Rudolf Steiner and Music

Can anyone offer insight into the sources of Rudolf Steiner's ideas
concerning the significance of musical interval and human spiritual
development? The following quotes are from his book, "The Inner Nature of
Music and the Experience of Tone" (1983), An throposophic Press, Hudson,
NY.

"...If we compare our age with former times, we find our age characterized
in a specific way in relation to the musical element. One can say that
our age occupies a position between two musical feelings [Empfindungen];
one such feeling it already has, th e other not yet. The feeling that our
age has attained, at least to a considerable degree, is the feeling for
the interval of the third. In history we can easily trace how the
transition from the feeling for the fifth to the third came about in the
worl d of musical feeling. The feeling for the third is something new.
The other feeling that will come about but as yet does not exist in our
age is the feeling for the octave. A true feeling for the octave actually
has not yet developed in humanity. You will experience the difference
that exists in comparison to feelings for tone up to the seventh. While
the seventh is still felt in relation to the prime, an entirely different
experience arises as soon as the octave appears. One cannot actually
disting uish it any longer from the prime; it merges with the prime. In
any case, the difference that exists for a fifth or a third is absent for
an octave. Of course we do have a feeling for the octave, but this is not
yet the feeling that will be developed in time; in the future the feeling
for the octave will be something completely different and will one day be
able to deepen the musical experience tremendously. Every time the octave
appears in a musical composition, man will have a feeling that I can only
describe with the words, "I have found my 'I' anew; I am uplifted in my
humanity by the feeling for the octave." The particular words I use here
are not important; what is important is the feeling that is evoked. "(p.
47-8)

"If you could go back into the Atlantean age, you would find that the
music of that time, which had little similarity to today's music, was
arranged according to continuing sevenths; even the fifth was unknown.
This musical experience, which was based on an experience of the seventh
through the full range of octaves, always consisted of man feeling
completely transported [entruckt]. 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." ...As the human being
wished to incarnate more deeply into his physical body and take possession
of it, the experience of the seventh became faintly painful. ...In the
course of time, the fifths began to be the pleasurable experience. All
musical forms, however, in which the third and what we call c today are
excluded, were permeated with a measure of this transporting quality. Such
music made a person feel as if he were carried into a different element.
In the music of fifths [Quintenmusik], a human being felt lifted out of
himself. ...This transition to the experience of the third signifies at
the same time that man feels music in relation to his ow n physical
organization. For the first time, man feels that he is an earthly being
when he plays music. Formerly, when he experienced fifths, he would have
been inclined to say, "The angel in my being is beginning to play music.
The muse in me speaks." "I sing" was not the appropriate expression. It
became possible to say this only when the experience of the third emerged,
making the whole musical feeling an inward experience; the human being
then felt that he himself was singing." (p 51-2)

Anyone have any insight into the sources of this kind of thinking about music?

Bruce Kanzelmeyer


Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 19:10 +0200
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01312; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 19:10:10 +0200
Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01310
Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
id KAA21375; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 10:08:35 -0700
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 10:08:35 -0700
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu