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Points of Departure
a select reading list
in speculative music
The relationship between Gurdjieff's
enneagram as related in my article, Tone-constellations
of the enneagram, and Rudolf Steiner's understanding both of the nature
of the interval, and of the processeses of 'cosmic nutrition,' have been
an area of deep interest for me. The relationship between insights developed
out of Steiner's work and the symbolism of the enneagram, is particularly
pregnant in that Gurdjieff's primary use of the enneagram symbolism was
to describe his 'food-factory' or 'octaves of nutrition' in which sense
impressions provided the impulse to advance the 'evolution' of the energy
of food and air into higher 'elements'.
Steiner's own teachings - scattered
here and there - concerning the 'cosmic nutrition stream' that enters
via the senses, as well as the transformation from a 'yoga of breath'
(pranayama) of ancient times to a 'yoga of cognition', and of an inbreathing
of 'vivifying' 'soul-light substance' into the senses since the time of
the Mystery of Golgatha - can greatly illuminate the questions stimulated
by Gurdjieff's exposition of the enneagram.
The application of musical
symbolism to the enneagram is intended as an exploration and contemplation
of the of the world-creative power of tone.
- Useful works in approaching
this sphere include Hans Lauer's article regarding the changing
experience of the various musical interval's during mankind's development.
In his Evolution of Music Through Changes in Tone-Systems,
(translated by Joscelyn Godwin in his Cosmic Music,
Inner Traditions) (Godwin has edited a number of interesting works
in speculative music, including translation's of Fabre D'Olivet).
- Armin Husemann's The
Harmony of the Human Body (Floris Books) provides an excellent
series of insights into the nature of the different intervals as
creative, formative forces, and how they express various creative
relationships between the etheric and astral. It provides and application
of the intervals to the development of living forms.
- Steiner's own The
Inner Nature of Music and The Experience of Tone. (Rudolf
Steiner Press) contains some of Steiner's seminal insights in this
area.
- Heiner Ruland's Expanding
Tonal Awareness (Rudolf Steiner Press) takes up where Lauer's
article leaves off, and provides an in-depth historical perspective
on the development of various musical systems.
- Sound and Symbol,
by Victor Zuckerkandl, (Princeton/Bollingen) provides an insightful
journey into the qualities of musical sound, with insights fruitful
for their application in speculative music.
- The Doctrine of
Vibration, Mark Dyczkowski, (SUNY Press), is a survey of
the Kashmir Shaivism and the Spanda Doctrine that understands the
self as the pulsing, active force in all reality.
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