Through music to the self : how to appreciate and experience music anew

Translation from the German by Peter Lemesurier of Durch Musik zum Selbst, Scherz Verlag, c1976.

Part 1 - Old and new paths in Western music. On contemporary musical awareness. Approaches to composition. Group-improvisation and intuitive music making. Psychedelic music. Part 2 - Encounter with non-European music. Indian classical music. Tibetan ritual music. Music of magical consciousness. 3 - The esoteric world of sound and research into harmonics. On the knowledge of the ancients. The harmonic series. The meaning of mantra. The human organism and its acoustic laws. Tone-colour as the vehicle of the spiritual. Part 4 - Music between the worlds. Musical meditation in the West. 'Periodic music' and 'minimal music'. Concentric and integral music (author's compositions). 5 - Social practice and exercise methods. The healing effect of music. The power of breath and voice. Finding your own note. Experimental theatre and collective self-experience

'Peter Hamel, a contemporary German composer, shows how the integration of musical forms from the East with those of the West, as well as the incorporation of ancient technique and ritual, can produce new musical forms that are modern yet retain their connection to the timeless realm of man's highest sensibilities.'

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