The Secret Power of Music
by David Tame
(304 pages, pb, $12.95)
Destiny Books, 1984
ISBN 0-89281-056-4
Simply the best, non-technical introduction to a Pythagorean way of thinking
about music and life. Get it, read it, love it.
Chapter Titles
Overture: Music and its Power
1. The Ancient Wisdom: Music in China
2. The Twentieth Century; The 'New' Music
3. Assessment: Music, Man and Society
4. The Ancient Wisdom: Music in India
5. The Twentieth Century: Jazz and the Blues - Their Nature and Origin
6. Assessment: The Physics of the OM
Appendix to 6. The Mystery of Pythagoras' Comma
Coda: The Ancient Wisdom Revisited: The Modern Esoteric Viewpoint
Selected Excerpt
pp. 20, 21
One evening in London I attended a concert of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.
Seating myself, I exchanged some words with my companion, and took pleasure
in glancing around at the marvelous Royal Festival Hall as it began to fill
up. It was only as the players came out and took their bow, and as they
tuned up, that I dimly began to feel it. Something very different and
unique was lurking about. It could not be seen or heard, but I could
feel its presence, and it seemed to be approaching!
And then, as the players prepared to begin and as the audience hushed, this
unknown something saturated the air with a crackling pregnant potential
of which none other seemed to be aware.
Then, literally from the first note , the timeless moment was upon
me. Yet I was already far beyond the ability to reflect consciously upon
it, for the experience was totally engulfing and all-encompassing. It left
no scope whatever for any other mental activity other than to be
the perceptions to which my mind now seemed to have been opened.
My body seemed to come alive with light; my heart was a fire which flared
forth to consume the dross of my soul. My perceptions were opened as though
they had always before been firmly closed. Never had I heard music in that
way! What previously I had often listened to as abstract sounds were now
Sound -- a tangible, living filigree lattice-work of mathematical precision
which I could almost reach out and touch, and which I could virtually see
as it flowed form the leading violin. Every note hung suspended in the air,
timeless and immaculate beyond all powers of verbal description. My body
froze into a coma-like rigidity as I hung my consciousness upon each next
chord. For several long minutes I lost all awareness of myself. The sheer
beauty of it all was quite indescribable. From the first bar, silenttears
ran from my staring unblinking eyes.
The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto had opened the evening, and just as the sublime
vision seemed about to wane, there began the concerto's unique harpsichord
solo. Again I was whisked quite beyond myself, and saw the music in a way
never perceived before. The long, fugal arpeggios trilled through the air
like visible, emanating waves of divine essence, one behind the other, filling
all the hall and passing beyond its walls into the city. I cannot say that
I saw the music-waves, for the process did not involve my eyes; yet
nevertheless I somehow did see them. I saw the music!
As the other instruments came in once more with indescribable loveliness,
this impression of emanating waves of a tangible goodness became
reinforced still further. It felt as though the music possessed a definite
and very real energy , and that this was radiating out beyond the
hall in all directions. My consciousness seemed to encompass the entire
city. For a few moments I felt as though I were looking down from a viewpoint
which revealed to me the entire urban spread; and not only the visible,
physical city, but also the underlying, causative forces which shaped and
moulded it. The understanding came that this music, as it radiated forth,
was somehow acting as a sustaining, invigorating force for the whole surrounding
area.
As the awareness of my body returned, sitting in its seat in the Royal Festival
Hall, the impression was left with me that the concert was in some way a
glowing light amid a great, chaotic sea of darkness. The darkness threatened
to encroach upon the flame and extinguish it forever. I shall never forget
this sensation: one not of fear, but of the deepest, gravest concern; of
the vast importance of the music which I was hearing, of the deepest gratitude
for the opportunity of experiencing it, and that it should at all costs
be preserved for the humanity of the future.
Mystical experiences have been a subject of debate for centuries among philosophers.
Up to the present day no general consensus of opinion has been arrived at
as to the reality of such experiences. Are they less real, equally real,
or more real than our usual experience of everyday life? Each must judge
for himself. But it is interesting that visionary and mystical experiences
are known to have provided the initial inspiration behind many of the world's
greatest inventions and scientific breakthroughs; even those of such giants
of the mind as Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla.
