Page 9 APRIL 1920 TIIE ETUDE Psychic Influence in Modern Music By Cyril Scott (This article is the conclusion of Mr. Scott's widely discussed article which appeared in the January issue of "The Etude." Mr. Scott, one of the most distinctive of the English com-posers, has long been an investigator in psychic matters.) elects to do the profitable as well as the artistic things, he stands a chance of becoming a man with an income which few financiers would despise. If he is a com-poser of successful compositions and receives adequate royalties upon the mechanical rights of his works his annual income under very favorable circumstances need not drop below the five figures of the rich man of fic-tion. Indeed, there have been cases of musicians whose incomes have not only run into the hundred thou-sands, but who have been compelled to make in-come tax returns large enough to irritate a real Croesus! But, you say, there are only a few Carusos, McCormacks and Paderewskis. True, but in propor-tion to the size of every industry there are only a very few men with enormous incomes equal to these men. There are men like Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan, whose incomes from popular successes have been enor-mous. As in everything else, we must have music to suit the oatmeal taste as well as the Pate de foie gras appetite. This interesting and stimulating interview will be continued in THE ETUDE for May, in which Mr. Hughes gives his opinions upon the future of American Musical Composition. Don't Be Discouraged! By E. von Schlechtendal WHE N you come to think about it, is it not a won-derful consolation to know that when you feel dis-couraged (and whoever has not had spells like that?) that there is nothing written in music that cannot be accomplished in some way, if you only knew how. In other words, there is no difficulty in technic that cannot be made easy. But who shall find the key to the puzzle? That is the task for the teacher—his only task. He should not only be able to find the way to a proper analysis of the difficulty, after a thorough diag-nosis, but he should also have the courage, energy and patience to explain the road to success. After that comes perseverance, which means he must not rest until he finds the pupil entirely relieved of his burden and ready and willing to apply the cure to a similar case with enthusiasm. That makes the work of both teacher and pupil interesting—yes, fascinating. It also vindicates the teacher's point of view that the pupil has no right to say: "I can't do it! Yes, I see you can; but I never will!" Make him change his mind, not by preaching but by actual help! There are, therefore three things necessary for a teacher: First, the knowledge, viz., to find the exact place of difficulty and how to overcome it. Second, the gift, the energy and patience to explain and to demonstrate. Third, more patience and more energy to see it done? Done! not started, not attempted, not satisfied by the pupil's exclamation: "I see! I understand!" But now the teacher is confronted with the difficulty of seeing it "through." That means watching the daily improvements, weekly improvements, monthly improve-ments in this particular problem. Oh! it is not so easy, my fellow-teacher, to do all that for someone else for a few dollars. If it were your own case, you wouldn't mind persevering. But to go through all of this for every new pupil, know-ing beforehand all the objections and spells of dis-couragement to overcome, means real self-sacrifice, genuine interest and enthusiasm. But it can be done! The Need for Wrist Freedom THE greatest care must be exercised by the teacher in seeing that the pupil does not hold his wrists stiffly. Nothing must be allowed to militate against the most perfect ease and freedom of the wrist. It must be absolutely loose and unimpeded in all of its three movements: 1. Upward or downward in a vertical direction. 2. Laterally from side to side. 3. In a rotary tilting direction. There must be no exaggeration in holding the wrist —it must be neither too high nor too low. The point of real importance is that the wrist joint must be free. The wrist joint can only be free when none of the opposing muscles are allowed to act.—C. W . PIERC E in The Art of the Piano Teacher. WE have in London now a very highly trained psychic named Mr. Robert King: a man well known all over Great Britain for his eloquence in lecturing, in addition to his other powers; though whether his fame has spread to America I am not competent to say. I am, however, inclined to think he was requested to make a tour in the States, but declined owing to pressure of work on this side of the Atlantic. Be that as it may, I have known Mr. King many years now and have had ample opportunity of witnessing his re-markable powers in more directions than one. I may mention, to begin with, he is benign, healthy, modest, tolerant, altruistic, and extraordinarily well-informed on all subjects; in a word, he is all that a psychic should be, and as great a contrast to the hysterical pseudo-psychic as it were possible to imagine. I well remember the first day I ever met him. I was taken, one hot summer afternoon, by a priest (now a Bishop) of the old Catholic Church, to Mr. King's house in North London. The district itself was "old world" and ''back of beyond" as we say; Mr. King having selected that locality because of its Aura: though I cannot very well go into the rationale of auras in this article. We came to a terrace and stopped at No. 13—a mys-tic number to begin with—and having knocked, a calm, very benevolent, middle-aged gentleman with a beard opened the door and gave us welcome; and a very kindly one at that. In fact, Mr. King has«a way with him which puts people immediately at their ease; and makes it evident that he loves humanity, and is resolved to help people with his supernormal faculties, and his extra knowledge and wisdom. Art on the Astral Plane We did not go into the question of Art and Music that afternoon, as I was more concerned with getting some facts about the Astral Plane which had puzzled me in the course of my occult studies, but in later inter-views (and they became frequent) I was able to learn many interesting and strange things in connection with the creative side of music. Nor was Mr, King alone the investigator, for I have had other psychics present at our little seances, each looking at the com-position I was playing from a different plane. I have on one or two occasions stayed at the house oi some mutua»l friends (a Mr. and Mrs. C.) and spent long and delightful evenings in this type of investigation. Mrs. C. on her part will go off into a trance, taking her to what is known as the Devachanic Plane, while Mr. King will "look at" the music from the Astral Plane, observing the thought-forms and colors produced by the particular type of composition in Astral matter. Now it is interesting to learn that the color and forms produced by certain types of modern music are of a far more brilliant and subtle order than those produced by what we term classical music—however shocking this statement may sound to the orthodox. In fact, the countless interlacing curves and spirals, not to speak of the irridescent scintillating hues utterly beg-gar description; for not only is our dimensional space involved, but colors which do not exist on the physical plane at all. I may also add that in the midst of all this, Mr. King saw the face and form of one of those glorious entities known as Devas: for music is so to say the actual speech of these Devas; and it is they who inspire the receptive musician with music itself, or do so through an intermediary, as the case may be. But here again the descriptive pen fails us, and I can only hope to point out one or two distinguishing char-acteristics. The first is an absolutely luminous body, with radiance reaching out in all directions to a consid-erable distance; the second is a capacity to make that body quite small, if, for some reason, circumstances demand it. A third characteristic is that the face of the Deva (at least the one seen on this particular occasion) was neither masculine or feminine, but of that type of beauty which possesses no facial marks of sex at all— thus one might almost call it of an intermediate sex. Nor is this strange to an occultist, since only on the physical and astral planes can sex be said to exist; the soul itself being sexless, as we understand it here below. As to Mrs. C's experiences (she, as already men-tioned, having gone off into a trance) they can only be inadequately imagined and not described. The key-note of her feelings, however, she said, was ecstasy, and one so intense as to render all consciousness of the physical body impossible—in other words she became not sub-conscious, as in sleep, but super-conscious. Ac-cording to her, hosts of wonderful Deva-forms sur-rounded her and swept her up in an ecstasy of light and color and sounds of unimaginable beauty. In fact on several occasions she appears to have gone so far away, that it was some time before she returned to the body, and necessitated our repeatedly calling her back to physical consciousness. She would then, with a smile apologize, admitting that the only drawback to the experience was that she had missed the actual physical music as a consequence of her celestial ex-cursion. Past Incarnations This same lady had the faculty of remembering her past incarnations, as also of reading the past incarna-tions of others. Nor does she attempt to flatter her friends by telling them they were kings and queens and other grandees in their past, as does the spurious type of clairvoyante who is aiming rather at acquiring money than telling the truth. As for myself, although I was in the very remote past something in the nature of a military general of semi-barbarian tribes, since then I can lay no claim to being anything higher than a bard, a priest, a composer, etc., while in many lives I was a very ordinary type of individual as far as anything in the way of fame was concerned. In my bardic incarnation I was apparently beheaded for voic-ing political indiscretions, nor did I fare much better in my very last incarnation, when I got killed in the French Revolution;—which reminds me there is a German adage which runs "one gets used to every-thing," so that by now I ought to be getting used to being executed! But to return to other matters. It would appear that whereas the classical music still pertains to the human (even including the immortal Richard Wagner) the "moderns" are getting beyond the "human" altogether, <ytvin% an adumbration of the "Music of the Spheres" or the Celestial Music—as it is called in occult philosophies. At least this is what we came to perceive through psychic investigation, as already pointed out. It would seem in fact that the subtleties towards which the moderns (or better said, some of the nobler moderns, like Debussy, Ravel, Scriabine, Eugene Goossens, etc.) are tending, are nearer the Celestial type of music than any hitherto known in the history of that great art. This, of course, casts no aspersions on the great classics, but merely shows per-haps that music is still evolving and has by no means reached its zenith yet. Futurists in Music As to the so-called Futurists in Music, and one would perhaps point out Schonberg and Ornstein as typical examples, among others, these are aiming at the expression of a certain type of astral music; (though unconsciously to themselves) the astral plane being the lowest one after the physical. It would seem, however (looked at from the occult point of view), that they are searching after adequate expres-sion rather than completely finding it in that sense. Indeed on some of the lower levels of the astral, there is a type of music which is cacophony rather than euphony, and in which melodic outline plays no part whatever. This remark, however, must not be re-garded as a musical criticism, for I am here merelv stating what I believe to be a fact. In the domain of painting, for instance, there is to be found a good deal of this portrayal of the lower astral scenery, which, however good it may be as actual painting or draughtsmanship, may not always be to our taste: see-ing the lower astral plane is by no means a desirable place, and one to which the very lowest types of humanity are to be found after death, until they rise, purged of their vices, to higher planes.
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