The book is an eclectic mix of selected poem from the various works of poetry spanning over a period of time and covering various subjects like mythology, beauty, nature, music and rains. The word imagery is quite vivid and creates very sound patterns of imagination and imagery in the minds of the readers with enhanced sensibilities and sensitivities to enhance the aesthetic experiences in the reader of the viewer. The subjects often intersperse into each other and create a visual and aesthetic delight out of the beauty of the exchange. The choice of words is exacting and appropriate to the situation or the subject.
First published in 1923, this classic volume contains timeless teachings on the nature of vibration and harmony as the basis of all creation. Transcending the barriers of religious traditions, The Mysticism of Sound explores profound and universal truths in a personable manner that will appeal to any seeker on the path of illumination.
The first teacher to bring Islamic mysticism to the West presents music’s divine nature and its connection to our daily lives in this poetic classic of Sufi literature. Music, according to Sufi teaching, is really a small expression of the overwhelming and perfect harmony of the whole universe—and that is the secret of its amazing power to move us. The Indian Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), the first teacher to bring the Islamic mystical tradition to the West, was an accomplished musician himself. His lucid exposition of music's divine nature has become a modern classic, beloved not only by those interested in Sufism but by musicians of all kinds.
This edited volume explores the dialogue between art and music with that of mystical currents at the turn of the twentieth century. The volume draws on the most current research from both art historians and musicologists to present an interdisciplinary approach to the study of mysticism’s historical importance. The chapters in this edited volume gauge the scope of different interpretations of mysticism and illuminate how an exchange between the sister arts unveil an underlying stream of metaphysical, supernatural, and spiritual ideas over the course of the century. Case studies include Charles Tournemire, Joseph Péladan, Erik Satie, Hilma af Klint, Jean Sibelius, František Kupka, and Wassily Kandinsky. The contributors’ unique theoretical perspectives and disciplinary methodologies offer expert insight on both the rewards and inevitable aesthetic complications that arise when one artform meets another. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, musicology, visual culture, and mysticism.
Mystical Love in the German Baroque: Theology, Poetry, Music identifies the cultural and devotional conventions underlying expressions of mystical love in poetry and music of the German baroque. It sheds new light on the seemingly erotic overtones in settings of the Song of Songs and dialogues between Christ and the faithful soul in late 17th- and early 18th-century cantatas by Heinrich Sch tz, Dieterich Buxtehude, and Johann Sebastian Bach. While these compositions have been interpreted solely as a secularizing tendency within devotional music of the baroque period, Isabella van Elferen demonstrates that they need to be viewed instead as intensifications of the sacred. Based on a wide selection of previously unedited or translated 17th- and 18th-century sources, van Elferen describes the history and development of baroque poetic and musical love discourses, from Sch tz's early works through Buxtehude's cantatas and Bach's cantatas and Passions. This long and multilayered discursive history of these compositions considers the love poetry of Petrarch, European reception of petrarchan imagery and traditions, its effect on the madrigal in Germany, and the role of Catholic medieval mystics in baroque Lutheranism. Van Elferen shows that Bach's compositional technique, based on the emotional characteristics of text and music rather than on the depiction of single words, allows the musical expression of mystical love to correspond closely to contemporary literary and theological conceptions of this affect.
This is the first extensive scholarly study of drone metal music and its religious associations, drawing on five years of ethnographic participant observation from more than 300 performances and 74 interviews, plus surveys, analyses of sound recordings, artwork, and extensive online discourse about music. Owen Coggins shows that while many drone metal listeners identify as non-religious, their ways of engaging with and talking about drone metal are richly informed by mysticism, ritual and religion. He explores why language relating to mysticism and spiritual experience is so prevalent in drone metal culture and in discussion of musical experiences and practices of the genre. The author develops the work of Michel de Certeau to provide an empirically grounded theory of mysticism in popular culture. He argues that the marginality of the genre culture, together with the extremely abstract sound produces a focus on the listeners' engagement with sound, and that this in turn creates a space for the open-ended exploration of religiosity in extreme states of bodily consciousness.
This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.
A bold, deeply researched, and long-needed debunking of the platitudes and prejudices that have long clouded our view of the personality and compositional habits of Anton Bruckner. Bruckner was, and continues to be, among the most divisive figures in the history of nineteenth-century music, in large part owing to the complexities and contradictions of his personality and the amalgam of differing stylistic features that characterize his musical language. Miguel J. Ramirez's insightful book scrutinizes the stereotypes about Bruckner's personality that loom large in the public imagination, the controversial editorial policies behind the publication of his collected works, and the trends in the reception of his music that were set early on by a handful of Viennese journalists. Working to undo the platitudes and prejudices that cloud our view of Bruckner's true personality and compositional habits, this study debunks the entrenched misconception that he was a helpless victim of "the Viennese press"-a notion contradicted by the pugnacious exchange in which pro- and anti-Bruckner critics invariably engaged after the premiere of each of his works. Ramirez demonstrates that, from the mid 1880s onward, only Eduard Hanslick, Max Kalbeck, and a few other critics persisted in their opposition to the Brucknerian symphonic oeuvre and that their caustic and denigrating reviews were vastly outnumbered by those of more appreciative critics who heard what performers and listeners cherish now: the music's coherence, grandeur, and emotional sweep.adicted by the pugnacious exchange in which pro- and anti-Bruckner critics invariably engaged after the premiere of each of his works. Ramirez demonstrates that, from the mid 1880s onward, only Eduard Hanslick, Max Kalbeck, and a few other critics persisted in their opposition to the Brucknerian symphonic oeuvre and that their caustic and denigrating reviews were vastly outnumbered by those of more appreciative critics who heard what performers and listeners cherish now: the music's coherence, grandeur, and emotional sweep.adicted by the pugnacious exchange in which pro- and anti-Bruckner critics invariably engaged after the premiere of each of his works. Ramirez demonstrates that, from the mid 1880s onward, only Eduard Hanslick, Max Kalbeck, and a few other critics persisted in their opposition to the Brucknerian symphonic oeuvre and that their caustic and denigrating reviews were vastly outnumbered by those of more appreciative critics who heard what performers and listeners cherish now: the music's coherence, grandeur, and emotional sweep.adicted by the pugnacious exchange in which pro- and anti-Bruckner critics invariably engaged after the premiere of each of his works. Ramirez demonstrates that, from the mid 1880s onward, only Eduard Hanslick, Max Kalbeck, and a few other critics persisted in their opposition to the Brucknerian symphonic oeuvre and that their caustic and denigrating reviews were vastly outnumbered by those of more appreciative critics who heard what performers and listeners cherish now: the music's coherence, grandeur, and emotional sweep.ence, grandeur, and emotional sweep.
