The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone: Selected Lectures from the Work of Rudolf Steiner

by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner, Alice Wulsin (Editor)

7 lectures in various cities, December 3, 1906 – March 16, 1923 (CW 283) "A tone is at the foundation of everything in the physical world." This is one of many astonishing statements made by Rudolf Steiner in this collection of seven lectures on the inner realities of music. These lectures are an unusual treasure, since they are the only two groups of lectures that Steiner gave primarily on music, other than the lecture cycle for the tone eurythmy course, Eurythmy as Visible Music . In the first group of three lectures, given in 1906, Steiner explains why music affects the human soul so powerfully. Music has always held a special position among the arts because it is the only art form whose archetype, or source, lies not in the physical world, as with architecture, sculpture, and painting, but purely in the spiritual world-the soul's true home. Music thus directly expresses through tones the innermost essence of the cosmos, and our sense of wellbeing when we hear music comes from a recognition of our soul's experience in the spiritual world. In the remaining lectures, given in 1922 and 1923, Steiner discusses our experience of musical intervals and shows how it has undergone profound changes during the course of evolution. The religious effects of music in ancient times and the union of music with speech are considered, as well as the origin of musical instruments out of imaginations that accompanied singing. New insights are offered on the nature of the major and minor modes and on future directions of musical development. “Major and minor keys, this strange bond between music and human subjectivity, the actual inner life of feeling―insofar as this life of feeling is bound to the earthly corporeality―came into being only in the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and are related to the experience of the third. The difference between major and minor keys appears; the subjective soul element relates itself to the musical element.” ― Rudolf Steiner (lect. 5) This volume is a translation of 7 lectures (of 8) in Das Wesen des Musikalischen und das Tonerlebnis im Menschen, published by Rudolf Steiner-Nachlaftverwaltung, Dornach, 1969 (GA 283).

Genres: Music, Spirituality

108 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

Author also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...


Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,  differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with most lectures by Dr Steiner, they are more easily read than his books. That does not make this an easy read. To understand the depth of Steiner's lectures, one must first be acquainted with his book "An Outline of Esoteric Science". In these lectures, knowledge of both Esoteric Human Evolution and the Seven and Nine Fold human being helps immensely. According to Steiner, music is the highest art form because it is purely spiritual. Music tones must be reborn each time a tune is expressed via the physical world (versus the permanence of art through material mediums. Further, it seems Steiner does not consider recordings as "music" as he is primarily concerned with art as the act of creation, and so far as music is concerned, once a piece is played it remains in the ethers, lacking physicality).

This is a beautiful series of lectures, covering the development of the ear, the evolution of tones from pre-Earth, the perception and acquisition of and individual's musical-ness from World of Devachan (places visited by the Astral body during dreamless sleep and between lives), the quality of notes as related to physiology, color, Eurythmy and the Zodiac, the different spiritual realms accessed by Imagination Inspiration and Intuition and possessing musical 'talent' as related to karma and physical heredity.

A beautiful philosophy of the experience of music.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information but a very dull read.

[Maura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read for serious singers.