Dane Rudhyar

The picture that you saw on the program was taken thirty-eight years ago when I was thirty-eight, so in an interesting way it was the great divide of my life and, in many ways, the great divide for America because it was the beginning of the Roosevelt Administration, the Depression, and so on. Everything changed, has changed ever since, and I suppose I have changed too. the musician. "ow I am not coming here to interpret my music, to tell you about what it means either symbolically or technically. I am not interested in that because I feel that music is something that must be e#perienced, that must be lived. It is not even an esthetical product because my approach is not esthetical as much as it is what you might call magical. $o me, music is a power of transformation. It has the power to change the vibration of a person % as the &ld 'orld knew very well in India, in (hina, in even the )reece of *lato and *ythagoras % and it is to that approach to music that my life as a musician has been dedicated. +ou might even say that music is a psychedelic factor, or at least that it can be so. It can be so because it can change the vibrations of a person, of his aura or his nervous system or whatever is susceptible of changing, of being transformed. It can e#pand consciousness in different ways. It can bring to the audience something which that audience is not normally able to feel, to be moved by. All great virtuosos, all great performers, are emoters. $hey are people who should stir you, who bring to you an intensity of emotional life and of reali,ation of deepest factors within yourself, which is often difficult for us to reach in our ordinary life. &ne may in special cases affect people by single tones, but generally speaking in music what is important is the relationship that is established between vibrations and tones. usic is based on relationship. A chord is a relationship between a number of simultaneous tones. A melody is an evolving relationship between successive sounds. -owever, when you are dealing with musical relationship it is very important at first to make clear what kind of entities are being related. 'e will see in a moment that it applies not only to music, but also to human society or to any group relationship whatsoever. usic is a practical application of a system of group-relationship % between what? 'ell, it can be two different things, and it is essential for us to reali,e what the two different things are. $here are such things as notes, and there are also tones. .ery interestingly, the words note and tone are composed of the same letters, slightly reversed, but there is a great difference between a music of notes and a music of tones. &ur 'estern music is essentially a music of notes. &riental music or archaic, primordial music % magical music % was essentially a music of tones. In our 'estern music notes are the edge of intervals. $hey are abstract entities which are related together in terms of such things as scales and tonality % ma/or, minor % and other types of patterns. 0et me stress that they are essentially abstract entities. If you study in a musical conservatory or university % or at least if you did study % it may be changed now, but in Europe, ost of the music that I wrote, or at least that I sketched, if I did not finish it then, was written before that time. !o what you saw in the picture was more or less

particularly, and also in America of fifty or thirty years ago, it was commonplace % you were told that if you are a composer, you must never compose at the piano. +ou must never hear what you compose. +our composition has to be the product of a definite and systemati,ed arrangement of notes, according to definite patterns and conventional regulations. In &riental music, everything is based on tones. A tone is a living entity. In India % and to some e#tent in (hina, but very specifically in India % a musical tone is the body of a god. $ones and special groups of tones are used in relation to the time of the day and the year, in relation to seasonal changes, natural rhythms and energies. In a certain sense, there are no false notes1 anything may happen between the tones because they are living entities, and they can relate to one another by subtle glissandos or undulations. It is the 2uality of the livingness of those tones which counts, whereas in Europe, if you do not strike e#actly that note you make a wrong note. In Asia it was only during the (lassical period at the courts of kings or ra/ahs that music also became to some e#tent formali,ed into a very definite system of rules % rules which had to do with the esthetical or formal values. !till it retained at all times a very basic 2uality of livingness and the reali,ation that it is through tone that man could reach higher consciousness and that certain elements in man3s nature could be changed. $here is the famous story of the Rag Dipak, a type of chant which when properly sung would set afire everything around it because it brought to a focus, the element, 4ire. In other words, there is a very definite difference between the typical classical Europe and the music of early periods in Asia. I grew strongly aware of what this difference meant when I came to America in 5657. I began to tell musicians that &riental music had /ust as much value for the culture from which it was born as our 'estern music has for us. And of course everybody thought I was slightly insane. $oday the situation has somewhat changed but still there usually is a great reluctance in institutions of learning along musical lines to reali,e that what we call the fundamentals of music are not fundamentals of usic, but fundamentals of European music, and that human music is not merely European music. $here are 8musics8 of many types which have to be recogni,ed as realities in them selves. 'hat really happened since the time of Debussy, who began to introduce in our music a few &riental scales, has been an attempt, mostly unconscious, to dis-Europeani,e music, to break away from the basic concept, canons, and strict regulation of our classical music. &ne may call this a process of musical deconditioning % /ust as young people are passing through various stages of commune living or sensitivity training in order to decondition themselves in some way, in order to break away from the regulations and the patterns % abstract intellectual patterns % of our European society. $hus, much of what happened with Debussy and !travinsky, and in a somewhat different way in !criabin3s music which is very profoundly mystical and transforming music, was an attempt to really produce a completely new 2uality of tone, to discover a new value for music1 and it is, unfortunately, what musicians and especially critics have very great difficulty in

understanding. Also the neoclassical movement followed the 4irst 'orld 'ar % when !travinsky, then an e#ile from Russia, turned back to the classical *ast. -e became so frightened 9by the power he had released in Sacre du Printemps: that he had to go back to the si#teenth century to feet secure. $he same thing happened to some e#tent in America also, and much of that which was started in the $wenties was stopped because neoclassicism had become so fashionable and powerful. I remember always the famous sentence of .ar;se, 8 usic must sound.8 It seems to be a common sense statement, but actually it was a revolutionary slogan. Everybody thought he was terrible< 'hen you reach the level where you truly deal with sound, with vibrant tone and with the quality of human beings, you find that there are two basically different ways in which the tones you are using can be related. I have spoken of these for many years as 8the consonant and dissonant orders8 of relationship. $his is a very broad sub/ect which I can only touch here. It refers not only to music, but also to society as a whole or to any group formation whatsoever. 4irst of all we have to reali,e that the sub/ective feeling of what is consonant and what is dissonant changes all the time. (hords which sounded awful fifty years ago are now taken for granted. $he feeling of dissonance changes, nevertheless there e#ists a very basic difference between what you might call the consonant order and the dissonant order of musical relationship % and likewise of social relationship. Actually this is a very simple difference, but like so many simple things, hardly anybody thinks of it. 'hen you are dealing with a certain type of group organi,ation, essentially characteri,ed by the old tribal order of society you see human beings who are linked together by a common )reat Ancestor, a common ideal of unity in the past. $his is the root power which brings them together, which gives them their unity. $hey live in a common land, have a common tradition, a common language, a common religion1 the god of that religion is the spiritual Ancestor, the !oul of the tribe. +ou have there a type of organi,ation where unity is back of you, in the past. $he &ne is becoming the any1 the one Ancestor has many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on % all of the same common type. 'hen, on the other hand you consider people with entirely different cultural background =language, religion and social temperament> who come together in order to reach a common purpose to reach a unity which is ahead of them, to develop a sense of working together, of co-operation individuals dedicated to something which is ahead of them, in the future % a totally different situation is encountered. +ou are starting with individuals who are different1 then somehow those differences are becoming harmoni,ed by a common purpose, a common decision, a common will to achieve something which is of value to all and which they all consciously recogni,e as individual persons. In the tribal order there are no 8individuals8 because in a sense every tribesman is /ust a specimen of a common type with a common origin. ?ut where the dissonant order of relationship prevails, if harmony is achieved, that harmony is something that had to be worked for, striven for, created. It is not something anyone can take for granted. It creates problems % problems that must be solved.

A similar situation unfolds in a music based on certain types of intervals, certain types of relationships between tones which have a dissonant character. $he character is dissonant, because the tones are not related to a common ancestor, a common root-sound, a tonic. In the consonant type of music % in the (-ma/or scale with its tonic and dominant, =the famous tonal (-ma/or chord> and with all the regular progressions and modulations on which the 'estern classical music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is based % you are dealing with a tribal kind of order. $he tonic is the king, the old powerful king1 behind it, the fundamental tone of the -armonic !eries is at least implied. All consonant chords and melodic progressions are theoretically based on the -armonic !eries. In acoustics you speak of fundamental tone and overtones. $here is a long series of overtones, in a sense an infinite one1 and those overtones are all related to that fundamental according to an arithmetical progression. $hat is to say, if the fundamental is one hundred vibrations per second, the first overtone is two hundred vibrations per second1 the second, three hundred1 the third, four hundred, etc. $his is arithmetic progression. $he unity adds itself to itself in order to create a progeny, thus simply duplicating and multiplying its own type. $he other type of music is based essentially on something else, or at least partly on something else. It is based on cycles % series of fifths, series of fourths, series of intervals which are e2ual intervals and which therefore are not considered to arise from the same fundamental. If you take the piano key-board, you see there about seven octaves. "ow, let us start with the lower ( and go to the seventh octave above the (. 'ithin these seven octaves you can also pair a series of twelve fifth intervals % (, ), D, A, E, ?, 4 sharp and so on. $hese twelve fifths take about the same space as seven octaves. $his musical space is really our musical universe. $his cycle of fifths gives you the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. +ou have also the cycle of fourths which e#tends to about five octaves. A very interesting thing is that the cycles of twelve fifths, which e2ual seven octaves, e2ual seven octaves plus a little, small interval which is called the *ythagorean 8comma.8 A series of twelve fifths is always a little larger than the seven octaves. -ere you have two very different principles@ the principle on which the series of the seven octaves is based is the principle of the -armonic !eries. It is an arithmetic progression and it refers to the very process of life and of the multiplication of the seed. ?ut when you are dealing with series of fifths or fourths =that is, with geometrical progressions> it is the same relationship which is added to itself not the same fre2uency, but the same relationship between two tones. $his geometrical kind of relationship belongs to the level of the creative mind1 it is creative rather than procreative. It is 2uite important to understand these matters when one hears much of my music or the last compositions of !criabin. ost of my music is more or less based on series of fifths. If you listen attentively those of you who are musicians % in 3!tars3 for instance, and also at the end of 8!unburst8 % you will hear constantly repeated such series of fifths. +ou will find it also at the end of the last movement of Syntony, 8Apotheosis8. $he fifths of course are not always perfect fifths. $hey are modified by sharps and flats, and so on. ?ut still the

fundamental principle can be sensed. $he chords, in order to become harmoni,ed % a dissonant kind of harmony % do not depend on tonality, but on the proper spacing of dissonant centers. If you have different people coming together in a group % people of different countries, habits, and temperaments % it is very important that you space them right, that they have enough space to live their own life. $hey should come together at certain times in a certain way. $hey should /oin in some kind of ritual which helps to build the harmony of the whole. If they are too close together, they begin to rub against each other and conflicts arise % discords instead of a dissonant harmony. $he same thing occurs in music. $hus you find in my music e#tended chords which provide a definite sense of spacing between notes, notes which are supposed to be in dissonant relationship. $hese harmonies can be disturbing at first, but eventually you can learn to reali,e what is their essential purpose1 and this purpose is to stimulate you, to arouse you, to break down crystalli,ation, to decondition you from the paternalistic order of the tribal society which still pervades our so-called (hristian world. It is to make you live a more intense, creative, transforming type of life. I began with music to demonstrate such a purpose, then developed it in different ways. $he basic aim is to provoke a reali,ation, or e#perience of wholeness, of a resonant vibration which includes all sorts of disparate vibrations, but all arranged in such a way that they carry a definite meaning, a definite power of inducing a new level, a new kind, of consciousness. $ake also the gongs of ?uddhism. ?uddhism has very little typical music, but the gong is the music of ?uddhism because in a gong % in those huge gongs from Aava, (hina and even to some e#tent in India % you have a brotherhood of tones. $he term 8brotherhood8 is not very good because one should not speak here of 8brothers8 but rather of 8companions8. In the gong we hear a companionship of tones potentially brought together in a definite form and a definite structure, and as it were hammered together so as to create a compound tone which is infinitely resonant and contains in itself a multitude of tones. In the same way, when you hear a piano, you don3t hear the strings of the piano. 'hat you hear is really the sounding board. A grand piano really is a modern gong, a gong that can be infinitely modified by striking constantly different centers of resonance. It is that kind of music to which you are sub/ected tonight. I hope that it will bring to you some sort of a reali,ation of a possibility which perhaps you have not been aware of, or confusedly so, in the past. $o really help you to live a more intense, a more creative life % this is the purpose I have always had in music, in other arts, or in my philosophy, astrology % indeed in whatever I have done. It is always an attempt to bring the human person away from the old traditional pattern of a classical, set and definite kind of society, and to lead it to new hori,ons where the creative factor in what really is man can be seen operating in full and glorious freedom. I thank you.