Renewal of Music, Fields of Application

Rudolf Steiner was aware that with the time of classic-romantic music a grand epoque came to its end and that since the beginning of the 20th century humanity was entering an enormous revolutionary change. His indications and comments towards music, however, remained fragmentary, for they could not be perceived yet by the most of the musicians and composers around him, as they mostly prefered the aesthetic concepts of music of the 19th century. This revolution asked and still asks for a deepening into the archetypal and basic elements of music, the single tone, the single interval etc… With Rudolf Steiner’s directions and notions towards the “melody inside the single tone”, or towards the “intervals” he dealt with this deepened experience, i.e. with an emerging into the quality and fields of application of the basic elements of the musical, in which the spiritual and cosmic can show its expression and its ways. In regard to this, Steiners indications and directions towards a renewal of singing and instrumental music, respectively towards new musical instruments can be seen in the same way. A precondition to all this is the complete individualisation – that is: There is only import in what the individual musician has occupied him- or herself with out of the objectively existing elements. Many musicians and composers have worked out of this, what one would call an anthroposophical musical impulse in this sense in manifold ways, - in singing and instrument making, in composition and music theory, in therapy and pedagogic, as well as music for religious ceremony.