Connecting to the Universe through 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. Where was the rhythm and beat? What key was it supposed to be in, or was it just random notes? Was there supposed to be a sung melody or was that ‘wailing’ sound designed for another purpose? It was painfully slow, without phrase, timeless. I could not find my way into this music. And perhaps most baffling were the Sultan’s hand-chosen musicians themselves: why were they staring into space as if in a day-dream?

‘The experience of tone structure was completely different, and the soul had a completely different relationship to the tone structure. One who lives musically only in sevenths, with no intervals in between, as naturally as did the Atlanteans does not even perceive the musical element as something that occurs around or within him. The moment he perceives the musical element he feels transported out of his body into the cosmos.’

Although I did not know it at the time, I had been brought to the threshold of a totally different paradigm— not just a different musical paradigm, but an altogether different paradigm of consciousness… something so old, so odd, it resisted any access through modern Western thinking. But there was a mood, a feeling that grew in me which I longed to explore.

Four years later I found myself irresistibly drawn to study this ancient art form, or at least its Balinese version. (Bali shares the same cultural heritage of Java.) I rented a little hut in central Bali and the gamelan worked its way into my soul. I learnt new things about myself, not least discovering my own Asian roots on my mother’s side. The music transported me to a paradise world where I seemed to hover above the ground, a timeless world where every day is the same. There are no seasons, it’s always hot and humid, it’s a world where one can simply sit with a local for an hour in silence, sip tea and just be– it’s just too hot to do anything else. Even thinking is an effort!

‘… the fifth comprised both inhalation and exhalation: the seventh comprised only exhalation.’

In this paradigm, even morality becomes nebulous and vague. I began to experience the shadowy world of dark magic and white magic. I saw and experienced things that my western mind could not explain. The music disembodied me and brought me in contact with a world where nature spirits, both benevolent and malevolent were a constant presence – a dangerous time in my journey, perhaps. Admittedly, there were times where I did not want to come back down to earth.

‘This musical experience, … always consisted of man feeling completely transported [entrückt]. He felt free of his earthbound existence and transported into another world in this experience of the seventh. At that time he could just as well have said, “I experience music,” as “I feel myself in the spiritual world.”’

But inevitably I did have to come back earth: I became a music teacher in a Waldorf School – a good balance between heaven and earth! I read Steiner’s highly esoteric views on music and slowly digested them. I also kept returning to Java and Bali in my holidays to keep the gamelan fire burning – a citizen of both worlds.

It was years later, whilst preparing to teach a subject called ‘The Time Map’ in the Foundation Studies in Anthroposophy course at Rudolf Steiner College in Perth, that I uncovered the possible link between Atlantis and Java in the gamelan.

Steiner talks of the Atlantean and post-Atlantean epochs being permeated by certain moods. These moods can be expressed quite objectively through the spiritual-musical truths of the intervals. Quite simply an interval in music is the distance between any two tones. Play any two tones on the piano and a certain mood will arise: you will feel the interval to be harmonious, dissonant or somewhere on the scale between these two poles.

‘Atlanteans could not yet experience musical intervals of thirds, not even fifths. Their musical experience really began with feeling the sevenths. They then felt further intervals, of which the seventh was the smallest. They missed hearing thirds and fifths; these intervals did not exist for Atlanteans. The experience of tone structure was completely different…’

So what is a seventh and what is its mood? Actually, there are many kinds of sevenths, all with their own moods. ‘Seventh’ is not an exact term; it generally means seven notes apart in the scale. But what scale? Our scales and their modern tunings have only existed for a few centuries. Pianos give us major sevenths and minor sevenths. These are based on a tuning system of fifths that we inherited from ancient Egypt and Greece. Clearly, the Atlanteans could not have tuned their sevenths based on the Egyptian/Greek fifth. In fact, as we read above, they had no feeling for such a tuning.

Steiner never indicated which seventh he meant when he spoke of the Atlanteans, and we have been making educated guesses ever since. Heiner Ruland, in his book ‘Expanding Tonal Awareness’, suggests it was the ‘natural seventh’, based on the numerical relationship 4:7 (two strings vibrating in this ratio will produce this ‘mood’). This interval is not found on the piano, hence it sounds foreign to our modern ears. It can be found by overblowing a brass instrument, as it is a naturally occurring overtone. In fact, brass players must constantly repress the natural tendency to sound this interval. This natural seventh (4:7) is indeed more naturally occurring than our modern major and minor sevenths (5:9, 8:15) but it has been covered up by modern tuning. Perhaps, in the interest of knowing our past, it is time to uncover it?

Steiner suggests Atlanteans felt a mood of consecutive sevenths raying up or down, something that does not fit into the limits of modern musical instruments or the range of the human voice. Modern humanity is thus left in the dark as to how to approach such a concept in music. Quite possibly, these raying-out intervals were not even heard in “physical” music but simply existed in silence as a ‘mood’. It is possible, however, to bring these tones into the compass of an octave, which makes it audible and far more accessible. We can thus experience the ancient mood of the seventh in a microcosm, within the range of an octave. Something very interesting happens when we do this: our octave becomes divided into five almost exactly equal parts. Our microcosm takes on a five-fold nature.

You can try tuning a lyre or guitar to these notes, using an electronic tuner that shows decimal places (best calibrated to A=432):

D E +0.4 G -0.2 A +0.2 C -0.4 D’

This gives a “true” pentatonic scale of five equally placed notes: the very same scale used in Java and Bali! It is also called the “slendro” scale. We can thus say that this particular style of gamelan is quite definitely based on the seventh, that is, the natural seventh. Gamelan (slendro) gives us the mood of the seventh in a microcosm. Some have found this tuning in the songs of the North American Hopi Indians. Others believe slendro is the oldest form of our modern pentatonic (based on fifths). Slendro-tuned instruments have also been found in Africa. But how did the mood of the seventh end up in Indonesia?

‘The Atlanteans …were forced to emigrate… the most important migrations were the ones that moved eastward from Atlantis. Europe, Asia and Africa were gradually settled by the descendants of the Atlanteans. Various peoples differing in their degrees of both development and depravity took up residence there. In their midst marched the initiates who guarded the mysteries…’

Atlantean music would have certainly migrated to Africa, but its mood would eventually be crystallized in India, where according to Steiner an important impulse based on the Christ oracle arose:

‘This initiate moved with them from west to east, to an area in central Asia… he selected the seven best to receive life bodies and astral bodies that were reproductions of those of the seven greatest Atlantean initiates.’ (These were the seven rishis.)

There is no evidence of mood of the seventh in classical or historical Indian music. Perhaps India has moved on and forgotten it. Is it possible that the music of Atlantis somehow resurfaced in Indonesia? Well, we do know for certain that holy Indian men have been visiting Indonesia for at least 2000 years. And their presence is still felt…

Four years ago, my wife and I visited a temple high in the mountains of Bali, a modern temple yet still with ancient remnants giving clues into its rich past. With our guide, we were the only ones there. We were so high up, the climate was cool, the clouds and jungle surrounded us. We seemed to be floating in a sort of bubble, high above the world, the thin air making us light-headed and impressionable to the supersensible worlds. The spirits were present. It was so still, but so alive. The only sound was that of gently trickling water coming down the mountain. Our guide was a Balinese religion and history scholar. He quietly explained that the temple was founded by the sage Agastya, descended from one of the great seven rishis of India, around 70 AD. I had to ask several times to confirm this fact. It was a eureka moment. Here I was, standing in the very place where high Ancient Indian culture first made its mark in Bali, carrying the impulse of the great Atlantean initiates. In this silent nebulous place in the clouds that ancient paradigm that still echoes today in the sounds of the gamelan was still palpable: the Atlantean mood of the seventh.

The mood of the seventh presents the modern ear with a challenge. We must learn to listen very differently, with our spirit more than with our soul. For one thing, this music can never live inside us in the way that all music of the modern era does. The mood of the seventh lives outside the listener. Its tendency is to excarnate us into the spiritual worlds. For this reason, there will be many who object and say it has no place for modern humanity. But I beg to differ. If we are to truly know ourselves and how we have evolved, as Anthroposophy implores us to do, then the mood of the seventh does have a place for us now. Through it, our distant past is lifted from the realm of ‘concept’ and takes its place in the realm of ‘soul-spirit’. The mood of the seventh is part of who we are.

Paul Lawrence, March 2018
Quotes from Rudolf Steiner: “The Inner Nature of Music and The Experience of Tone” and “An Outline of Esoteric Science”.

“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.” —Confucius

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.”

It seems we are not well-governed and that little has changed since Steiner said those words. Perhaps things have worsened since then.

What are some of the influences that have led to this culture’s demise in health?

There are many, of course, and they run so deep into the unconscious, that no government or health insurance slogan can ever hope to tackle them. We are, on the whole, such a ‘surface’ culture. We are not hard-wired to look deeply into problems nor to turn to religion or ideology for help. We are stuck.

This article will look at just one possible self-perpetuating part of the problem: the role of music in this culture. Music too is very sick in this culture and there is a correlation between people’s health and music’s health. If we heal the music, we heal the people. This fact alone is something we must bring into our awareness, out of the lull, the sleep or ignorance of our culture. The life-force in music does affect the life-force in people.

Now I’ll pose a weird question: Is music good for us? “Of course,” you say, as if programmed automatically to say so. Music must be good for us because it makes us feel good, right? But in light of the above quotes, perhaps you are having second thoughts.

Our times are filled with deception, ignorance and delusion. Sweets packed with carcinogenic chemicals make us feel good too– to start with, then comes the inevitable sickness; a binge in front of the telly makes us feel good, to start with… we switch off, enjoy the stimulation and let something else take over for a while. Something enters our souls, and it isn’t always healthy.

How many of us are aware of what exactly is entering us when we have music on in the background, or even when we seriously/intentionally listen to it?

The fact is, most music has ceased to be an ‘alive force’, yet still gives the illusion of being so. Something enters us with the illusion of being full of life, yet, like the sweets or the TV, it’s actually deadening us. And the vicious circle begins: we want more life– so we eat more sweets, watch more TV, turn the music up louder. And so the sickness begins. An addiction to junk food, plasma tvs and loud techno music? Sounds like a typical family in your street! (but, of course, not yours!)

Acknowledging the sickness of our culture is one thing, healing it is another. How to embark on such a journey?

It is said that every journey begins with one step. Here are some steps I would take to heal our society through the medium of music, a way to halt the deadening forces and bring life back: healing sounds coursing through our body. I will look at the life force in tone colour, the life force in the performer, the life force in the tuning method, and the life force in the arrangement of the tones. Each topic will be more complex than the last, so stop where you want, or just chew off small bits at a time to slowly digest.

Life force in tone colour;

Classical musicians often speak of “tone colour” or timbre– the quality of sound, the richness or thinness, the boldness of a brass section or the mellowness of the lower string instruments, etc. You can, of course, go deeper than this. With heightened awareness, one can begin to identifying the objective feeling that each type of sound produces.

In Goethean colour theory, we acknowledge that colour gives rise to a pure objective feeling– e.g. the boldness of red, the quick-minded curiosity of yellow. The ‘colour’ of sound affects us in a similar way. Now consider the purity of ‘visual’ colour you take in: to use the TV analogy again, are you aware that there is an extreme difference between colours produced digitally/electronically on a computer/tv screen and the ‘pure’ colour of a real sunset sky? A cheap photographic reproduction of the sunset doesn’t affect you in the same way as the real thing, but every year technology increases its art of deception, and the consumers flock to buy better cameras and bigger screens for their lounge rooms with even ‘richer’ colour. This result is a confused, unhealthy feeling life where we ask, what is real?

The same applies to electronically reproduced music. Billions of dollars are spent on the quest for perfect digital sound, but it still doesn’t compare to the resonant instrument right in front of you that you strum, strike, blow or bow: hollow chambers filled with sound; chambers of seasoned wood or polished fine metal resonate with our own inner chambers. Imagine a huge and beautiful cathedral filled with magnificent a capella singing. We are that cathedral. Our hollow chambers (lungs, throats, sinuses) and stonework (organs, bones), resonate with something living and life-giving. An electronic signal transferred to a magnet and synthetic membrane gives us a close, but unfortunately dead illusion.

One particular exercise Steiner recommended was to meditate on two plants: one dead, one alive– to gradually feel and become aware of, with new, as-yet-undeveloped organs – the life force inherent in them. The same exercise could easily apply to two sounds– one dead (electronic/digital), one alive (acoustic); in fact, this exercise is a must for anyone wishing to embark on the musical healing journey. Learn the difference between alive and dead sound.

On another level, we can look at how real, acoustic instruments affect our life force in different ways. The sound of each instrument awakens in us something of the quality of the instrument’s material, whether wood, brass or plastic. Ancient man could strike two animal bones together and hear the deceased animal’s ‘story’ released from the physical bones into the ether through sound, but modern man is almost deaf to the subtlety of sounds. Seasoned wood on a violin sounds fuller than cheap unseasoned wood. A gold flute tingles the spine in a way that an inferior grade flute could never do. It is as if a voice which has been stuck or enchanted in the physical world is suddenly released: gold is given a voice in the sound of a flute, a maple tree sings through a violin, and yes, the essence of ‘plastic’ is given a voice too in countless school recorders around the world! What happens if the majority of our music is from plastic instruments? We become desensitized to other sounds and to archetypal natural sounds. Each sound carries its material’s archetype to our ears, from there it enters and whispers its secrets to our souls: the secrets of gold, wood or bamboo become alive in us. We can learn the secrets of the world subtly but directly through sound, but only through real, live instruments.

Life force in the performer

So, if your local Steiner school tells you to go out and buy a hand-crafted pentatonic wooden flute for your child, lovingly made from a bio-dynamically grown pear tree in Sweden, you’ll understand why. Playing the devil’s advocate here, what would happen if the teacher of the ‘totally alive’ flute was a robot?

Have you ever been to a concert where the performers seemed disinterested, half asleep, underpaid, bored? How can anyone be enlivened by such music? (except perhaps in your imagination, but then why bother buying tickets for a concert if your imagination produces better music?!)

Truly, it is the performer’s integrity and intention as well as the instrument which the listener hears, and this comes from years of dedicated practice in mastering the instrument (and one soon learns that to master an instrument one must also master oneself). There is far too much robot music around, whether from stereos, ipods, plugged-in musical instruments or even ‘live’ performers who are just ‘making the moves’– they too are just as robotic!

Do the live music vs. dead music meditation. Get inspired by a ‘live, unplugged’ musician who lives and breathes every phrase and nuance of his music and you should know and hear the difference.

Life force in tuning;

Even the best of intentions and the best quality instruments soon come to a crashing halt when the instrument itself is out of tune. What does it mean to tune an instrument? To make it go in tune… with what? How do you tune an instrument? What are you listening for? What are you tuning to?

I often get looks of awe from young children and even adults when I routinely tune my violin. I remind myself that it actually is a very mysterious process.

Many musicians like to use an electronic device to aid them in tuning an instrument. I prefer to use my ear. In this way, I am tuning the instrument first and foremost to myself. I am bringing the instrument into a relationship with myself. But how do I know I am in tune? How do I know my ear is right? Experience. Years of practice and ‘outer’ listening gradually form the capacity for ‘inner listening’ or ‘inner music’. It’s as if a subtle new internal organ is created– a musical organ, which would, for example, account for that mysterious ‘connection with the universe’ that musicians seem to have or the ‘synergy’ that musicians have when they play together. Musicians need to be in tune with themselves, with their instruments, indeed, with music itself.

This is essential, but the art of ‘being in tune’ goes deeper…, way deeper!

Tuning an instrument or singing ‘in tune’ can bring about a huge philosophical debate. Something like: well what exact mathematical frequencies are the ‘right’ ones to tune to anyway? Here we can say there are tuning methods which are more alive than others, depending on your point of view. Art and science meet at this point, as do mathematics and aesthetics.

There was a time when all of this was in balance and synthesis: the ancient Greeks, in fact, helped bring about this balance and introduced theories of tuning. They turned to mathematics and nature and found that their aesthetic sense of beauty could be reduced into simple, beautiful numbers and ratios.

Using a simple stringed instrument, Pythagoras measured the distance between two notes that sounded in harmony with one another. Invariably, when two notes sounded in harmony, their string lengths would form a simple ‘harmonious’ mathematical ratio. For example, if a string is stopped with a finger exactly half way along its length, the resulting sound will be one octave higher than the original full-length note. Musicians acknowledge this octave as the purest sounding of all intervals. It is produced using the simplest of all mathematical ratios, 1:2. Similarly, the ratio 2:3 produces the next purest harmony (a ‘fifth’), 2:4 produces an octave again, 4:5 also sounds pure and pleasing, as does 2:3, 3:4, and so on. Intervals that are dissonant have complex ratios, for example the tritone, c – f sharp commonly uses a ratio of 512:729. This interval has been avoided throughout history at all costs. It is awkward geometrically and acoustically.

The ancient Greeks also found these simple harmonious ratios in nature, in the geometry of a leaf or flower, in a beautifully proportioned animal and particularly in the dimensions of the human body. They were also sure that the same harmonious ratios existed in the stars and planets; this is indeed the case. For the ancient Greeks the whole cosmos was proportioned mathematically and musically in simple harmonies. In fact for Pythagoras the world was a ‘sounding composition’.

The connection between music, nature and cosmos remained in human consciousness until the seventeenth century, when a decisive and highly significant event occurred: musicians changed the tuning system from one based on nature to one which supposedly allowed more musical exploration and creativity. This was called ‘equal temperament’ and allowed a subtle but profound ‘tempering’ of the tuning from pure to impure, so that all 12 keys could be played relatively ‘in tune’. In tune with what?

Certainly not in tune with nature, but more in tune with ‘itself’. A new musical microcosm or paradigm had been invented, arising from human intellect, in the name of creative freedom. Man had ‘liberated himself from the laws of nature’, if that was possible. To this day, any keyed instrument, from clarinet to xylophone to piano – will take this slightly impure, unnatural tuning as its reference.

When I tell people about the ancient connection between nature, the cosmos and music, they are awed and amazed; when I tell them that we have abandoned natural tuning– that our music is no longer in tune with nature, they stare in disbelief, “Why?”

In order to understand this, its worth having a brief look at what was happening historically. Interestingly, this new musical innovation arose at a time when man firmly believed that he could conquer and control nature. Previously, during Renaissance times, a sort of precarious balance existed in the human psyche between the perfection of man and the perfection of God. With the new Baroque period however, –a period of lavish opulence, grandeur and self-importance, the balance shifted decisively towards man. The church’s importance in Europe was greatly diminished. Instead, autocratic kings such as Loius XIV built lavish monuments to themselves and then pompously declared, “I am the state”. New discoveries and inventions gave credence to the thought that man could do anything he put his mind to, from conquering every continent in the world to measuring every second of time with a mechanical clock.

The gardens of Versailles with its carefully formed hedges and topiary and abandonment of anything wild reflected the belief that nature can and must be tamed, that the glory of man now out-shines even the beauty of nature.

Since this time, man has not ceased in his quest of knowing everything, taming, controlling and even manipulating nature for his own means. He has also steadily increased the ability to isolate his thoughts from the natural world around him. In fact increasingly more modern thoughts, systems and microcosms have very little grounding in nature whatsoever. I can, for example, have a serious relationship with a computer avatar– some have even tried to marry their computer generated ‘person’. Whole scientific endeavours can be based on things we cannot see, hear or touch

How much more removed from reality can our insatiable curiosity get us? We seem to be living in a bubble of our own creation, hovering above the natural world because we no longer find it relevant.

Musically too, man has explored every conceivable emotion and paradigm in the man-made bubble of twelve tempered tones. All this has been necessary for man to explore and experience his full potential. The thinking seems to be that if we remove ourselves from nature we will know ourselves better. Nature, it seems, is just an irrelevant backdrop.

Yet, something is plainly wrong when we look at the man-nature relationship today. Man’s isolation from nature has come with a price: the devastation of the very thing that gives him life. We have reached the point in time where we must change tack or we will not survive. There now seems to be a global realization that if the man-nature equilibrium is not addressed we will perish. We live in a physical body on a physical planet, both governed by natural laws, but in both science and music we are forgetting our roots in nature. Indeed, we are in danger of severing those roots altogether and dying of suffocation through our own ignorance.

If a musical instrument is tuned in ignorance to unnatural laws it perpetuates the fallacy that we can live without natural laws. If we continue to tune our music in this way we must cultivate far more awareness and responsibility. There should be an internal warning sign when we tune our pianos and guitars, something like: you are now leaving the laws of nature (natural tuning) and entering the zone of creative freedom. Do this for your fulfillment but at your own peril. Do this responsibly and do not neglect the laws which sustain your body and your planet.

And if all this sounds too much, take up singing instead. You have a much better chance of staying au natural.

And what about tuning in terms of life force? It seems to me that there is much life in exploring, discovering and creating using unnatural tuning, but there is implicit danger, as described above. Tuning unnaturally in ignorance will tend towards depleting the life force in us. Done consciously, it may enhance the life force. Natural tuning is already in tune with all life, it nourishes and supports life. And if natural tuning offers too little for the modern man in terms of outward expression, perhaps we should consider going inward instead, thereby uncovering the elements of life and music which are full of secrets and mystery, understanding the big-picture archetypes, going to the source. I believe this is necessary: necessary for musical and planetary healing to take place. We can and certainly should rediscover natural tuning and what it has to offer.

Arrangement of tones.

Let’s assume we have followed all of the above steps. Let’s take one more step.

The last and most complex layer of music I will discuss is the system of arranging tones, i.e. the choice of scale, mode or interval that gives music a certain archetypal sound.

Many Anthroposophical musicians, it seems, work with the theory born out of a few enigmatic words given by Rudolf Steiner, that each great civilization or epoch had at its root a particular sound interval which characterized and embodied that civilization’s qualities. In the Atlantean and Indian epochs it was the seventh (4:7); in the Persian/Mesopotamian it was the sixth (8:13); in Ancient Egypt/China it was the fifth (2:3); in Ancient Greece the fourth (3:4 and 8:11) and in our modern epoch it is the third (4:5).

For example, if we work imaginatively/artistically with the musical interval of the seventh, we will begin to live into an Atlantean consciousness. A feeling of timelessness pervades, our feet leave the ground, we hover above the earth in a sleepy/dreamy ‘paradise’, still unaware of the difference between good and evil, illusion and reality, today and tomorrow. Working with the qualities of the sixth, we feel closer to earth, with more sense of vertical dimension, but still not grounded. It is finally with the fifth of ancient Egypt that we begin to see the world outside and develop a new capacity to breathe it in and internalize it. An awareness of our physical selves and physical world gradually arises.

The ancient Greeks, according to Heiner Ruland in his book, “Expanding Tonal Awareness”, polarized music into two distinct kinds: the outward looking ‘Apollonian’ style responsible for scale creation and further creative exploration; and the more mysterious, secretive, inward looking ‘Dionysian’. The former (Apollonian) developed music based on the 3:4 fourth, basically an inversion of the Egyptian fifth, with similar properties: an outward/inward awareness of the world. The fourth facilitated thinking about the world, something the Greeks loved to do.

The latter (Dionysian), according to Ruland saw the secret development of mystery schools with internal focus. The ancient Greeks thus stood at the midpoint between outward focused cosmic consciousness and inward focused microcosmic consciousness. According to Ruland, the first qualities to arise from within when working with the mysterious 8:11 fourth were compassion and love. This midpoint in human evolution where inward focus was born and an awareness of the compassionate Self, paved the way for the colossal event of Jesus Christ in the latter part of the Greco-Roman epoch.

To the modern observer, however, this secret fourth remains just that– secret, silent and absent from any historical records. Post Greco-Roman music seems to be still firmly anchored in the other fourth and old fifth (2:3:4). It was not until the Renaissance period that any significant development came along to challenge the rulership of the Egyptian fifth.

In Renaissance music, one particular note of the scale began to stand out and shine in the hearts and minds of spiritually advanced composers and listeners. The new golden quality of the third (4:5) heralded the birth of the individual. The glory of God could now be felt internally through love and compassion (since Greek times– interval 8:11) and shining through as the individual itself. The individual human could be conscious of his/her own divinity.

The glorious musical third must have been wondrous to behold in those times especially in the hands of masters such as Palestrina in the Renaissance, Bach in the Baroque period and Mozart in the Classical period. But I speak in the past tense, because something has happened in modern times to confuse and disorientate our appreciation of this interval, the glorious third. Perhaps through unnatural tuning, perhaps through other forces, the glorious third of individuality now sounds to us as sentimental or nostalgic individualism or immature egoism. If the Renaissance was our individuality’s birth, then we are still children or, at the most, egotistical teenagers caught up in the chaos and confusion of the modern world, as mega-star Taylor Swift so aptly describes in her hit song, “Shake it Up”.

This is music of the major 3rd at its most naïve.

On the bright side, we are seeing increasing numbers of awake and mature beings whose individuality shines like a beacon, beckoning us to take the next step from ‘teenager’ to ‘adult’. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi come to mind.

Coming back to the question of life-force then, how do we work with the arrangement of tones?

A highly advanced state of listening is required. A ‘clean-slate’, unprejudiced objectivity is needed so that the above secrets become revealed. One does not normally make the effort to cultivate such listening skill without good reason. The immense amount of work required must be considered as a service to humanity. A selfless approach will open up the doors to grace and the whisperings of the wise ones of the musical stratosphere. No doubt the direction will come, when the time is right, to use this knowledge for the purpose of uplifting others.

This is the ‘golden age’ of the third, the glorious Self, in which we can become conscious of the workings of the arts. When it matures, this Self will be able to rise above the old physically burdened paradigm and work uninhibited with the life force itself. An incredible power will be unleashed: and it is this power which is said will herald the next phase of musical development: the interval of the second.

It is tantalizing to note our journey thus far. It has come down the scale from the octave (Lemurian), seventh (Atlantean), sixth (Chaldean), fifth, (Egyptian), fourth (Greek), to the third (European Renaissance). Our task now is to gather ourselves for full understanding and expression of our evolution, sure in the understanding that an enlightened future awaits us, in the interval of the second and the prime, as soon as the present is complete!

Life force in music is elusive to most people. Yet it is the key to the future evolution of this most powerful art form. Music shapes us on every level. And we have the freedom to shape music itself, and thereby, the freedom to shape our own destiny.

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!” (From the Christmas Carol. “O little town of Bethlehem”)

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.

Silence is not the absence of sound. When all of man’s machinery is silenced, there is still the sound of nature: wind, crickets, mosquitoes. Even on the stillest of nights, I can still hear the sound of blood rushing around my ears, or a heartbeat, or breathing. When I detach myself from that and listen to my mind– whoa, how noisy can you get! Even with deep meditation, detached from outside sounds, when thoughts are quieted, then there is something approaching silence. Yet still I cannot describe it as an “absence of sound”, for it is a presence to me. This presence, this awareness, is the sound of silence.

Both ancient scripture and the latest modern science say that sound (vibration) predates all matter, that sound was there in the beginning (“In the beginning was the Word.”). Was/is there a time or place where there is an absence of sound? No, I don’t think so. When we attempt to understand silence as an “absence of sound” are we not deluding ourselves?

The sound of a distant train in a foggy landscape…silence; The trickle of a creek in a quiet forest glade…silence; The squeak of a rusty windmill in a vast outback landscape…silence…

Silence is present. Even when there is sound.

SOMEONE ONCE POSED THE QUESTION: When a tree falls alone in the forest with no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

“Of course”, we all say… but let’s look closer at this. The tree falling on the ground makes an air vibration, which will continue on and on, gradually weakening unless someone becomes aware of it. At that point, the hearer can register the vibration as “sound”. Thus, the world is full of air vibrations, shooting off here and there, eventually disappearing into thin air. They remain vibrations only, not sounds, unless an animal or human registers them as such. Without an awareness present, there can be nothing to interpret “vibration” as “sound”. No. The falling tree does not make a sound if there is no one there to hear it.

If sound is registered, there must be awareness. When there is awareness, there is sound.

WE KNOW THAT HUMANS will register air vibration in more or less the same way throughout the world, since our ears are built more or less the same way around the world. We can assume that a bird sounds the same to us as it would to a tribesman in Africa, though the perception and meaning may be entirely different (eg. “cheep, cheep”: “oh, how pretty” or “oh, the spirit of my grandmother is communicating”).

It is rather difficult for us to know how an animal, eg. a dog, would hear the same sound, since their ears are shaped so differently. It appears, however, that in the animal kingdom, sound is produced and registered on a lower level of awareness than humans. Sound at this level may convey food, danger, mating calls or other basic instinctual messages. With humans, sound reaches the level of idea; conveying not just instinctual messages but thought, emotion, feeling, even soul and spirit. Here, words, poetry and music come into being. Man is the only creature to use and interpret sound at this level.

So how is man going in his quest to find valuable meaning and interpretation in sound and silence? How evolved are we in this respect?

We’ve heard it said that only when we can truly listen to the Earth will we be able to save it.

If this assumption is true, the Earth meanwhile goes down it’s path of decay and destruction, managed by unaware, unquiet people, unable to listen and whose definition of silence, I suspect, would be a noisy one at best. It is interesting to note that modern man now considers 50 decibels of “background” noise to be at a level he can still call “silent”. Our society’s noise level has increased so much it has infiltrated our very understanding of silence itself. For 3 million years we have lived in relative silence. Yet in the last 200 years, noise levels have steadily increased to almost deafening. This has corresponded with a steady destruction of the Earth and the environment. Any correlation here? Evolution? We’ve got a long way to go. It seems we’ve come to the point where we either begin to listen to the planet’s silent needs, or perish.

I ONLY WISH that more musicians, with their enhanced hearing, would listen more to themselves and their hearts, their own inner silence, rather than their intellects and egos (in the case of the classical music scene) or animal instinctual urges (in the case of the heavy metal, rap, hard rock scene). This unfortunate trend has resulted in an extremely unhealthy state of music. Music is not dead. On the contrary: it is very much alive and unwell.

In language too, there is a general negative trend towards abbreviation, base rap language, dry technological terms even in non-work environments, and so on. And then the sounds we are exposed to– machinery, traffic, beeps, jingles, computerized music, are all heading the same unhealthy way.

Music, language, sound continue, as always, to profoundly effect our souls. Our souls, thus affected, seek to express their pain in their accustomed music/language… and the vicious circle goes on.

What can get us out?

A touch of awareness; a smidgeon of Silence and things would already change. Cultivating an awareness of silence and sound could reverse this trend.

Thoughts to myself: As a Music Teacher, keen on opening others’ awareness through the ears, my ultimate goal must be to awaken the awareness of silence… not just in the rests, but in sound as well (…train, creek, rusty windmill…) Music is Awareness, and Awareness is Silence. What is my aim in teaching music? I can think of no higher aim or greater gift than awakening That Silence in others.

SILENCE LEADS TO, and actually is the same as, awareness itself. Awareness leads to silence. Silence leads to more awareness. In the end it all merges.

Awareness: the story of human development. What is awareness? What is the root of awareness?

To be aware of something, you need to quieten the mind somewhat, to let in what’s happening, here and now. The quieter the mind, the more it can register what’s happening around it, the more aware it becomes. Quieting leads to awareness. Total quiet leads to total awareness. Silence is the root of Awareness.

Can one turn it around too, and imply that Awareness is the root of Silence? –that the more aware one is, the more one is able to quieten the mind? –that as we develop into aware individuals, we are actually becoming more and more (inwardly) silent? Won’t this silence make us more aware– and therefore more silent? Are we dealing with some unseen force here? …the Power of Silence?

I think the answer lies in the secret of silence itself. When we make the effort to become more aware, to quieten our mind, silence steps in, like a magical force. Silence does have a power of its own. Silence is an enlightened, self-intelligent force, which bestows more silence and awareness, taking us a step deeper than our own self-effort can. Silence, then, in its wisdom-filled awareness seems to be grace bestowing. Silence is a gift from God.

Silence is a gift. Silence is. Silence.

Paul Lawrence, 2002

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 world of sound is subtler than the images we see around us. Sounds and music creep in almost unnoticed and play around inside our heads. Here they work their magic, for music can heal, uplift, turn a mundane moment into a joyous one.

The positive sides of music are almost unfathomable. Some sacred music has been shown to transform living tissue right through to its DNA structure. Hindu scriptures state that just chanting the name of God with devotion is enough to lead one to enlightenment.

But music has a flipside. There’s white magic and black. Just as music can be positive, it can also be extremely negative. I remember reading about an extreme example where US marines would plug into explicit and obscene rap music during the war in Iraq to ‘help them in their work’ -with its crazed obsessive trance-like beat and lyrics that speak of hate, rape and murder.

And then there’s grey-area music… We’re not sure whether it’s uplifting or debasing, but we listen to it anyway. For better or worse, richer or poorer, we just let it play. How does this affect you?

A modern day example: A crowded café: a mobile phone begins to play Bach. Its owner instinctively grabs it, and says ‘hello’. What was that sound? Was it music?

If we react to that series of beeps with an instinctive urge to pick up a gadget and mutter ‘hello’, what has music become? Mere noise, for music without soul can only be described as ‘noise’. What has the human become? Like an animal. It receives an auditory stimulus and instinctively reacts, like a chicken that hears the rustle of an insect and pecks.

Music becomes noise. Man becomes animal/instinctive. In the same way we can’t expect a gadget to soulfully express music, we also can’t expect the listener to have a soulful musical experience from it.

In contrast, the intention of a master musician playing the same piece of Bach is to be one with universal creativity, to elevate himself/herself to the Music of the Spheres, to dance in delight to the perfection of the tonal relationships, the symmetries and primordial patterns, the sacred laws of harmony, as if dancing with God; the instrument has also been crafted with similarly high intentions: lifting matter- wood, ivory, metal- into spirit.

The intention of the mobile phone that plays Bach? Zilch. Its manufacturers’ intention? Bach= pick up the phone.

‘Grey area’ music sells us short. It depletes and deprives us of a soulful experience. We are worthy of something better. We have greater inner resources than that.

The exalted ability of man to flow with universal creativity is a remarkable achievement. Yes, the masters can do it, but so can the infant. The newborn, according to Rudolf Steiner is already attuned to the ‘soul’ in music, much more than the ‘matter’ (vibration). It is the responsibility of the child’s guardians and the task of the music educator to keep the soul of music alive, against the tide of materialization; to support the child’s expanding consciousness through music; indeed, to allow the child to uncover his/her own soul through music.

The task becomes extremely difficult when the child has been exposed to a lot of media. In this age of progress, the modern child hears ‘music’ as: mobile phone tones, advertising jingles, movie music, radio pop/ rock/ rap, computer game themes; there are ‘musical’ cars and fridges/ gadgets that tell you when a door’s been left open or you have a notification; then there’s so called ‘children’s music’ (eg “Baby Shark”), based on rock and roll- (adult music dressed up in children’s clothing).

None of the above is produced ‘live’ let alone acoustically. Each of these musical ‘genre’ have their intention: to alert, to calm and dull, to sell, stimulate, entertain, please the parents. Most media music these days is created not by musicians but predominantly by ‘spin doctors’ who study image, pop trends and what sells. For them, “music is money”. That which is intrinsically spiritual, which nearly all cultures have revered as a gift from the gods, has somehow been reduced to materialism. Music is dictated by gadgets, marketing, money, base instincts, stimulation and dehumanization. Are children inert to the intentions behind such music?

“In reality, music is the human being and indeed it is from music that one may rightly learn how to free oneself from matter.”

Now we have hit ‘rock’ bottom, let’s find a way up.

The tool is listening. The method of humanizing music again is to start listening. Listening, too, is a path, a journey of uncovering. By ‘listening’ I mean becoming aware, letting go of the unnecessary, of getting deeper, closer to the core, the truer nature of things. Wherever we start is right. Listening is a path of Knowledge.

Across the globe there is a healthy trend to get back to basics. In terms of music, there is a trend towards grassroots music- world music, traditional folk, old sacred music- but at a conscious level. Music is being truly listened to, with awareness. Many feel the urge to ‘unplug’- to hear acoustic instruments, to feel the vibration of cowhide stretched over a drum frame- a sensation no synthesizer can reproduce.

Some are becoming aware of certain healing properties of music- pure music, perfect intervals, ancient sacred instruments, chanting.

And some again are reaching to the stars and working with this awareness in far-reaching, futuristic, profoundly healing ways.

It has been just over a century since Rudolf Steiner advocated this way of working with music, even in schools. His teachings were visionary and lofty, yet not beyond grasp. To those already used to working spiritually with the arts Steiner’s teachings make sense and show a way forward for the evolution of man. Whilst Steiner educators are not required to teach children this higher spiritual knowledge, they are expected to work at imbibing it themselves, as a philosophical base from which to work. With this intention behind their work, much is communicated to the child on a subtle level that will serve them well for the future. When teachers are steeped in a deep understanding and an inner nourishment from music and the arts, something precious is awakened in the child. Like all subtle, life-giving processes, this takes time until fruition. The teacher will carefully find ways of bringing out a child’s innate musicality, helping the child to evolve, uncovering the soul through music.

Steiner also introduced a new art form, known as Eurythmy, which requires the teacher to have a profound understanding of the secrets of music and speech. When these secrets are ‘brought down’ into the realm of movement and gesture and experienced by a child, seeds of great cosmic wisdom are planted. Steiner was acutely aware of the effects certain tonal relationships (intervals) have on man and what sort of music supports the evolving child. These indications were passed on to the teachers of the first Waldorf schools, always with the message that teachers should endeavour to experience these truths for themselves, and work artistically from their own understanding. Working in this way, with awareness, music’s inaudible subtleties become apparent. It’s as if music is ‘lifted up’. One learns to hear, not with the ear, but with the heart. The art form is raised once again from the material to the spiritual. It returns home, to where it belongs.

Children learn that music is a gift. It is something magical, something to be revered. And in the hands of true magicians (Waldorf teachers!), music becomes a dynamic, healing, socializing, spiritualizing power.

It’s not beyond any parent to tap into this wisdom. It’s all common sense and intuition, really. And an ability to really listen to your own child’s needs. What music will best nourish them?

So please consider what music your child is exposed to. Is it supporting their development and well-being? Is it nurturing, nourishing, magical? Is it permeated by soul?

Listen to it. Truly listen. Not with your ears, but with your heart. Listen to the inaudible. What is it saying?

Only then will you know whether the gift of music is worth giving at all.

“What is Music? It is what one does not hear…. The more one is able to make use of what cannot be heard, the more one uses the audible simply as a vehicle of the inaudible, so much the more is music permeated by soul.”

Paul Lawrence, 2004, edited 2020
All quotes from Rudolf Steiner’s book, ‘Eurythmy as Visible Tone’.

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.

Before we set out, we formed a circle and sang. We also stamped, clapped, laughed and generally had a jolly good time. Spirits were high. Hearts, heads and hands were connecting beautifully. Then someone suggested we pause for a moment to feel the energy in our fingertips, and from the earth beneath our feet. The energy was tangible, “streaming”, strong.

Ten minutes later we plunged those highly charged fingers into our buckets of diluted ‘500’ and stirred for an hour, before spraying. The water felt so energized. The preparation was obviously working. But I wondered– what about the human element? Had our singing and high spirits also charged the water?

Is there a connection between singing and farming?

Old cultures have known for thousands of years there is a connection. They intuitively knew how to ‘sing the land’. In Aboriginal Australia, the land and the song line were intricately interwoven. Every feature of the landscape had its living song. To keep the song alive was to keep the land alive. In other cultures, people still work the land with a song each day– from the potato fields of Jamaica to the beaches of the Pacific islands– or think of the old slave songs of the US cotton-fields. Sometimes the ‘song of the land’ may be heard through a musical instrument– the idyllic picture of the shepherd is not complete without a lyre or a flute, nor is a picture of the Swiss countryside complete without an alphorn or a yodeler. In ancient India and China the relationship between music and environment became a science. Certain melodies, ‘ragas’, and notes were reserved for certain weather patterns, certain seasons or certain times of day or month. The great Chinese emperors would never think to rule their empire without first tuning their orchestra to the great cosmic note, the ‘Huang Chung’– sometimes ten thousand players were required to harmonize the empire! Old cultures instinctively knew there was a relationship between land and song.

How can it be that song affects the land?

Well, for a start, singing makes you happy. Try singing when you’re down, depressed, worried, stressed. It lifts the spirits. It gets you into your heart and lungs, and out of your head. It gives you a voice to air your ‘stuff’. Even a sad song will provide comfort and tend to balance out the emotions. Singing forces you to breathe more. It literally forces your head/skull, dense with thought, worry and fear, to vibrate with music! Many cultures use singing as a means of raising consciousness. It fills the empty spaces, inside and outside, with life. It enlivens and energizes.

Singing also affects the environment. Even conventional science has shown that plants grow better when they ‘hear’ Mozart. The latest research tells us that certain ‘songs’, such as Gregorian chant and Sanskrit mantra can transform a living entity right down to its DNA structure. There is an ashram in India where mantras are played through loud speakers throughout the gardens. The ashram is an oasis of green, full of lush, exotic plants, while outside the gates it is treeless and barren. And King Charles admits to talking to his plants, so it must work! (He should try singing.)

Nature and singing have common roots. They are governed by the same laws. They complement each other. In music theory, the laws of harmony are governed by mathematical principles– simple ratios that are abundant in nature. You only have to look at the proportions of a tree or an insect to see music theory in action: the laws of harmony. The distances and speeds of the planets above are dictated by the same mathematical/musical principles. It is the ‘music of the spheres’– the cosmic symphony. Working with these laws, whether in nature, music, astrology or mathematics has a very harmonizing effect.

Now picture the typical modern farmer– surrounded by his noisy machines, tractors, harvesters, crop-dusters, armed with his pesticides and chemicals. Does the typical farmer sing? Or has the cosmic symphony been silenced within him? Does he prefer the dead, physical, chemical, to the living breathing, musical?

Biodynamic farming provides an alternative to the typical modern farmer. It goes beyond the lifeless, physical elements. It works with the living, breathing and, in a sense, musical: in that it takes the cosmic symphony into account. It uses the rhythms of the moon, sun and planets to its advantage. Its pinnacle is: man. Because only conscious man can take all the various living elements and rhythms and combine them so that nature healthily evolves in a way it cannot achieve by itself. It is truly the farming method for the Age of Consciousness. Ideally, biodynamic preparations are made and stirred by hand, not machine, so that everything that goes into the ground has been infused with the ‘stuff of man’: consciousness. The more conscious is man, the more successful is his biodynamic farm.

Singing. Only man can do it. It requires consciousness. It raises consciousness. The archetypical qualities of song are the hallmark of man. When man sings, he leaves his mark.

The biodynamic farmer wants to become more conscious and he wants his land to hear the cosmic song. Putting two and two together then, have we discovered (or rather, rediscovered) a new experimental ingredient to the biodynamic farm?

In attempting to raise his own level of consciousness and infuse his farm with cosmic music, the farmer may like to experiment with the simple art of singing. His ancestors have done it. Science shows it works. The only thing he has to lose is his shyness.

Once he has gotten the modern stereotyped message of ‘real farmers don’t sing’ out of his head, he may ask: “Well, what do I sing? What key? What language? Is Beyonce OK? Can I play my harmonica instead?” –to which the answer is: do whatever feels right. You too are part of the creation. The cosmos is always singing through you. When you stick your hand in a bucketful of fermented cow poo, the cosmic song becomes amplified. Listen for a while. Let the silence become alive. Then begin to tone or hum. What comes out? Have a giggle if you need to, then sing. Go with the flow. Keep open and light.

And whatever you do, don’t get too serious. You might be starting a new farming revolution, but you probably don’t want the neighbours to hear!

Paul Lawrence, 2003, edited 2020

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’. We are not talking about limited artistic creativity in the human sense but the source of creative power, “creation”, that animates and gives rise to every living and non-sentient entity. When a human being experiences this kind of creativity, they experience their own divinity. They become co-creator, one with all other truly creative beings and one with God. Human creative endeavours help one prepare for this experience, as does meditation and a deep appreciation of music.

Paul Lawrence, 2016