The following is a brief introduction to his
principles.
The following links offer additional information:
Dane Rudhyar was born in Paris in 1895 and moved to the United States in 1916, remaining there until his death in 1985. In addition to being a composer, Rudhyar was a philosopher, an astrologer, is the founder of the International Composers' Guild and has had several books published on his philosophical and psychological ideas. It is interesting to note that although Rudhyar was very well known in the first half of the century as a new music composer, yet is not very well known in the present day. Most of his books remaining in print as of 1997 are, ironically, the ones rooted in astrology.
Rudhyar's concepts of music were based on a blend of science and mysticism, strongly influenced by the music and musical concepts of Scriabin. In 1926, Rudhyar observes the Russian composer:
"the conscious foundations of an entirely new and revitalized SENSE of music... While music is, for the neo-classicists, an assemblage of sound patterns and esthetic forms, and for the romantic, an emotional projection of human life, for Scriabin it is a magical force used by the spiritual Will to produce ecstasy, that is, communion with the Soul!"
These spiritual connections with Scriabin's music and Rudhyar's own music led to very powerful perspectives on the state of European art music.
Strongly rooted in Eastern musics and philosophies, Rudhyar is very critical of European concepts that have dominated Western music. In Rudhyar's 1922 article "The Relativity of Our Musical Conceptions", he compares the differences between the concepts of note versus sound :
"What is a note according to the current musical theories? A Note is the unit of our musical universe, the cell of the body of music. All musical creations, from a popular refrain to a symphony, are aggregates of notes - vertical aggregations, or chords; horizontal aggregations, or melodies. If, on the other hand, you ask for a definition of music you may find something like this: Music is the art of combining sounds. Here immediately we come across what seems a duplication. First we spoke of notes, then of sounds. Is there then a difference between a note and a sound?
"Indeed there is a difference. Sound is an element of the Universe. Everything around us is sound, sound that oftentimes we do not hear because of the limitations of our ear, yet in some respect sound. Our music, however, does not use all this infinitude of sounds; it is too rich, too chaotic for our musical sense; we are lost in the profusion of audible vibrations. We, therefore, have selected some specific sounds produced by some almost invariable instruments, and have thus created a little cosmos of sounds in which we feel at home. We have expurgated Nature, we have engaged it, and thus rejoice in our easy mastery over this atrophied material. This material is what we call musical sounds . But a note is theoretically different. A note is an abstract concept . It has no sense-reality in itself. When we think of the note A, we think of something which is a pure abstraction."
Rudhyar goes on to argue that when three separate voices, for example, simultaneously sing the pitch "A", you are indeed hearing three separate sounds. He argues that Western ears and minds tend to over-simplify the concepts of sound. Rudhyar believes that calling an octave of a particular pitch the same name is merely for the sake of convenience, because Rudhyar observes that each pitch in of itself has a different character, beyond the scope of labeling only twelve semi-tones within the octave. Rudhyar further explains his objection to conventional musical nomenclature:
"We have been trained for generations to consider the sound a" as something possessing the same emotional quality as the sound a', the same quality to such an extent as to apply to both the same denomination. Yet, we cannot help but see that these two sounds are different. They are not the same. It is a mere convention, which has absolutely no natural, no fundamental basis ; which, therefore, may be modified at any moment without any theoretical inconvenience."
According to Rudhyar, Eastern music "ignores the 'note' as such", meaning that Eastern musicians think of and hear music in terms of absolute pitch, instead of relative pitch. Rudhyar purports that Eastern "music is built upon modes wherein each tone , each 'compound sound ' has an individuality, an existence proper."
His comparison of chords and compound tones is not of quality but of quantity. He relates a compound-tone played a violin as being of the first -order , whereas a chord sounded by a string quartet as being a compound tone of the second-order . The differences, according to Rudhyar, lies in degrees of degree, not diversity. These issues lead Rudhyar to four conclusions:
Rudhyar observes that "if every musical sound is a compound-tone, a melody is not one unrolling thread of sounds, but several threads of sounds; it is, in fact, approximatively the same thing as a succession of chords," Rudhyar's interpretation of musical processes yields the conclusion that harmony and melody are one in the same.
The basic concepts about compound tones are, of course, common knowledge among many musicians and musical engineers. But Rudhyar's point seems to be concerned with our over-simplification of these concepts, and that Western music composition and performance seem to go on without conscious knowledge of these phenomena. Thus, the question remains: how do these notions affect Rudhyar's compositional process?
From a program note written in 1976, Rudhyar explained his "compositional philosophy":
"My music is essentially the exteriorization of inner experiences and states of consciousness and feelings. It is subjective rather than the development of objective and intellectually analyzable patterns conditioned by our culture. My music does not stress what is technically called the 'development' of themes or formally repetitive patterns of notes. Its principle of organization is derived from the flow of life itself rather from traditional forms and patterns dictated either by the old tonality or by Schoenberg's 'twelve-tone' system of composition. The music seeks to induce in the hearer psychic processes of change, and at times to break down emotional crystallizations. I have spoken of it as a 'music of speech' to distinguish it from most of our Western music whose rhythmic patterns are essentially physical, because rooted in dance-forms, it is a speech whose components are not words with an intellectual or descriptive meaning, but tones whose quality is non-rational, yet which can evoke a higher realm of meaning and intent. The hearer should concentrate on the tones themselves as they flow and merge into each other. The holistic resonance of the piano tones should be allowed to vibrate within one's consciousness and stimulate a deeper experience of inner living and psychic transformation."
Regardless of Rudhyar's assertion that there is a lack of structural planning in his work, a conclusion derived from the statement "its principle of organization is derived from the flow of life itself rather from traditional forms and patterns dictated either by the old tonality or by Schoenberg's 'twelve-tone' system of composition", there are indeed organizing principles within his music that are clearly intentional compositional decisions on the part of the composer. Perhaps an interpretation of the above statement could lead a reader to believe that Rudhyar is merely using observations of nature to construct musical structures, but on the other hand, the notion that "the principle of organization is derived from the flow of life itself" can have implications that the composer is claiming to compose on a purely intuitive level, that the music is "divinely" created by the composer, or some such thing. Assuming Rudhyar was a great intellectual, (his tremendous amount of writings on many diverse subjects should somehow prove his validity), it will be assumed that Rudhyar was using organizing principles other than conventional ones of his day to realize the music. As proposed eariler in this document, Rudhyar seemed to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual realms in as far as his understanding of Nature and Her processes.
Text © 1997 Keith Kramer
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