The Inner Nature of Music: And the Experience of Tone (CW 283) (The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner) (Volume 283) - Softcover

Steiner, Rudolf

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1621483460 ISBN 13: 9781621483465

Publisher: SteinerBooks, 2024

Synopsis

8 lectures, 2 Q&A sessions, and 2 closing addresses, 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 Singing.

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).

About this title

About the Author

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was born in the small village of Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Croatia), where he grew up. As a young man, he lived in Weimar and Berlin, where he became a well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, known especially for his work with Goethe's scientific writings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he began to develop his early philosophical principles into an approach to systematic research into psychological and spiritual phenomena. Formally beginning his spiritual teaching career under the auspices of the Theosophical Society, Steiner came to use the term Anthroposophy (and spiritual science) for his philosophy, spiritual research, and findings. The influence of Steiner's multifaceted genius has led to innovative and holistic approaches in medicine, various therapies, philosophy, religious renewal, Waldorf education, education for special needs, threefold economics, biodynamic agriculture, Goethean science, architecture, and the arts of drama, speech, and eurythmy. In 1924, Rudolf Steiner founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world. He died in Dornach, Switzerland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Of particular interest in this volume are the two lectures given in Stuttgart in 1923. They are an incredible treasure―the more you work with them, the more they reveal to you. For decades, one was told that they were given by Rudolf Steiner to the teachers of the Waldorf school, and many of us puzzled: Why did he give the eurythmy forms for the musical intervals to the teachers and not to the eurythmists? It is, of course, not “either/or” but rather “and.” In the meantime, it has become clear that these lectures were given in the Eurythmeum for the faculty of the adult eurythmy training. Eurythmy students and teachers of the Waldorf school were invited to join. Now the latest German edition of Eurythmy as Visible Singing (CW 278) includes a reproduction of Rudolf Steiner’s sketch for the intervals. 

I once heard Elena Zuccoli (one of the early eurythmists who was a student in the Eurythmeum at that time) describe how Rudolf Steiner drew the intervals on the blackboard. Because no black paper had been used to record his drawings, as was customary, they were not erased for a long time, and the eurythmy students therefore had lessons in the classroom with the original drawings. I mention this also because I trust her drawings (which are slightly different from the sketch) more than the sketch itself, which Rudolf Steiner made in his notebook while preparing for the lecture. In my view, it is likely that he altered the forms slightly when he gave them in the lecture and that Zuccoli’s drawings therefore reflect more closely what was actually given. Rudolf Steiner also did not include the octave, no doubt for good reasons. Tradition has it that he never gave a form for the octave. In Eurythmy as Visible Singing, interval forms as such are not mentioned.

The inseparable aspect of eurythmy and anthroposophy, or eurythmy and music as expression of anthroposophy, is very evident in these lectures. We see the threefold nature of the soul: music lives only within feeling but is differentiated by tending upwards towards thinking, downwards towards the will: melody towards the head; rhythm towards the limbs; harmony as feeling within feeling in the middle. It is noteworthy that in the Tone Course (Eurythmy as Visible Singing), Rudolf Steiner brings the same theme again, but slightly differently. There he again emphasizes that music is always within feeling, but then gives a different grouping: upwards with melos, downwards with strength of tone (forte, piano), and rhythm in the middle. What is in the middle here (rhythm) is extended―the difference between melody and melos is that melody is not pure melos but has a rhythmic quality that is added, and rhythm in the Stuttgart lectures is beat with rhythmic qualities added, which leaves space for harmony in the middle:

Directions            Stuttgart Lectures           Eurythmy as Visible Singing
Thinking            melody             melos
Feeling            harmony             rhythm
Willing            rhythm             strength of tone

Beat is the measuring of time expressed through the polarity of emphasis and lack of emphasis. Rhythm alone does not contain emphasis but is the alternation of being more or less conscious―more awake (short tones), more asleep (long tones)―of incarnating and excarnating. Expressed in eurythmy, the different qualities found in our right and left appear in beat, while those of our front and back appear in rhythm. With melos, we have the polarity of head activity (free movement) and foot activity (bound, unfree movement). 

The gift of music for humanity, the inward quality in every aspect, is a direct indication for the movement of a eurythmist. We raise the physical body to move according to etheric laws. In tone eurythmy, we transform the spatial into the non-spatial. 

We have the supersensible, the spiritual made visible (more exactly: brought to expression). The visual connects us with the outside. Rudolf Steiner brings so beautifully the difference between the sense of seeing and the sense of hearing―hearing actually separates the outside from the inside, as opposed to seeing, where we “reach out.” This is never in the audible but the inaudible experience. 

Everything brought in these lectures can be understood as an elaboration of this. Bringing together the qualities of the intervals and their forms given in these lectures with the added gestures in the Tone Course is invaluable.

I personally love and so appreciate the way Rudolf Steiner often says something that, if taken too literally, would lead easily to fanaticism, but he follows with a sentence or two balancing it out and bringing it into proper proportion. The example here is at the end of the lecture of March 8, 1923, contrasting the instruments of the orchestra with the piano. I would go even further, adding that the piano is a wonderful example of the musical not lying in the sound but in the inaudible, the in-between. The fading of the tone of the piano honestly shows that the movement is the inaudible experience between the tones, whereas wind and bowed string instruments can sustain the tone audibly.

These lectures convincingly reveal how the human being is a citizen of two worlds, and the more this can be brought to expression in all we do, the more human we become. Music and eurythmy are important guides, teachers, for this path, and practicing what Rudolf Steiner has made available to us is immense. There are still many, many things I do not understand, but I trust that over the course of time, more and more will come to light.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: SteinerBooks
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1621483460
• ISBN 13: 9781621483465
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198