Being Familiar with Music
Gathering Musical Truth without the Mass of Music Consumers
Control over the Musical Process of Knowing
The Listener Finds Himself Creative
Identification of the Listener with the One Great Music Creator of the World
Human Forces in Perfection
The Secret Exchange of Experiences
of the Listener with
the Creative Form of the
Music Creator
Music
bears many a secret; to someone, therefore, who is not practised in gaining
knowledge in music, music often appears withdrawn and strange in many ways.
To the initiate, however, it is so familiar in many ways because it shares
its secrets with him.
The familiarity with music comes about by the secret flow of truth between the composer and his music listener.
If music is a secret, then only in this sense; because something one does not know is not a secret but just something unknown, while a secret is some knowledge one shares with someone else or with a few, and which is not talked around in the general public.
The secret of music, therefore, lies primarily in the discreet association of a music lover with the creative effluence of a true creator of music, and it manifests itself in that silent dialogue which takes place between the composer and his trustful music listener, a dialogue which escapes the music-consuming masses around the music listener.
In
his personal exchange of experiences with the musical creator, for the true
music listener the neighbouring listener simply does not exist.
To the knower only his very personal dialogue with the creative form of the
great master of tones exists, who conveys to him, through the interpreter,
his insights into human life.
However, this is only the first stage of music listening, and the composer
aims at something more, something higher.
With
the help of his musical statements the tone poet stimulates one after another
specific spaces of cognition within the listener to vibrate and he determines
the proportions of the reverberating spaces in such a manner that they vibrate
harmoniously towards each other and with each other.
When he created the musical work, the music poet had set these inner, reverberating,
cognitive spaces into vibration within himself, too, and so he knows their
effect on the individual personality, on the individual soul.
Now,
in his personal experience while listening to the music, his listener perceives
these reverberating spaces as his own inner tone-world, as his own inner creative
world, as his own, very original, inner, living world, as his manifold self,
as his one and all.
So, according to the pattern laid down by the musical creator, he examines
his manifold creative talent, his true creative potential in the swinging
roundelay of his inner qualities, and he realizes that he is creative.
In that moment, the creative form of the great music creator speaks to him not from outside anymore but speaks within the music listener himself as the voice of his very own conscience, as the voice of his very own creative power.
So,
in a very discreet, secret manner, the music listener discovers the multiplicity
of life spread before him in his innermost experience.
And the traced-out pattern of the outer poetry of tones shows him means and
ways to harmoniously stimulate his own inner life, his own mighty, inner human
forces, for playful action and how to keep the wheel of the joy-giving inner
knowledge turning with the qualities of the musical meaning.
© AAR EDITION INTERNATIONAL 1982