Alain Danielou site
Music and the Power of Sound:
The Influence of Tuning and Intervals on Consciousness
by Alain Danielou
(172 pages, hb, $24.95)
Inner Traditions, 1995
ISBN 1-89281-336-9
Danielou presents a detailed exposition of various tunings, modes and scales, and how they
produce specific states of conscsiousness. Know your math and your music notation for this
one.
Chapter Titles
1. Metaphysical Correspondances
2. The Conflict of Musical Systems
3. The Measurement of Intervals and Harmonic Sounds
4. The Cycle of Fifths: The Musical Theory of the Chinese
5. Relations to a Tonic: The Modal Music of India
6. Confusion of the Systems: The Music of the Greeks
7. The Western Scale and Equal Temperament
8. The Scale of Sounds
Selected Quotes
p. 1
"All music is based on the relations between sounds, and a careful study of the
numbers by which these relations are ruled brings us immediately into the almost forgotten
science of numerical symbolism. Numbers correspond to abstract principles, and their
application to physical reality follows absolute and inescapable laws. In musical
experience we are brought into direct contact with these principles; the connection
between physical reality and metaphysical principles can be felt in music as nowhere else.
Music was therefore justly considered by the ancients as die key to all sciences and
arts--the link between metaphysics and physics through which the universal laws and their
multiple applications could be understood.
Modern civilization has tended to reject the ways of thinking and scientific conceptions
that formed its foundations. Western people have largely broken away from the social and
intellectual regulations that restricted their freedom, and in doing so they have
abandoned the age-old order and traditional knowledge that had been the basis of their
development. This is why sciences and arts originally understood as diverse applications
of common principles have been reduced to a condition of fragmentary experiments isolated
from one another.
Thus, to take the domain with which we are here particularly concerned, there remain no
data in the West on the nature of music except for a few technical and mostly arbitrary
rules about the relations of sounds and the structures of chortis. The strange phenomenon
by which coordinated sounds have the power to evoke feelings or images is accepted simply
as a fact. Attempts are made to define the effects of certain combinations of sounds, but
these effects are discovered almost fortuitously an(] no search is made for their
underlying cause. just as one day Newton discovered the law of gravitation, it is only
through the genius of some musician that we may be able to rediscover the significance of
a particular relation of sounds; it is Gluck or Chopin who may suddenly reveal to us the
deep, absolute, and inevitable meaning of a chord or of a melodic interval."
p.4
"The universe is called in Sanskrit jagat (that which moves) because nothing exists
but by the combination of forces and movements. But every movement generates a vibration
and therefore a sound that is peculiar to it. Such a sound, of course, may not be audible
to our rudimentary ears, but it does exist as pure sound. Since each element of matter
produces a sound, the relation of elements can be expressed by a relation of sounds. We
can therefore understand why astrology, alchemy, geometry, and so forth express themselves
in terms of harmonic relations.
Although those pure, absolute sounds that Kabir calls 'inaudible music' cannot be
perceived by our ears (they may be perceptible for more delicate instruments, and the
perception of such sounds is one of the stages in the practice of yoga), we may
nonetheless be able to produce corresponding sounds within the range of vibrations we can
perceive. We can establish relations between these partial sounds similar to the subtle
relations of nature. They will be only gross relations, but they may approach the subtle
relations of nature sufficiently to evoke images in our mind. Sir John Woodroffe, the
learned commentator on tantric metaphysics, explains it thus: 'There are, it is said,
closely approximate natural names, combined according to natural laws of harmony
[chandahs], forming mantras which are irresistibly connected with their esoteric arthas
[forms).'
If we were able to reproduce the exact relations that constitute the natural names, we
should recreate beings, things, and phenomena, because this is the very process of
creation, explained by the Vedas and also indicated in Genesis, or in the Gospel of John
when the 'creative Word' is spoken of. If, however, exact relations cannot be produced,
approximate relations have a power, if not of creation, at least of evocation; sound
'works now in man's small magic, just as it first worked in the grand magical display of
the World Creator.' 'The natural name of anything is the sound which is produced by the
action of the moving forces which constitute it. He therefore, it is said, who mentally or
vocally utters with creative force the natural name of anything brings into being the
thing which bears that name.' By the artificial construction of harmony we can go beyond
the phenomenon of sound vibrations and perceive not sounds but immaterial relations
through which can be expressed realities of a spiritual nature. We can thus lift the veil
by which matter hides from its all true realities"
pp. 4, 5
"Evocation tlirough sound, like creation itself, takes place not because of the
material fact of physical vibration but on accouit of the existence of metaphysical
correspondences. Therefore all psychological explanation of musical experience has to be
discarded. In reality, the personality of the hearer counts for nothing in the phenomenon
of musical evocation because evocation takes place even if there is no hearer, and if the
existence of this evocation is ephemeral it is only because of the imperfection of the
relation of sounds. Hearers can be differentiated negatively only by the relative
acuteness of their perceptions, their greater or lesser deafness.
'Several centuries before Plato, Pythagoras, imbued with Egyptian doctrine, requested his
disciples to reject the judgment of their ears as susceptible to error and variation where
harmonic principles are concerned. He wanted them to regulate those immovable principles
only according to the proportional and analogical harmony of numbers.' The work of the
musician consists therefore only in knowing, as accurately as possible, the symbolic
relations of all things so as to reproduce in us, through the magic of sounds, the
feelings, the passions, the visions of an almost real world. And the history of Indian
music, as that of Chinese music, is full of the legends of marvelous musicians whose voice
could make night fall or spring appear, or who, like the celebrated musician Naik Gopal,
compelled by the Emperor Akbar to sing in the mode of fire (raga Dipak), made the water of
the river Jumna boil and died burned by the flames that issued from every part of his
body."