"The
role of music lies in helping the consciousness uplift itself
towards the spiritual heights."
The Mother
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is a domain far above the mind which we could call the world of
Harmony and, if you can reach there, you will find the root of all
harmony that has been manifested in whatever form upon earth. For
instance, there is a certain line of music, consisting of a few
supreme notes, that was behind the productions of two artists who
came one after another - one a concerto of Bach, another a concerto
of Beethoven. The two are not alike on paper and differ to the but
in their essence they are the same. One and the same vibration of
consciousness, one wave of significant harmony touched both these
artists. Beethoven caught a larger part, but in him it was more
mixed with the inventions and interpolations of his mind; Bach received
less, but what he seized of it was purer. The vibration was that
of victorious emergence of consciousness, consciousness tearing
itself out of unconsciousness in a triumphant uprising and birth.
If by Yoga you
are capable of reaching this source of all art, then you are master,
if you will, of all the arts.
"
The Mother
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Is
Music Superior to other Arts?
Sri Aurobindo:
"I do not know what to say
on the subject you propose to me - the superiority of music to
poetry - for my appreciation of music is bodiless and inexpressible,
while about poetry I can write at ease with an expert knowledge.
But is it necessary to fix a scale of greatness between two fine
arts when each has its own greatness and can touch in its own
way the extremes of aesthetic Ananda? Music, no doubt, goes nearest
to the infinite and to the essence of things because it relies
wholly on the ethereal vehicle, sabda, (architecture
by the way can do something of the same kind at the other extreme
even in its imprisonment in mass); but painting and sculpture
have their revenge by liberating visible form into ecstasy, while
poetry though it cannot do with the sound what music does, yet
can make a many-stringed harmony, a sound revelation winging the
creation by the word and setting afloat vivid suggestions of form
and color, - that gives it in a very subtle kind the power of
all the arts. Who shall decide between such claims or be a judge
between these god-heads?"
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"Among the
great modern musicians there have been several whose consciousness,
when they created, came into touch with a higher consciousness.
Caesar Frank played on the organ as one inspired; he had an opening
into the psychic life and he was conscious of it and to a great
extent expressed it. Beethoven, when he composed the Ninth Symphony,
had the vision of an opening into a higher world and of the descent
of a higher world into this earthly plane. Wagner had strong powerful
intimations of the occult world; he had the instinct of occultism
and the sense of the occult and through it he received his greatest
inspiration. But he worked mainly on the vital level and his mind
came in constantly to interfere and mechanised his inspiration.
His work for the greater part is too mixed, too often obscure
and heavy, although powerful. But when he could cross the vital
and the mental levels and reach a higher world, some of the glimpses
he had were of an exceptional beauty, as in Parsifal, in some
parts of Tristan and lseult and most in its last great Act.
"
The Mother
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(The Mother,
while describing some experience...)
... suddenly I
heard, as if they came from all the corners of the earth, those
great notes one sometimes hears in the subtle physical, a little
like those of Beethoven's Concerto in D-major, which come in moments
of great progress, as though fifty orchestras had burst forth
all in unison, without a single false note, to express the joy
of this new communion between Nature and Spirit, the meeting of
old friends who come together again after having been separated
for so long.
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Music
- a Part of Life of Yoga?
Sri
Aurobindo
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"Importance of Music in Education
Plato in his Republic has dealt with extraordinary emphasis on
the importance of music in education; as is the music to which
a people is accustomed, so, he says in effect, is the character
of that people. The importance of painting and sculpture is hardly
less. The mind is profoundly influenced by what it sees and, if
the eye is trained from the days of childhood to the contemplation
and understanding of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in line
and color, the tastes, habits and character will be insensibly
trained to follow a similar law of beauty, harmony and just arrangement
in the life of adult man... A similar result is produced on the
emotions by the study of beautiful or noble art. We have spoken
of the purification of the heart, the chittaSuddhi, which Aristotle
assigned as the essential office of poetry, and have pointed out
that it is done in poetry by the detached and disinterested enjoyment
of the eight rasas or forms of emotional aestheticism which make
up life unalloyed by the disturbance of the lower self-regarding
passions. Painting and sculpture work in the same direction by
different means. Art sometimes uses the same means as poetry but
cannot do it to the same extent because it has not the movement
of poetry; it is fixed, still, it expresses only a given moment,
a given point in space and cannot move freely through time and
region. But it is precisely this stillness, this calm, this fixity
which gives its separate value to Art. Poetry raises the emotions
and gives each its separate delight. Art stills the emotions and
teaches them the delight of a restrained and limited satisfaction,
- this indeed was the characteristic that the Greeks, a nation
of artists far more artistic than poetic, tried to bring into
their poetry. Music deepens the emotions and harmonises them with
each other. Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education
for the soul; they make and keep its movements purified, self-controlled,
deep and harmonious. These, therefore, are agents which cannot
profitably be neglected by humanity on its onward march or degraded
to the mere satisfaction of sensuous pleasure which will disintegrate
rather than build the character. They are, when properly used,
great educating, edifying and civilising forces."
Sri Aurobindo
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