Well-founded
Musical Education as the Criterion for Development
Fundamentals of the Interpretation
Training Programme at the Foundation of the Musical Art
The
Significance
of Music in the Human Evolution
The Horizontal and the Vertical System of Order in Music
Giving and Receiving Music
The Twofold Path of Musical Cognition
The Mechanics of Perfect Hearing
The Supreme Musical Experience
“Perfection must be the goal
of every true artist.”
Beethoven
The Study of Musical Creativity
So the true study of music is based on the general study of musical creativity, on the general study of inner, human musical unfoldment, on the systematic study of the individual creative personality.
Only on that basis it makes sense to consider an outer presentation of that which is created within by the intellect and heard with the inner ear. Quotation
Musical education thus presents itself as a systematic, well-directed training programme for an inner-human cultivation of character.
This
definition of the purpose of music guarantees us the approval of the great
wise men of all high cultures; for they considered this central task to be
the principal field of musical activity.
Thus, music today regains its original paramount importance in determining
human evolution.
In principle, music knows two kinds of systems of order which – each further subdivided – are the two magic arms that present the music to the listener.
These two great systems of order may be considered as the horizontal one – recognizable from outside and comprehensible by the understanding – and the vertical one – recognizable from inside and comprehensible by the feeling.
The listener, in turn, receives the music presented to him with two arms: the qualities of his feeling and his understanding.
Both
systems together form the twofold human path of understanding the one musical
structure. Endowed with feeling and understanding, man extracts that dual
knowledge from music and interprets it as the horizontal system of order –
the one which he comprehends with his understanding – and as the vertical
system of order – the one which he comprehends with his feeling.
Due to the heterogeneity of these two methods of knowing, i.e. feeling and
understanding,music is being perceived in space and time within our consciousness.
When the listener, on the path of his personal musical experience, devotes himself with his feeling and his understanding to the cognition of increasingly higher levels of musical order, and thereby experiences the composition more and more comprehensively, then gradually he reaches a point where he comprehends the music with his feeling and with his understanding in an integrated manner; at this moment he has retired from the world of musical sounds into the world of pure knowledge.
Now
he realizes that he himself is the true essence of the composition, the origin
of the composition, the origin of each single composition, the origin of all
compositions together, the origin of all music, and the origin of all that
which music is, was, and ever will be.
Reaching this high musical goal, re-emerging from this musical unity into
a manifold world of music, and re-entering again the unbounded origin of music
is the supreme musical experience and the level proper for any genuine musical
experience. Quotation