In Christian Schubart’s “Ideas for an Aesthetics of Tonkunst” ( Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst -1806) he lists all the musical keys and tells of its virtues and emotional values. But what on earth is tonkunst?
An old German word mainly out of use meaning the art of tone. I have no idea how this method or art was developed. Maybe it a was synesthetic thing, maybe it came handed down from one musical teacher to another. But it is in keeping with today’s scientific investigations into how music and keys effect us. This Scientific America article explores yet another interesting take on how music evolved and why it moves us:
“ …new research by Logeswaran and Bhattacharya adds yet more fuel to the expectation that music has been culturally selected to sound like an emotionally expressive human. While it is not easy for us to see the human ingredients in the modulations of pitch, intensity, tempo and rhythm that make music, perhaps it is obvious to our auditory homunculus.” (Mark Changizi on September 15, 2009)
Music is a hologram of the human body…made by humans.
It’s an invisible vibrational space we create around us and into us via compression waves. We can also replay it in our heads without making a sound. The musical body or the “auditory homunculus” as Mark Changizi playfully puts it.
This month’s composition is simply called “Spring”. It’s intentionally pretty and simple and like some of my meditation music it’s a series of interlacing segments, like different turning circular shapes, randomly crossing paths – a bit like the header image of this blog by Tom Bass (1916-2010). It’s a detail of the lintel feature (beaten copper bas-relief 1968) from the National Library, Australia. It came to mind – the play of forms and planes – when composing this particular piece of music.
“Spring” is in Eb Major which according to Schubert is “ the key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.”
Stephen Fearnley is an award-winning filmmaker, artist and composer. He composes transformational soundscapes for the meditation journeys of One Mind Live – a unique worldwide online group meditation community. To sample One Mind Live, go HERE