My Articles on Music
As an impressionable 15-year-old, I sat listening to the Sultan of Yogyakarta’s Royal Gamelan Orchestra. Nothing in my musical training had prepared me for this. This music broke all the rules…
The Life Force in Music
Turn on the radio to any station. What is the typical quality of our western music? And, using Confucius’ analogy, what does it say about the way we are governed?
Nearly 100 years ago Rudolf Steiner said, “A chaotic economic life without direction; a life of rights become a mere striving for power; a spiritual life degraded to hollow phrases: this is the threefold character of social life we have and of which we must rid ourselves.”
The Sounds of Silence
WHAT IS SILENCE? AND HOW DO WE APPRECIATE IT? Some dictionaries will tell you that silence is the “absence of sound”. I find this a rather shallow definition, which also says a lot about the state of modern man, as we shall see…
The Magic of Music
(But is it good magic or bad?)
There is much talk in Waldorf schools these days of the need to protect children- to protect children from the harmful images of media, from the hardening intellectual forces that rob them of imagination, from the obsessive trend towards stimulation and entertainment. If you are a Waldorf parent, chances are you’re acutely aware of this and are doing what you can to protect and nurture your own children. Well here’s something else to consider: what about sounds? What about music?
The Happy Farmer
In April, 2002, about a dozen participants of the Goethean Studies programme, their friends and families met at a desolate, highly salinated piece of farmland about 2 hours east of Perth, armed with a water tank, a plastic bucket each and a jar of ‘500’ preparation (specially prepared biodynamic cow manure). We intended to spray the land annually as part of the on-going Veridian Project, in order to see what the effect might be…
To Experience the World as a Sounding Composition
To experience the world as a sounding composition, rather than a whole lot of measurable concepts, takes one beyond the mind to a realm of movement, fluidity, fluctuation and ‘creativity’…
Christmas Carols in Australia
“It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas in heaven”
Just had to find this satirical Monty Python video on youtube to help me in the process of preparing for Xmas, the holy-day, the birth of the Christ in us, on traditionally the darkest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere at least).
Here, its southern hemisphere, Perth, Western Australia. The tinsel’s out, the drinking is on, the stress is up. It’s Christmas in heaven. OMG…