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This nOde
last updated November 24th,
2001
and is permanently morphing...
(2 Men (Eagle) - 13 Ceh (Red) - 12.19.8.13.15)
Chapter Titles
1. Metaphysical
Correspondences
2. The Conflict of Musical Systems
3. The Measurement of Intervals and Harmonic
Sounds
4. The Cycle of Fifths: The Musical Theory of the Chinese
5. Relations to a Tonic: The Modal Music of India
6. Confusion of the Systems: The Music of the Greeks
7. The Western Scale and Equal Temperament
8. The Scale of Sounds
p. 1
"All music is based on the
relations between sounds, and a careful study of the numbers by which these
relations are ruled brings us immediately into the almost forgotten science
of numerical symbolism. Numbers correspond to abstract principles, and
their application to physical reality
follows absolute and inescapable laws. In musical experience we are brought
into direct contact
with these principles; the connection between physical reality and metaphysical
principles can be felt in
music as nowhere else. Music
was therefore justly considered by the ancients as the key to all sciences
and arts--the link between metaphysics and physics through which the universal
laws and their multiple applications could be understood.
Modern civilization has tended
to reject the ways of thinking and scientific conceptions that formed its foundations.
Western people have largely broken away from the social and intellectual
regulations that restricted their freedom, and in doing so they have abandoned
the age-old order and traditional knowledge that had been the basis of
their development. This is why sciences and arts originally understood
as diverse applications of common principles have been reduced to a condition
of fragmentary experiments isolated from one another.
 |
Thus, to take the domain with which we are here
particularly concerned, there remain no data in the West on the nature
of music except for a few technical and mostly arbitrary rules about the
relations of sounds and the structures of chortis. The strange phenomenon
by which coordinated sounds have the power to evoke feelings or images
is accepted simply as a fact. Attempts are made to define the effects of
certain combinations of sounds, but these effects are discovered almost
fortuitously and] no search is made for their underlying cause. Just as
one day Newton
discovered the law of gravitation,
it is only through the genius of some musician that we may be able to rediscover
the significance of a particular relation of sounds; it is Gluck or Chopin
who may suddenly reveal to us the deep, absolute, and inevitable meaning
of a chord or of a melodic interval."
p.4
"The universe is called in Sanskrit
'jagat' (that which moves) because nothing exists but by the combination
of forces
and movements. But every movement generates a vibration and therefore a
sound that is peculiar to it. Such a sound, of course, may not be audible
to our rudimentary ears, but it does exist as pure sound. Since each element
of matter produces a sound, the relation of elements can be expressed by
a relation of sounds. We can therefore understand why astrology, alchemy,
geometry, and so forth express themselves in terms of harmonic relations.
 |
Although those pure, absolute
sounds that Kabir calls 'inaudible music' cannot be perceived by our ears
(they may be perceptible for more delicate instruments, and the perception
of such sounds is one of the stages in the practice of yoga), we may nonetheless
be able to produce corresponding sounds within the range of vibrations
we can perceive. We can establish relations between these partial sounds
similar to the subtle relations of nature. They will be only gross relations,
but they may approach the subtle relations of nature sufficiently to evoke
images in our mind. Sir John Woodroffe, the learned commentator on tantric metaphysics,
explains it thus: 'There are, it is said, closely approximate natural names,
combined according to natural laws of harmony [chandahs], forming mantras
which are irresistibly connected with their esoteric arthas [forms).'
If we were able to reproduce the exact relations
that constitute the natural names, we should recreate beings, things, and
phenomena, because this is the very process
of creation, explained by the Vedas and also indicated in Genesis, or in
the Gospel of John when the 'creative Word' is spoken of. If, however,
exact relations cannot be produced, approximate relations have a power,
if not of creation, at least of evocation; sound 'works now in man's small magic,
just as it first worked in the grand magical display of the World Creator.'
'The natural name of anything is the sound which is produced by the action
of the moving forces
which constitute it. He therefore, it is said, who mentally or vocally
utters with creative force the natural name of anything brings into being
the thing which bears that name.' By the artificial construction of harmony
we can go beyond the phenomenon of sound vibrations and perceive not sounds
but immaterial relations through which can be expressed realities
of a spiritual nature. We can thus lift the veil by which matter hides
from its all true realities"
pp. 4, 5
 |
"Evocation tlirough sound, like creation itself, takes place not because of the material fact of physical vibration but on account of the existence of metaphysical correspondences. Therefore all psychological explanation of musical experience has to be discarded. In reality, the personality of the hearer counts for nothing in the phenomenon of musical evocation because evocation takes place even if there is no hearer, and if the existence of this evocation is ephemeral it is only because of the imperfection of the relation of sounds. Hearers can be differentiated negatively only by the relative acuteness of their perceptions, their greater or lesser deafness.
'Several centuries before
Plato, Pythagoras,
imbued with Egyptian
doctrine, requested his disciples to reject the judgment of their ears
as susceptible to error and variation where harmonic
principles are concerned. He wanted them to regulate those immovable principles
only according to the proportional and analogical harmony of numbers.'
The work of the musician consists therefore only in knowing, as accurately
as possible, the symbolic relations of all things so as to reproduce in
us, through the magic of
sounds, the feelings, the passions, the visions of an almost real world.
And the history of Indian music, as that of Chinese music, is full of the
legends of marvelous musicians whose voice could make night fall or spring
appear, or who, like the celebrated musician Naik Gopal, compelled by the
Emperor Akbar to sing in the mode of fire (raga Dipak), made the water
of the river Jumna boil and died burned by the flames that issued from
every part of his body."
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