Multiplex: What's New | Site Map | Community | News My Multiplex Account | Sign In 
in Search

Music and the Integral Vision

Last post 06-05-2008, 3:53 PM by balder. 32 replies.
Page 1 of 3 (33 items)   1 2 3 Next >
Sort Posts: Previous Next
  •  05-07-2008, 12:40 AM 49570

    Music and the Integral Vision

    .
  •  05-07-2008, 7:40 AM 49632 in reply to 49570

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    Thanks for this, schalk. Great questions. I look forward to answering really soon.   - Kerry
    'takes all kinds.
  •  05-07-2008, 7:26 PM 49695 in reply to 49632

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    .
  •  05-07-2008, 9:52 PM 49722 in reply to 49695

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    schalk,

    I caught this thread on my way out the door this morning, pleased to find it having just last night heard my own music reproduced digitally for the first time. While most of my self taught playing/composing was in my mid-teens, with only a few months of time on the piano scattered throughout the last twenty years, I do consider music, both interiorly and exteriorly, central to my aesthetic life, even as a visual artist.

    Not too long ago the thread Integral Frontiers of Sacred Music was started by balder on gaia.com . Some of your questions are taken up there as well.

    What I'd like to bring here is a hypothesis on the AQAL rootedness of styles of musical expression.

    Using the example of 'sacred' vocal music, particularly that which developed since people began singing indoors, acoustic settings with distinct insulations from outdoor soundscapes (markedly more insular than tents or yurts or caves). 

    There are some sounds, mainly those of the 'natural world', with which we as a species have longer histories, deeper co-grooves, with: those that most of our evolution took place with. 

    Among these sounds some came to hold specific survival value as signifiers. For instance, the chirpping of crickets. To our ancient ancestors hearing the sound of cricketsong likely signified a comfortably moderate temperature and that one could relax in relative safty. When crickets suddenly shut up (like caneries in coal mines) was a signifier of danger, risk of attack, that something stealth enough to fly under your conscious radar was, perhaps, way too close. ("Chrip" = peace. Chirp stop = fight or flight.)

    In the UR we're 'wired' or imprinted or programed with the significance of cricketsong. I think that that ancient and deep signifier was established in direct association with the baseline in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A foundation of the foundation of spiritual aspiration and turning leasure attention to aesthetic persuits.

    Interestingly enough, when you listen to a recording of cricketsong slowed down to about 1/100th of usual heard speed, you hear the entire range of human tones used in the soprano through baratone styles of vocal music. And you hear these overlayed and harmonized in successive waves, which, to my ear, is remarkably similar to the choral styles we began to express once we got into cathedrals and such.

    So I've begun to sketch out contours of what I'm seeing as the musics sometimes refered to (in flatland) as "other-worldly", or "futuristic" as (not some 'eternity' referent calling attention to an else-when, but) a fuller, more thorough embodiment of what we always already are. Furthermore, I'm positing a transposition of meaning. That one of the deep signals of peace built into us over millions of years found it's directly correlary expression in a specific style of sacred vocal music. 

    ..to be continued,

    Kerry


    'takes all kinds.
  •  05-08-2008, 12:59 AM 49751 in reply to 49722

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    .
  •  05-25-2008, 10:58 PM 52849 in reply to 49751

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    Schalk,

    It's taken me a while, I know, to get back to you here, but the idea of transposition of meaning has to do with a reframing of what is meant by 'context', that there may be a type of context which operates differently than what we might think of as a linear-temporal sense of contextual location. Morphogenic resonance would be an example of such a context.

    So, while meaning can still be said to be context dependent, I'm asking if there are other kinds of context, contexts of the LL, in which one kosmically habituated interior event (such as the peace, or restfull reflection associated with the signifier, 'cricketsong') becomes resonant or harmonic with or (like I prefer) transposed 'into' another place / time. (Recontexted?)

    Another way to think about this would be to recognize meaning itself as a type of context. That although 'the names have been changed to protect the innocent' the plotline gets recast with fidelity.

    I'm trying to notice if and how cultural forms might be rooted in the long cycles of collective experience.

    K


    'takes all kinds.
  •  05-26-2008, 7:20 PM 53037 in reply to 52849

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    .
  •  05-26-2008, 7:51 PM 53040 in reply to 53037

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    Schalk,

    Of all the possible aesthetic choices, of uses of voice, design of instrument, development of genre, etc., there are ways that some became more probable than others. I'm supposing that there are extremely long histories to our sensibilities as to what is desirable in music. And that deep factors in our aesthetic decisions are tracable back through our own development, ..and... that what-a-choice-means-to-us-now* holds clues or keys to where in our ancestry** we might find the sourses, or the beginings, of our aesthetics.

     

    * 'what a choice means to us now' would be, in the case, the (still)current use of choral music in signifying a transcendent/expansive aspirational aesthetic.

    ** 'where in our ancestry' would be those earlier settings wherein that feeling, or aesthetic, or meaning began, where it started to take hold as a feature in the spectrum of human experience.

    K


    'takes all kinds.
  •  05-26-2008, 8:53 PM 53046 in reply to 53040

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    .
  •  05-26-2008, 9:29 PM 53053 in reply to 53046

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    First, Schalk, I would consider the variety of primates and from them, apply this artifact.  ; )

    k


    'takes all kinds.
  •  05-26-2008, 9:43 PM 53060 in reply to 53053

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    .
  •  05-26-2008, 10:21 PM 53067 in reply to 53060

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    Then, we aught to reinvent this wheel. Though that's just another survey suggestion.

    Using the examples given in that thread will help guage tastes as represented in our demographic, and would be a decent platform from which to launch an effort to address the aesthetic tapestry we have here.

    Yet this could also be approached from the artist side and left to intuition.

    K


    'takes all kinds.
  •  05-26-2008, 11:47 PM 53075 in reply to 53067

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    .
  •  05-27-2008, 12:29 AM 53077 in reply to 53075

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    I would caution against equating eclectic with integral. Especially any attempt to bring together in a single piece all the favorite optimal elements of all known music. This alone will not make the work integral, or resonant with this community.

    I wouldn't be married to delineating natural from artificial in regards to unplugged or synthesized.

    Whatever anthem this community deserves I'm guessing that it may not be arrived at via any abstract cognitive proposing, or conceptual sythesis of extant examples.

    I think we'll have to let the I-I Muse herself propose while notes are taken.

    K

    p.s. I recall The Wall, live, the first time eight banks of speakers surrounded the entire audiance. I learned alot from that concert.


    'takes all kinds.
  •  05-27-2008, 10:51 AM 53132 in reply to 53077

    Re: Music and the Integral Vision

    .
Page 1 of 3 (33 items)   1 2 3 Next >
View as RSS news feed in XML
 © Integral Institute, 2024. all rights reserved - powered by enlight™ email this page del.icio.us | terms of service | privacy policy | suggestion box | help