therefore, the tones of a well-governed period are peaceful and joyful and the government is based on harmony. The tones of a troubled epoch are full of hatred and irritation, and the government is opposed to reason. The tones of a kingdom falling into ruins are sad and anxious, and the people mournful. Sounds and musical tones are in conformity with the government.
Music is related to classes and attributions. Thus those who perceive sounds, but ignore musical notes, are animals. He who perceives musical notes but does not understand music is an ordinary man. The Sage alone can understand music.
Therefore, one studies sounds in order to understand musical notes; one studies notes in order to understand music; one studies music in order to understand government; thus is acquired the method of right leadership. As a result, it is impossible to explain the notes to him who does not understand the notes; but he who understands music is near to the correct perception of the rites. Once rites and music are fully known and realized, virtue is possessed; virtue being the full realization of all things...cont'd

http://khaldea.com/rudhyar/mt/mt_ap1.shtml




Contents

Preface

1. Communication: Man's Primordial Need

2. Sound as Carrier-Wave for Tone

3. The Magical and the Sacred

4. Number and the Quantification of Tone Relationship

5. The Spatialization of the Tone-Experience: Musical Notation and Form

6. Descending and Ascending Musical Progressions

7. The Harmonic Series

8. The Septenary Tone Cycle and the Psychoactive Modes issued from Its Fundamentals

9. The European Spirit in Music: Pluralism, Tonality and Equal Temperament

10. Music in Transformation: Avant-garde Music and the Deconditioning Process

11. Dissonant Harmony, Pleromas of Sound, and the Principle of Holistic Resonance

12. The Rhythms of Civilization and Culture

APPENDIX I.
The Pythagorean and Chinese Approaches to Music

APPENDIX II.
Notes on the Music of India

APPENDIX III.
The Origin and Early Development of the European Approach to Music

APPENDIX IV.
Concerning My Musical Works

[Dover]

1. All life is vibration and the result of vibration is form

Life is Music: A Vedic View of Music
Inspired by Maharishi

"What is most intimate to life is the evolutionary process, the process of creation, the performance of creative intelligence. When we hear music, we find that the background of sound is maintained and the foreground of sound comes up-some sharp notes on the background of some lull-maintaining the continuity of melody and binding together in harmony the single notes that come up as waves on the silent bed of the ocean. This is precisely the creative process. The wholeness of Being in its eternal silence warms up and produces the background of the music of life, and on the foreground of Being spring up the waves of relativity, waves of life. Each wave has a tendency to rise and fall, and in this rise and fall is the progress of music. The music of life is the rise and fall of the impulses of relativity on the background and foreground of eternal silence of the Absolute. So music reminds us of what one is; it displays the story of life. When one finds what one actually is, one is attracted to it. Whether one is aware of it or not, the reality of life is found in music and therefore it is natural that music should have a universal attraction." --Maharishi Mahesh Yogi


Connectedness. These days there is a growing experience of the interconnectedness of everything with everything else. Perhaps an exploration of the relationship of music and consciousness can help us understand this experience of deeper levels of reality.
According to both ancient Vedic texts and the latest superstring theories of quantum physics, the world is sound or, in Sanskrit, Nada Brahma. Everything is vibrating, not incoherently but in highly ordered harmonic relationships. According to the familiar structure of the harmonic overtone series, the periodic vibration of a medium produces a fundamental tone which contains within it an infinite series of overtones. In addition, each overtone can itself be considered a fundamental tone with an infinite overtone series of its own. The picture is one of an infinite matrix of harmonic vibration.

Not only is everything in creation vibrating but every vibration contains all others! The relationships between the overtones in the series described above are not chaotic but are organized in a beautiful sequence of whole number ratios; 1\:2, 2\:3,3\:4. This is because the medium, for example a piano string, is not only vibrating as a whole but is also vibrating as if divided into halves, thirds, fourths, etc., on to infinity. If the frequency of the fundamental tone (called "1" in the series) is vibrating at 100 cycles per second, then the frequency of the next overtone, "2", would be 200cps or twice that of the fundamental; "3"= 300cps, "4"= 400cps, etc. Since everything is vibrating and every coherently vibrating entity has its own infinite harmonic series, there is an unlimited range of possible relationships in creation.

Some of the relationships are numerically very complex and others remarkably simple. From the macrocosm to the microcosm, the general tendency seems to be towards the simpler or "consonant" low whole number relationships and those that we would identi}

The German musicologist Wilfried Kruger discovered that the eight electrons of the oxygen atom shell and the eight protons of the nucleus of the oxygen atom generate a major scale with the spins of the particles delineating the half tones and whole tones. According to the work of the famous astronomer, Johannes Kepler, certain proportions of the elliptical orbits of the planets correspond beautifully to the simpler relationships naturally found in the overtone series. These same harmonic relationships are found not only throughout nature but also at the basis of the most successful human constructs such as classical Greek architecture.

The simplest relationship between two overtones in the series is 2\:1 or, in musical terms, the octave. A closer look at this most fundamental tonal relationship may shed more light on inter-connectedness. When two or more entities are vibrating sympath etically, this is known as resonance. An easy way to observe this phenomenon is to gently depress and hold down any key, say C, in the upper range of the piano (without letting the hammer actually strike the string), then forcefully strike the same note several octaves lower and listen. As the loud sound of the lower note dies out, the vibration of the same note value several octaves higher can easily be heard. By gently depressing and holding down the piano key, the damper is lifted from the string, allowing it to freely vibrate in resonance with the lower note. All the notes with the same name within the playable range of an instrument are related to each other using various multiples of this 2\:1 relationship and will therefore vibrate in sympathy with each other. Through this principle of resonance, any periodic vibration creates sympathetic responses throughout creation.

Usually we define sound as what human beings are capable of hearing, e.g. approximately 20cps-20,000cps. Light is comprised of a much higher range of frequencies, again defined by the limitations of human sense perception. The reality is that the whole of the manifest creation is one infinite harmonic overtone series. We appreciate certain segments of it with our different senses and then give them names like sound, light, taste, touch, etc. The aspect of interconnectedness can be found in the 2\:1 relationship which gives rise to resonance throughout the infinite range and combinations of vibrations of creation.

So far we've been considering the diversity of vibration of the manifest creation. What about the non-vibrational unmanifest value of life? What about the eternal silence of the ocean of conciousness? Just like the ocean, life is found in layers. Even though there may be tremendous activity on the surface with the rise and fall of huge waves, at its depth the ocean is still, silent. The non-vibrating silence of unmanifest pure conciousness is not a void, not a dead emptiness, however. It is pregnant with the infinite dynamism of all possibilities. Vedic texts refer to sound as "ahata" or "heard sound", and "anahata" or "unheard sound". "Ahata" refers to all the manifest sounds in creation and "anahata" refers to the lively yet still unmanifest potentiality that gives rise to these sounds. Perhaps one way to conceive of creation is that the whole thing is an infinite harmonic overtone (and perhaps undertone!) series based on the "unheard" fundamental tone of unmanifest pure conciousness; the cosmic hum of the universe itself....cont'd

http://www.stokstad.com/cyberspacecafe/lifeismusic2.html


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Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul - A Treatise on White Magic - Rule IX

All life is vibration and the result of vibration is form, dense or subtle, and ever subtler as ascension takes place. As the pulsating life progresses its rate of vibration changes, and in this changing of vibration lies hid the secret of form-shattering and form-building. Forms are of four kinds in this era of the fourth round:

1. The Form of the Personality, that vehicle of physical, astral and mental matter that provides the means of contact in the three worlds. It is built in each life, the key of the vibration being set up in the life preceding the present. That form proves adequate for the average man and serves him till death. The man who is entering on the occult path starts with the vehicle provided, but during incarnation builds for himself ever a newer and better vehicle, and the more progressed he is the more consciously he works. Hence eventuates that constant turmoil and frequent ill-health of the beginner in the occult life. He senses the law, he realizes the need of raising his key, and frequently he begins with mistakes. He starts to build anew his physical body by diet and discipline, instead of working from the inner outward. In the careful discipline of the mind and the manipulation of thought-matter and in transmutation of emotion comes the working out on the physical plane. Add to the two above, physical plane purity as to food and manner of life, and in seven years time the man has built for himself three new bodies around the permanent atoms.

2. The Form of the Environment. This is really the evolutionary working out of the involutionary group soul. It relates to our contacts, not just exterior, but on the inner planes as well. In similarity of vibration <263> comes coherency. When therefore a man raises his vibration and builds anew from the beginning, and alters consequently his key, it results in dissonance in his surroundings and subsequent discord. Therefore - under the law - there comes always to the striver after the Mysteries and the manipulator of the law, a period of aloneness and of sorrow when no man stands by and isolation is his lot. In lesser degree this comes to all, and to the arhat (or initiate of the fourth degree) this complete isolation is a characteristic feature. He stands midway between life in the three worlds and that in the world of adepts. His vibration does not synchronize, prior to initiation, with the vibrations of either group. Under the law he is alone. But this is only temporary. When the environment satisfies then is the moment of anxiety; it indicates stagnation. The application of the law causes primary disruption.

3. The Form of the Devotee. Yes, I mean just that word, for it expresses an abstract idea. Each person of every degree has his devotion, that for which he lives, that for which - in ignorance, in knowledge or in wisdom - he wields as much of the law as he can grasp. Purely physical may that devotion be, centered in flesh, in lust for gold, in possessions concrete. He bends all his energies to the search for the satisfaction of that concrete form and thereby learns. Purely astral maybe the aim of the devotee - love of wife or child, or family, pride of race, love of popularity, or lust of some kind - to them he devotes the whole of his energy, using the physical body to fulfil the desire of the astral.

Higher still may be the form of his devotion, - love of art, or science or philosophy, the life religious, scientific, or artistic - to them he consecrates his energies, physical, astral and mental, and always the form is that of devotion. Always the vibration measures up to the goal, finds that goal, passes it and disintegrates. Pain enters <264> into all shattering of the form, and changing of the key. Many lives, for millennia of years, are spent under the lower vibrations. As evolution progresses, more rapid is the development, and the key changes from life to life, whereas in the earlier stages one key or tone might be sounded for several lives in their entirety. As a man nears the Path, the Probationary Path becomes strewn with many shattered forms, and from lesser cycle to lesser cycle he changes the key, often in one life heightening his vibration several times. See therefore how the life of all aspirants, if progressing with the desired rapidity, is one of constant movement, constant changes and differentiations, and continuous building and breaking, planning and seeing those plans disrupted. It is a life of ceaseless suffering, of frequent clashing with the environing circumstances, of numerous friendships made and transferred, of mutation ceaseless and consequent agony. Ideals are transcended only to be found to be stations on the road to higher; visions are seen, only to be replaced by others; dreams are dreamt only to be realized and discarded; friends are made, to be loved and left behind, and to follow later and more slowly the footsteps of the striving aspirant; and all the time the fourth form is being built.

4. The Form of the Causal Body. This is the vehicle of the higher consciousness, the temple of the indwelling God, which seems of a beauty so rare and of a stability of so sure a nature that, when the final shattering comes of even that masterpiece of many lives, bitter indeed is the cup to drink, and unutterably bereft seems the unit of consciousness. Conscious then only of the innate Divine Spirit, conscious only of the Truth of the Godhead, realizing profoundly and to the depths of his being the ephemeral nature of the form and of all forms, standing alone in the vortex of initiatory rites, bereft of all on which he may have leant (be it friend, Master, doctrine <265> or environment), well may the Initiate cry out: "I am that I am, and there is naught else." Well may he then figuratively place his hand in that of his Father in Heaven, and hold the other out in blessing on the world of men, for only the hands that have let slip all within the three worlds are free to carry the ultimate blessing to struggling humanity. Then he builds for himself a form such as he desires, - a new form that is no longer subject to shattering, but suffices for his need, to be discarded or used as occasion warrants.

http://laluni.helloyou.ws/netnews/bk/magic/magi1110.html

[pacifictiger]

2. thanks for posting these

One of the things that bother me about much of the current music that seems to be everywhere is that it seems to have a sort of 'dumbing down' effect. Lowering vibrations instead of raising them up.
I guess if you're stuck in 1st chakra, tribal, that's what reasonates with the psyche best.

[Dover]

3. Given the general environment in which it is produced I'd say it

is in resonance with it's time. Bailey points out that figuratively speaking, 'dissonance' can also be experienced because one's 'key' or vibration is being raised and no longer is in synch or harmony with the surrounding vibrations.

Sure lots of the music in the popular culture seems like it's NUMBING down - stagnating at a lower vibration, other music seems well intended but is somewhat vacant and lost, but there are always pockets of innovation which seem like an authentic sympathetic expression of this search for the soul.

Wouldn't it be interesting though if musicians as well as those on the path, studied the sacred aspects of music along with traditional training...so they would be working more consciously with it. On the otherhand, that is not the only way to access it, as much is also intuitive for those receptive enough to 'hear' it. There is more to training than acquiring knowledge as the Bailey piece explains...working from the inside out to alter one's 'key'.

I like these paragraphs:

The Form of the Environment. This is really the evolutionary working out of the involutionary group soul. It relates to our contacts, not just exterior, but on the inner planes as well. In similarity of vibration <263> comes coherency. When therefore a man raises his vibration and builds anew from the beginning, and alters consequently his key, it results in dissonance in his surroundings and subsequent discord. Therefore - under the law - there comes always to the striver after the Mysteries and the manipulator of the law, a period of aloneness and of sorrow when no man stands by and isolation is his lot. In lesser degree this comes to all, and to the arhat (or initiate of the fourth degree) this complete isolation is a characteristic feature. He stands midway between life in the three worlds and that in the world of adepts. His vibration does not synchronize, prior to initiation, with the vibrations of either group. Under the law he is alone. But this is only temporary. When the environment satisfies then is the moment of anxiety; it indicates stagnation. The application of the law causes primary disruption.

..snip..

Pain enters <264> into all shattering of the form, and changing of the key. Many lives, for millennia of years, are spent under the lower vibrations. As evolution progresses, more rapid is the development, and the key changes from life to life, whereas in the earlier stages one key or tone might be sounded for several lives in their entirety. As a man nears the Path, the Probationary Path becomes strewn with many shattered forms, and from lesser cycle to lesser cycle he changes the key, often in one life heightening his vibration several times. See therefore how the life of all aspirants, if progressing with the desired rapidity, is one of constant movement, constant changes and differentiations, and continuous building and breaking, planning and seeing those plans disrupted. It is a life of ceaseless suffering, of frequent clashing with the environing circumstances, of numerous friendships made and transferred, of mutation ceaseless and consequent agony. Ideals are transcended only to be found to be stations on the road to higher; visions are seen, only to be replaced by others; dreams are dreamt only to be realized and discarded; friends are made, to be loved and left behind, and to follow later and more slowly the footsteps of the striving aspirant; and all the time the fourth form is being built.