5 - Music as a Training in Harmony

"What we call music in our everyday language is only a miniature which our intelligence has grasped of that music or harmony of the whole universe which is working behind everything and which is the source and origin of nature...the music of the universe is the background of the small picture which we call music.  Our sense of music, our attraction to music, shows that there is music in the depth of our being.  What does music teach us?  Music helps us to train in harmony.  Man, being a miniature of the universe, shows harmonious and inharmonious chords.  Vibrations can be changed by understanding one's life - understanding the rhythm of the mind."

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Have you ever stirred in your sleep as a melody came to you as from nowhere and bid to awaken to write it down or at least remember it in the awakened state? This happened to Brahms, out of which his 4th Symphony unfurled.

It was only after having resolved his frustrations and found a way of joy while accepting the constraint of the situation that Brahms was able to give expression to the joy of love. But compare with Tomaso Albinoni's uninhibited sentimentality, heartwarming but rather facile and unsophisticated, in his Adagio in Sol Minore.

Have you ever felt frivolously trifling, nonchalant and carefree? Mozart translated this mood into the dancing notes of a famous tune.

Let's try it out ourselves: drop your reserve for a moment, give your responsibility a break for a while and just let yourself in for a burst of the joviality that you have been holding back – let it take over.

Have you ever felt facetious, flippant, pert, dallying with a burlesque edge, probably as a reaction to people taking themselves too seriously, or against heavy sanctimoniousness? Dimitri Shostakowitsch reacted to totalitarian stiffness and stuffy formalism in his symphony #9.

Have you ever just thought of a melody, quite spontaneously to give expression to a bout of energy? Beethoven did this in the first beats of his 5th Symphony, giving vent to the emotions roused in him by his admiration for the verve and heroism of Napoleon in his younger unspoilt days.

Notice the scanned, crisp rhythm here, expressing venture, aggressivity in comparison with the sweet, alluring rhythm of the first quotation, expressing the delight of love?

We all know how easily we yield to the forceful impact of the environment, both physical and psychic by reacting rather than acting upon the environment by dint of our self-motivation. A lesson in dealing with life's situations can be given in the language of music. In the slow movement of his fourth piano concerto, Beethoven teaches us to call a buffer between that impact and our emotional attunement. This he does by refusing to play ball, and calling a zone of silence, turning within in the stillness of an inverted space where all creativity emerges; thus setting his own pace upon the environment. The impact of the environment is reduced to functioning as a catalyst, triggering off our pent up potentialities.

Obviously Beethoven is depicting himself as the pianist and the world as the orchestra. Notice the contrast between the staccato of the orchestra with the poised legato of the piano.

Supposing you drift into a mystical mood, you will find yourself shifting your improvisations from the major mode to the minor: and if you continue thus turning more and more within, you will fluctuate even further from the minor mode, exploring subtle nuances of emotion. This is what the Indian musician is doing, exploring unchartered areas of  tone and rhythm as he/she improvises.

Note the departure from the minor mode. Note the effort to reach the dominant note by a process of escalation.

Stravinski ventured upon a novel mode in the Symphony of Psalms. Have you ever felt dreary, drab, low-key   -   ever tasted of the blues? Have you ever found yourself wrapped in a mysterious melancholy   -   a nebulous gray mood, like a lake in the mist concealing the unknown, the non-determined? Get it off your chest by burning off the mist so that it may rise as a curtain upon the dawning of a diaphanous light.

Can you improvise two tunes related to these two moods, operating the transit from melancholy to nostalgia; and then a third opening up into the brightest of suns on a clear sky?

Claude Debussy portrayed the malaise and ambiguity of his time in a way that speaks of the soul-searching in each of us, exploring the unknown, in the Cathedrale Engloutie (the sunken cathedral.) Note the wealth of pastel intonations.

The next step he made in Claire de Lune; here he is describing something like clearings in the woods in the moonlight.

Reflecting his time, Debussy could never allow himself to come so clearly in the sunshine as did Bach in an untold number of compositions. A pertinent illustration of this advent of the Divine presence upon the earth is to be found in the beginning of Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

Have you ever felt free or freed, unfettered, liberated, unflappable, having shaken off a load, or having pulverized the walls that were hemming you in, or cast aside the harness imposed upon you by your friends? Like Bach describes in his Concertos for Four Harpsichords.

Now you are streaking across space eerily like a ripple of unbounded energy. Sometimes the verve of the situation is expressed by a sense of urgency. Hasten, hasten says the bass voice in the following passage of St. John's Passion.

This sense of urgency is well known to us all -  is it not? A further example of this mercurial verve is to be found in some of the choruses of St. John's Passion.

The urgency with which Bach calls our attention to a cosmic event on earth has attained probably its ultimate expression in the beginning of Bach's St. John's Passion.

Note the sharpness of the notes intonated by the choir while the orchestra builds up into crescendo waves.

In contrast to this annunciation, we have an apotheosis in Bach's Magnificat's Gloria Patri. If you play this sequence, you will find that one apotheosis builds up into a further apotheosis, and so on until the final resolution.

Now apply all your verve to improvise melody to express your rapture. You ask, "How do I even start improvising?" If other composers did so, so can you. Their know-how may have been learned, elaborate, even tremendous, but their inspiration emerged irrespective of their know-how  -  just an impulse to express the emotion felt at the time, first in rhythm then in tone.

Notice the repetitiveness of the rhythms in every case quoted here! Just start by expressing your emotion as a rhythm. Once the rhythm has set in, there may be fluctuations in the rhythm. The melody seems to emerge from the rhythm - check it out.  You will find that: lo and behold, you can compose!

Could you this time give expression to not just unbridled joy which remains confined to the person, but cosmic glorification. Have you ever felt moved to the foundations of your being by an impelling urge to express glorification faced with the sudden realization of the splendor behind all of this we call the universe? J.S. Bach expressed this in, amongst untold examples, the Hosanna of his B-minor Mass.

Notice the break-through of energy affirming the certainty gained by faith by dint of repetition, while rising undauntedly like the arches of a cathedral.

How different from Stravinski's plaintive alleluia in his Symphony of Psalms!

It is difficult for the modern denizen of our Planet to nurture the effervescent optimism which sparkled the spirit of the early Church, releasing the emotion of fervor unrestrainedly.

Have you ever been daunted by the struggle for meaningfulness in our day and age against soul-killing realism or even the metaphysical anxiety upon sardonic reflections on where we are heading - where it will all lead to if we continue on this tack? Prokofieff's ponderous soul, searching on the edge of war and peace in the Peregrinus of his Alexander Nevski, reflects these misgivings we are all feeling.

Have you ever overcome a foible or an addiction or freed yourself from a debt? Have you noticed how as a result one could pace with poise and majesty and with an air of sovereignty and determination?  Bach expresses this masterly pace in the Passacaglia for organ.

The pace is manifested by a continuous advance scanned by a syncopated rhythm, indicating the alternation between the left foot and the right foot.

"The purpose of life is like the horizon, one thinks one can see it, but as one advances a further landscape has become one's horizon."  (Hazrat Inayat Khan paraphrased by Pir Vilayat.)

If you cannot read music, you may buy the tapes or records of these excerpts which will help you understand my commentaries; or ask somebody who can read music to sing the melodies to you. The excerpts are, unfortunately, very short.