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Permalink Reply by Mikkel Juel Sørensen on April 11, 2014 at 11:49am

I feel that the contemporary theosophically oriented composers needs more than anything to get a solid network build up. As by now I havent found a single theosophically designated music school or department or even one entirely musically dedicated study group within the theosophical environment. Neither have I been able to find reviews of any conspicuous ancient music school in existence outside the music conservatories. 

Musical composition is the purest form of and the most advanced and nurtured tradition of practical alchemy. Let me express my gratitude of seeing other musicians in this forum and strong wishes to see a great music engagement in the theosophical society in generel.   

Right on top of my head, apart from Alexander Scriabin, the following composers needs to be thouroughly introduced to this forum anytime soon:

Jean Sibelius - Practiced kabbalah. He described his working process with composition as a practice of being very very still, and the music would work itself out. 

Karlheinz Stockhausen - wrote a 30 hours long opera cyklus entitled LICHT - based on mixed mythology and religions. Stockhausen expressed his religion as "modified catholicism", and he often spoke of meditation, higher beings, transformation of humans, astrology etc in his composition lectures. Below is a video of his lecture on MANTRA, a classic example of serialism derived from a small idea, a mantra, developed into a form addapted from geometry of The Tree of Life. 

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8K9gkuHpMo 

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QASwHLZ_fBE

Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHmcJgJiVe8

Per Nørgård - have expressed a brief interest in Blavatsky and Eastern Mysticism. Apart from his heavy use of sacred geometry in his music, he was in fact the one who invented fractal geometry and published the theory before it was officially discovered by someone else. 

John Cage - His orientation toward Zen made a foundation for his work as a composer. He felt sick of using thought and emotion as the means for composing music, and as a consequence he stopped seeing creativity as an inherent part of his consciousness and started using "random" operations and involving the listener and surroundings as part of the creative process to a greater extent. He wrote compositions where fragments would take a continously changing chronology for every performance, making it sound always different. He also used I Ching.

Gurdjieff - Presented a highly advanced and alien theory of harmony tied up with a basic understanding of the universe. He claimed that the well-tempered system had a very different origin than we use to think, namely that it wasnt a product of the quintic circle but that the diatonic scale was developed many thousand years ago from an advanced understanding of celestrial mechanics, and that the 7 diatonic notes in an octave are harmonic interference points of the 7 Rays. He further insisted that music and its response in people is an objective value.  

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji - Identified himself with his Zoroastrianist heritage, although later in life he also found interest in Roman Catholicism. In his youth he had a strong interest in the occult and was a member of the London Society of Psychical Research. He personally met Aleister Crowley in 1922, although Sorabji was dissapointed with him. Bernhard Bromage remained one of Sorabjis closest friends for 20 years. Paul Rapoport claimed that Sorabji was a mystic based on occult inscriptions found in his early works. Sorabji practiced yoga to regulate his thoughts, and used tarot cards in the process of writing his 5th sonata OPUS ARCHIMAGICUM. His Tantrik Symphony deals with Tantrik and Shaktic yoga. 

Mikkel

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