Micro Music Laboratories - Music Theory - Part 4 - Didactics of Music - The Study of Musical Creativity

“Perfection must be the goal
of every true artist.”

Beethoven

So the true study of music is based on the general study of musical creativity, on the general study of inner, human musical unfoldment, on the systematic study of the individual creative personality.

Only on that basis it makes sense to consider an outer presentation of that which is created within by the intellect and heard with the inner ear. Quotation

Musical education thus presents itself as a systematic, well-direct-ed training programme for an inner-human cultivation of character.

This definition of the purpose of music guarantees us the approval of the great wise men of all high cultures; for they considered this central task to be the principal field of musical activity.
Thus, music today regains its original paramount importance in determining human evolution.

In principle, music knows two kinds of systems of order which – each further subdivided – are the two magic arms that present the music to the listener.

These two great systems of order may be considered as the horizontal one – recognizable from outside and comprehensible by the understanding – and the vertical one – recognizable from inside and comprehensible by the feeling.

The listener, in turn, receives the music presented to him with two arms: the qualities of his feeling and his understanding.

Both systems together form the twofold human path of under-standing the one musical structure. Endowed with feeling and understanding, man extracts that dual knowledge from music and interprets it as the horizontal system of order – the one which he comprehends with his understanding – and as the vertical system of order – the one which he comprehends with his feeling.
Due to the heterogeneity of these two methods of knowing, i.e. feeling and understanding,music is being perceived in space and time within our consciousness.

When the listener, on the path of his personal musical experience, devotes himself with his feeling and his understanding to the cognition of increasingly higher levels of musical order, and thereby experiences the composition more and more comprehensively, then gradually he reaches a point where he comprehends the music with his feeling and with his understanding in an integrated manner; at this moment he has retired from the world of musical sounds into the world of pure knowledge.

Now he realizes that he himself is the true essence of the composi-tion, the origin of the composition, the origin of each single composition, the origin of all compositions together, the origin of all music, and the origin of all that which music is, was, and ever will be.
Reaching this high musical goal, re-emerging from this musical unity into a manifold world of music, and re-entering again the unbounded origin of music is the supreme musical experience and the level proper for any genuine musical experience.

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