Music and Contemplation

Saraswati: goddess of music, wisdom, art, and knowledge

The spirit that animates the music of traditional civilizations is very different than the one which dominates our modern Western culture. I think that one of the factors behind this great difference is the West's exaltation of action which has become opposed to contemplation.

It does not take great powers of perception to see that Western society is propelled by action, there is a tangible and inescapable obsession with work and production, and we see the fruits of this all around us: from our private time spent gazing into the void of virtual worlds to the sparkling towers which dominate the horizon of the earth. Activity which is not entertainment or work has no place in such a world, intellectual activity is not understood and even looked down upon, this is the natural result of the unnatural glorification of action, and it poisons everything it comes into contact with. Much has been written on this wide and important topic, and it is not my purpose to set forth a full exposition of the significance of contemplation and action (for this I would recommend Pieper's Leisure the Basis of Culture and Guenon's The Crisis of the Modern World), here I wish only to focus on how these principles apply to music and see what deeper meanings we can draw from them. As always, what I say here is only some aspects of the greater picture, not an exhaustive or perfect treatment.

Music is – among many other things – a manifestation of man's inborn tendencies. Music is then always tied to the soul of man, and expresses the many aspects of humanity understood universally. Although it would be wrong to say that music only remains on that level – even the level of universal man – and it would be even more wrong to suggest that music only expresses the identity of the individual who creates it. Instead we say that music can also serve as a symbol of the metaphysical: the highest truths which order everything else.

Metaphysics is linked with contemplation as its truth is the furthest removed from contingencies, it is most perfectly grasped through intellectual intuition, which is about as far away from action as you can get. Knowledge bears fruit in itself. So it is primarily through contemplation that we arrive at metaphysics. It is no surprise then that a society which embraces action and sets it up in opposition with contemplation would lose sight of the highest truths, and the music of such a society would reflect this.

An example of music produced by a contemplative civilization is this piece played by Gopal Shankar Misra.

The basic anatomy of this music is simple but profound. It is composed of two main elements: a constant drone and melodies which are played around its unchanging harmonic centre. Ananda Coomaraswamy speaks of the symbolism of the drone: “we have here the sound of the tambura which is heard before the song, during the song, and continued after it: that is the timeless Absolute, which as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be (Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva). It is the All who remains unaffected by flux of creation. It is the peace revered by the medieval Latins in the full meaning of the word Pax: an uninterrupted rest in God (Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy).

The next layer of the music is the melody that surrounds the unity, and this can symbolize a few things. (1 The first and most contingent interpretation is that the melody represents the raja guna inherent in man and the universe, this is the tendency of action and becoming, but standing in ordered relation (the scale) to God (the drone). (2) The second is a Platonic interpretation: the melody is nature which emerges from God, is sustained by Him and then returns to him. (3) It can also represent the contemplation of God and the fruits of knowledge. (4) And fourthly (this is the highest) it can represent all the states of being in relation to God (this is very similar to the second aspect but is taken to its most universal extent). We can apply Guenon's symbolism of the cross to this interpretation if we view the melody as the horizontal beam of the cross and the harmonic centre as the vertical beam. Certainly more interpretations could be drawn.

Indian music very clearly shows these symbolic correspondences (which is a testament to their culture) but this is not restricted to that people or to the Orient. The liturgical chants of the Catholic Church (in all its cultural manifestations) embody the same spirit and depth of meaning as all contemplative music but is ordered to the specific temperament of Western man.

We can contrast this with European classical music with its harmonies and shifting keys as embodying the active tendencies of the West taken to a perverse extreme. It is music which violently pulls at the emotions and produces satisfaction through tension and its release. Not that such an activity is wrong, but it is very indicative of spiritual decline when this music is taken to be the highest type of music. This is another case of the lower taken to be the higher. We can make this analogy: contemplative music is intuitive and modern music is rational. In this sense the Age of Reason could produce nothing but reiterations of Haydn.

The fact that contemplative music sounds foreign to the ears of Western men has its root in the exaltation of action against contemplation, the result of this is the loss of the sight of metaphysical truths which direct the action of all activities. This latter point is the most significant and cuts across all domains. Metaphysics is not an isolated science, a branch of lofty knowledge that has nothing to do with this world; but paradoxically because it is the most removed from this world that it has the most to do with it than any other branch of knowledge. This is because its principles serve as the guide for everything in creation. This can be illustrated by the Thomistic principle that God has no relation to creatures, but all creatures have a relation to Him and this is what orders their existence.