3B: Music 1

Location: Doelenzaal, UvA Library

Chair: Rachel Cowgill (Cardiff University)

Andrew Owen (Louisiana State University)
‘Holst's Textual Synthesis: The Texts of The Hymn of Jesus’
view abstracthide abstract
The textual sources of Gustav Holst’s 1917 choral masterwork The Hymn of Jesus demonstrate the composer’s interest in ancient philosophies. The piece’s main text is from a late second-century work titled the Acts of John, a gnostic non-canonical text that was recovered in 1897 in the Imperial Library in Vienna. This discovery caught the attention of the theosophist G. R. S. Mead, who was Madame Blavatsky’s former secretary and Holst’s friend. In 1907, Mead published his own translation and commentary on the text, ten years before Holst began to work with it and other versions of the hymn so that he could set it to music. With the help of Jane Joseph, G. R. S. Mead, and Clifford Bax (who was also a theosophist), Holst’s modifications of the text maintained the style of Mead’s translation, but made it more direct and understandable. Many of these modifications advanced his personal interpretations of the hymn text and many also made the hymn easier to understand. Holst intensified the text’s emphasis on volition as a requirement for spiritual advancement, for instance, when he changes passive verbs like “seest” to active ones like “gaze.” Holst clearly saw in the text the three-part pattern of a passive statement, followed by an active statement, followed by a stabilizing “Amen” (a stability that Mead notes in his commentary on the text). Holst directly set the first two in various, often opposing, ways, and the “Amen” in a consistent, repetitive way. The closer the attention goes to the active/passive dyad, the more varied the music is, and the closer the attention goes to the stable monad “Amen,” the more stable the music is. Holst’s awareness of Mead’s theosophical interpretations of the hymn greatly influenced the musical style of the Hymn of Jesus. He knew that a more concise and direct version of the text that satisfied his imagination and incorporated current thought on the hymn would be more dramatically effective than a setting of Mead’s original words. Though existing scholarship on Holst has previously considered only broad implications of Holst’s theosophical understandings, none has hitherto examined specifically how they affected the text and the musical structures of this piece. With the Hymn of Jesus being the only gnostic text set by a major composer, Holst’s incorporation of relevant theosophical principles make the work well fit for representing the text’s original philosophies. © Andrew Owen 2013

Dominik Šedivý (University of Salzburg)
‘Dodecaphonic universalism: Equivalent balance as a counter model to monocentrism and duality’
view abstracthide abstract
The last century originated a number of prominent composers that have created an elaborate combined system of a neoplatonic and hermetic musical world view. While the scientific community is more or less aware of Alexander Skriabin’s (1872–1915) musical mysticism, comparatively little parts of the tremendous amount of material left by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) has reached the awareness of greater circles. Even less is known about the spiritual world of the Austrian composer and theorist Josef Matthias Hauer (1883–1959) who created an extensive system of universalistic thought based on the principle of dodecaphony.

In 1919, Hauer established his “twelve-tone law” (which he called “Nomos”) by claiming a fragile, but harmonic balance (on the basis of the Golden Section) between all twelve pitches caused by self-regulation. He explained this concept in terms of a Harmony of the Spheres, saying that the “solar systems [= 12 pitches] temper each other” by necessity and thus establish a well-tempered and dodecaphonic Harmony of the Spheres. Although it is neither evident nor likely that Hauer actually considered Ramon Llull’s Ars Magna (esp. fig. 1 of this work) in his thought, the apparent similarities are indeed striking: All different elements (pitches) concur with each other in perfect harmony. The sum of all possible combinations that is represented by one specific current aggregate (“atonal melody”) points to a meta-harmony in the center of the circle of tones represented by the term “Melos”: a fundamental spiritual idea behind the physical appearance of sound expresses both balance and proportion as an aesthetical and as one ethical implication. Another implication with regard to the act of composition is the predisposition of the musical material in terms of the twelve-tone row, its trope and the resulting series of 4-part chords (“harmonic bond”).

Rather than to Western hermeticism, Hauer often explicitly referred to ancient Greece, to the Harmony of the Spheres, to Daoism and to the Book of Revelation. He considered the equivalent harmonic balance within a plurality (of twelve items) a universal principle of thought that is or can be combined with other twelvefold systems such as colours, musical keys and intervals, months, zodiacs, fundamental consonants, vocational classes, the I Ching and the set of fundamental principles thought. To a certain extent, this “atonal” system also constitutes a counter-model in contrast to ascending (or descending) monocentric –therefore “tonal”: he actually referred to a “natural trope” and the harmonic series as a counterpart to his 44 “atonal tropes”– scales with reference to integer proportions, the Tetraktys and the Ptolemaic system such as Robert Fludd’s pyramids or his Divine Monochord. It also explicitly opposes bipolar concepts such as the Platonic Lambda or the Thimusian Lambdoma. Although Rudolf Steiner was provably aware of Hauer and saw many affinities between his own anthroposophical understanding of music and Hauer’s musical thought, it was Arnold Keyserling (1922–2005) who elaborated Hauers and his Zwölftonspiel’s remarkably close connections to Boethius’s triad Musica Mundana – Humana – Instrumentalis. © Dominik Šedivý 2013

Lucy Cradduck (The Open University)
'"Point of Departure”: The enduring influence of Theosophy on the composer Edmund Rubbra’
view abstracthide abstract
As a student of Cyril Scott and then Gustav Holst and R.O. Morris, it was almost inevitable that the young English composer Edmund Rubbra (1901–86) would gain an interest in theosophy. His unpublished Op. 1, The Secret Hymnody, is a setting of a hermetic Greek text translated by G.R.S. Mead. During the 1920s, Rubbra’s early involvement with theosophy was reflected in his unconventional lifestyle, including his work as a composer and pianist with the travelling theatrical company the Arts League of Service. Much of his early vocal and incidental music has a connection with theosophical or mystical texts, and musically contains the seeds of his mature style. Fifty years later, Rubbra still singled out his first published work, the song ‘Rosa Mundi’, Op. 2 (1921), as ‘the point of departure for [his] future development.’

Rubbra subsequently moved out of London and from the late 1930s began to build a reputation as a symphonist. He became increasingly influenced by Roman Catholicism, culminating in his reception into the church in 1947. It would be easy to dismiss his earlier enthusiasm for theosophy as a passing following of fashion or a youthful rebellion against his working-class, low church upbringing. Yet, as Rubbra himself acknowledged, the interest that it aroused for Eastern religion, philosophy and music remained with him for the rest of his life, leaving a lasting impression on his music. This resurfaced particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s in such works as the Piano Concerto (1956), the Pezzo Ostinato for harp (1958) and the song cycle The Jade Mountain (1962) setting poems from the T’ang Dynasty translated from the Chinese by Witter Bynner. Musically, the Orient is expressed in a sensuous concern for timbre, subtlety of rhythm and mode, and use of delicate ostinati – qualities that are also present in his earliest works.

This paper will explore examples of his early and later music, setting the works in their biographical context to show how, from the start of his career, an interest in theosophy and the East enabled Rubbra to create a very original and individual soundworld. © Lucy Cradduck 2013