Music in the Microcosm and the Macrocosm
Music in the Microcosm and Macrocosm
A lecture delivered at the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of the Grand Lodge of New York, Salon de la Rose + Croix, March 28, 2019.
“Artist, you are a priest. Art is the great mystery, and when your effort ends in the masterpiece, a ray of the divine descends as on an altar.”[1]
- Joséphin Péladan
To understand Art in the view of the Rose + Croix, consider the idea that there is a tradition of divine knowledge as old as mankind itself, which exists in every person like an instinct, and which can be remembered. Allegorically this has been characterized as a lost language, lost chord, or forgotten word. The memory of it can be activated by certain things, such as the books you read, meetings with extraordinary persons, Rituals, Initiation, symbols, and Art.
To give you an idea of how the artists of the French Rosicrucian tradition expressed this idea, I’d like to share an excerpt written by the French author, poet, and composer Fabre d’Olivet, whose writings influenced Peladan and also especially Dr. Gerard Encausse (known by the pseudonym Papus), the founder of the Martinist Order. In 1844 Fabre d’Olivet wrote:
Hear this secret, young composers who are seeking the perfection of the musical art. Know that a correspondence exists between souls, a secret and sympathetic fluid, an unknown electricity that puts them in contact with one another. Of all the means of setting this fluid in motion, music offers the most powerful one. Would you communicate a sentiment, a passion, to your listeners? Would you awaken in them a memory, inspire in them a presentiment? Conceive this sentiment, this passion, strongly; soak yourself in this memory, this presentiment; work! The more energy you have put into feeling, the more strongly you will find your listeners feel. They will experience in their turn, and in proportion to your energy and their own sensibility, the electrical impulse you have imprinted on the sympathetic fluid of which I have spoken.[2]
Consider the idea that Art can stimulate unconscious and ancient human instinct. Darwin theorized that music-making is a remnant of primitive communication, because he observed that the instinct to produce music exists in other animals.[3] For example, the songs of birds and humpback whales use many of the same rhythmic and musical phrasing patterns as humans.[4] To explain why music exists among species, some have proposed that music serves an evolutionary purpose. For example, we know that music triggers the hypothalamus to release endorphins, the neurotransmitters that promote a sense of well-being and play an important role in social bonding.[5] So it has been suggested that music may have replaced grooming behaviors, which also trigger the release of endorphins, as social groups grew too large for grooming to unite the groups.
And music has predictable effects on the emotions. One study suggests that the acoustic frequencies of major and minor modes are similar to those of excited (happy) and subdued (sad) speech, respectively.[6] Another found that people with no previous exposure to western music could identify happiness, sadness or fear in instrumental excerpts. Researchers concluded that western music in particular seems to mimic the emotional cues of human speech, using the same melodic and rhythmic structures.[7]
The relationship between music and the emotional cues of human speech takes us deep into the microcosm –into the womb. Before birth, the senses of sight, smell, taste, and touch are limited, but the unborn child, through the amniotic fluid, perceives the sounds of its own body, of the mother’s body, and of the outside world. The various emotional states of the mother, which are also felt by the child, are accompanied by differences in the tone, pitch, and rhythm of her voice. So our very first notion of emotional meaning is associated with sound. After birth, we forget the experience of the womb as we acquire language, but throughout our lives sound remains related to the unconscious memory of our earliest conscious experiences.[8]
With this in mind, consider that the oldest known musical instruments were found in caves in southwestern Germany, Austria and the French Pyrenees. It has been suggested that these caves were sanctuaries of initiation rites.[9] Think about how the experiences in those caves might evoke the unconscious memory of the experience in the womb. Iegor Reznikoff, an archaeoacoustician at University of Paris, studied similar painted caves in Burgundy and observed that the resonance is so strong that a simple low hum at the right pitch is sufficient to help one proceed in the darkness. Describing this experience he writes, “The whole body co-vibrates with the gallery, it is like an identification, a deep communion with earth, stone and the mineral elements of Creation.”
The oldest known musical instrument is a flute found in the cave Geissenkloesterle in southern Germany, one of several caves in the region that has produced important examples of mythical art. The flutes found there are made from the bones of birds and from the ivory of wooly mammoth tusks, and are more than 42,000 years old. These flutes are no mere whistles or noisemakers, but in fact are “capable of playing expressive melodies” in the tones of a pentatonic scale.[10] Remarkably, prehistoric flutes found in East Asia and dating back to 6000-7000 B.C.E. have identical beveling around the finger holes, and the alignment marks around the holes show that the same technique was used to determine where the holes would be placed.[11]
It is with the ancient Greeks that we arrive at music in the macrocosm. Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century B.C.E., was the first to give a model for music that is scientific and which furthered the ancient understanding of numerical proportion in nature. Nicomachus of Gerasa the Pythagorean, who lived in the first century C.E., writes that Pythagoras walked by a smithy and “heard the hammers beating out iron on the anvil and giving off in combination sounds which were most harmonious with one another, except for one combination.” Then, by means of weights and strings, Pythagoras discovered the numerical proportions of the concordant, or harmonious, combinations: the octave is produced by a 2:1 ratio; the fifth is produced by a 3:2 ratio; and the fourth is produced by a 4:3 ratio.
These same mathematical ratios are not merely theoretical. They are actually inherent in Nature. If you take a single string stretched between two points and pluck it, it will automatically divide itself at certain points called nodes corresponding to these same numerical ratios and produce a series of what are called “overtones.” Not only does the string sound the main tone we hear, but also the octave, the fifth, and the fourth above it, and so on, in perfect harmony. Numerical proportion is present inherently in Nature, unfailingly, and by us it is perceived aesthetically as Beauty.
The discovery of numerical proportion in the phenomena of sound led to important speculations concerning proportion in the rest of Nature. According to Nicomachus, the prototype of our music is the music of the planets. He writes that “all swiftly whirling bodies necessarily produce sounds,”[12] and says that “we ourselves do not hear this cosmic symphony with its deep complementation of sound and its all-embracing attunement, as tradition describes.”[13]
Sources:
[1] Péladan, J. (1892). Catalogue du Salon de la Rose-Croix: 10 mars au 10 avril. Paris: Galerie Durand-Ruel, 7.
[2] D’Olivet, A. F., & Godwin, J. (1997). The secret lore of music. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.
[3] Charles Darwin. The Descent of Man (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896): 572.
[4] Payne, R. S., & McVay, S. (1971). Songs of Humpback Whales. Science, 173(3997), 585-597.
[5] Fukui, H., & Toyoshima, K. (2014). Music increase altruism through regulating the secretion of steroid hormones and peptides. Medical Hypotheses, 83(6), 706-708.
[6] Daniel L. Bowling, Kamraan Gill, Jonathan D. Choi, Joseph Prinz, and Dale Purves. “Major and minor music compared to excited and subdued speech.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127.1 (2010): 491-503.
[7] Fritz, Thomas, Sebastian Jentschke, Nathalie Gosselin, Daniela Sammler, Isabelle Peretz, Robert Turner, Angela D. Friederici, and Stefan Koelsch. "Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music." Current Biology 19.7 (2009): 573-576.
[8] Reznikoff, I. (2004). On Primitive Elements of Musical Meaning. The Journal of Music and Meaning, 3.
[9] Leroi-Gourhan, A., Anati, E., & Champion, S. (1982). The dawn of European art: An introduction to palaeolithic cave painting. Cambridge: University Press.
[10] H. Mair. “Prehistoric European and East Asian Flutes,” in Anderl et al (2006): 211.
[11] Victor H. Mair. “Prehistoric European and East Asian Flutes”, 2006.
[12] Nicomachus, & Levin, F. R. (1986). Manual of harmonics. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press. 45.
[13] Ibid. 46.
A lecture delivered at the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of the Grand Lodge of New York, Salon de la Rose + Croix, March 28, 2019.
“Artist, you are a priest. Art is the great mystery, and when your effort ends in the masterpiece, a ray of the divine descends as on an altar.”[1]
- Joséphin Péladan
To understand Art in the view of the Rose + Croix, consider the idea that there is a tradition of divine knowledge as old as mankind itself, which exists in every person like an instinct, and which can be remembered. Allegorically this has been characterized as a lost language, lost chord, or forgotten word. The memory of it can be activated by certain things, such as the books you read, meetings with extraordinary persons, Rituals, Initiation, symbols, and Art.
To give you an idea of how the artists of the French Rosicrucian tradition expressed this idea, I’d like to share an excerpt written by the French author, poet, and composer Fabre d’Olivet, whose writings influenced Peladan and also especially Dr. Gerard Encausse (known by the pseudonym Papus), the founder of the Martinist Order. In 1844 Fabre d’Olivet wrote:
Hear this secret, young composers who are seeking the perfection of the musical art. Know that a correspondence exists between souls, a secret and sympathetic fluid, an unknown electricity that puts them in contact with one another. Of all the means of setting this fluid in motion, music offers the most powerful one. Would you communicate a sentiment, a passion, to your listeners? Would you awaken in them a memory, inspire in them a presentiment? Conceive this sentiment, this passion, strongly; soak yourself in this memory, this presentiment; work! The more energy you have put into feeling, the more strongly you will find your listeners feel. They will experience in their turn, and in proportion to your energy and their own sensibility, the electrical impulse you have imprinted on the sympathetic fluid of which I have spoken.[2]
Consider the idea that Art can stimulate unconscious and ancient human instinct. Darwin theorized that music-making is a remnant of primitive communication, because he observed that the instinct to produce music exists in other animals.[3] For example, the songs of birds and humpback whales use many of the same rhythmic and musical phrasing patterns as humans.[4] To explain why music exists among species, some have proposed that music serves an evolutionary purpose. For example, we know that music triggers the hypothalamus to release endorphins, the neurotransmitters that promote a sense of well-being and play an important role in social bonding.[5] So it has been suggested that music may have replaced grooming behaviors, which also trigger the release of endorphins, as social groups grew too large for grooming to unite the groups.
And music has predictable effects on the emotions. One study suggests that the acoustic frequencies of major and minor modes are similar to those of excited (happy) and subdued (sad) speech, respectively.[6] Another found that people with no previous exposure to western music could identify happiness, sadness or fear in instrumental excerpts. Researchers concluded that western music in particular seems to mimic the emotional cues of human speech, using the same melodic and rhythmic structures.[7]
The relationship between music and the emotional cues of human speech takes us deep into the microcosm –into the womb. Before birth, the senses of sight, smell, taste, and touch are limited, but the unborn child, through the amniotic fluid, perceives the sounds of its own body, of the mother’s body, and of the outside world. The various emotional states of the mother, which are also felt by the child, are accompanied by differences in the tone, pitch, and rhythm of her voice. So our very first notion of emotional meaning is associated with sound. After birth, we forget the experience of the womb as we acquire language, but throughout our lives sound remains related to the unconscious memory of our earliest conscious experiences.[8]
With this in mind, consider that the oldest known musical instruments were found in caves in southwestern Germany, Austria and the French Pyrenees. It has been suggested that these caves were sanctuaries of initiation rites.[9] Think about how the experiences in those caves might evoke the unconscious memory of the experience in the womb. Iegor Reznikoff, an archaeoacoustician at University of Paris, studied similar painted caves in Burgundy and observed that the resonance is so strong that a simple low hum at the right pitch is sufficient to help one proceed in the darkness. Describing this experience he writes, “The whole body co-vibrates with the gallery, it is like an identification, a deep communion with earth, stone and the mineral elements of Creation.”
The oldest known musical instrument is a flute found in the cave Geissenkloesterle in southern Germany, one of several caves in the region that has produced important examples of mythical art. The flutes found there are made from the bones of birds and from the ivory of wooly mammoth tusks, and are more than 42,000 years old. These flutes are no mere whistles or noisemakers, but in fact are “capable of playing expressive melodies” in the tones of a pentatonic scale.[10] Remarkably, prehistoric flutes found in East Asia and dating back to 6000-7000 B.C.E. have identical beveling around the finger holes, and the alignment marks around the holes show that the same technique was used to determine where the holes would be placed.[11]
It is with the ancient Greeks that we arrive at music in the macrocosm. Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century B.C.E., was the first to give a model for music that is scientific and which furthered the ancient understanding of numerical proportion in nature. Nicomachus of Gerasa the Pythagorean, who lived in the first century C.E., writes that Pythagoras walked by a smithy and “heard the hammers beating out iron on the anvil and giving off in combination sounds which were most harmonious with one another, except for one combination.” Then, by means of weights and strings, Pythagoras discovered the numerical proportions of the concordant, or harmonious, combinations: the octave is produced by a 2:1 ratio; the fifth is produced by a 3:2 ratio; and the fourth is produced by a 4:3 ratio.
These same mathematical ratios are not merely theoretical. They are actually inherent in Nature. If you take a single string stretched between two points and pluck it, it will automatically divide itself at certain points called nodes corresponding to these same numerical ratios and produce a series of what are called “overtones.” Not only does the string sound the main tone we hear, but also the octave, the fifth, and the fourth above it, and so on, in perfect harmony. Numerical proportion is present inherently in Nature, unfailingly, and by us it is perceived aesthetically as Beauty.
The discovery of numerical proportion in the phenomena of sound led to important speculations concerning proportion in the rest of Nature. According to Nicomachus, the prototype of our music is the music of the planets. He writes that “all swiftly whirling bodies necessarily produce sounds,”[12] and says that “we ourselves do not hear this cosmic symphony with its deep complementation of sound and its all-embracing attunement, as tradition describes.”[13]
Sources:
[1] Péladan, J. (1892). Catalogue du Salon de la Rose-Croix: 10 mars au 10 avril. Paris: Galerie Durand-Ruel, 7.
[2] D’Olivet, A. F., & Godwin, J. (1997). The secret lore of music. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.
[3] Charles Darwin. The Descent of Man (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896): 572.
[4] Payne, R. S., & McVay, S. (1971). Songs of Humpback Whales. Science, 173(3997), 585-597.
[5] Fukui, H., & Toyoshima, K. (2014). Music increase altruism through regulating the secretion of steroid hormones and peptides. Medical Hypotheses, 83(6), 706-708.
[6] Daniel L. Bowling, Kamraan Gill, Jonathan D. Choi, Joseph Prinz, and Dale Purves. “Major and minor music compared to excited and subdued speech.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127.1 (2010): 491-503.
[7] Fritz, Thomas, Sebastian Jentschke, Nathalie Gosselin, Daniela Sammler, Isabelle Peretz, Robert Turner, Angela D. Friederici, and Stefan Koelsch. "Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music." Current Biology 19.7 (2009): 573-576.
[8] Reznikoff, I. (2004). On Primitive Elements of Musical Meaning. The Journal of Music and Meaning, 3.
[9] Leroi-Gourhan, A., Anati, E., & Champion, S. (1982). The dawn of European art: An introduction to palaeolithic cave painting. Cambridge: University Press.
[10] H. Mair. “Prehistoric European and East Asian Flutes,” in Anderl et al (2006): 211.
[11] Victor H. Mair. “Prehistoric European and East Asian Flutes”, 2006.
[12] Nicomachus, & Levin, F. R. (1986). Manual of harmonics. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press. 45.
[13] Ibid. 46.