The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As you will have gathered from yesterday's lecture, a proper presentation of eurythmy has to take its start from Melos, from the melodic element, or we could also say, from the motif or phrase. [25] It is the progression of the motif, the musical motif in time, which indicates the path which eurythmy must take on the basis of the musical element.

Let us concentrate on this today. Here again you will see how necessary it is to pay special attention to the actual musical element. Now, the musical element makes sense in the progression of the motifs—that is, the musical element as such, not as it manifests in expression. And this sense has absolutely to be brought out in a presentation of eurythmy. The question, then, is how the progression of a musical phrase must be treated in eurythmy.

Usually in music itself, even when listening.to it, people fail to observe the musical sense progressing within the motif itself You all know that a motif frequently includes the bar line [American: bar]; indeed this is generally the case. The bar, the change of bar that is, interrupts the motif And when passing from one completed motif to the following formation you often feel that something like a ‘dead interval’ lies between them (musicians frequently even use this expression). It is further said that such a dead interval corresponds to the progression from the end of one spoken word to the beginning of the next. The matter is frequently regarded in this way. But this very comparison, as I said yesterday, demonstrates that people have no feeling for the fact that the true musical element actually is that which is inaudible. When the dead interval is spoken about, and is compared with what lies between two spoken words, the comparison is not valid. Anyone wishing to speak out of an understanding of art really should not speak of the ‘dead interval’ between two words, but on the contrary should place the greatest value upon the way the transition proceeds from one word to another.

Just think that in speech, in the treatment of speech, we can observe the following fundamental difference between good and bad treatment. You can treat each word separately, but this is quite different from a clear feeling that one word ends in a specific way and the next begins in a specific way. And you look for meaning between what is apparent to the senses (that is to say, between the end of one word and the beginning of the next), where the spirit lies, which you are endeavouring to express. The spirit also lies between the words. Furthermore, the sounds we hear in words are only the sensory impression; when we speak, too, the spirit lies in the inaudible realm. It is sad that people today have so little feeling for the inaudible realm, and are no longer able to listen between the words. A lecture on spiritual science can never be understood when you follow merely the actual words; you have to listen between the words, even listen into the words, discovering in the words what lies behind them. In this case words at all times are an aid to express what cannot be heard.

The question, then, is to find some means of differentiating in eurythmic movement the position of a bar line in a motif, and the transition from one motif to the next. This difference may be shown by holding the movement at the bar line, so that whoever carries the movement does it, so to speak, within himself, wherever possible indicating through the position of the arms and hands that he is pushed together, and especially in moving a form by contracting the movement of the form into himself—in other words, becoming stuck whilst in the form. Conversely, in the transition from one motif-metamorphosis to the next, we are dealing with a swinging-over (Schwung) from the one metamorphosed motif to the other. We swing in a spirited manner from one metamorphosed motif to the next; in the actual bodily movement itself we have a kind of upward swing. And where the bar line appears within a motif we aim for a rigidly upright posture.

Try to practise this until it becomes a matter of course when moving. This will be of great significance. It would be quite good to make sure that the matter is clear. Let us take the following to clarify this. (It is important to make a beginning with the very simplest of examples, and it is no matter if this simplicity is somewhat home-baked.)

Here, then, we will select as simple a phrase as possible to make clear to ourselves the real significance of what I have been speaking about. The phrase starts with a G and progresses to B, returns to G, progresses to F#, and so on. Thus we have the first motif, then the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth, and the question is: How should this progression of motifs be carried out in eurythmy? In the first motif we hold ourselves back, in the second we boldly swing onwards to the next motif: the curve is first up, then down, and between we have the bar lines. The phrase continues (see Fig. 4) with holding ourselves back, boldly swinging onwards, holding ourselves back.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Thus, if I draw the whole thing: up, down, up, down, up, down—we always find the bar line in between, and in the fifth and sixth motifs, two bar lines each. The progression is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight restraining-ourselves, and one, two, three, four, five swinging-onwards. Try to be quite upright, but go together with the whole movement; to be upright at the bar line and boldly swinging onwards at the transition from one motif to its following metamorphosis. The bar line must be strongly indicated by means of a strong holding-on to yourself. This may never take place simultaneously with the notes, however, but must always occur between them.

This, hopefully, is clearly understandable. Always show the bar line, and its holding-on movement, very distinctly. This, of course, is something I ask you to ponder about, what it means for the various forms of phrasing. I wanted to show you this with as simple an example as possible. You see, the presentation of eurythmy reveals that the melody receives the actual spirit and carries it on. Fundamentally speaking, everything else does not add the spirit of the musical element, being at all events a more or less illustrative element. But in order to gain a real conviction of this for yourselves, I ask you to try first and foremost to seek the whole human being in the musical element. The eurythmist is really obliged to study the way in which the human being streams out, as it were, into the musical element.

It is a fact that when we stand with our physical form, whether slim or short, fat or thin (that part of us which is actually visible), this is really the very least part of us. It even remains, in fact, for a short period after we have gone through the portal of death. But yet how much of the human being is present in the corpse? When we look at the human being as he stands before us in the physical world it is only the corpse, or hardly more than the corpse, that may be seen. Now in music, the physical form of man corresponds to what may be called the least significant of the musical elements; it represents the beat. It is therefore quite natural that with the bar line there should be an emphasis of the physical form, a holding-on to yourself. [26]

When you pass over to rhythm, presenting the ‘short-long’, you already go beyond what is represented by the human bodily form. In rhythm you already show a very considerable part of the life of your soul. With beat in eurythmy, you always feel that a person's heaviness is the determining factor in its expression. When the beat is shown in eurythmy, you always feel (as you just saw from these attempts) that it becomes evident how heavy a person is. A heavier person will be able to mark the beat in eurythmy better than a lighter person. This is less apparent in the case of rhythm. Rhythm brings the human being into movement. And here already it is quite easy to differentiate whether the movement has artistic taste or is tasteless, whether the movement is permeated with soul: slow—quick, slow—quick. You see, here the etheric element in the human being makes its appearance. It is the etheric human being which is revealed in rhythm.

If, however, we turn our attention to melody, which conveys the actual spirit in the musical element, then the astral being of man is revealed. When you are active in the musical element the whole human being, with the exception of the ego, is brought into play. It is really true to say: ‘As physical human being I mark the beat; as etheric human being, the rhythm; as astral human being I am the evolver of Melos: it is thus that I appear before the world.’ And, you see, the moment when you pass over from the musical realm to that of speech, the ego steps in. Naturally, speech is then transmitted into the astral element and even into the etheric, but its original impulse lies in the ego. [27]

At the end of yesterday's lecture I indicated the hidden parallel between the scale and the vowels, and we even saw how the musical element enters eurythmically into the vowel element. Now we must also be clear about the fact that in singing the realm of the pure musical element is already exceeded. The pure and real musical element is expressed in the astral make-up of the human being. This is why singing becomes more essentially musical in proportion to the degree in which it holds to what is purely musical—the more it follows Melos. And indeed this following of Melos will be the most sympathetic in singing.

Passing from singing to speech (to declamation and recitation), we find marked disharmony between Melos and something that has also to be borne in mind by the reciter, namely the sense of the words. It ought to be emphasized that the musical element has to be active in recitation and declamation, but an inner conflict will always exist, a conflict which the singer can only solve in the musical element. The more musical a singer, the more he will enter into the sphere of the astral, into Melos, thus solving for himself the problem of how to remain musical in singing. Consequently it requires greater skill to remain musical in singing than for instance it is to remain musical in instrumental music.

But now let us consider the following. I think everyone must feel that a certain poem of Goethe's produces an extraordinarily musical effect. I refer to the poem:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch. [28]

Let us take the principal words from this poem: Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh: Gipfeln, ist Ruh, Wipfeln, Hauch, auch, warte, balde.

If you enter into this poem with your feeling, you will find that what is appealing and musical (for it is extraordinarily appealing and musical) lies in the use of the words Gipfel, Wipfel, ist Ruh, Hauch, auch, warte, balde. It is in these words that the actual musical element lies. Now I ask you, what have we got here? Let us compare this with what I told you yesterday of the correspondence of the vowel sounds, with the scale. I always write the scale thus (naturally any note can be written on a C [i.e. tonic]) but I write C in the usual way, as the note from which the scale starts. Of course, the matter is not dependent on this way of writing it, but when you write in the way I did yesterday, then we have in the word Gipfel B G, BAG—a descending third. It has the effect of a minor third (Moll-Terz). It is the mirror image of a third. And it is the repetition of this mirrored third in Wipfel and Gipfel which initially renders this wonderfully subtle musical effect.

Going further, we have ist Ruh. In ist Ruh, according to the model I described yesterday, we first have a B, and the u [‘oo’] represents C: B C. We find the seventh relating back to the prime, and in this relationship we have an example of everything I said both yesterday and the day before. When the human being enters into the seventh he goes out of himself. There is a relating back when he returns from the seventh to the keynote; he regains himself, as it were. You can feel this in ist Ruh, because it is inherent in the words.

Now it is especially interesting that in balde and warte we have E G—once more a kind of third, but the other third which moves in the opposite direction; it is the mirror image of the previous third, a kind of major third (Dur-Terz). Consequently we have a marvellous correspondance here: thirds which relate to each other as mirror images and the descending seventh chord, seventh harmony, in which the human being is given back to himself.

And now we will go further. Hauch and auch are words in which the diphthong makes its appearance. What are diphthongs? Where may we look for them in music? Here, you see, we may reverse our usual process. We have often found a transition from music to speech, and now we will pass over from speech into the diphthong element, into the musical element. If you possess an ear for such things, applying the principle about which I have often spoken, you will ask: Where does the essence of the diphthong lie? - of ei, for instance, or au? Does it lie in the e or the i, in the a or the u?[1] No, it lies between them. The actual sounds ei, au, are uttered (Ausgesprochene), but the ‘essence’ (Ausgegeisterte, ‘spirited out’) of the diphthong lies between them, and for this reason we must look in the diphthong not for notes, but for intervals. Diphthongs are always intervals. And the interesting thing about Goethe's poem is that Hauch (au, that is to say) is truly the interval of the third. You only need call to mind yesterday's model Wipfel—B G, ist Ruh—B C, Gipfel—B G, Hauch—third, auch—third, warte—E G, balde—E G. In this way Goethe not only makes use of clear thirds and their mirror images, but in order to employ every possibility in this matter, he adds true intervals of the third in the diphthongs. Here you have what matters.

When someone reads or recites this poem of Goethes, it does not matter that he should think it contains intervals of the third and even the seventh. Of course he does not think about it! Nevertheless, when the poem is rightly felt, something of this will be expressed by the reciter. It will find its way through. But what have we here? What is it that is almost as spiritual as the meaningful utterance of the ego, and which yet remains unknown? It is the astral element. And so behind the meaning of the poem there is a deeper, unconscious meaning for the human being, which is the musical meaning to be found in the astral element; this is especially effective in this poem. In this poem Goethe has transferred the effect of the poem, as far as this is possible, from the ego back into the astral realm.

Now you will best express this poem in eurythmy when you actually manage to emphasize the separate sounds less, but rather to indicate them wherever possible, without finishing them. Thus the i (‘ee’) in Wipfel and Gipfel is not quite finished, but left hovering in the air. This whole poem is most beautifully expressed, both eurythmically and musically, when the movements for the vowels are left hovering, and the eurythmist pulls back before completing them.

These are the things I have in mind when I say that eurythmy should be studied with feeling. Feeling should not be allowed to disappear while you are engaged in eurythmy, but rather cultivated. For the onlooker can clearly differentiate (he is not aware of this, for it does not reach his consciousness, but unconsciously the onlooker can tell quite clearly) whether a eurythmist automatically goes through the motions in eurythmy, or whether feeling is poured into the forms he or she creates. And two eurythmists, one of whom is an intellectual, only presenting the meaning of what has been learned, whereas the other feels through everything down to the details of curved or stretched arm movements, feeling through the finger movements—two such eurythmists will really be as different as the virtuoso is from the artist. A person can know perfectly well how to be a virtuoso, but is not therefore an artist. These things, when brought to full consciousness, will be apparent in the beauty of your eurythmic movements. Consequently it should not be a matter of indifference whether or not you know the relationship that exists between a eurythmic presentation of music and a eurythmic presentation of recitation. Through a knowledge derived from feeling- experience you will assume the attitude which must be embraced if eurythmy is increasingly to develop into a real art.

Just consider how the sense of the words actually destroys melody. It might be said that the necessity of attending to the meaning of the words entails a certain fear lest the melody be destroyed. The result is that speech does violence, as it were, to the musical element. These words are naturally somewhat drastic, but speech does do violence to the musical element. Must this be so? Can it be confirmed anywhere in the world?

Yes, how this is confirmed in the world may be seen from the following: Speech consists, on the one hand, of the vowel sounds, which mainly serve to express what lives within. In the vowel sounds, as we have seen, it is easy to see that the musical element leaves its mark, whereas in the consonants this is very difficult to find. But you also know how often I have emphasized the fact that the vowels have been wrested from man's inner being. They are the direct expression of feeling, of the inner essence of the soul; wonder, amazement, shrinking back in fear, holding yourself in relation to the outer world, self- assertion, giving way, loving embrace—all this is clearly expressed in the vowels.

The consonants are entirely adapted to the outer world. If you study a consonant you will find that it always imitates some thing or process existing in the outer world. When someone speaks i [‘ee’], you can feel quite definitely that here someone asserts himself. Certain German dialects even use i instead of ich, and here the human being feels his own being the strongest, as I know, for until my fourteenth or fifteenth year I myself spoke in dialect: ‘Na, nit du, i!’ [‘No, not you, me!’]; I know how one's own being asserts itself when one says i [‘ee’]. When speaking this sound i, you first jump into the air and then you stand on the ground. This is what has to be felt.

Now for the consonants—let us take l—you can picture the sound, but i has to be heard; ah has also to be heard. At most they may be pictured astrally. But you can quite well picture l or r. L—if someone creeps along, you straightaway have l. The r. someone skips while running; you have r, which is a process. An ordinary wheel creeps along, it l’s, so to speak, but a cog-wheel r’s along! You can immediately picture it. If you have ever noticed a stake being driven into the ground with a hammer, you cannot picture anything else but a t; it is a t. An external process is a consonant. It is always an external process. Thus the consonantal formations of speech plainly point to the world outside. The vowels fit themselves into the consonants.

You know, of course, that in [certain] languages the consonants are interchangeable with the vowels. Every consonant has something of the vowel about it, and every vowel something of the consonant. We need only remember that in some languages the l becomes i; a consonant becomes a vowel. In certain German dialects, for instance, the final l is always pronounced i. When speaking dialect ‘Dörfl’ is always pronounced ‘Dörfi’, [approximately, ‘Dirfee’]. The sound is i, and the l is very softly indicated in it; it is the i which is really pronounced.

But this also brings the vowel sounds towards the outside, towards the outer world. Speech is something which comes into contact with the outer world; in a certain sense it may be said to be an image of the outer world.

This is why speech does violence to the musical element, and why great skill is necessary if we are to retrieve the musical element in recitation. Great skill is necessary in order to strive back to the musical element, and we will only find the melodic element in speech if the musical element in the poet comes to meet us; indeed rhythm and beat have to be taken into account when reciting any passage of poetic language. If we neglect this, we sin against rhythm and beat (which in the musical realm itself do tend, of course, more towards the outside), and this results in incorrect recitation. The nearer you approach the musical element itself, the more you enter into Melos. Melos is the musical element.

When you examine everything I have just said, you will find that in the world outside the human being, the musical element is only present to a limited degree. By proceeding from within outwards, passing from musical experience to the experience of speech, we ourselves retreat ever further from the realm of music. Why do we retreat ever further? Because speech has to lean on external nature. But external nature can only be laid hold of by speech when an element is introduced into speech which is really foreign. For nature scorns beat, rhythm, and indeed our melodic speech. And a purely naturalistic materialist deems poetic speech of any sort, that is, artistic speech, affected and sentimental.

I once knew a fellow student, for example, who regarded himself as highly gifted. This was at the time of certain lectures held by Schröer, of which I wrote in The Course of My Life. [29] The classes took the form of practical exercises in lecturing and essay-writing. This student arrived one day, saying that he was prepared with subject-matter of the very greatest, indeed world-shaking, importance. He went on to tell us what these world-shaking ideas were. They amounted to the following: All metrical, poetic language is fundamentally wrong. People write in iambic, trochaic rhythms; they write in rhyme. This, however, is entirely wrong, for it is not natural but artificial. It must all be abolished from poetry. Such was the discovery he had made. He declared that a new poetry must make its appearance—without rhythm, without iambus or trochee, and without rhyme. Later on I even experienced that such poetry is actually written. At that time my fellow student only put it forward as theory. We thrashed him so thoroughly that he never held his lecture!

You will see from all this that it is perfectly obvious that what comes from nature does not form the basis of the musical element, for the musical element itself is a creation of the human being. And if we examine the inner nature of music and speech, we shall realize why it is that the musical element is so far removed from anything naturalistic. It is the self-creating force in the human being, and imitating nature is an aberration of the musical path.

As I said before, I do not mean to cast aspersions on the imitation of ‘rustling forests’, soughing winds, bubbling springs, ‘a brook in March’, [30] and so on. It is far from my intention to criticize these things in any way; but there does lie behind them the urge to pass out of the actual musical element, to enrich music by the introduction of something unmusical. In certain circumstances the result may be very agreeable, for it is possible to enlarge the sphere of every art in every direction, but because eurythmy demands that music be taken still more musically than it already is, terrible difficulties will arise if attempts are made to express in the right way in eurythmy something that is not purely musical.

Yet another thing can be understood from this, and that is the beneficial effect of tone eurythmy therapy; for this must gradually be developed side by side with usual tone eurythmy. Why is this? Fundamentally speaking, a large number of illnesses are caused by the fact that people have an inward tendency to turn into nature in some way, instead of remaining human. We always turn into a piece of nature when we are ill. Now we are human beings through the very fact that we inwardly do not tolerate natural processes to remain as they are, but instantly subject them to an inner transformation; we instantly make them inwardly human. There is no process in the human being (with the exception of the dissolving of salt, the metamorphosis of salt) [31] which is not a transformation of some process of nature. We become ill when we are powerless against natural processes in this inner transformation, if we cannot metamorphose them (a process they have to undergo within the human being), and when they still run their course as natural processes. If in any part of the human organism a natural process preponderates over the human, and we then make the person practise tone eurythmy, this is a therapeutic factor; for by this means we lead the part of the body in question away from nature and back into the human realm. When we let someone do tone eurvthmy because nature in him is too strong, it is as though we said to the natural process in the organ: ‘Out you go!’—for these movements are solely human and have nothing of nature about them. The musical element belongs only to man, not to nature. [32]

In earlier times the musical element itself was recognized as a means of healing, and music in such times did bring about many cures. But because the musical element comes especially to the fore in eurythmy, so the therapeutic forces of the musical element must also come to the fore with an efficient therapy. This is what I wanted to tell you today. Tomorrow at the same time we shall continue.

Notes:

1. For pronunciation of German vowels, see p. xiv. (Translator's note.)

You will have seen that it is quite possible for a single individual to express in eurythmy the essence of the musical element as musical element. We have tried to show how, for instance, the triad and the progression of the phrase may be mastered by a single person.

But the eurythmical expression of the musical element by a single person, from a certain point of view, is necessarily rather primitive, and is somewhat meagre when presented on the stage—although most beautiful and impressive performances can be given by a solo eurythmist. It is to be hoped that these solo performances will be valued, for they are a means whereby the actual essence of musical eurythmy may be revealed. In spite of this, it cannot be denied that a musical impression can also be given by means of the concerted working of a number of people, in other words by means of choral eurythmy. The point, however, is that we must not merely take these things schematically, but also enter somewhat into the quality of working together in artistic presentation.

I have emphasized what doing eurythmy entails: it is work to raise (heraufarbeiten) the physical human being (which really only ‘sounds’ in beat) to the etheric and the astral human being [see Appendix 2, final quotations]. And if we seek for Melos as such in the astral organization of the human being (and we seek for speech in the ego-organization), then we can perceive that which forms the fundamental basis of musical eurythmy. What you experience as astral human being usually remains stuck in a state of repose. But when you proceed a step further and present to the world that which otherwise remains in repose in the astral human being, you show, as it were, your spirit and soul nature. And it is this power of making things manifest which constitutes the most predominant element of all artistic endeavour.

At this point I will take the opportunity of alluding to a very, very remarkable contemporary phenomenon. My reason for doing so is, that if as eurythmists you can awaken a feeling for it, it would do much to help you in the actual artistic development of eurythmy.

During this course of lectures on tone eurythmy, I have often found myself thinking of a very significant Austrian musician of the present day. This musician, who was born in Wiener-Neustadt, opposes all modern music with extraordinary vehemence, denouncing it as ‘bad European music’. This in itself is an interesting phenomenon, and should be of special interest to eurythmists. Hauer [33] began to study music at a very early age, between his fifth and eighth to ninth years, by playing the zither, and he progressed far, coming to the view that it does not take much to acquire all that we presently call music. We can feel in Hauer's whole manner of expression that in a certain respect he is inwardly extraordinarily honest. On the one hand, he came to the conclusion that what goes by the name of music today is exceptionally easily come by, but, on the other hand, that precisely the musical element is missing, that we are led away from the musical realm. Indeed, very much of what I have to say about the eurythmic presentation of the musical realm can be found in Hauer's writings, although he expresses it in a stark and radical way. He speaks, for example, about atonal music.

I have said that the actual musical element, the spiritual element in music, lies between the notes, in the intervals, constituting that which we do not hear. In speaking about atonal music Hauer touches on something that is very significant and true. He is of the opinion that the production of a note or chord is nothing more than an appeal to the emotions or the senses—merely a means to express externally the inaudible Melos, which presents the inmost life of the human soul.

Now there is something so decadent and chaotic in the culture and civilization of the present day, especially where the arts are concerned, that your heart may well warm towards anyone who, with a certain instinctive flair, realizes that the music of today [1924] is not really music, but simply noise, and perceives that on which the musical element depends. It is, moreover, not difficult to understand that a man who has developed by himself out of all this can be absolutely furious with all European art. And this is true of Hauer. European art is absolutely repugnant to him.

All this is very interesting, and I have long been interested in this man Hauer. At the time when I was trying to lead over the musical element into eurythmy, I had to seek for some things that appear in Hauer, and I had to say to myself ‘It is certain that you could never take Hauer's atonal Melos as a basis for the gestures of eurythmy.’ The movements of eurythmy could not be found in this way. I had to ask myself: ‘Why is this so? Why is it not possible to come to eurythmic movements in this way, when Hauer undoubtedly feels the movement of Melos with such inwardness, and sees so clearly what is essential in the musical realm?’ In the case of Hauer, the explanation is simple. Hauer hates that civilization which marks the beginning of European culture—a civilization which the rest of humanity admires tremendously. He hates the civilization of Greece. He is a man who hates to excess the civilization of Greece.

Now it is interesting for once to come across a man who honestly and truly hates Greek civilization. There are any number of people who venerate it insincerely, by which I do not mean to imply that there are not others who venerate it with sincerity. To honour Sophocles and Aeschylus is a matter of course today, whereas to find anyone abusing Sophocles and Aeschylus as destroyers of art is an interesting phenomenon, and one which should not be overlooked. Hauer's view of the Greeks is based on the fact that, in his opinion, they brought everything that is related to art into the theatre, thus pouring everything that is audible into visibility: Now, after all, that is quite true. The question is whether we can also love the visible realm. If we are to find our way to eurythmy, we must of course be able to love what is visible. If we do not love the visible realm, honestly do not love it, preferring to remain in the audible realm, to stop with Melos, then we shall never be able to find any satisfaction in Greek culture, where everything was transferred into the sphere of what can be seen and understood.

Now among the orientals there were inspired teachers who truly wanted to listen to the audible realm. Oriental architecture was really music in space; it has within it a great deal of eurythmy. You actually see Melos pouring itself into movement. Europe possesses very little understanding for a musical architecture, as has been built with the Goetheanum here in Dornach, for the Goetheanum was, in a sense, a revolt against Greek architecture. There was very little suggestion of Greek architecture about it; but the Goetheanum was musical, it was eurythmic. [34]

Now, you see, Hauer actually hates speech, too, because speech does not stop with Melos, but (as I have already shown) does violence to it, pushing it into the outer world. For from the moment we utter sounds (and in so doing give ourselves up to what is demanded of us by the meaning of the sounds), from that moment onwards we become in a certain sense unmusical. The speaking of sounds is an art that in fact can only indicate a sounding of Melos. Melos may thus peep through, but it cannot be fully developed. You cannot form words according to the arrangement I proposed, as if the vowel sounds contained in them were really thirds or other intervals. You cannot do this, for the world does not permit it.

When (let us say) you feel wonder, an ah, and just after experiencing this sound you experience some feeling (let's say) which lies in the interval of the third compared to the former feeling, the world does not allow you to feel it. It's not possible, wouldn't you agree?—Life continually destroys that which is musical. Nature too is unmusical, and it is not from nature that we are able to derive that which is musical.

This destruction of what is musical extends to recitation and declamation. If there were only vowel sounds in speech, there would be no recitation or declamation, for the human being would always be yielding up his inner being (through pronouncing the vowels) to the outer world. There would be no declamation or recitation, for we would have to go along with the experiences of the world, and it would not be possible to conserve the musical element. That is why we have the consonants. The consonants are, as it were, the apology for the vowels. Man apologises to himself for the fact that, in the vowel sounds, he follows his own experiences. And when he fits in the consonants between the vowels, it is an apology for having become so foreign to himself. When you make the sound a follow an ah, forming thus either warte or balde (I have already spoken about these things) you have at the same time, in the consonants fitting themselves in between the ah and the a, an apology for the succession of the vowels.

In the case of that particular poem by Goethe, however, the vowels really make a musical effect, and consequently this apology of the consonants is not so much needed. When listening to this poem, a subtle, musical impression would be received if the speaker could achieve a swallowing of the consonants as much as possible, so that only the vowels were audible, with the consonants merely indicated.

Many other poems, however, really need the consonants. It may be said that the less musical a poem is, the more careful you must be to make the right use of the consonantal instrument (palate, mouth, lips, teeth, and so on). Then, in recitation and declamation, we have the apology for the offence committed by the vowels.

This will demonstrate that with the vowel sounds, which are an externalization of what is inward, the human being places a kind of caricature into the world. He is no longer himself. The human being is himself as long as he remains musical. When he becomes a vowel sound, he places a caricature in the world. With the consonants he once again recasts this caricature into the human form, and is then outside. He lays hold of an image of himself This corresponds to the vowel when framed by the consonants. In music we go more and more inwards. In speech we go further and further outwards. It is infinitely important for eurythmists to feel and experience these things, to develop a rounding-off of the artistic process, which is more than simply making or copying movements.

Taking this as your starting-point you will also be able to feel how choral eurythmy can be effective. In choral eurythmy we are dealing with a number of people. Let us first take the musical case: We have a metamorphosis of the motif, or phrase. We might express this metamorphosis of motifs in choral form by somehow grouping people together—three, let us say. We will let the first person present the first motif in eurythmy by moving in the form to the place of the second person, who will now take over the second metamorphosis of the motif. The first person remains standing. The second person moves on, passing the next metamorphosis of the motif over to the third person, who now continues the form to the place of the first (see Fig. 5). A kind of round dance can be brought about in this way.

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It is only necessary in such a case for those who remain to continue to carry out the corresponding motifs while standing. In this simple way (where one person develops the motifs by moving, while the others retain their original motifs in standing), we have introduced a new variation into the motifs by means of eurythmy. By means of the motif which is in motion and the motif which is formed, in eurythmy we are able to introduee into the musical realm something which could never be expressed by the pure musical element, for in the pure musical element the previous chord or motif can no longer be retained after the new one has begun to sound.

Only think how often I have observed that, in the spiritual world, the past remains. In this development of the motifs through the chorus, the past remains (becomes engraved, so to speak, hardened), through the fact that the bearer of the motif in question carries out the movements while standing. This is one way.

Another variation appears when we have chords in the progressions of the motif. Here you can arrange the chorus in such a way that the chord is carried out by several people, and the motif is carried over to another group of people. In this way, one group expresses the harmonic element, and the harmonic development is then expressed by letting the harmony flow over from one group to another. Here we reach something very significant and totally different in its effect. When the progression of the motif is expressed in movement (the chord can also be represented by a single person, and the progression of the motif can also be expressed in movement by an individual), the space in which the movement occurs, and all the metamorphoses and transformations of the music, are filled out by the physical human being.

When making use of a chorus, however (we will suppose that you have one group of three people, and three more, and a further three, each carrying the progression of the motif from one group to the next), the element of visibility ceases to be [paramount], for when the motif is passed from one group to the next an invisible element wends its way through this choral dance. Here we approach very near to making this invisible element musical, very near especially to atonal music. Thus, by transferring to a chorus, the whole matter takes on quite a different aspect [from a solo performance]. In this way the aspect of the musical element which is becoming progressively unmusical, may be made musical once again by means of eurythmy, because movement makes it possible to appeal to that which is invisible. Thus, in this direction too, we shall possibly find that tone eurythmy is able to exert a corrective influence upon the musical element.

Now in the continuation of a motif everything will naturally depend upon the movement, but when the chord is being represented by a group, the relative positions of the people are of importance. The people in question (even when their group is moving) must endeavour to retain their relative positions. Your feelings will have to tell you this. Let us now suppose that we have to represent a triad. You can't place yourselves one behind the other (left of the diagram). You can and have to feel that you place yourselves in such a way that the first person stands here, the second here and the third in the middle (see Fig. 6).

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Then, when the lowest note is taken by the first person, the next highest note by the second person, and the third note (if you wish, the fifth) by the third person, then you can tell by looking at it that the right thing has happened. The motif, when brought into movement, is carried over to the next group of people. And when the whole chorus is moving, each individual must endeavour to retain the right position in relationship to the others, so the whole design of the form (which is determinded by the relative positions of the people) may be expressed through this.

If we have a combination of two notes, the people can only be placed in this way:

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We can feel that this is incomplete.

But now for the four-note discord. When you consider the artistic effect of placing three people as we did for the triad, and observe the complete grouping (which really does make the triad stand before us), then you will say to yourself: Where shall I put the fourth person? Whoever has artistic feeling will not find a place for a fourth person. Indeed no such place can be found. The fourth person can only be provided for by letting him or her move around the third person. There is no other way of doing it. You come to this by direct intuition. So now you already have an indication for the discord in the grouping. The group, the fixed configuration, can only express concords. The moment a discord enters, movement must be introduced into the grouping.

When you introduce movement into the grouping, you bring a challenge, and you can no longer remain still. The movement made by the fourth person (a movement necessary to the progression, to the resolution of the discord) is disclosed by its own nature.

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You see, we have to look at things in this way if we are to gain insight into the gestures as the essential matter. Having gained this insight, you will say to yourselves: ‘What we do is the outcome of an intrinsic necessity.’ This is no infringement of freedom, although it does not open the door for purely arbitrary ideas. What always remains is the freedom to carry out the movements beautifully.

Choral eurythmy may be developed from the usual eurythmy which the individual presents. In particular, however, the following can be done. Let us suppose that in some piece of music we have the tonic, the dominant and the subdominant. To present this we take three groups of people and place the tonic with the first group, the dominant with the second group and the subdominant with the third, making those presenting the tonic have larger movements, whereas those presenting the dominant and subdominant make smaller ones. Now try to imagine how this would look. The frequent recurrence of the tonic is shown by the larger forms. The tonic is given prominence by the larger movements. It follows that the eurythmist who is moving these larger forms will quite naturally make larger gestures too, prompted by his or her feeling. The tonic, which recurs time and again, also recurs in the eurythmy forms. If these things are well practised in the way that has been explained, you will find that the character of each individual key [35] will be revealed, for you will be obliged to make the corresponding movements in the transitions.

The difference between major and minor keys appears very clearly with this interplay between the different groups [see Steiner's lecture notes, p. 24]. And when, in addition, you take into consideration the fact that every time a sound goes higher there should be the feeling that the eurythmist has to approach nearer to the audience, whereas when the sound goes lower the eurythmist has to move more towards the back of the stage—when all this is added you will have the whole musical element in a visual image.

There is still another point which belongs to this, that when a group comes to high notes, there must be a feeling that the movement has to be made more pointed, whereas when it is a question of lower notes, then it has to become rounder. Thus it may be said that a movement carried out with this gesture is lower, and a movement with this gesture is higher.

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You will say: ‘These things present us with a great deal to learn, for in actual practice they are very complicated.’ Quite true! But they are no more complicated than learning to play the piano, or learning to sing.

I have indicated how the transition can be made from solo eurythmy to choral eurythmy. Real difficulties only make their appearance when we come to polyphonic music, but we shall speak about this tomorrow. In movement the whole affair will become even more disjointed than in the musical element as such. When we have a piece with many voices, therefore, we also have to make use of different people, and the quality of belonging together can only be achieved by means of a certain relationship in the form.

At this point I should like to develop a brief, esoteric ‘intermezzo’ for you. It has to do with the fact that the eurythmist has to use his or her body as an instrument. Only think of all that goes into the making of an instrument and how we appreciate certain violins which today can actually no longer be made. [Instruments made by Stradivarius, Guarnerius, and so on. (Translator's note.)] Think of everything that is involved in an external musical instrument. Now it is true that the human being is, in a certain way, exempt from these demands, for the divine-spiritual powers have already built him as an exceedingly good instrument. But actually the case is not so rosy, for otherwise every individual would find his body were the most perfectly suitable instrument. The eurythmists sitting here will be well aware of the great difficulties they have in overcoming bodily hindrances and impediments, if it is a question of arriving at eurythmy that is really worthy of the art.

The fact is that quite a bit can be done in order to work inwardly upon your body so that eurythmy to the sounds of speech and of music may gradually appear out of this body in a truly artistic, complete form. There is very little opportunity for this in the civilized life of Europe. European civilization has developed a view towards outer nature, but has not developed that which is necessary to give the human being a place in the world commensurate with true human dignity. And so people today have great difficulty feeling their real humanity within themselves.

Now what I have to say in this direction will not be immediately clear. It will become apparent through doing it. What I want to say in this connection is as follows. Listen to this progression of notes, which will at first seem very strange to you:

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And now (to the pianist): Play the first two notes together and the next two notes consecutively, sustaining the last note for a long time. The first two notes, accordingly, played together and the last two notes one after the other, the final note sustained for a long time.

Now will someone who can do it well show this in eurythmy, simply in standing: B, A, along with E and D; the E short, and sustaining the last note for a long time.

And now I need somebody who will sing a word to this progression of notes; for there is a word which rings true when sung to this peculiar progression of notes, namely, the word ‘T A 0’. We are dealing here with the following: When expressing this in eurythmy (and here you must apply what has been given in these lectures) you have the seventh, the sixth, and only then the other notes. But you also have to feel the descending progression of notes, and then try to express this in eurythmy, not merely the notes. Hitherto you have become stuck in what is elementary, but you really have to express what I have said and then you will see that in the TAO you have a wonderful means of making your inner bodily nature flexible, inwardly supple, and able to be artistically fashioned for eurythmy. For when you lead the seventh and the sixth, as I have indicated them, down into the E and the D (that is to say you come into this second), you will see how by carrying this out you will gain an inner strength which you will be able to carry over into all your eurythmy. This is an esoteric exercise, and when it is carried out it means meditation in eurythmy.

And when you ask someone else (either singing or speaking in a reciting or declamatory way) to accompany these gestures with declamation or singing of TAO, you will see that in connection with singing, eurythmy and recitation, this is something like that which meditation is for general human life.

What I have given here is indeed an esoteric ‘intermezzo’, and it points the way to eurythmic meditation. We must go very far back, back to the ancient civilization of China, if we are to find our way into this meditation in eurythmy. [36] And you will understand that we can exercise a certain sympathy for someone who wants to get back to the ancient Orient in order to re-discover music, and whose feeling leads him to say: The Greeks have totally ruined music, and that is why the Greeks really had no proper musician—with the exception of the mythological figure, Orpheus. [12, end]

On the other hand, we can love the Greek civilization for its way of entering into the sculptural, plastic element. But one thing is true, that the Greek culture with its sculpture gradually was led away from eurythmy. Here we must compare the forms of oriental architecture, which really did transpose music into movement, with the forms of Greek architecture, which basically exhibit a dreadful symmetry. Here this dreadful symmetry rules. This, too, had to make its appearance in the world at some point.

The Greek culture did (I might almost say) tragically suffer the consequences of its civilization. It was a short-lived civilization, bringing about its own dissolution. The fault does not lie in the Greek culture: the fault lies in the fact that Greek culture is supposed to be forever reproduced in European civilization. It is, however, a kind of dissolution of this Greek element when we derive our movements directly from speech and singing, from the realms of speech and of music themselves. The difficulty people have in understanding eurythmy lies in the fact that European understanding has been, as it were, frozen into the reposing form, and is fundamentally no longer able to live in movement. The reposing form, however, should be left to. nature. When we come to the human being, we have to enter into movement, because the human being transcends the reposing, purely sense-perceptibly visible form.

That is what I wanted to say to you today.

If, in the forthcoming lectures, we are to become acquainted with a few things in further detail, today we have to put the question: If music essentially is the flow of Melos, and if it is Melos in particular which should be expressed in the gestures of eurythmy, what then is the musical element as such, the music shown in eurythmy, meant to express?

Here we meet with two extremes. On the one hand it may be said that the melodic element is tending more and more towards what is thematic, towards the expression of something which is not in itself musical. I have often mentioned that, especially in recent times through a Wagnerian influence, as well as other influences, music on the one hand has become expression, expression of something that is not music. On the other hand, especially in the beginning of the age of Wagner, we also find pure, absolute music (the musical element as such, simply the weaving of musical sounds)—of which it was said (not without a certain justification) that it made music into a tonal arabesque, a progression of notes without content.

Naturally these are both extreme cases. To put forward the idea that music embodies nothing and is merely a tonal arabesque [37] is nonsense, utter nonsense. But such nonsense may very easily arise when there is no real understanding of where the essential musical element lies. It cannot lie in the notes themselves, as I have repeatedly emphasized. The person engaged in tone eurythmy has constantly to bear in mind the necessity for expressing in the movements, in the actual gestures themselves, that which lies between the notes, regarding the notes as merely giving him the occasion for the movement.

It may help you to carry out these gestures I have already indicated, with inner correctness, and the right inner feeling, if we make a certain basic provision. And the provision should consist that you, as eurythmists, regard the actual note, and in a certain sense the chord too, as that which pushes you into movement, causes you to move, and gives the impetus (Ruck: ‘jolt’) towards movement. You must continue the impetus between two notes and again regard the next note as the impetus which is given to you. In this way the movement will not express the note, and will not emphasize the note, but will express in the fullest possible way everything that lies between the notes and what comes to the fore, for instance, in the intervals. This is of great importance.

Now, why is there such a strong urge in our modern age to deviate from the purely musical realm? Something quite beautiful may sometimes result from this deviation from what is purely musical, but why is the urge to deviate from it so strong? It is because the contemporary person has gradually acquired an attitude of mind in which he is no longer able to dream, no longer able to meditate. He has nothing within to set him into movement, and wants to be set into movement from outside. But this being-set-into-movement from outside can never produce a musical mood. In order that modern civilization could furnish proof of its unmusical nature, it has laid hold of a drastic means to do so. It is really as though, in its concealed depths of soul, modern civilization wanted to provide the clearest proof that it is unmusical. And the proof is given in that it has produced the film. The film is the clearest proof that those who like it are unmusical. For the whole basis of films is that they only permit those things to be active in the soul which do not arise out of the inner life of the soul, but which are stimulated from outside [See Appendix 6].

It must be admitted that a lot of modern music-making [1924] tends to lay special stress upon that which is stimulated from outside. Attempts are made to imitate what is external—not by means of the pure melodic element, but rather by employing some subject matter as far remote from the melodic element as possible.

There is a very simple way, once more a kind of meditation (I recently spoke to you about the TAO meditation, which may be helpful to eurythmists in the way I have already explained), whereby you may gradually accustom yourself to seek for that which is musical even in what lies outside the musical sphere. It consists in comparing a sequence of vowels, such as: Lieb ist viel or Eden geht grell. There need be no meaning. Compare these for instance with: Gab man Manna or Ob Olaf warm war.

And now repeat such sentences one after the other:

Lieb ist viel ... Eden geht grell ... : does not resonate
Gab man Manna ... Ob Olaf warm war ... : musical

You will most certainly feel that the second examples are musical, whereas the first exist as if they would not resound. Just try to repeat these sentences one after the other: Lieb ist viel. Gab man Manna. Eden geht grell. Ob Olaf warm war. You will easily recognize that the vowels ah[1] and o lie within the musical sphere, whereas the vowels ee and a depart from it. This is an important matter for eurythmists to observe, for eurythmy must, of course, represent a wholeness. When in tone eurythmy you wish to express something very inward, the movements may be led over into ah or o, or likewise into oo. But the gestures of tone eurythmy may not readily be led over into e or a. Thus the sounds ah, o, oo may be employed in pieces of music for eurythmy in order to emphasize the mood, but a and ee should only be used when it is definitely intended to pass, at some point or other, out of the musical realm. This is important.

These things are of such a nature that we have to acquire a consciousness of them above all. It is interesting, for example, when we follow the German language through several centuries, to observe that it has gradually dropped many ah, o, and oo sounds, and has taken on many ee and a sounds. In other words, the German language has become progressively more unmusical in the course of centuries. (I am speaking now of the vowels, not of the intervals.)

It is really important to bear this in mind in tone eurythmy, and indeed in other eurythmy too. For the knowledge that the German language has a marked tendency towards a distorted phonetic imagination may be quite valuable. With the western Germanic languages this is even more the case. But all this rightly leads us to put the question: ‘What does music really express?’ This question cannot easily be answered by anyone who is unable to dream. For, you see, in very truth the poet, the artist, must basically be able to dream, to dream consciously—that is to say, to meditate. Either he must hold dream- pictures in recollection, or be able to find dream-pictures of the realities of the spiritual world.

But what does this mean? It means leaving behind everything that makes sense in the sensory world. Take a dream (I have often spoken of these matters). Take a dream: if we are to get at its nature, we must not look at it as an interpreter of dreams does. For the interpreter of dreams takes the dream's content. Anyone who really understands the nature of dreams does not take the dream's content, but considers whether the dream rises up in fear and calms down, whether the dream stirs up an inner uneasiness which is intensified to anxiety, ending perhaps in this anxiety, or whether there is a state of tension which is afterwards resolved. This is really the decisive thing in a dream. And in the description of spiritual processes this becomes even more necessary.

It is, of course, exceedingly difficult today to speak to humanity about the things which spiritual science has to impart. For instance, when I described the progression of world-evolution (Saturn, Sun, Moon and so on), people thought the very things important that were unimportant to me. It is certainly correct that the processes on Saturn were as I described them. But that is not the essential point. The essential point is the inner movement which is described. And I have always been most delighted when somebody said that he would like to compose in music what has been described in the evolution of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Of course, he would have to leave out some of it, leave out the colour element, as I described, the warmth phenomena, even the smells on Saturn (for apart from the ‘smelling-harmonium’ [38] we have no musical instrument functioning to smells, do we!). Even so, particularly Saturn evolution is such that its essence could be expressed quite well in music and could be composed. [39]

When anyone dreams, and (setting aside its content) takes the tension and relaxation, the culmination of the picture sequence, or the culmination of bliss when flying, and so on; if he takes all this movement and says: ‘I am quite indifferent to the meaning of the dream; for me it all depends on how its movements take place’—then the dream already is a piece of music, then you cannot write it down except in musical notation. Once you feel that the dream can only be written down in musical notation, then you are just beginning to understand the dream, I mean really to understand it by looking at it directly.

From this you will see that the musical element has content: not the thematic content, which is taken from the sensory world, but a content which appears everywhere when something is expressed in terms of the senses, but in such a manner that everything sensory can be left aside, revealing the essence of the matter. You have to treat the musical element precisely in this way. And the eurythmist has above all things to bear this strongly in mind. And he will bear it strongly in mind when he pays more attention than is usual in listening, when he pays attention to the sustained notes and the rests.

For the eurythmist, the sustained note (the pedal-point) and the rest are of special importance. And it is a serious question whether a pedal- point or anything that recalls in some way the sustained note (this really is of great importance) is being adequately treated. It will be adequately treated if, every time he or she comes to a held note, or to something which either is a pedal-point in germ, or might become such, the eurythmist carries out the eurythmy in the greatest possible calmness, emphasizing standing calmly, in other words not proceeding further in space as long as the sustained note is heard.

On the other hand, it is important for the eurythmist to penetrate inwardly into the musical significance of everything connected to the rest. And so it will be good to take an example. Here (see musical example) you have the opportunity of moving up after the descending mood, with a corresponding rest which even contains a bar line, something which may seem a contradiction, from the point of view of the eurythmist.

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I mention this because after what I just said it must appear contradictory to the eurythmist. I previously said that the bar line signifies a holding-on, doing the movement in yourself; that the transition from one motif to another signifies moving in space, if possible with a swinging movement—naturally suited to the notes in question. As a eurythmist you may say: ‘Now here I really do not know what to do. I am supposed to move forwards and yet at the same time remain standing.’ That is in fact just what you should do! You should move forwards two steps and remain standing between them. You should accomplish this when you want to express anything similar to this example, taken from Mozart's Piano Sonata in F major, where you can have a longer rest during which the bar line occurs—then you should move with a swing from one note to the other, but calmly stand still in yourself in the middle of this swinging movement, in the rest. Here you will see how you radically indicate, precisely through eurythmy, that the musical element lies between the notes, for in such a case it is the rest which you specially emphasize through eurythmy. It is this that is so very important.

And now consider I said on the one hand that when a note is sustained, you should try as far as possible to stand still, remaining within yourself. Now, the pedal-point, the sustained note, frequently lies in a second voice and of course it may be aesthetically expressed when the two parts are taken (as they always have to be) by two people, each moving a different form. In this way a very beautiful interplay (Variation) may result between the two people. When the one proceeds in the movement, the other remains standing with the sustained note. The movements are carried out so that the person remaining standing moves a shorter curve, during which time the person moving onwards in the form makes a fuller curve—and they re-encounter each other. In this way the whole thing is brought into a satisfactory movement, which on the one hand may be shown between the swinging over, between the interval (which may go as far as the rest), and on the other hand in the pedal-point or the sustained note in general.

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It is in this way that the actual quality of tone eurythmy has gradually to develop. Only when you feel things in this way will you be able to bring out the actual quality of tone eurythmy.

This shows you at the same time that music of several parts will essentially be expressed by a number of people moving a number of forms. The forms must be carried out in such a way that they really correspond to each other, just as the different voices correspond in the music itself.

When you further develop the feeling of which I have spoken (the realization that the musical element lies in the tension, relaxation, in the rising and falling of the movement), you will indeed have something which the music expresses. For music does not express that which creates the meaning of words, but it expresses the spiritual element itself living in the movement of musical sound. It is consequently specially important for eurythmists to pay great heed to what the movement expresses quite inwardly in the greatest sense, that is discord and concord. Now, you know, a composer will never make use of a discord unintentionally, and indeed music without discords is not really music, because it is without inner movement. Composers and musicians in general make use of discords. Concords are actually there in order to calm the discords, to bring the discord to some sort of completion.

In the experience of discords and concords something makes its appearance which approaches the mysteries of the world closer than we can put into words. Let us suppose that we hear a discordant phrase which resolves into a concord. Let us observe what the eurythmist does. He or she of course can bear in mind all that I have indicated, and shall possibly still indicate, with regard to forms. He or she will go on to a concord and may use as form the various intervals that I have indicated. But the transition from a discord to a concord, or vice versa, should be brought out in the presentation. It should be that the eurythmist, while moving on in a discord, at the moment of going over from a discord to a concord, must insert an abrupt movement (Ruck) into the movement itself.

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Something very significant is expressed in this way. By this means we express the fact that here, with the transition from discord to concord, or vice versa, something is brought about which the human being places outside of himself. What I have drawn above could also be drawn like this:

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Observe how I erase a small part. That is where you go back. You will feel that a small part has been erased. It is a passing over into the spiritual. When you erase a piece of your path you annul all musical sound [that is present] in the movement, and you indicate: ‘Something is present that is no longer possible to express in the sensory realm. Here I [the eurythmist] can only suggest the bounds to you [the onlooker]; your imagination must take you further.’

You see, it is only when we come so far in doing such things that we reach the point where the arts should be. Philistines may think, when they see something of this kind (see Fig. 15, drawing on the left), that it is a face. It is not a face; it is a line. A face is as follows: I must manage in such a way that no actual line is drawn, but a line, as it is, is allowed to arise out of the light and shade (see drawing on the right). Anyone who draws these lines, from the very moment he begins to draw, is no painter, indeed no artist at all. Only someone who allows the lines to arise either out of the colour, or out of the chiaroscuro [light and shade], is an artist.

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You can draw in a philistine fashion, like this:

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This represents the boundary between sea and sky. But in reality it does not exist! It is absolutely non-existent. The sky exists: blue. The sea exists: green. The boundary between them both comes about because they touch each other (see Fig. 17).

If you want to paint a house, surrounded as it is by air, leave room for your colours within the area which the air leaves free. The house will come about. That's what art has to work for! In this matter one can indeed sometimes reach a fine state of despair. [40]

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You see, such despair is very difficult for someone of today to understand. Now, many and various are the types of people who apply for teaching posts at the Waldorf School [Stuttgart], amongst them, teachers of drawing. They have certainly learned something (namely drawing) that is quite useless at the Waldorf School. They say: ‘I can draw.’ Indeed there is no such thing as drawing! It is damaging when children are taught to draw, for there really is no such thing as drawing.

When you reach the point of understanding this erasing of your line in eurythmy, you will also have reached the point when this understanding of the musical element in doing eurythmy really leads into the artistic realm. Thus whenever transitions occur, try (once again without being pedantic) to develop a movement which goes back over itself so that the onlooker is obliged to go back, so that he says to himself: ‘He or she was already further and is now going back.’ He will notice all this unconsciously, but he will at that moment be urged out of the sensory realm, to enter into the spiritual realm where everything to do with the senses is erased.

In this way you will discover the possibility of looking for the essential nature of eurythmic movement in the rest, (Pause: ‘rest’, ‘pause’), even bringing more and more into the rest. Let us once more consider our example (see Fig. 11). Here you have a transition which, in its note values, already presents a marked feeling of going-out-of-yourself, of going with your inner being out of your skin. With the interval of the fifth there is still the feeling of being just at the boundary of the skin.

The fifth is the human being. Going further, we actually pass over into what lies beyond the human realm, but in this case, because we are dealing with music, into the spiritual realm. If you achieve this emphasis of the rest by means of specially pronounced movement, and yet introduce into this movement a momentary calmness (as I have indicated), you will express the whole meaning of this ascending passage in a really satisfactory eurythmical way.

When you are practising, try to find examples of musical phrases containing long rests and very pronounced leaps in pitch, and then try to make the movement as characteristic as possible. This will result in a eurythmy perfectly adapted to the expression of instrumental music; I might say, a singing eurythmy. This will also affect your eurythmy as a whole. For by this means you will feel the very marked contrast which lies between the vowels and the consonants for eurythmic expression. Even if it is true that ee and a actually tend towards a distortion of phonetic imagination, they are nevertheless vowels, and remain within the sphere of music, whereas the consonants are merely noises and lead away from the musical realm.

I have also said that the consonants are really the apology for using the vowel sounds for something in the outer world. This will closely concern you, for in speech eurythmy it will cause you to introduce as much of the vowel element as possible into the consonants. This means, in other words, that you should try in eurythmy to make the consonants as short and the vowels as long as possible.

Now this is not what I wanted to impress on you (for this will arise from your feelings) that there must be a certain parallel between declamation and recitation, and eurythmy. What I do want you especially to take to heart is that for speech eurythmy, too, it is most important to bear in mind that it is also the task of the speaker not only to say something when he speaks, but at times to say something even more essential when he doesn't speak. I do not mean by this those dashes of which recent poets are so enamoured, presumably because they have so much spiritual matter to communicate that they are compelled to express it in continual dashes! I expect you are acquainted with an ironical poem by Morgenstern, consisting only of dashes. [41] It does not contain a single sound, not a single word—simply dashes. I do not mean these dashes, then, but rather the fact that, in order to bring out certain effects in a poem, it is absolutely necessary, just as necessary in declamation as in eurythmy, to understand how to make proper pauses.

Think of the hexameter, with its caesura, where a pause has to be made, and you will realize that something is actually said by means of the pause. Sometimes the pauses need only be short, but it is important that they should also be given their place in declamation and recitation. Imagine the phrase: Was hör ich draussen vor dem Tor was auf der Brücke schallen? recited without any pause—appalling!

Was hör' ich draussen vor dem Tor—
Was auf der Brücke schallen?

is correct. Now as eurythmists, when you are concerned with the expression of a rest, and in speech eurythmy too, the effect will be eminently correct and aesthetically good as well as intrinsically justified, if you cultivate the goingback-into-yourself (going back in the form) which you have been able to learn from tone eurythmy. So that at times even in the short pauses of speech eurythmy, this retracing, this erasing the form, should by all means be seen.

In conclusion I only want to add something which will serve to complete what was left out in the preceding lectures. It is this: You know that the keynote is best expressed by the position, or also by means of the step: position, step (as I explained in connection with the triad). Now imagine that you have to form the interval of the second. The second in music is something which actually does not quite express the musical element, but in which the musical element makes a beginning. It stands at the gateway of the musical realm. The second is a musical question. Thus it is necessary (and you will feel the necessity) when forming a second, which follows any keynote, that you as second (whilst the second follows from another note) strive to turn the palms of the hands upwards. Any sort of movement you like can be produced while trying to arrive with the palms of the hands turned upwards, when ascending from one note to the next, or just a movement upwards, straightening the palm of the hand. Of course you must see to it that the hand does not appear in this position beforehand. The important thing is always to acquire a view of the whole. Through this, it [the second] manifests itself

Now, on the basis of what I have said, we have still to arrange the next two sessions.

Notes:

1. Phonetic spelling, see p. xiv. (Translator's note.)

I have often stressed that eurythmy is drawn from the nature of the human organization, from the possibilities of movement prefigured in the human organism. The human organism on the one hand contains the musical element, which in fact is built into it, and on the other hand (as should be especially mentioned in connection with tone eurythmy) it contains music translated into movement. It will doubtless be obvious to you that the musical element is situated, so to speak, in the human chest structure, above the chest. If we put the question: ‘How are we to find in the actual human organization the transition from singing, and from the inner musical organization upon which the human being is founded, to the “organism of movement” of eurythmy?’—then (as is immediately apparent) we must turn to the limbs attached to the chest structure, which reveal themselves as limbs of movement out of the chest organism. [42]

Now in regard to the whole human organization, the hands and arms are the most wonderful human ‘organs’. And you need only exert your intuitive vision a little to recognize that that which is latent in the human singing apparatus through the palate, jaw, and so on appears as limbs. In a certain respect it is like arms and hands which have become solidified and brought to rest. Try the following: Bring your arms and hands into movement before you by means of an interlocking of the fingers (folded hands), and now compare this with what happens when the lower and upper jaws are interlocked, as may be observed in the skeleton. If you take into account the muscles stretched across this, you will easily begin to discern the process of metamorphosis from a mobile state to a state of rest.

Now we see how that which serves the musical element in singing is continued below. That which is connected to voice production and to initiating the sound is actually surrounded by the muscles and bones which end in the arms and hands. And because movement depends upon making use of these muscles and bones, it is consequently a question of learning to feel how the muscles and bones have to be used in order to do eurythmy in the musical sense.

In voice production, the singer seeks the point of departure for initiating the sound. Can we too find a point of departure in eurythmy, where we make use of those most expressive ‘organs’, the arms and hands?

The human being possesses a singular ‘organ’ which may be said to form the anatomical, physiological starting point between the chest and the arms. This is the collar-bone. It is S-shaped—truly a most wonderful bone. At one end it is connected with the human middle system, and at the other end (after making the S-form) it goes out towards the periphery, towards directing the movements of the arms and hands. Now I must ask you to consider the following. Animals which make use of their fore-legs and their fore-paws for dexterous climbing (the bat, for instance, or the monkey) have quite an ingeniously formed collar-bone. Beasts of prey, animals such as cats or lions, which do not exactly climb but make use of their fore-paws when tearing their spoil to pieces, possess a less well-formed collar-bone, but they do have one. The horse, which only makes use of its fore-legs for the purpose of running, has developed no skill in their use, and their formation permits no mobility in itself; the horse has no collar-bone. Now, it is in the collar-bone that we may feel the starting point from which tone eurythmy originates. It is located there. And when you become conscious that a force goes out from your collar-bone with its muscles into the arms and hands, then vitality will be brought into your tone eurythmy. Then you have the point of departure. It really has to do with livingly feeling your limbs so that they can be used for such movements as we have done. Anyone who is unable to feel at a specific place will never discover the right point of departure.

The most necessary preparation for tone eurythmy, therefore, is a concentration of your consciousness to the left and the right sides of the collar-bone. And when starting to do tone eurythmy, with the first step, [42] transfer your consciousness to the left and right of the collar-bone. Feel that all the subtle possibilities of movement which you pour into your arms and hands really proceed from your collar-bone, just as the voice proceeds from its starting point. [43]

Then feel that you pour this feeling, which you consciously stimulate in the collar-bone, first into the socket of the upper arm. And feel too when you express the keynote with the legs, with the step, the following:

Already while unfolding the arm, the force which causes the arm to be unfolded goes to the keynote from up here, proceeding from the point of departure of the arm. Feel as if the whole forearm (and indeed the upper arm too) together with the hand and fingers were quite light, as if they had no weight, as if they really were not there, as if you were dealing with them quite usually. But here, at the point of departure, feel a strong unfolding of force; then you have held fast the keynote in the arm.

And now feel a raising or turning of the upper arm, in connection with the movement I have already shown for the second. Feel the second itself, by holding the hand in a certain way so that the force enabling you to retain this position of the hand starts in the upper arm. Then you have the right unfolding of the second; then it really is a second.

The stream flowing out from the collar-bone passes by way of the upper arm and on into the forearm; and only then does the flowing into the forearm become the third. And here something extremely remarkable makes its appearance. In order to form the third, you unfold the movement as I described it in the first lecture. For this, you need the forearm, both hands [probably Austrian dialect for ‘arms’. Translator's note], and the right or left hand [arm], depending on where you will form the third. When you allow the feeling which you have already made use of in the upper arm to stream on further, it will pass over the elbow and flow into the back part of the forearm. This is possible. When you go by way of the elbow, you come to the starting point for the third. Now you can ask yourself: ‘Can I also allow the feeling to stream hither (along the inside of the arm towards the hand)?’ Here, if your feeling is sound, you will say: ‘This is not possible. I can let the feeling stream forth up to the back part of the hand. But if I try to let it flow down the inner part of the arm, this is not possible. I have to imagine it as coming towards me, from below upwards. I have to imagine to myself as though I were laying hold somewhere with my hand, as though the feeling were flowing over along this side.’ And so we have two possibilities. If the beginning of the upper arm is here (see Fig. 18), the feeling streams in this direction (downwards). We pass from the second to the third. We can also unfold the feeling that comes towards us, and here we have to think of it as flowing from the hand inwards (direction of the arrow).

Now, you see, isn't this something wonderful! The human arm possesses one bone in the upper arm, for [the interval of] the second, and it possesses two bones in the forearm (radius and ulna) because there are two thirds. The bone at the back of the forearm [ulna] presents the major third, and the inner bone of the forearm [radius] the minor third. The way the scale is active in the bones and muscles of the arm is simply marvellous. When you now reach the place where the hand begins (where the small bones are) you still feel exactly as if you were inside yourself.

It is only when coming to the hand itself that you go out of yourself. The fourth is still within. It is here at the place where the hand begins. Here you have to feel the movement that gives you the fourth. The fifth is here on the hand itself. Feel the sixth here in the base of the fingers [proximal phalanges], and the seventh (as I showed you) you can produce in particular with the ends of the fingers [distal phalanges]. You must send your feeling into the ends of the fingers.

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You see, it is not a mere figure of speech to say that eurythmy has been drawn out of the organization of the human being. So strongly is this the case that you can keep completely to the structure of the human form. There are the two bones in the forearm for the major and minor thirds, and here too you have to develop the feeling corresponding to a major key and a minor key. The major key is felt in the feeling flowing downward, passing by way of the elbow into the ulna and from there into the back of the hand. [44] When you feel this stream as flowing down into the back of the hand, the feeling is of the major mood.

When, however, you feel a slight current of air or a feeling coming towards you, passing through the palm of the hand and here at the lower arm into the inner bones, then you have the feeling of the minor mood. If you acquire a sensitivity for this transference of feeling in the human organism you will find yourself becoming inwardly musical, for you yourself are really living the scale.

Take some opportunity of observing two people engaged in eurythmy, of whom one makes the movements as if they were being carried out by an artificial, papier mache, mechanical person, whereas the other really feels the origin in the collar-bone, feels the keynote at the point of departure of the upper arm, the second proceeding from here (upper arm), the third in the forearm, and further out in the hand itself the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. We have to get out of ourselves in the hands. We are out of ourselves the most at the ends of the fingers. It is here that the seventh arises. The goal in eurythmy is not to invent worked-out movements, but rather to draw out the possibilities of movement that are inherent in the human form itself. This is where eurythmy differs from every other modern attempt to develop an art of movement. In none of these attempts do we find in what is practised the movements drawn out in this way from the human being himself. For it is necessary, in the first place, to know that the human arm with the human hand, from the point of departure through the collar-bone, is precisely the scale itself.

If you look at a horse, you will feel that it actually could not do eurythmy. A horse engaged in eurythmy would be an appalling sight! A kitten would make a more charming impression, and a little monkey better still. The eurythmy of a little monkey might be quite pleasing. Why? Because the horse has no collar-bone. A kitten has a collar-bone, even if less perfectly formed than that of a monkey, which possesses the most perfect collar-bone [of the three]. The eurythmic movements of an animal, if you could imagine them, would be pleasing in proportion to the development of its collar-bone.

Everything arising from the appendage of lungs, larynx, and so on, when metamorphosed and correspondingly projected outwards, is represented in the conglomeration of collar-bone (the shoulder blade serves as a completion) collar-bone, shoulder-blades, upper arm, forearm, and the bones of the fingers.

Now when the first four notes of the scale are played, or shown in eurythmy, you will undoubtedly feel them as a progression. Play the scale up to the fourth: prime, second, third, fourth; it is a progression. With the fifth you feel that something is changing. And with the sixth and seventh you will distinctly notice at the same time a spreading out; the whole scale expands. Even this is reproduced in the hand. If you consider the simple structure of the upper arm and the two bones of the forearm, you find there the entire musical image of the first stages of the scale. When the scale widens out (from the fourth onwards), everything is indeed situated in the hand itself; and here there are twenty-seven bones designed for inner mobility. Thus, when you ascend to the upper notes of the scale, you can develop considerable powers of expression, especially in the use of the hands.

You know, however, that from the anatomical point of view there is much similarity between the arm and the hand, and the leg and the foot even if such points of departure are not present. And it is possible to transfer the movements (which we have used to express the notes) to the legs and feet, harder though they are to carry out, and necessarily remaining as an indication. When you transfer the gestures for the notes to the legs and feet, the effect will be less beautiful, but you have here a different means of expression for the legs and feet from dancing, as we have already tried in the most various ways in speech eurythmy and the like. Now you will easily gather that in the case of legs and feet, the beginning of the thigh-bone, the whole thigh-bone, corresponds to the keynote, when you flex the muscles. When you try to produce a movement in which the lower part of the leg hangs, to a certain extent, while strong movements are made by the upper part of the leg, then you are in the sphere of the keynote and the second. Passing over the lower part of the leg to the fibula and tibia (shin-bone and splint-bone), you again find the major and minor thirds—the major third in the tibia and the minor third in the fibula. In this way the thirds may be expressed once again by means of the leg. But essentially such movements will be differentiated very strongly from those most expressive movements the human being is capable of (the movements, that is to say, of the arms and hands), just as the double-bass differs from the violin.

When, with two people, a piece of music is so carried out that the notes down to the C two octaves below middle C are strongly articulated with the arms, while the bass notes beyond the C two octaves below middle C are correspondingly expressed by the legs (either by the same or another person) you will find this renders a remarkably expressive possibility.

Thus it is really possible today that all the musical elements may be included in eurythmy. It is, of course, impossible to work out the actual exercises during these lectures; you will, however, understand how matters lie, and in the future it will be a question of thoroughly practising all the things which I am putting before you. It is only through practising that you really get into it. Then you will see that this is precisely the method of tone eurythmy.

Now if a person wishes to show the lower notes (the notes two octaves or more below middle C) by emphasizing them as strongly as can be done with feet and legs, at the same time only slightly indicating the same notes with the arms, the effect will certainly be fine, too. This is one possibility.

Another possibility is this. While carrying out the movements with feet and legs, the arms may in a certain way retain confirming movements enveloping the whole thing, varying according to the degree of liveliness in movement that you wish to express (a) (see Fig. 19), or, when stronger and more lively, a movement of this sort (b), or, when specially lively in mood, a movement of this sort (c). You see, it is quite possible to say to yourself: ‘Yes, there are different possibilities of expressing the notes.’ For this is the case. Eurythmy will never lead anyone into pedantry.

If you have thoroughly practised the things we are here discussing, many different variations and possibilities of expression will be revealed—but only if you base your work on the realization that everything does actually depend upon being conscious of the point of departure, of developing the consciousness: seconds are in the upper arm, thirds are in the forearm. With your awareness correspondingly transferred to the upper arm or forearm, you will create aesthetically beautiful movements. Then your soul is brought into play.

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Just imagine one of you carrying out the movements of eurythmy. Eurythmy is a singing through movement; it is singing. It is not dancing; it is not mime; it is singing. This is why you cannot sing and do eurythmy at the same time. Instrumental music can be expressed in tone eurythmy, but not singing. Anyone who imagines that this is possible has not yet grasped what eurythmy is. He is not looking upon it as an autonomous art, but is making use of it in order to illustrate what is being sung. In such a case eurythmy would only be an art of illustration, and this, of course, is a complete misunderstanding. A better understanding may perhaps be furthered by mentioning something in this connection. Imagine that one person is expressing in eurythmy something that another person is singing, both exactly the same thing. Anyone possessing spiritual vision would see in the etheric body of the singer precisely the same movements; it would be as though a spirit were perched on the singer's shoulders, making the very movements that are being made by the eurythmist. Singing is nothing other than a carrying out with the etheric body of the same movements resonating in the vocal organs, which you permit the physical organism to perform in eurythmy. That is why it is difficult to bear the sight of anyone doing eurythmy whilst singing to it at the same time. For then you are aware of the same thing duplicated; you perceive with the physical eyes, and then you see another, etheric being, with his legs dangling on the shoulders doing these movements up there, doing the very same thing! [45]

Should you ever have the opportunity of examining a collar-bone (perhaps managing to acquire some knowledge of the surrounding muscles, and especially studying the direction they take) then you will notice something very remarkable about this S-shaped collar-bone. The form of that part of the collar-bone which tends outwards will give you the feeling that it is receiving something, that it allows things from outside to approach it. In that part which goes out from the middle you will feel an out-streaming tendency. In the collar-bone (see diagram) you really have an out-streaming and an in-streaming. The outward stream passes through the back part of the arm, via the ulna, down into the back of the hand. The inward stream passes through the palm of the hand, up the radius and back again here [to the collar-bone]. Here two streams continually exist, the one flowing upwards this way, and the other outwards (see arrow). The one gives something out, the other is receptive. Following this, you arrive directly at a real understanding of the major (Dur) and minor (Moll) moods.

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The things that are said about major and minor and which are found in books on music are actually appalling. [46] Many such theories with regard to major and minor have been put forward in recent times. If people, in such a case, did not listen in a sounder way than they think, the fate of music would be the same as the fate that would undoubtedly overtake the art of eating if the numerous physiological theories had to be followed instead of the instincts. It is a mercy that in music (and consequently in eurythmy) we can, up to a point, follow the instincts; for the real secret of the difference between major and minor lies in the fact that everything of the nature of major streams out from the will, that is, a streaming out from the fullness of the human being. Everything that is major is related to action (Tat). Thus a certain activity must be introduced into all motifs in the major mood. All phrases in the minor mood are receptive. They possess something of recognition, of acceptance, of laying hold of something. All phrases in the minor mood are related to feeling. When passing over from a phrase in the major mood to a phrase in the minor mood, we must definitely show that this is a transference of activity from the outer structure of muscle and bone to the manipulation of the inner structure of muscle and bone in the arm and hand of the eurythmist. It is from feeling and experience of the impulse towards action that all eurythmy has to proceed.

It is a fact that anything based on the musical element may be expressed in tone eurythmy. To be convinced of this, you need but to remind yourselves, for instance, not only of how this or that occurs in the musical phrase, but also in the musical element that which brings about a close for musical feeling as such (where the progression of a phrase leads in a certain direction, resulting in a feeling of being checked). In the cadence we have something (the expression is somewhat crude, but I think it is applicable) which dams up the flow of the music.

When you experience the cadence and the whole progression towards the cadence, you will find the following to be quite obvious. As an example, let us take the cadence in the major mood (see Fig. 21).

How would you express this in eurythmy? In the fashioning of your movement you have to bring it to a conclusion, and you will certainly feel a tendency to lead the movement over towards the right, stopping it.

This gives the effect of a close. Thus a cadence in the major mood leads you to move in a turning from left to right; the eurythmic movement is made in this way, towards the right side.

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If, instead of this, we have a cadence in the minor mood, the process is reversed; the stopping movement would then proceed from right to left, for now the element of feeling has to be present. It is only the ignorance of our civilization which gives rise to the wish to teach children to write with both right and left hands. This differentiation in the human organism is fundamental. For there is a great difference, is there not, whether the heart is situated on the right side or the left. (Cases are known in which the heart lies on the right side, but they are exceedingly rare; in such a case the person in question would differ from all his fellow-men.) Now, this fundamental difference does indeed exist. It is based upon the inner organization of the human being. And so, when approaching a close it is necessary that you feel: cadence in the major mood (towards the right side), cadence in the minor mood (towards the left side). And when, in the progression of the music, at the moment when you reach a close in the music itself (where you cannot imagine continuing), then at this point you have to introduce something into your movement whereby this movement is inwardly brought to a conclusion. You will feel the necessity of expressing the cadence in eurythmy in just this way.

You see, in this course of lectures it has been my full intention to direct your attention precisely to those things relating to the inner feeling of the movement. For I have been struck by the slight attention paid by eurythmists to that aspect of the eurythmy figures designated as ‘character’. [47] I have always emphasized that a real attempt has to be made to concentrate the feeling and to stimulate a strong muscular tension at those parts of the eurythmy figures where the ‘character’ is applied. This makes quite a different impression upon the audience from that which is created when (if you will pardon the expression) the matter is carried out phlegmatically to the utmost. Eurythmy is fundamentally based on the possibility that these things can be used.

Now, because speech eurythmy is more bound up with the sense of the words, it will not be quite so noticeable if feeling does not accompany the activity. But if the movements of tone eurythmy are not permeated through and through with feeling the whole thing becomes utterly meaningless. If your feelings are not incorporated just as I have indicated today for the scale, the audience will feel the movements as arbitrary and disjointed. Everything depends upon your feeling: Here the upper arm begins, and you form the keynote—or whether you feel: A humanly-felt impulse is situated here in the upper arm, and you fashion the second in the way I told you yesterday. These feelings determine whether the movements which you carry out for any progression of notes appear filled with human motivation or whether they appear unmotivated. For in everything artistic, nothing is as important as motivation.

From this, however, you see (and this is a point I would like to touch on at the end of this lecture) that eurythmy has to develop gradually in such a way that auxiliary subjects are studied, just as in other forms of art. [48] The painter and sculptor are obliged to acquaint themselves with sculptors' and painters' anatomy. They cannot get on without it. The eurythmist should endeavour to acquire a thorough knowledge of the human being, and should study such things as the physiology of the collar-bone, and so on, as an auxiliary study (or whatever you'd like to call it).

When you now consider this intimate connection between eurythmy and the whole organization of the human being, it will no longer seem strange to you that in the case of tone eurythmy too (although perhaps with occasional variations) we are able to speak of a eurythmy therapy. Only think of all that lies behind what I have discussed today! We have realized that there is both an inner and outer organization in the formation of arms and hands (see Fig. 22). They fit each other as does the nut to the nutshell; they are built up out of the same forces. Consequently, if we have to treat a diseased lung, it is possible to work back on this lung by encouraging the patient to do tone eurythmy in a certain way, as eurythmy therapy.

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It is in afflictions of the throat, however, that tone eurythmy can work with particularly far-reaching results. For the whole muscular and bony structure of hand and arm is in reality nothing but an outer, concave image of what exists in inner, convex form in the lungs, and proceeding further, in the heart-organization and in everything concerned with speaking and singing right out as far as the lips.

And so, a really practical awakening of the eurythmy that is within you, will enable you to gain deep insight into the human organization; indeed, I would like to say, the study of eurythmy may lead over into the esoteric realm if a practice is made of transferring the inner impulse of feeling from collar-bone to upper arm, radius, ulna, and so on, or correspondingly in the legs and feet.

Tomorrow, then, at the same time, we shall begin by adding what is still lacking, and in retrospect complement our studies.

Today, I will try to pass on some things which will bring our studies of tone eurythmy to a provisional conclusion, so that a stimulation for the advance of the substance of tone eurythmy will have been given. The first step in this direction will be to digest those things I have given. Then, a little later on, it will be necessary to hold a further series of lectures, either on tone eurythmy or speech eurythmy, [50] for it is quite clear that a living stream of development has to be maintained. I have frequently said that eurythmy is only just beginning (perhaps only an attempted beginning), and it must be developed further.

From yesterday's study, which dealt more with the bodily aspect of the human being, and with the way in which the body is brought into activity in the movements of eurythmy, I should like to pass over today to the aspect of soul, and make clear to you how the life of the soul is brought to expression in every single movement or gesture. Your attitude to eurythmy must always be such as to prevent any form of pedantry. You will realize more and more that many things can be expressed either in one way or another, and that in art it is a question of taste. And with several things you will have to consult your own feelings: ‘What special means must I employ to bring this or that to expression?’

Let us consider an effectual means of expressing that most essential element of music, the phrase in Melos. Let us consider the progression of the phrase (since it really is the phrase which truly carries music into being), and direct our attention to that which gives the phrase its actual content, and makes it a true means of expressing the musical element: pitch. Further, we must distinguish note values and dynamics. The three elements of pitch, note values and dynamics really give us the inner content of the musical phrase. The more external aspect will be considered later.

Now everything musical, in so far as it is wrought out of the inner nature of the human being, comes from feeling, from the realm of feeling. And it is true to say that nothing is musical which is not in some way rooted in human feeling. Similarly, when music streams over into eurythmic movement, everything which is brought to life in this movement must also be rooted in feeling. When we studied the anatomical, physiological aspect of the matter yesterday, we saw that in its more physical, bodily aspect, movement springs from feeling. The scale is the human being, but actually the human being as he encloses his chest, or in so far as his chest is able to be revealed outwards via the collar-bone. The chest is connected with feeling, and carries within it the central organ of feeling, the heart. And the physical characteristic we touched upon yesterday simply points to the fact that in music we have to do with feeling.

If I may put it in this way, feeling can be coloured either more towards the head- or more towards the limb-organization. Should feeling tend in the direction of the head, it is expressed so to speak in the roundabout way of the intellect. Now I must beg you not to misunderstand this, and think that it is my intention to intellectualize the musical element. I have no such intention! It is a fact, however, that precisely in the element of pitch, something is manifest which causes feeling to tend in the direction of the intellect, only it does not reach the intellect, but remains in the realm of feeling. And so a musician need not in the least be interested when the intellectual physicist comes along and speaks of the frequency and the pattern of sound-waves. The musician can justifiably answer: ‘This may be all very well, and so on, but it has nothing to do with me. I am not interested in this.’ An intellectual conception of music leads away from the sphere of music. It may be left to the physicist. [51] That element of music which tends towards the intellect is also felt. Pitch, in all its differing manifestations, is an experience of feeling. And it is just because music inclines away from the intellect that the head has so little to do in tone eurythmy. Indeed in speech eurythmy, too, the head should play practically no part, though naturally it should humanly accompany the movements carried out by the speech eurythmist.

Of course, in a humorous poem it would not be good for a eurythmist to make a face as if he had drunk a pint or so of vinegar! This would obviously be out of place. Generally speaking, the whole mental attitude should be suited to the content of the words. But if anyone attempted to do eurythmy with the face (and some people miss mime or a special play of the facial features) we could well answer that this would be equivalent in real speech eurythmy to someone accompanying his speaking with grimaces.

In tone eurythmy, exactly the same as in speech eurythmy, the head need not remain inactive. But just where it is a concern of manifesting the intellectual tendency of the musical element, that is pitch, the activity of the head should be restrained as much as possible. Otherwise interpretation, or the element of seeking meaning, enters into the musical element, and this is its ruination. This introduces thinking into art, and the moment you begin to think, artistic activity ceases. I am not saying that art may not present thoughts, but thoughts must be there already in finished form, they cannot just be made up on the spot. A majestic, elevated thought may, for instance, be contrasted with lesser thoughts, or an idea may frequently recur in a train of thought, just as a musical motif may recur, for then the musical element is effective in the . train of thought. This is certainly possible. But you must not be thinking! [52] The same even applies to poetry. When a poet begins thinking he ceases to be a poet. Certainly he may embody thought in artistic form—but that is a very different matter.

Now as we have already seen, pitch (which lives in the musical phrase) initially finds expression in movements made in the upward-downward direction. The expression of pitch is up, down. Why should the movements be upwards and downwards? What lives in pitch?

You see, in the case of ascending pitch we feel a rising up into the spiritual element, in the musical element a rising up into the spiritual, rising with the ascending pitch. This is exceedingly significant. What really happens here is that the astral body and ego ascend. The human being is freed from his physical and etheric bodies. If he were to do this in an inartistic or even an anti-artistic manner, then he would faint. If he were to go out of his physical body without sufficient preparation, he would faint. The experience of musical sound (so long as it remains an experience of musical sound, of Melos) permits us to pass out of the physical body. Then we instantly come back into it. In ascending pitch there is a continuous rising out of the physical body, an identification of the human being with the spiritual element. In tone eurythmy every ascending movement basically signifies ethos. Ethos of the human being is a uniting of the soul with the spiritual weaving and essence. Ascending pitch: ethos.

When, alternatively, pitch descends, and we are consequently obliged to follow, to make the movements lower in space (making each movement lower than the one preceding), we sink more deeply into the physical body with the astral body and ego. We are united more with the physical element. Descending pitch signifies a closer connection than normal with the physical element. This is pathos. Ascending pitch: ethos. Descending pitch: pathos.

If you observe the unfolding of a piece of music with sound musical feeling, you will see that this is always the case. You will always experience ethos, that is to say, a uniting with the spiritual element, when the pitch carries you upwards. You will always feel something of the nature of pathos present in the music when the pitch causes you to descend. This can find expression in change of posture, and may indeed be specially clearly expressed by the movements of tone eurythmy.

Note values: note values are the feeling element as such. The faculty of feeling tends neither in the direction of the intellect nor in the direction of the will, but lives in its own element in note values. From what I have said about the way in which rests, for instance, or the pedal- point may be expressed in eurythmy, you will already have realized that feeling is active in note values. For it is indeed a fact that feeling is active to the greatest extent in note values. You need only recall in a feeling-way what you experience concerning a semibreve (whole-note), let us say, or a minim, crotchet or quaver (half-note, quarter-note or eighth-note). The shorter the length of the notes, the more your soul becomes inwardly filled, inwardly more formed and shaped. A vivid means of musical expression is made possible to a high degree by the contradistinction between notes which are short and those of longer duration. Long, slow notes denote a certain indifferent emptiness of soul (to put things baldly), an indifferent emptiness of soul. And in this fullness in the soul or this emptiness in the soul, the second factor, the actual feeling element, is active. The feeling concerning long notes may be likened (there is a real resemblance here) to that of waiting for something which still does not want to come. pn the other hand, when someone continually seeks to stimulate us to activity, this is akin to the feeling- experience underlying short notes.

The head may be brought to our assistance when it is a question of experiencing note values; indeed, a certain use of the head in eurythmy now becomes necessary. But the question is: How may this be done?

You see, in pitch, the soul is purely concerned with itself. Consequently in pitch, the soul rises up to God or sinks down to the Devil, [53] living to the extreme completely within its own essence.

In note values a certain enjoyment and participation in the world outside, a contact with the world, exists. A relationship of the human being with the outer world is expressed in note values. For this reason an aesthetic and pleasing impression will be created when, in the case of short notes (beginning perhaps with minims, or half-notes, [54] and working up in ever-increased activity) you look in the direction of what you are doing with your arm, fingers or hand, looking at your own eurythmy, carefully following your own movements with your eyes.

When, alternatively, you have long semibreves (whole-notes), do not look towards but rather away from your movement, either straight in front of you or in some other direction. You will see that although this does not fully express the feeling involved here (this must be expressed through sustaining the note or through moving on), it will be accompanied in the right manner. There can be no doubt about the fact that in note values we have to do with feeling. That is why the head may be brought to our aid. The head is not used here as a little interpreter; it simply expresses its participation in the feelings, and that looks quite pleasing.

The third element is dynamics. In the phrase, dynamics, the realm of feeling (which is always the source of the musical element), are coloured towards the element of will. The will as such does not come into play in the musical element, for the musical element always remains in the sphere of feeling. But just as in pitch, where feeling tends to be coloured towards the intellectual element, so in dynamics, feeling tends to be coloured towards the will. Here it is somewhat different than with the head. In the head, that which is manifested in the arms as movement is brought to rest. The jaws can only move a little; they are at rest. Indeed the head is entirely at rest. On the other hand, the legs and feet do retain a certain similarity to the arms and hands, so the movements of the arms and hands might possibly be accompanied with parallel movements of the feet when expressing a certain emphasis, or a certain dynamic marking. If this were not so, there would be no dancing. Eurythmy should not become dancing, but there may be times when a tendency towards dancing may be a justifiable means of expression (when the dynamics demand that feeling be coloured through the element of will). In musical dynamics, the human being's relationship with the world is even more relevant. Only pitch remains entirely inward. Note values bring the human being into a certain connection with the outer world. Dynamics make this complete, for forte gains its strength from the will, whereas in piano the will-impulse is lacking. Here, then, the movements of hand and arm can be reinforced by corresponding leg movements. These movements, of course, have to be graceful in the highest sense of the word; they should not be awkward, but have to be similar in style to what the arms and hands do. You will feel then what the legs have to do.

Dynamics may be substantially supported if you are aware of the fact that increased dynamics find is expressed by pointing the fingers, and a weakening of the sound makes the fingers rounded, so you can achieve something very expressive. Just think how much expression can be brought into the phrase which is already very expressive from a musical point of view. Think, in the first place, how we are able to express the phrase by emphasizing varied pitch in the way we have learned. This may be accompanied by bringing out note values by a use of the head, looking either towards or away. The dynamics of the phrase may be lit up by a pointing or rounding of the fingers. This gives you the possibility of becoming a very expressive being within the phrase. You will be able to express much when you observe this variety in the phrase, in the continuation of the phrase, and so on.

There is another way of accompaniment which can increase your means of expression. You see, with certain very high notes (notes which ascend two octaves or more above middle C) [55] you may follow the movements with your eyes. Try, however, not to conjure up an active gesture of looking (looking gives an impression of note lengths), but let your eyes be swept up with the movement. And so when you would especially like to express very high notes, you will follow the movement with your eyes, too. You will try, though, not to produce the gesture of looking, but of being swept up with your eyes. Produce the gesture of being swept up with your eyes, as if they [56] would do this movement—and they should be swept up with the movement! In such a case the eyes do not look, but turn in the direction of the movement. Here we have still another means of expressing the things that are present in the phrase.

These things are initially bound up with the inner essence of the phrase, with the actual life of the phrase. And if you concern yourselves further with the phrase you will actually find, fundamentally, when you use these things; that you will be able to follow transforming and developing phrases.

I should just like to add the following. It is, of course, necessary that everything we have studied in these lectures (which have aimed at deepening eurythmy) should be developed with particular inner activity.

Let us now take the development of a phrase as it progresses through various musical sentences. Here we are able to differentiate whether it is developed in the form of repetition—so that the development signifies a certain intensification, a confirmation of the original phrase. In such a case, if other aspects do not indicate the contrary, much can be expressed by the treatment of the form.

Let us suppose that you have to carry out some form such as this (a) in a certain piece of music. Quite apart from what you express by means

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of your body, this form has to be carried out. If you follow your musical feelings you will be able to add, according to the progression of the phrase, certain steps backwards and forwards, still following the direction of the form (b)

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If, however, the progression of the phrase is such that a second phrase follows the previous one similar to that between question and answer, it would be good if the progression of the form were treated in this way (c)—with a more complicated development introduced into the form.

Another means of expressing either a sequence or an answering phrase, the repetitive sequence or the contrast of phrases, is this. At specific points in the progression of a phrase, where the progression of the phrase is specially felt (where, let us say, a new metamorphosis of the phrase commences), the direction of the form can be directed towards the right (b). If another phrase is brought into conjunction with the first, at the point where this second phrase begins, make a turn towards the left.

Such things make the movements exceedingly expressive. And further, if you make the movements of this latter type stronger in a four-bar phrase, let's say, and bring out the eight-bar phrase (which has four main accents) by clearly showing the alternating direction of left-right, then you will succeed in expressing in eurythmy this plastically-formed development in the progression of the phrase.

When you come to apply the things we have been discussing, you will invariably reach a point where, in some way or other, the essential nature of the musical element is revealed in its onward progression. Here you actually pass out of the inner experience inherent in the soul of Melos (as I'd like to put it) and you approach instead the life of Melos. We can certainly differentiate between the soul and the life of Melos. And the element which is less bound up with the soul and more with the life of Melos is tempo, especially tempo changes. The human being, by living in time, has to live either at a quicker or slower pace. This is something which exerts a certain influence on his or her life from outside. A person certainly does not become someone else if circumstances compel him or her to do something in a shorter time than usual. It is not a question of becoming cleverer, or more stupid, but simply of becoming quicker. It is, then, the external element of time which causes increase of tempo

Now it is a fact that in the musical element nearly everything depends upon changes, just as in movement generally everything depends upon changes. For this reason, change of tempo must be given special consideration in eurythmy. Let us suppose that we have an increase in tempo. An increase in tempo may not be shown simply by increased speed of movement, as this may be applied for pitch, for note values, and so on, but the body must make an abrupt movement (Ruck) towards the right. When you change to a retarded tempo, the body must be drawn (Zug) towards the left. Here you have a means of expressing change of tempo in such a way that the external element in it is given its adequate place in the moulding of the phrase.

You will say: ‘What a terrible amount there is to do!’ But bring imagination to your aid and think how beautiful it will be when you carry out all this detail, how articulated and expressive a piece of music will become when interpreted in this way. A tempo remaining either quick or slow may be particularly well expressed when, with a quick tempo, the head is turned forwards to the right, and, with a slow tempo, backwards to the left. Naturally this cannot be intellectually proved, but, as with everything in art, has to be felt and experienced.

You will, then, have to do many different things simultaneously, and by means of this simultaneous attention to one thing and another, it will be possible for you in the whole management of your body to go beyond yourself and enter into the movement in such a way that you will succeed in giving a perfectly adequate revelation of the musical element.

Now, in doing all these things just feel how far we remove ourselves especially in tone eurythmy from anything of the nature of mime. Mime can have no place in tone eurythmy, and anything in the nature of dance is only permissible at most as a faint undercurrent. It is only with deep bass notes that the eurythmist may be tempted to add dance-like movements to colour his eurythmy. In this way eurythmy will really be kept in a sphere which justifies the name of ‘visible singing’. Eurythmy is not dancing, not mime, but visible singing—a visible singing by means of which everything sounding in one way or another in instrumental music may be expressed. The feeling must never arise that we are dealing with anything other than visible singing. Here we come across something very instructive. With the means given here you will have no difficulty expressing anything that is purely musical. Certain difficulties will only appear when you have a musical phrase which you cannot bring to a conclusion. I am not going to rail against what is called ‘continuous melody’, but you will invariably experience difficulty when you try to express this in eurythmy. As we saw yesterday, genuine cadences can be expressed in eurythmy. But what always wants to move on (and not to come to a close) will hold great difficulty in store for you when you try to find a means of expression for it. I will suggest, then, that you accompany the passage where a melody fades away, which just meanders on (as is frequently the case with Wagner's ‘continuous melodic phrases’) [57] with some sort of movement, but this, when you pursue it eurythmically, will in fact appear extraordinary, will appear forced. In eurythmy it will appear laboured and artificial. It cannot be otherwise.

It may well be said that by its very nature, eurythmy will oblige people to return more and more to the pure musical element. When you come to apply all the means of expression of which I have been speaking, it will be necessary to engage your feeling for phrasing in music to the utmost. If you do not divide the separate phrases correctly, and are not clearly aware of how the notes should be grouped together, and then try to apply what I have discussed for a rest or a sustained note, it will appear ugly. Wrong phrasing, or a note falsely grouped and included wrongly in a phrase or allowed to remain isolated, will instantly be apparent. The very moment you phrase wrongly, the movement will become uncouth and clumsy. This is why it is of primary importance, when practising tone eurythmy, first to come to terms with the larger matters. As soon, then, as you have determined upon the phrasing and made up your mind about the progression of the music, the next step will be to discuss the phrasing with your pianist. [58] This simply belongs to the matter. When you are practising it will be necessary first Co experiment and find your way into the experience of the music. Only then will you realize what the effect of this or that kind of movement will be. You will be filled with inner warmth or inner cold. This is what the inner life is. A eurythmist may often be able to feel how notes are grouped even better than the person sitting at the instrument. It is really necessary to come to an understanding with the musician so that the phrasing may be correspondingly carried out. Of course, people do generally phrase correctly, but in eurythmy it will be frequently noticeable that an accepted phrasing must be altered, owing to the very nature of eurythmy. You will discover that several matters need correction.

Now, these are the things I wanted to give you in this course of lectures. In the first place it should be a stimulus to deepen tone eurythmy, and eurythmy in general. If in the near future it is shown that, through this, much in eurythmy (in tone eurythmy in particular) achieves a greater degree of perfection, and if it may be seen that speech eurythmy too receives fresh life through what has been said, we will hold another course. In this way we shall be able to develop ever further what today is still only a beginning. But if, instead of the eight lectures, I had given fourteen, I would have been concerned that the subject matter be properly assimilated. Then let us stay with what we have now received as a stimulus.

Herr Stuten: [59] Dear Herr Doctor, I know that I speak for everyone when I express our heartfelt thanks to you at the close of these lectures. Once again you have cast light on so many questions which we all carried within us, and given us much stimulus, that we see a great but completely unconstrained work before us. It is a great joy especially today to be allowed to express our thanks.

Dr Steiner. Thank you very much. I have intentionally not asked for questions because I think the material needs to be worked through and in the course of time there will be many opportunities where the one or other question can be dealt with. Very little comes when questions are asked after the first hearing, and everything becomes hurried and mixed up.

by Dorothea Mier

The study of music is the study of the human being. The two are inseparable, and eurythmy is the art which brings this most clearly to expression. In these lectures, Rudolf Steiner guides us along a path toward an understanding of the human form as music come to rest—the movements of eurythmy bringing this music back to life.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Alan Stott for the enormous undertaking of translating these lectures. He has taken great care to keep as close as possible to the original. I feel the effort made here in translating to be of tremendous importance, because it is very difficult not to shift slightly, or to make concrete formulations of that which holds a true mystery, thus limiting the reader's access to the path of discovery inherent in the original formulation. Steiner's characterizations are often challenging, but spiritually vital. They are like gems that have a depth which is unending.

The translator has achieved a great deal, in my opinion, in keeping Rudolf Steiner's work intact as far as possible. He has tried to accommodate, using copious notes, the different terms used in the various cultures, and he gives many references for further study. I appreciate his logic in translating Ton-Eurythmie as ‘music eurythmy’, yet am deeply grateful that he has accepted the term ‘tone eurythmy’ used worldwide over the past decades.

It soon becomes apparent when studying these lectures, that there are many enigmas, and many baffling statements. As yet, there is much that is not completely understood, but over the years people may come to a greater depth of understanding that will unlock the secrets hidden within the various indications. When reading these lectures, I think it is very important to remember that they were lectures, spoken to an intimate group of invited eurythmists and musicians—unrevised by the lecturer. Regarding the Lecturer's Notes (which in themselves are so valuable), I feel we also need to be very careful to remember their context. These Notes, included in this edition, were Rudolf Steiner's personal notes in preparation for the lectures. I am filled with questions, for instance, in connection with Lecture 5, on Cadence. What prevented Steiner from bringing some of the aspects of his notes into the lecture? As you read, you will find your own questions which can stimulate lifelong research.

This is a real handbook for active eurythmists and musicians, a text for advanced study. It is not meant for the casual reader, because (as with any ‘time art’) eurythmy cannot be self-taught. I can only encourage the reader to work deeply into the questions that arise when living with these lectures, because it is through delving into the mysteries contained here that we will come further into the unfolding of tone eurythmy.

Spring Valley, Michaelmas 1994
Dorothea Mier

The musical element

When speaking of the arts, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) emphasizes that the musical element increasingly belongs to the future of humanity.¹ In the following words he points to the mission of music:

Fundamentally speaking, music is the human being, and indeed it is from music that we rightly learn how to free ourselves from matter. For if music were to become materialistic, it would actually be false: it is not ‘there’! Every other form of matter is present in the world and is insistent. But musical sounds are not to be found in the material world in their original form. We have to devise a means of producing them; they must first be made. The soul element that lives in the human being lies between the notes. But today, because the world has become so unmusical, people are scarcely aware of it.²

This passage also witnesses to Steiner's own particular mission at the beginning of the twentieth century: to sow seeds in the cultural life which could enable humanity to find its way from estrangement to cooperation with the world of spirit. This concept is of immense practical importance in a century which has allowed the forces of technology and finance to encroach into the realm rightly belonging to the free human spirit. About the time of these lectures, Steiner was responding to requests from many professional quarters for advice which would provide creative stimuli. Lecture courses were given to experts seeking renewal in their particular fields: science, medicine, agriculture, religion, the arts, education and therapeutic education. ‘The development of anthroposophical activity into the realm of art resulted out of the nature of anthroposophy.’ The art of eurythmy, however, occupies a unique position as the newly-born daughter of anthroposophy itself.³

For Steiner, it is not only music; all the arts are to become more musical. Steiner is concerned with living, creative activity. He communicated this vision most succinctly in a far-reaching lecture in Torquay. (See Note 1) Like J. M. Hauer (1883–1959), whose theoretical writings were known to him, Steiner uses the Greek Melos (‘tune’) for pure pitch (Melodie—‘melody’, of course, includes rhythm and beat. See also Steiner's own lecture notes, p. 10). Both Hauer and Steiner use Melos to indicate the actual creative principle in music. ‘Melos is the musical element,’ Steiner claims (Lecture 4). In this translation I have retained Melos where it is employed.

In speech, Melos only ‘peeps through’. But it ‘poured into’ oriental architecture, which ‘really did transpose music into movement’. ‘Oriental architecture has within it a great deal of eurythmy,’ we read in Lecture 5. The word ‘rhythm’ comes from the Greek rhuthmos (measured motion, time rhythm), from rhe-ein (to flow). The word ‘eurhythmy’ is an architectural term: ‘beautiful proportion, hence beautiful, harmonious movement’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Laurens van der Post mentions the ‘eurhythmic grace’ of certain beautiful animal movements in his African writings. ‘Eurythmy’ and Melos, accordingly, have existed and do still exist both in nature and in human culture. Both worlds unite in the art of eurythmy, which cultivates Melos, and was brought to birth through Rudolf Steiner. (Otto Fränkl-Lundborg claims the spelling of ‘eurythmy’ without the ‘h’ is philologically correct; rho as suffix loses its aspirate. See Das Goetheanum, 49. Jg., Nr. 30, 26.7.70, p. 246).

Steiner, like Hauer, uses the expression das Musikalische (‘the musical’) more often than die Musik (‘music’), and in this way emphasizes the inner activity before the technicalities of the craft come into consideration. This is a supremely important detail. In English we have to extend this to phrases like ‘the musical element’, or ‘the realm of music’, which may be clumsy, but they are accurate. What Steiner has in mind and continuously refers to is the musical essence. This is not only the concern of musicians but it is the underlying creative, transforming force of life itself, present in all vital human expression. Moreover, it bears a direct relationship to the path of mankind's inner development. This development can be prepared and assisted by the inner activity of individuals on the path of initiation, which is described by Steiner as a process of development through God's grace, involving Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition (spiritual vision, inner hearing and a higher life).⁴

Long, long before the human being enters consciously into the stages of initiation, he is able to express these individual experiences in images, and this is done through music! In the last analysis genuine music is essentially a developing drama of life taking its course in musical sounds, which are an external picture of what the soul consciously experiences in the life of initiation.⁵

We may sense that Steiner channelled his own musicality into his work as a teacher of humanity, and this he confirmed more than once:

It gave me particular pleasure to be told one day by one of our artistically-gifted friends that some of the lecture cycles I have given could be transcribed into symphonies purely on the basis of their inner structure. Some of the courses are indeed based in their structure on something very like this. Take for instance the lecture course given in Vienna on life between death and a new birth: you will see that you could make a symphony of it.⁶

The art of eurythmy has been given to us as a gift from the future. Its evolution depends upon each individual eurythmist, musician and speaker developing an inner listening with his or her artistic feeling. This must be developed, not in an ecstatic way, but as a spiritual path the individual undertakes while within the body. This inner activity, Steiner insists (in answer to Hauer), can be revealed in art by raising sensory experience.⁷ The present lecture course may prove to be the best companion on such a path, which is akin to the practising of a musician. This is a demanding exercise, but however small the progress, it forms the substance of true art, and can be offered as nourishment to a world in need.⁸

One of the questions today concerns recorded sound (see Appendix 6). After following the arguments concerning recordings, it can be refreshing to return to the present course of lectures. Though modestly described as ‘only a beginning’, Steiner begins where many of the great musicians of his time, and the ensuing decades, leave off.⁹

Music's turning point

Steiner characterizes music as the art which ‘contains the laws of our ego’.¹⁰ If we could consciously dive down into our astral body, the musician in us, we could perceive the cosmic music that has formed us: ‘... with the help of the astral body, the cosmos is playing our own being ... The ancients felt that earthly music could only be a mirroring of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind.’ Modern humanity has been led into the muddy, materialistic swamp of darkness and desire, which obscures this music. But there is a path of purification leading to perception of the music of the spheres once again. When we hear a symphony we dive with soul and spirit into the will, which is usually asleep in daytime consciousness. Art—‘even the nature of major and minor melodies’ - can bring life to the connection between man and cosmos (in other words, anthroposophy); to what might appear as dead form. Steiner warns ‘that these things are not a skeleton of ideas!’ hinting that his Theosophy was written musically, not schematically.

The present lectures on eurythmy represent Steiner's greatest contribution to musical studies. When he gave them in 1924, he advised the eurythmists to study Hauer's theoretical writings. Hauer was a musician who discovered atonal melody, or twelve-note music, at the same time (or even just before) as Schönberg did by a different route. Both composers endeavoured to get beyond the materialistic swamp through spiritual striving.¹¹ By 1924 Hauer had published his own attempt at a Goethean theory of music,¹² and his Deutung des Melos (Interpretation of Melos, questions to the artists and thinkers of our time) includes an appreciation of Goethe's Theory of Colour.¹³ In these eurythmy lectures, Steiner appears to agree with Hauer's diagnosis of the modern situation as ‘noise’; Wagner's music, for example, is ‘unmusical music’, though it has its justification. Steiner seems to agree with Hauer's spiritual principle of Melos, ‘the actual musical element’ (to Hauer ‘movement itself’, or the ‘TAO’, the interpretation of which is ‘the only true spiritual science’). He reproduces Hauer's correspondence of vowels and intervals, writing in his notebook Hauer's list of examples (Notebook, p. 10), and he retells the story of the Arab listening to a contrapuntal piece, who asks for it to be played ‘one tune at a time’. But Steiner certainly does not agree with Hauer's answer to the challenge of materialism. ‘Those who deride materialism are bad artists, bad scientists,’ Steiner declares.¹⁴ Instead of criticism, he offers help.

In his profound study on Bach, Erich Schwebsch suggests that eurythmy arrived just at the right time in the evolution of mankind.¹⁵ His justification of music eurythmy is unlikely to be supplanted. With the founding of music eurythmy, a new beginning opens up for the art of music too. This thought was also expressed by the musician and eurythmist Ralph Kux.¹⁶ It remains for me to draw attention to the counter-phenomenon accompanying this new beginning.

The counter-tendency, so strongly marked in Hauer's thought and life, artificially separates itself from the human roots of music. Steiner's answer to Hauer's dissatisfaction with western culture was to give a further impetus to music eurythmy (already born but still in its infancy) by tracing the origin of music back to the human being. Through a conscious ‘turning inside out’ within the organism, at the point of departure in the collar-bone, the cosmic music that formed us (flowing in between the shoulder-blades) is released and made available for artistic ends.¹⁷ Music today, he implies, is not a purely spiritual, meditative affair, leading (as later in Hauer's career) a reclusive life. The music of the spheres sought along the old paths ‘out there’ in the cosmos leads to an abstract caricature today. The living connection is to be found on earth, in the human being.¹⁸ Steiner was in all things concerned with living, creative activity. The arts are the means whereby inner activity and experience become outer expression: ‘to present the soul and spirit in fullest concentration ... is basically the highest ideal of all art.’¹⁹ The arts remind us of the meaning in our earthly destiny. Steiner's meditative verse, written for Marie Steiner at Christmas 1922, begins: ‘The stars once spake to man’—but what leads to the future is ‘what man speaks to the stars’.²⁰

Albert Steffen expresses it clearly: there is a splitting of the way ‘concerning the life or death of music as such ... The whole of humanity stands before this alternative. There is no way back. Every individual has to go through it or come to grief.’²¹ In one of his most inspired articles, H. Pfrogner (a musicologist and authority on twentieth-century developments) characterizes the one path of experience as the way of ‘universal concord’, and the other as ‘ego concord’.²² The former path leads to universal spirituality, to a dissolving of the self. The latter path leads to a maturing of the self. Pfrogner accociates the former spirituality with the impulse emanating from the conspiracy of Gondishapur (seventh century AD - further details can be found in Ruland).²³ which echoes on in Islamic culture; the maturing spirituality he associates with the Christian west. All inclination to ‘dissolve the ego’, whose new richness of content was brought by Christ, spiritually subscribes to Arabism, whereas all steps toward strengthened responsibility follow the latter path. But this latter path leads to an extension of the diatonic system, ‘that resounding image of the human being pure and simple’ (Pfrogner).

The path to overcome materialism, further elucidated by Pfrogner,²⁴ will not be reached by avoiding the swamp of man's egotism and hastily ‘reaching for the stars’ (the arrangement of twelve) to the exclusion of the diatonic system (based on the number seven). Lurking in such a counter-reaction to romanticism (which, like Viennese classicism, arose in the age of materialism as a protest) is an implied denial of the Christ-event. ‘Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolution in human nature, based on the retention of the ego's full consciousness. He inaugurated the initiation of the ego,’ Steiner explains.²⁵ ‘With Christ,’ F. Rittelmeyer reminds us in his last book, ‘the whole orientation of humanity is changed. And from now on we no longer look back with longing to the past, to a "golden age" of the primal beginning, but look forward toward fulfilment, creating the future ...’²⁶ There is a path through the swamp which has been trodden by composers such as Bartok, Hindemith, Messiaen, Martinu, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich, Britten, Tippett, Hartmann, Henze, Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Pärt and many others (following in their own ways the example of the modern ‘Prometheus’, Beethoven).²⁷

Musical art of the future

On more than one occasion, Steiner, speaking of the future of music, pointed to ‘finding a melody in the single note’.²⁸ In the eurythmy lectures he points out that this does not mean listening to the acoustic ‘chord of overtones’ in a single note—on which Hauer and Hindemith base their theoretical work. It is a supersensible experience. One of the climaxes of the investigations of Pfrogner and H. Ruland (one of the former's successors), is the working out of Steiner's hints of a development of our tonal system.²⁹

Here mention should be made of two other pioneers in musical studies whose work is acknowledged by Ruland in his Expanding Tonal Awareness. Ernst Bindel developed the relationship between mathematics and music.³⁰ (Without some mathematics there can be no responsible step towards a musical future.) The other pioneer is H. E. Lauer,³¹ whose account of the evolution of tonal systems has subsequently been considerably developed by Ruland.

We conclude with a suggestion regarding ‘artistic longing’, made by Steiner some months before the lectures translated here:

‘If someone feels that here on earth he does not fulfil what lies in his archetype, with its abode in the heavens, there arises in him an artistic longing for some outer image of that archetype. Whereupon he can gain the power to become an instrument for expressing the true relation of man to the world by becoming a eurythmist. The eurythmist says: All the movements which I ordinarily carry out here on earth do less than justice to the mobile archetype of man. To present the ideal human archetype I must begin by finding a way to unite with its movements.’ These movements, through which the human being endeavours to imitate in space the movements of his heavenly archetype, constitute eurythmy.³²

Steiner wrote in his Notebook (see p. 131 below) for the present eurythmy course:

In the musical element the spatial human being is transformed into the non-spatial human being—the spiritual human being is the inner origin of the musical element.

Artistic people often think more naturally in evocative images, rather than with philosophical or technical concepts about ‘the spiritual human being’ or ‘the heavenly archetype’. And ultimately the inner life cannot express itself other than in images. Artistic readers looking for direction to surmount materialism may be able to grasp the necessity for decisive action more directly in the form of a picture. It may be appropriate to recall a passage from one of Selma Lagerlöf's novels to show the precision of Steiner's statement. An image of the Christ-child is kept in a basilica run by Franciscan monks. An Englishwoman plans to steal this image and replace it with a cheap imitation.

When the copy was ready she took a needle and scratched into the crown: ‘My kingdom is only of this world.’ It was as if she was afraid that she herself would not be able to distinguish one image from the other. And it was as if she wished to appease her own conscience. ‘I have not wished to make a false Christ-image. I have written in his crown: “My kingdom is only of this world”.’³³

Stourbridge, Michaelmas 1993
Alan Stott

• 1. R. Steiner, True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation, GA243, (RSP 1975). An accurate translation of the section on music (last part of the final lecture of 24.8.22) appears in Lea van der Pals, op. cit., p. 71ff. Compare: ‘The basic mood of the new world-conception [since the Mystery of Golgotha] is musical, whereas the basic mood of the old world was sculptural. The basic mood of the new age is really musical, and the world will become ever more musical. In order to continue rightly on the path of human evolution, we must know the importance of striving towards a musical element and not repeating the old sculptural one’ (R. Steiner, Der Baum des Lebens and der Baum der Erkenntnis des Guten and Bosen [‘The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil’], lecture Dornach 31.7.15, GA162 [translation A. S.]; see also Appendix 4, ‘R. Steiner, Torquay, 22.8.24’, in Vol. 2).
• 2. R. Steiner, Eurythmy as Visible Singing, GA278, Lecture 3.
• 3. The name ‘anthroposophy’ (‘wisdom of the human being’) is not used in any of Steiner's basic books. It appeared before the world for the first time one year after the founding of the Anthroposophical Society (1913), in the final chapter of R. Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy [original edition 1914, English translation AP 1973], ‘A brief outline of an approach to anthroposophy’. In this chapter, reference is made to the author's Truth and Science (1882), The Philosphy of Freedom (1894), and the lecture ‘The psychological foundations and epistemological position of spiritual science’, delivered before the Philosophical Congress, Bologna, 18.4.11.
  
  ‘Eurythmy has grown out of the soil of the anthroposophical movement, [originating] like a gift of destiny’ (R. Steiner, ‘Eurythmy, what it is and how it originated’, lecture Penmaenmawr 26.8.23 in Eurythmy as Visible Song [London and New York 1932], p. 1). ‘The artistic element will be an elixir of life of the anthroposophical movement’ (R. Steiner, introduction to a eurythmy performance on the occasion of the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society, Dornach 5.1.24, in GA277, p. 423). See also R. Steiner, Das Goetheanum in seinen zehn Jahren’ (‘The Goetheanum, ten years in retrospect’), essay of 14.1.24 in GA36, and Tb635 p. 131. For a detailed account, see R. Steiner, Die Entstehung and Entwicklung der Eurythmie (‘The origin and development of eurythmy’, translation in progress) GA277a (Dornach 1965), and R. Steiner, Eurythmie—die Offenbarung der Sprechende Seele (‘Eurythmy—revelation of the speaking soul’) GA277 (Dornach 1972), a collection of introductions to performances, and so on; a paperback mainly consisting of selections is published: Eurythmie, Tb642 (Dornach 1986). Some introductions are translated in R. Steiner, Eurythmy, an Introduction (AP 1984); the lecture 14.2.20 is translated in The Inner Nature of Music, op. cit.
• 4. Rational thinking is not jettisoned in favour of ‘mysticism’ or something else. The spiritual activity within thinking itself can be strengthened for investigating and creating within the realm of the spirit. The spiritual activity of pure thinking, the higher union of science and religion demonstrated by Steiner, was prophesied, for example, by Emerson: ‘No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation’ (R. W. Emerson, tract on ‘Nature’, Chapter VIII, [1836]. See also a recent study on Emerson, Richard G. Geldard, The Esoteric Emerson [The Lindisfarne Press, West Stockbridge, Mass., 1993]).
• 5. R. Steiner, Art as seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, GA275, Lecture 30.12.14 (RSP 1984).
• 6. R. Steiner, Practical Advice to Teachers (RSP 1976), GA294. The lecture course referred to is R. Steiner, The Inner Nature of Man and the Life Between Death and a New Birth, Vienna 9-14.4.14, GA153 (RSP 1959). Steiner aimed at a marriage of form and content in his work, which is the lofty artistic ideal. After the Christmas Foundation of 1923/4, he reached a new level in this respect. In connection with the subject matter of GA153, compare: ‘Contrary to the works of architects, sculptors and painters, musical works must be repeatedly generated anew; they flow onwards in the surge and swell of their melodies, a picture of the soul, which in its incarnations always has to experience itself afresh in the progressive stream of time. The soul flows down from its spiritual homeland and returns thither—likewise its shadow-images: notes and harmonies. Hence the intimate effect of music on the soul’ (R. Steiner, lecture Berlin 12.11.06, The Inner Nature of Music [AP 1983]).
  
  Steiner confirmed that: ‘For anyone who would read my Occult Science as today one would read a novel or any other book, passively giving oneself to it, it is really only a thicket of words—and so are my other books. It is only someone who knows in every moment of reading that he must create out of his own soul's depths, and through his most intimate will—which the books should stimulate—only this person is able to regard these books as musical scores from which he can experience the true music. This active experience of the individual soul, moreover, is what we need’ (R. Steiner, Heilfaktoren fir den sozialen Organismus, lecture Dornach 2.7.20, GA198). See also R. Steiner, The Gospel of St John, Lecture XI, Hamburg 30.5.08, GA103 (RSP 1978); GA278, Lecture 6, Endnote 39 in Vol. 2.
  
  The implications for the musician are discussed by Erich Schwebsch in his pioneer study on anthroposophy and music. He concludes: ‘The cosmology of Occult Science contains in its thoughts the best exercises for a meditative musician who is searching for new forms today’ (E. Schwebsch, J. S. Bach and Die Kunst der Fuge [Stuttgart 1988], Chapter 4 ‘Musik als Offenbarung des Geistes. Aphoristische Betrachtungen’, p. 193 [J. S. Bach and ‘The Art of Fugue’; translation of Chapter 4 in manuscript, ‘Music as revelation of the spirit. Aphoristic observations’]).
• 7. In his first lecture, before the Goethe Society, Vienna 1888, Steiner said: ‘Beauty is not the divine in a cloak of physical reality; no, it is physical reality in a cloak that is divine. The artist does not bring the divine on to the earth by letting it flow into the world; he raises the world into the sphere of the divine’ (R. Steiner, Goethe as Founder ofa new Science of Aesthetics [Rudolf Steiner Pub., Co., London c.1927]). Steiner claims that this lecture, already in 1888, contains ‘a sound foundation for anthroposophy and the anthroposophical way of thinking’ (Preface to the second edition, 1919). The lecture suggests an acid test for what is truly new. Movements exist today which bear the adjective ‘spiritual’ but do not attempt any transformation. Indeed, it is often stated that ‘no musical knowledge is necessary’! Is not the call for courage against despondency and inadequacy met right here with every individual?
• 8. See Schwebsch, Endnote 6. Pfrogner, in the chapter ‘und was nun? (‘and what now?’) in his extensive study on The living world of music’, presents a clear vision of tasks for the future: ‘No longer l'art pour l'art, but simply and solely: l’art pour l’homme will be the saying of the hour. This “art for human beings”, however, will have to be an art totally “from human beings”, an art in the above-mentioned sense “raised” from the human being, if it should be true “nourishment for life” ’ (H. Pfrogner, Lebendige Tonwelt [Langen Müller, München/Wien 1981], p. 474, trans. A.S.).
• 9. For example: Bruno Walter, Theme and Variations (Hamish Hamilton, London 1947), and On Music and Music-Making (Faber, London 1957); W. Furtwängler, Concerning Music (Boosey and Hawkes, London 1953); Artur Schnabel, My Life and Music (C. Smythe, New York and Gerrards Cross 1988), and Music and the Line of Most Resistance (Princeton 1942); Edwin Fischer, Reflections on Music (Williams & Norgate, London 1951); R. Vaughan Williams, National Music and other Essays (OUP 1987); J. Ma. Corredor, Conversations with Casals (Duddon, New York 1956).
• 10. R. Steiner, Art as seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, lecture 29.12.24, GA275 (RSP 1984).
• 11. For the best introduction to this perspective, see H. Pfrogner Zwölfordnung der Töne (Zürich/Leipzig/Wien 1953), reprinted in H. Pfrogner, Zeitwende der Musik (Langen Müller, München/Wien 1986), translation in manuscript, ‘Music's turning point of time’.
• 12. J. M. Hauer, Vom Wesen des Musikalischen (1920, later editions Robert Lienau, Berlin-Lichterfelde), translation in progress, ‘The essence of music’.
• 13. J. M. Hauer, Deutung des Melos (Tal & Co. Verlag, Leipzig/Wien/Zürich 1923), translation in manuscript ‘The interpretation of Melds’.
• 14. R. Steiner, The Arts and Their Mission, lecture Oslo, 18.5.23, GA276 (AP 1964), p. 111.
• 15. Schwebsch presented his eloquent conclusion already in 1930: ‘But all inner experience of the soul when it is ripe to that end, wishes to become visible, perceptible. The soul world desires to become objective. The first beginning for this becoming visible of vitally filled musical movement, from the All rising up behind the Nothing [an echo from Goethe's Faust, Part 2, 6256. Translator's note.] of the vanishing past, at the exact nadir of time, is the art of music eurythmy: visible singing, newly created by Rudolf Steiner’ (E. Schwebsch, op. cit., p. 211). Chapter 4 is more than the title suggests. It is an anthroposophical musician's ‘credo’, which applies to Steffen's essay (see Endnote 21 below), too.
• 16. R. Kux and W. Kux, Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner and R. Kux, Eurythmie and Musik (Mellinger Verlag, Stuttgart 1976), translation in manuscript ‘Recollections of R. Steiner, and eurythmy and music’.
• 17. See R. Steiner, The Essentials of Education, lecture 10.4.24 a.m. (RSP 1982), p. 58. The physiology is explained in A. Husemann, The Harmony of the Human Body (Floris Books, Edinburgh 1994; German edition, Der musikalische Bau des Menschen [Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 1989]). Note, for example, with what careful scholarship Dr Husemann explores what ‘beim Aufireten’ (‘by stepping’, or ‘with the first step’) from Lecture 7 must mean (Section 31, p. 189ff.). See also Endnote 43 on Ansatz, in Vol. 2.
• 18. Compare Steiner: ‘Since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot speak of the music of the spheres as did Pythagoras, but we can speak of it in another way. An initiate might even today speak as Pythagoras did, but the ordinary inhabitant of the earth in his physical body can speak of the music of the spheres and of the cosmic life only when he experiences in his soul, "Not I, but Christ in me", for the Christ within him has lived in the music of the spheres and in the cosmic life. But we must go through this experience in ourselves; we really must receive Christ into our souls’ (R. Steiner, lecture Norrköping, 16.7.14, in Christ and the Human Soul GA155 [RSP 1984], pp. 69-70). The harmony of the spheres is heard ‘in deep sleep’ by the initiate ‘as if they were the notes of trumpets and the rolling of thunder’ (R. Steiner, An Esoteric Cosmology GA93a [St George Publications, Spring Valley, New York 1978], lecture Paris 30.5.1906, reported by E. Schure, p. 45. Steiner's proclamation of Christ rests on knowledge. By the turn of the century, he could say: ‘The unfolding of my soul rested upon the fact that I had stood in spirit before the Mystery of Golgotha in most inward, most earnest solemnity of knowledge’ (R. Steiner, The Course of my Life [New York, 1951], closing sentence of Chapter XXVI, p. 276). ‘Spiritual science is concerned not merely to talk about the Christ, but to declare what the Christ wishes to say to people in our time, through the medium of human thoughts.’ R. Steiner, lecture Zürich 4.2.19., in The Inner Aspect of the Social Question GA193, (RSP 1950), p. 16.
  
  Steiner indicates what amounts to 84 (= 7 x 12) meditations for musicians: ‘You have in the fixed stars a wonderful cosmic instrument, and the players of this instrument of the zodiac and fixed stars are the gods of the planets beyond’ (lecture Dornach, 2.12.22, in The Inner Nature of Music GA283 [AP 1983], pp. 42-3); see also R. Steiner, The Gospel of St Matthew (especially lectures Berne, 3,4, 10 and 12.10.10), GAl23 (RSP 1965); R. Steiner, Universe, Earth and Man, lecture Stuttgart 12.8.08 [RSP 1987], p. 118ff. See also Appendices 3 and 5 in Vol. 2.
• 19. R. Steiner, GA277, op. cit., p. 320.
• 20. R. Steiner, Verses and Meditations (RSP 1961), pp. 96-97 In this connection, compare Beckh's definition of ‘cosmic’: ‘the revelation of the spirit within the earthly realm’ (H. Beckh, Die Sprache der Tonart [Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1977], p. 20, English translation ‘The language of tonality’, in manuscript).
• 21. Albert Steffen, ‘Musik’ in Der Künstler and die Erfiillung der Mysterien (Dornach 1964), translation in the British Newsletter, forthcoming. An artist could base his life on this astonishing essay. 21
• 22. H. Pfrogner, Chapter 17 in Zeitwende..., op. cit.
• 23. Compare: ‘Absolute objectivity ultimately demands the sacrifice of the personality’ (Hauer, Vom Wesen des Musikalischen [Leipzig/Wien 1922], p. 40), with: ‘When the human being became a personality, God also had to become a personality in order to save him, to give him the possibility of rising again’ (R. Steiner, Egyptian Myths and Mysteries [AP 1971], p. 139). Another twentieth- century scientist, comparing his life to that of Goethe's, declared that his goal was ‘to penetrate into the secret of the personality’; the ‘central concept’ of his psychology is ‘the principle of individuation’ (C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections [Fontana, London 1967], pp. 232 and 235, italics original). Sir Julian Huxley summarizes Teilhard de Chardin, the scientist-seer: ‘persons are individuals who transcend their merely organic individuality in conscious participation’ (Introduction to Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man [Collins 1959/Fontana 1965], p. 20/21). A vague pantheism is avoided: ‘Union differentiates’, and ‘the more "other" [grains of consciousness] become in conjunction, the more they find themselves as "self" as they make for the ‘Omega point’ of evolution (op. cit., p. 261/288). See Endnote 20 in Vol. 2.
• 24. See H. Pfrogner, Zeitwende..., op. cit., and Lebendige Tonwelt, op. cit., for informed views on musical development right up to the twentieth century.
• 25. R. Steiner, The Gospel of St Matthew, lecture Berne 9.10.10 (RSP 1965). Steiner explains the meaning of the atonement: ‘The One sufferred for all, so that through the world-historic initiation a substitute has been created for the old form of initiation ... Through inner vision, through true mysticism, community with Christ is possible’ (R. Steiner, Foundations of Esotericism, lecture Berlin, 27.9.05 [RSP 1983], p. 14)
• 26. F. Rittelmeyer, Christus (Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1936), p. 38 (translation in MS). Rittelmeyer's mature relationship to John's Gospel, with its hidden music, informs his major works. For Rittelmeyer on music, see A. Stott: ‘Friedrich Rittelmeyer and the "Song of the earth's perfecting"’ in The Threshing Floor, May/June 1988 (Floris Books, Edinburgh). Another study on the Christ- Impulse is C. E. Raven, Jesus and the Gospel of Love (Hodder & Stoughton, London 1931/49), see especially Chapter XV, ‘Christ in the Twentieth Century’.
• 27. The following reference to Beethoven's entelechy is the only one that has come to my notice: ‘I was deeply impressed when a while ago I heard from a famous musician that in a personal conversation Rudolf Steiner said "Beethoven is Prometheus"’ (E. Kolisko, ‘Beethoven’, from a series of articles under the title ‘Reincarnation’ in The Modern Mystic, September 1938).
• 28. See Endnote 17 in Vol. 2.
• 29. See H. Ruland, Expanding Tonal Awareness (RSP 1992).
• 30. Ernst Bindel, Die Zahlgrundlagen der Musik im Wandel der Zeiten (Stuttgart 1985); translation in progress ‘The numerical basis of music in its development’.
• 31. H. E. Lauer, ‘The Evolution of Music through Changes in Tone-Systems’ in Cosmic Music, edited by J. Godwin (Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont 1989). Lauer also wrote Musik and Musiker (Selbstverlag, undated).
• 32. R. Steiner, The Arts and Their Mission, lecture Dornach 27.5.23, GA276 (AP 1964).
• 33. Selma Lagerlöf, The Miracles of Antichrist (Gay & Bird, London 1899), p. 14.

Report from the Nachrichtenblatt (News sheet) of 2.3.24

...Now in the Section for Speech and Music, of which Frau Marie Steiner is the director, it was felt intrinsically necessary to arrange a course on tone eurythmy ...

I shall briefly report here on the aims and intentions of it. In the art of eurythmy, speech eurythmy has been developed to a certain extent. We are our own most severe critics, and realize that whatever we manage to achieve in this realm is merely a beginning. But what has begun must be developed further.

Less progress has been made so far with tone eurythmy, ‘visible singing’, than with speech eurythmy, ‘visible word’. So that the beginning which we have achieved can be continued in the right way, the stage at which tone eurythmy is now practised had to be taken a step further. This was the purpose of the lecture course. Consequently the nature of the musical element had to be indicated, too. For in eurythmy, music is made visible, and we have to feel where music has its true source in the human being, if its fundamental essence is to be made visible.

Tone eurythmy makes visible that which is invisible, but lives audibly, in music. It is just here that we are in the gravest danger of becoming unmusical. I hope to have demonstrated in the lectures that when music flows over into movement, the urge arises to reject all that is unmusical in music and to make visible only ‘pure music’. Those who hold the view that music ceases when the audible is carried over into visible movement will certainly have reservations about tone eurythmy as such. This view, however, is not in the deepest sense an artistic one, for someone who inwardly experiences art must take delight in every extension of artistic sources and their forms. It is a fact that music, like all true art, springs forth from man's innermost being. His life can reveal this in the most varying ways. What wants to sing in the human being wants to be presented in forms of movement too, and only those possibilities of movement that lie in man's organism are called forth in speech and tone eurythmy. It is the human being himself who reveals his essence here. The human form is only truly understood as arrested movement, and only the movement of the human being reveals the meaning of his form. It may be said: Someone who disputes the justification of tone and speech eurythmy refuses to allow the human being to appear in his totality. Materialism does not permit the spirit to appear in human understanding, and the rejection of eurythmy as an art that can justifiably stand on a par with the other arts no doubt has its origin in a similar conviction.

It is to be hoped that the eurythmists have received some inspiration from this course, and thus some contribution has been made towards the further development of our art of eurythmy.

‘A translation has to be made out of the spirit of the language of the country just as if the respective book were written in this language’ (R. Steiner, Soul Economy and Waldorf Education, Lecture 14, 5.1.22, GA303 [RSP/AP 1986]).

With this sentence, Steiner encapsulates the translator's ideal. It is echoed by Gerald Vann: ‘Translation must always of course be a rendering not of word for word but of idea for idea; to be content to transliterate is merely illiterate’ (G. Vann, ‘Translator's Note to Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe [Collins, London 1965]). I do not think any translator believes a fixed ‘fundamentalist’ view concerning Steiner's terms is a tenable position. Words with Teutonic roots are not automatically holy or accurate, whoever the author might be. Nor does anybody claim pommes de terre has anything to do with apples! We have all heard of ‘anthrospeak’, that habit of jargonizing which we try to avoid in serious discourse. We all know that language is a living reality, and we try to be sensitive to its development.

These remarks arise from a perception that general awareness of our use of language is not as precise as it might be, that several factors are involved, and that a translator of a text on music inherits a difficult and controversial situation from which, nevertheless, I am convinced much good can result. Questions of terminology began to be aired at last in the Newsletter of the Association of Eurythmists in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, Aberdeen, Winter 1993. Potential critics may care to know that the aims expressed in Anna Meuss' article ‘Translating Rudolf Steiner's lectures’ (in Anthroposophy Today No. 20, RSP Autumn 1993) match my own. Most translators working in English owe much to her example. With the question of spelling and what to italicize, I have followed The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (1991). The few alternative American musical terms are included in brackets.

The course of lectures on music eurythmy translated here was held in February, 1924, for an audience of eurythmists and musicians. It represents the greatest of Steiner's contributions to music, and should interest all artists. Other lecture courses were planned, including one for musicians, but Steiner's death in 1925 prevented this. Nevertheless a rich fund of insights was offered with which artists can begin working: the lectures published under the title Das Wesen des Musikalischen GA283, most of which are published in The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone (AP 1983), also Art as seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom GA275 (AP 1984), and The Arts and their Mission GA276 (AP 1964). Lea van der Pals, a leading eurythmist in Dornach, has achieved a creative synthesis of what Steiner gave on the subject in her book, The Human Being as Music (The Robinswood Press, Stourbridge 1992).

Eurythmie als Sichtbarer Gesang GA278, was first published in English as Eurythmy as Visible Song in 1932. In the second edition (1977) this title was changed to Eurythmy as Visible Music, presumably on the grounds that eurythmy is not practised with singers (for reasons Steiner gives in Lecture 7 below). However, the original designation sichtbarer Gesang is unusual in German, too. The literal translation ‘visible singing’ is what Steiner had in mind, more active than either ‘visible music’ or ‘visible song’. (Steiner sometimes said sichtbares Singen, ‘visible singing’ [14.2.20 in GA277 and Tb642, and in the essay ‘Das Goetheanum ...’ IV, 1924 in GA36 and Tb635, p. 142]; and in Lecture 6, in connection with instrumental music, he said Gesangseurythmie—‘a singing eurythmy’.) Gesang is translated as ‘singing’ because it points to three central issues:

(1) the human being as creative source of music;

(2) the origin of all instrumental music in singing, intrinsically and historically;

(3) the possibility of expressing this human essence in artistic movement.

Steiner sums it up: ‘Eurythmy is a singing through movement; it is singing. It is not dancing; it is not mime’ (Lecture 7; see GA277, p. 337 too). Ralph Kux explains: The eurythmic artist ... perceives instrumental music through the ear and straight away transforms it into an inwardly heard singing, and fashions this singing into visible movement. Consequently we can speak of a “visible singing” and not of a “visible music” ’ (R. Kux, Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner, Mellinger Verlag [Stuttgart 1976], p. 52; translation A. S.).

It also seems reasonable that a conscientious translator should be consistent in following the use of one of the main branches of the English language. Clarity of meaning is thereby encouraged. As this translation aims, in the first place, for accuracy in English as it is used in Britain, we should clarify three words. The German Ton means ‘sound’, more specifically ‘musical sound’, and ‘note’. In the USA the term ‘tone’ might cover some, but not all, of the uses: both English and American musicians sing and play ‘notes’. To British musicians, the word ‘tone’ denotes a major second; it also refers to the quality of sound. Interestingly, Shakespeare's Titania begs, ‘I pray you gentle mortal, sing again / Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note’; Don Pedro advises: ‘do it in notes’. Steiner, too, sometimes uses Note and Noten in his lectures. Eurythmy employs sound as its raw material: Laut—speech sound, Ton—musical sound. For Lauteurythmie we rightly say ‘speech eurythmy’, and for Toneurythmie, logically ‘music eurythmy’. This term suggests itself as one which avoids misunderstanding and consequently one which could be internationally acceptable. But it may genuinely not be desirable to have an ‘internationally acceptable’ term.

Incidentally, Steiner uses the expressions musikalische Eurythmie (‘musical eurythmy’) and musikalisches Eurythmisieren (literally ‘musical eurythmizing’) in Lecture 5; musikalische Eurythmisierende (‘the person engaged in music eurythmy’) in Lecture 6, and Musikgebärde (‘gestures of music [eurythmy]’) in Lecture 1. Owen Barfield, in his article ‘The Art of Eurythmy’, in The Golden Blade (London 1954), speaks of ‘speech eurythmy’, ‘musical eurythmy’, and simply ‘eurythmy’.

The Romance languages use the words ‘music’ and ‘musical’: eurythmie musicale (French), euritmia musicale (Italian), eurythmia da musica (Portuguese), eurythmia de la musica (Spanish). Hebrew possesses only one word for both musical and speech sound (tzlil), and so uses ‘music’ too: oritmia im-musica. Eastern Europe uses the word ‘musical’, for example: muzikalaija evritmija (Russian), musikalna evritmia (Bulgarian). The Japanese, too, use their equivalent word for ‘music’. Since this translation uses English as it is spoken in Britain, Ton is translated as ‘sound’, ‘musical sound’ and ‘note’ according to the context. Here, as in general, I have been guided by the Oxford Dictionary of Music (1985) and The New Oxford Companion to Music (1983), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), and Collins Encyclopaedia of Music (1976). Those who feel they are closer to the Teutonic tradition, and who prefer the earlier terms ‘tone’ and ‘tone-eurythmy’ that have been hallowed by use, will realize that these terms sound like jargon, at least in Britain. It should also be said that the modern meaning of the word ‘tone’ for acoustics and electronics, for example, as implied in ‘a musical note, without its harmonics’ (from the first sentence of the entry ‘Tone’ in The International Cyclopaedia of Music and Musicians, ed. Oscar Thompson [Dodd, Mead and Co, New York and Toronto / Dent, London; 10th edition 1975], p. 2293), is the opposite of what Steiner means by Ton. However, I have been asked to retain the term ‘tone eurythmy’ in the lectures.

Eurythmists, Steiner explains, have to ‘raise’ their bodies ‘through work’, so that their bodies (their instruments) can appear as if moving in the etheric realm. Translators, similarly, have to ‘raise’ their thinking. In fact, anyone who manages to do this can ‘approach [the archangel] Michael’ (lecture 13.1.24 in GA233a). ‘Christology,’ Steiner says elsewhere (Lecture 1.8.15), ‘has nothing to do with any division of man and mankind.’ But he does emphasize that realization comes only from within. The ‘raising’ mentioned above is also attempted by all those who have contributed their labour of love to the present work. No translation, of course, can claim to be ‘perfect’. Even were this translation good, it could still be better. Any comments in this direction that would assist preparation for the day when a fourth edition is needed, will be appreciated. Endnote numbers in square brackets refer to the section ‘Notes to the Lectures’ in the companion volume to the present lectures. This companion volume also contains eight Appendices on specific subjects.

Eurythmists will be for ever grateful to Marie Steiner for her incalculable contribution to eurythmy. Her main concern, however, was the speech work. Her synopsis of the present lectures which appeared in the first edition (Eurythmy as Visible Song) even contains an occasional misleading statement. Her original titles for these lectures have been slightly revised here. This third edition of Eurythmy as Visible Singing is planned to appear during the bicentenary of Schiller's Aesthetic Letters (1794) and the centenary of Steiner's own The Philosophy of Freedom (1894). Both books are recommended by Steiner for eurythmy students. What worthier companions could be imagined for the present lecture course, which is an attempt to blaze a trail between naturalism and abstraction in art, in order to get beyond materialism? May this edition, planned to appear in 1994 (seventy years after the lectures were held), encourage a further step in bringing about that which Goethe called ‘Nature's worthiest exponent, Art’.

These lectures dealing with the nature of eurhythmy are given in response to a request from Frau Dr. Steiner, who believes it to be necessary, in order to lay the foundation of an exact eurhythmic tradition, to recapitulate in the first place all that has been given in the domain of speech-eurhythmy at different times to different people. To this repetition fresh material will be added in order to widen the field of eurhythmic expression. Such material will, however, not be set apart in separate chapters, but will be given in connection with each individual point as this comes under discussion.

I shall endeavour to deal with eurhythmy from its various aspects; not only from the artistic side which naturally calls for our first consideration here, but also from the point of view of education and healing.

The first lecture will be in the nature of an introduction and this will be followed by a lecture dealing with the first elements of speech-eurhythmy. In every branch of eurhythmic activity it is necessary above all that the personality, the whole human being of the eurhythmist should be brought into play, so that eurhythmy may become an expression of life itself. This cannot he achieved unless one enters into the spirit of eurhythmy, feeling it actually as visible speech. As in the case of all artistic appreciation, it is quite possible for anyone to enjoy eurhythmy as a spectator, without having acquired any knowledge of its essential basis, just as it is quite unnecessary to have studied harmony or counterpoint to be able to appreciate music. For it is an accepted fact of human evolution that the healthily developed human being carries within him a natural appreciation and understanding of art.

Art must work through its own inherent power. Art must explain itself. Those, however, who are studying eurhythmy, whose duty it is in some way or another to bring eurhythmy before the world, must penetrate into the actual essence and nature of eurhythmy in just the same way as, let us say, the musician, the painter or the sculptor must enter into the nature of his own particular art. If we wish to enter into the true nature of eurhythmy we must perforce enter into the true nature of the human being. For eurhythmy, to a far greater extent than any other art, makes use of what lies in the nature of man himself. Take for example various other arts, arts which need instruments or tools for their expression. You find no instrument or tool so nearly akin to the human being as the instrument made use of by the eurhythmist. The art of mime and the art of dancing do indeed to some extent make use of the human being as a means of artistic expression. With the art of mime, however, that which is expressed through the mime itself is merely subordinate to the performance as a whole, for such a performance does not depend entirely upon the artistic, plastic use of the human being. In such a case this same human being is made use of in order to imitate something or other which is already represented in man here upon the earth.

Further, in the case of the art of mime, we find as a rule that the gestures are used mainly to emphasize and render clearer something which is made use of by man in everyday life; that is to say, mime emphasizes speech. In order to bring a more intimate note into speech, gesture is added. Thus we are here concerned with something which merely adds in some small measure to the scope of that which is already present in man on the physical plane.

In the art of dancing—if we may use the word ‘art’ in such a connection—we have to do with an outpouring of the emotions, of the will, into movements of the human body, whereby are only further developed those possibilities of movement inherent in the human being and already present elsewhere on the physical plane. In eurhythmy we have to do with something which can nowhere be found in the human being in ordinary physical life, but which must be through and through a creation out of the spiritual worlds. We have to do with something which makes use of the human being, which makes use of the human form and its possibilities of movement as a means of expression.

Now the question arises:—What is really expressed in eurhythmy?—This you will only understand when you begin to realize that eurhythmy is actually a visible speech. With regard to speech itself the following must be said. When we give form to speech by means of mime, the ordinary speech itself provides us with a picture, with an image; when, however, we give form to speech itself, to sound as such, we find that the latter contains within it no such image. Speech arises as a separate, independent product from out of the human being himself. Nowhere in Nature do we find that which reveals itself in speech, that which comes into being through speech.

For this reason eurhythmy must, in its very nature, be something which represents a primeval creation. Speech—let us take this as our starting point—speech appears as a production of the human larynx and of those organs of speech which are more or less connected with it. What is the nature of the larynx? This question must eventually be brought forward, for I have often shown how in eurhythmy the whole human being must become a sort of larynx. We must therefore put to ourselves the question: Of what significance is the larynx? Now if you look upon speech merely as a production of the larynx, you will gain no conception of what is really proceeding from it, of what is being fashioned within it. Here it would perhaps be well to remind ourselves of a remarkable tradition which to-day is little understood, and of which you find some indication when you take the beginning of St. John’s Gospel: ‘In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God was the Word’. The Word.—Of course that which we to-day imagine to be the Word is something which gives not the slightest sense to the opening sentences of this Gospel. Nevertheless they are continually quoted. People believe they can make something out of them. They do not, however, succeed. For it is an undeniable fact that the conception of a word as held by the man of to-day is often truly expressed by his saying something of this kind:—What is a name but mere sound and smoke, mist and vapour?—In a certain sense he values the word itself little in comparison with its underlying concept. He feels a certain superiority in thus being able to value the word little in comparison with the thought. When, therefore, one puts oneself in the position of the man of to-day, and considers his conception of a word, the beginning of St. John’s Gospel has indeed no meaning. For consider the Word?—we have so many words, which word? It can only be a definite, concrete word. And what is the nature of this Word? That is the question.

Now behind this tradition which is indicated in the beginning of this Gospel lies the fact that man once had an instinctive knowledge of the true nature of the Word. To-day, however, this knowledge has been lost. To primeval human understanding the idea, the conception, ‘the Word’ comprised the whole human being as an etheric creation.

All of you, as Anthroposophists, know what we mean by the etheric man. We have the physical man and we have the etheric man. Physical man, as he is described to-day by modern physiology and anatomy, consists, both outwardly and inwardly, of certain forms of which one is able to make diagrams. Here, however, one naturally does not take into consideration the fact that what one draws is only the very smallest part of the physical human being, for the physical body is at the same time fluidic; it consists also of air and warmth. These constituents are naturally not included when one is speaking of the human being in physiology and anatomy. Nevertheless it is possible to gain some idea of the nature of the physical body of man.

We have, however, the second member of the human being,—the etheric body. If we were to attempt to draw the etheric body something extraordinarily complicated would come to expression. For the etheric body can just as little be represented as something static as can lightning. It is impossible to paint lightning; for lightning is in continual movement, lightning is in continual flow. In portraying lightning one must attempt to show it in continual flow and movement. And the same holds good with the etheric body. The etheric body is in continual motion, in continual activity.

Now these movements, these gestures which are continually in movement,—of which the etheric body does not indeed consist, but out of which it continually arises and again passes away,—do we find them anywhere in the world, do we come up against them anywhere? Yes, we do. This was no secret to a primeval and intuitive knowledge. We have these movements,—and here, my dear friends, I must ask you to take what I am saying quite literally,—we have these movements in the sound formations which embody the content of speech.

Now review mentally all the sounds of speech to which your larynx gives form and utterance, inasmuch as this formative principle is applied to the entire range of articulate speech. Bear in mind all the component elements which issue from the larynx for the purpose of speech. You must realize that all these elements, proceeding as they do from the larynx, really form the component parts of that which is brought to outer expression in speech. You must realize that these sound-formations consist of definite movements, the origin of which lies in the structure and form of the larynx and its neighbouring organs. They proceed from the larynx.

But these movements do not of course appear simultaneously. We cannot utter all the sounds which make up the content of speech at the same moment. How then could we utter all that makes up the content of speech? We could do so,—paradoxical us this may sound it is nevertheless a fact,—we could do so if for once we were to utter one after the other all the possible sounds from a, b, c, down to z. Try to imagine this. Imagine that someone were to say the alphabet aloud, beginning with a, b and continuing as far as z, with only the necessary pauses for breathing. Every spoken sound describes a certain form in the air, which one does not see but the existence of which must be presupposed. It is possible, indeed, to think of these forms being retained, fixed by scientific means, without actually making a physical drawing of them.

When we utter any particular word aloud,—‘tree’ for example, or ‘sun’,—we produce a quite definite form in the air. If we were to say the whole alphabet aloud from a to z, we should produce a very complicated form. Let us put this question to ourselves:—What really would be the result if someone were actually to do this? It would have to take place within a certain time,—as you will learn in the course of these lectures. It would have to take place within a certain time, so that, on reaching z, the first sound would not have completely disintegrated, that is to say the a-sound must still retain its plastic form when we have reached the sound z. If it were actually possible in this creation of air-forms to pass from a to z in such a way that the a-sound remained when the z-sound were reached, thus creating in the air an image of the whole alphabet, what would be the result? What sort of form should we have made? We should have created the form of the human etheric body. In this way we should have reproduced the human etheric body. If you were to repeat the alphabet aloud from a to z—(one would have to do this in exactly the right way; the alphabetical order of sounds in general use to-day is no longer quite correct—but I am speaking now of the underlying principle)—the human etheric body would stand before you.

What then would really have taken place? The human etheric body is always present. Every man bears it within himself. What do you do therefore when you speak, when you say the alphabet aloud? You sink into the form of your own etheric body. What happens then, when we utter a single word, which of course does not consist of all the sounds? Let us picture to ourselves the human being as he stands before us. He consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. He speaks some word. He sinks his consciousness into his etheric body. He forms some part of the etheric body in the air as an image, in much the same way as you, standing before a physical body, might for instance copy the form of a hand, so that the form of the hand were made visible in the air. Now the etheric body does not consist of the same forms as those which make up the physical body, but in this case it is the forms of the etheric body which are impressed into the air. When we learn to understand this rightly, my dear friends, we gain an insight into the most wonderful metamorphosis of the human form, an insight into the evolution of man. For what is this etheric body? It is the vehicle of the forces of growth; it contains within it all those forces bound up with the processes of nourishment, and also those forces connected with the power of memory. All this is imparted to the airy formations when we speak.

The inner being of man, in so far as this is expressed in the etheric body, is impressed into the air when we speak. When we put sounds together, words arise. When we put together the whole alphabet from beginning to end, there arises a very complicated word. This word contains every possibility of word-formation. It also contains at the same time the human being in his etheric nature. Before man appeared on the earth as a physical being he already existed as an etheric being. For the etheric man underlies the physical man. How then may the etheric man be described? The etheric man is the Word which contains within it the entire alphabet.

Thus when we are able to speak of the formation of this primeval Word, which existed from the beginning before physical man came into being, we find that that which arises in connection with speech may indeed be called a birth,—a birth of the whole etheric man when the alphabet is spoken aloud. Otherwise, in the single words, it is a partial birth, a birth of fragments, of parts of the human being. In every single word as it is uttered there lies something of the being of man. Let us take the word ‘tree’ for instance,—what does it mean when we say the word ‘tree’?

When we say the word ‘tree’ it means that we describe the tree in some such way as this. We say: That which stands there in the outer world, to which we give the name ‘tree’ is a part of ourselves, a part of our own etheric being. Everything in the world is a part of ourselves; nothing exists which cannot he expressed through the being of man. Just as the human being when he gives utterance to the whole alphabet really gives utterance to himself, and consequently to the whole universe, so, when uttering single words, which represent fragments of the Collective Word, of the alphabet, he gives expression to something which is a part of the universe. The entire universe is expressed when the whole alphabet is repeated from beginning to end. Parts of the universe are expressed in the single words.

There is one thing, however, about which we must be quite clear when we think over all that lies behind sound as such. Behind sound as such there lies everything that is comprised in the inner being of man. The activity manifested by the etheric body is representative of inner experiences of the soul in the nature of feeling. We must now find our way to these feelings themselves which are experienced in the human soul.

Let us take the sound a as a beginning.¹ To-day one learns to utter the sound a when one is in that unconscious dreamy condition in which one lives as a very small child. This experience is later submerged when the child suffers harm at school as a result of receiving wrong teaching in sound and language. When one learns to speak as a child there is really present something of the great mystery of speech. It remains, however, in a state of dreamy unconsciousness.

When we utter the sound a we feel, if our instinct is at all healthy, that this sound really proceeds from our inmost being when we are in a state of wonder and amazement.

 German English a, ah (as in father) e, a (as in say) i, ee (as in feet) ei, i (as in light) au, ow (as in how) eu, oi (as in joy 

Now this wonder is of course again only a part of the human being. Man is no abstraction. At every waking moment of his life he is something or other. One can of course allow oneself to become sluggish or stupefied, in which case one cannot be said to be anything very definite. But the human being must always be something, even when he reduces himself to a state of torpor; at every minute of the day he must be something or other. Now he is filled with wonder, now with fear, or again, let us say, with aggressive activity. The human being is no abstraction; every second he must be something definite. Thus there are times when man is a being of wonder, a being filled with amazement. The processes at work in the etheric body when man experiences wonder are imprinted into the air with the help of the larynx when he utters the sound a. When man utters the sound a he sends forth out of himself a part of his own being, namely the quality of wonder. This he imprints into the air.

We know that when a physical man appears upon the earth, he appears,—if he is born in accordance with the ordinary possibilities of development,—as a complete human being. This complete human being comes forth from the womb of the mother. He is born as physical man with a physical form. If all the sounds of the alphabet were uttered from a to z there would arise an etheric man, only this etheric man would be imprinted into the air, born from out of the human larynx and its neighbouring organs.

In the same way, when the child is brought into the world, when the child first sees the light, we must say: From out of the womb and its neighbouring organs there has arisen a physical man.

But the larynx differs from the womb of the mother in that it is in a continual state of creation. So that in a single word fragments of the human being arise; and indeed, if one were to bring together all the words of a language (which even in the case of a poet of such rich vocabulary as Shakespeare never actually occurs) the entire etheric man as an air-form would be produced by means of the creative larynx, but it would be a succession of births, a continuous becoming. It would be a birth continually taking place during the process of speech. Speech is always the bringing to birth of parts of the etheric man.

Again the physical larynx is only the external sheath of that most wonderful organ which is present in the etheric body, and which is, as it were, the womb of the Word. And here again we are confronted with a wonderful metamorphosis. Everything which is present in the human being is a metamorphosis of certain fundamental forms. The etheric larynx and its sheath, the physical larynx, are a metamorphosis of the uterus. In speech we have to do with the creation of man, with the creation of man as an etheric being.

This mystery of speech, my dear friends, is indicated by the connection which we find between the vocal and sexual functions, a connection clearly illustrated in the breaking of the male voice.

We have therefore to do with a creative activity which, welling up from the depths of cosmic life, flows outwards through the medium of speech. We see revealed in a fluctuating, ever-changing form that which otherwise withdraws itself into the mysterious depths of the human organization at the moment of physical birth. Thus we gain something which is essential for us in our artistic creative activity. We gain respect, reverence, for that creative element into which we, as artists, are placed. Theoretical discussion is useless in the realm of art. We cannot do with it; it merely leads us into abstraction. In art we need something which places us with our whole human being into the cosmic being. And how could we penetrate more deeply into the cosmic being than by becoming conscious of the relation existing between speech and the genesis of man. Every time that a man speaks he produces out of himself some part of that which existed in primeval times, when the human being was created out of cosmic depths, out of the etheric forces, and received form as a being of air before he acquired fluidic form, and, later still, his solid physical form. Every time we speak we transpose ourselves into the cosmic evolution of man as it was in primeval ages.

Let us take an example. Let us go back once more to the sound a, this sound which calls up within us the human being in a state of wonder. We must realize that every time the sound a appears in language there lies behind it the element of wonder. Let us take the word Wasser (water), or the word Pfahl (post), any word you like in which the sound a occurs. In every instance, when you lay stress on the sound a in speech, there lies in the background a feeling of wonder; the human being filled with wonder is brought to expression in this way by means of speech. There was a time when this was known. It was, for example, known to the Hebraic people. For what really lay behind the a, the Aleph, in the Hebrew language? What was the Aleph? It was wonder as manifested in the human being.

Now I should like to remind you of something which could lead you to an understanding of all that is really indicated by the sound a, all that the sound a really signifies. In ancient Greece there was a saying: Philosophy begins with wonder. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, the love of knowledge, begins with wonder.—Had one spoken absolutely organically, really in accordance with primeval understanding, with primeval instinctive—clairvoyant understanding, one might equally well have said:—Philosophy begins with a.—To a primeval humanity this would have meant exactly the same thing.—Philosophy, love of wisdom begins with a.

But what is it that one is really investigating when one studies philosophy? When all is said and done one is really investigating man. Philosophy strives after self-knowledge, and this self-observation begins with the sound a. It is, however, at the same time a most profound mystery, for it requires great effort, great activity, to attain to such knowledge of the human being. When man approaches his own being and sees how it is formed out of body, soul and spirit, when he looks upon his own being in its entirety, then he is confronted by something before which he may say a with the deepest wonder. For this reason a corresponds to man in a state of wonder, to man filled with wonder at his own true being, that is to say, man looked at from the highest, most ideal aspect.

The realization that man, as he stands before us as a physical being, is but a part of the complete human being, and that we only have the real man before us when we perceive the full measure of the divinity within him,—this realization, this wonder called up in us by a contemplation of our own being, was called by a primeval humanity: A. A corresponds to man in his highest perfection. Thus man strives towards the a, and in the sound a we are expressing something which is felt in the depths of the human soul. Let us pass over from a to b, in order to give at least some indication of that which might lead to an understanding of this primeval word, which is made up of the entire alphabet. Let us pass over to b. In b we have a so-called consonant; in a we have to do with a vowel sound. You will feel, if you pronounce a vowel sound, that you are giving expression to something coming from the inmost depths of your own being. Every vowel, as we have already seen in the case of the vowel a, is bound up with an experience of the soul. In every case where the sound a makes its appearance, we have the feeling of wonder. In every case where an e makes its appearance we have an experience which can be expressed somewhat as follows:—I become aware that something has been done to me.

Just think for a moment what creatures of abstraction we have become, how withered and lifeless our nature. Just as an apple or a plum may shrivel up, so have we become shrivelled up as regards our experience of language. Let us consider how, in speaking, when we pronounce the sound a and proceed from this sound to the sound e (which constantly happens) we have no idea that we are passing over from the feeling of wonder to the feeling: I become aware that something has been done to me.

Let us now enter into the feeling of the i-sound. With i we have, as it were, the feeling that we have been curious about something and that our curiosity has been satisfied. A wonderful and far from simple experience lies at the back of every vowel sound. When we allow the five vowel sounds to work upon us we receive the impression of man in his primeval strength and vigour. Man is, as it were, born again in his true dignity when he allows these five sounds consciously to work upon him, that is to say when he allows these sounds to proceed out of his inmost being in full consciousness. Therefore it is true to say:—We have become quite shrivelled up and think only of the meaning of a word, utterly disregarding the experience behind it. We think only of the meaning. The word ‘water’ for instance means some particular thing and so on. We have become utterly shrivelled up.

The consonants are quite different in their nature from the vowels. With the consonants we do not feel that the sounds arise from our inmost experience, but we feel that they are images of that which is outside our own being.

Let us suppose that I am filled with wonder, that I say a. I cannot make an outer image of the sound a, I must give utterance to it. If, however, I would give expression to something which is round in its form, like this table, for example, what must I do if I do not wish to express it in words? I must imitate it, I must copy its form, (corresponding gesture). If I would describe a nose without speaking, without actually saying the word ‘nose’ but still wishing to make myself understood, I can, as it were, copy its form, (corresponding gesture). And it is just the same in the forming of the consonants. In the consonants we have an imitation of that which exists in the external world. They are always an imitation of external forms. But we express these forms by constructing them in the air, producing them by means of the larynx and its neighbouring organs, the palate, for example. With the help of these organs we create a form which imitates, copies something which exists outside ourselves. This is even carried into the actual form of the letters, but of this we shall speak later.

When we form a b (it is, by the way, impossible to pronounce this sound without the addition of some vowel) when we form a b it is the imitation of something in the external world. If we were able to hold fast the air-form which is created by b (we must, of course, speak the sound aloud) we should have something in the nature of a shelter. A protecting, sheltering form would be produced. Something would be produced which might be likened to a hut or a house. B is an imitation of a house. Thus when we begin with a, b, we have, as it were, the human being in his perfection, and the human being in his house: a, b.

And so, if we were to go through the whole alphabet, we should, in the consecutive sounds, unfold the mystery of man. We should express the human being as he lives in the cosmos, the human being in his house, his physical sheath. If we were to pass from a, b to c, d, and so on, every sound would tell us something about the human being. And on reaching z we should have pictured in sound the whole of human wisdom, for this is contained in the etheric body of man.

We see from this that something of the very greatest significance takes place in speech. In speech the human being himself is fashioned. And one can indeed give a fairly complete picture of the soul life of man when one brings to expression his most fundamental feelings. I, O, A. These sounds represent practically the whole content of the human soul in its aspect of feeling: I, O, A.

Let us for a moment consider all that proceeds from the human being when he speaks. Let us suppose that somebody repeats the alphabet; when this is done the entire etheric body of man comes into being, proceeding from the larynx, as from the womb. The etheric body is brought into being. When we look at the physical body of man we know that it has come forth from the organism of the mother, it has come forth from a metamorphosis of the larynx, that is to say, from the mother’s womb.

But now let us picture to ourselves the complete human being as he comes into the world with all his different attributes; for that which is brought forth from the organism of the mother cannot remain unchanged. If the human being were to remain unchanged through his whole life, he could not be said to be a man in the true sense of the word; there must be a continual development. The human being at the age of thirty-five, let us say, has gained more from the universal, cosmic being than was his as a child. We may picture the whole human being in some such way as this. Just as speech proceeds from out of the larynx, the child from out of the womb, so the fully developed human being at about the age of thirty-five is born, as it were, from out of the cosmos in the same way in which the words which we speak are spoken out of us. Thus we have the form of man, the complete human form, as a spoken word.

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The human form stands before us,—that most wonderful of earthly forms,—the human form stands before us and we ask the divine spiritual powers which have existed from the beginning: How then did you create man? Did you create him in some such way as the spoken word is created when we speak? How did you create man? What really took place when you created man?—And if we were to receive an answer to our question from out of universal space, it would be some such answer as this: All around us there is movement, form, constantly changing and of infinite variety: such a form (a was here shown in eurhythmy), such a form (e was shown), such a form (i was shown)—all possibilities of form in movement proceed from out of the universe, every possibility of movement that we out of the nature of our being are able to conceive and to bring into connection with the human organization.

My dear friends, one can indeed say that these possibilities of movement are those which, becoming fixed, give man his physical form as it is when he reaches full maturity. What then would the gods do if they really wished to form man out of a lump of earth? The gods would make movements, and as a result of these movements, capable of giving form to the dust of the earth, the human form would eventually arise.

Now once more let us picture the eurhythmy movements for a, for b, for c, and so on. Let us imagine that the gods, out of their divine primeval activity were to make those eurhythmic movements which correspond to the sounds of the alphabet. Then, if these movements were impressed into physical matter, the human being would stand before us. This is what really lies behind eurhythmy. The human being as we see him is a completed form. But the form has been created out of movement. It has arisen from those primeval forms which were continually taking shape and again passing away. Movement does not proceed from quiescence; on the contrary, that which is in a state of rest originates in movement. In eurhythmy we are really going back to primordial movement.

What is it that my Creator, working out of primeval, cosmic being, does in me as man?

If you would give the answer to this question you must make the eurhythmic movements. God eurhythmetizes, and as the result of His eurhythmy there arises the form of man.

What I have said here about eurhythmy can indeed be said about any of the arts, for in some way or another every art springs from a divine origin. But in eurhythmy most especially, because it makes use of the human being as its instrument, one is able to penetrate most deeply into the connection existing between the human being and the cosmic being. For this reason one cannot fail to appreciate eurhythmy. For just suppose that one had no real conception of the nature of human beauty, as this is expressed in the outward human form, and then suppose that one had the opportunity of being shown how in the beginning, God created the beautiful human form out of movement, and one saw the repetition of those divine creative movements in the eurhythmic gestures, then one would receive the answer to the question: How did human beauty come into being?

Let us think of the child, the incomplete human being, who has not yet attained to his full manhood. How shall we help the gods, so that the physical form of the child shall be rightly furthered in its development? What shall we bring to the child in the way of movement? We must teach him eurythmy, for this is a continuation of divine movement, of the divine creation of man.

And when illness of some kind or another overtakes the human being, then the forms corresponding to his divine archetype receive injury; here, in the physical world, they become different. What shall we do then? We must go back to those divine movements; we must help the sick human being to make those movements for himself. This will work upon him in such a way that the harm his bodily form may have received will be remedied.

Thus we have to look upon eurhythmy as an art of healing, just as in ancient clairvoyant times it was known that certain sounds, uttered with a special intonation, reacted upon the health of man. But in those days one was shown how to affect the health by a more or less roundabout way, by means of the air, which worked back again into the etheric body. If one works more directly, if one makes the patient actually do the movements corresponding to the formation of his organs,—the point being, of course, that one knows what these movements really are,—(e.g. certain movements of the foot and leg correspond to certain formations right up in the head),—when one reproduces all this, then there arises this third aspect of eurhythmy, curative eurhythmy.

This introduction was necessary in order that all of you, as active eurhythmists, may gain a fundamental feeling and perception of what you are doing. You must not take eurhythmy as something which can be learned in the ordinary conventional way, but you must think of it as something which brings the human being nearer to the Divine than would otherwise be possible. The same applies indeed to all art. You must permeate yourselves through and through with this feeling. What then must be considered as an essential part of all eurhythmic teaching? The right atmosphere must enter into it, the feeling for the connection between man and the divine spiritual powers. This is essential if you would become eurhythmists in the true sense.

• 1. Owing to the fact that a number of German examples and quotations have had to be retained in the translation of these lectures, the German pronunciation of the vowel sounds has been consistently used throughout.