Music - a choice of futures: Keith Barnard
I am a composer whose aims and ambitions may seem unusual by the standards of most modern creativity. After having written nearly a hundred works, my views on music are based on a dedication to the sacred - an architectural, mathematical, esoteric, resonant and numerological path of expression - alien to much of the present day philosophy, but having a good deal in common with Atlantis, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China.......expressions of sound/sonic art and science, lost for hundreds if not thousands of years in forgotten archives and libraries, and now.......in our new renaissance millennium, seemingly destined to hold the light of day once again.....these are my visions..........linking - as they do into the very fabric and destiny of our root civilisation.
My music is set for all combinations - piano, vocal, choral, chamber, chamber/orchestral, and a two-part meditative opera: 'The Healing Angels', for small forces and an abstract sung text - as well as short narrated parts. The piano being my instrument, there is quite naturally a large body of music for this unique 'keyboard soul', from the seven minute 'Nocturne', to the two hour, thirty five minutes' composition, 'The Secret Tones Of The Divine Spheres', which I performed - in its single, continuous movement, in June of 1996. In addition to all this, I have numerous recordings including three of music for synthesizer.
My influences have been wide - either in musical or philosophical content - Chopin, Liszt, Satie, Debussy and above all, Scriabin - whom I consider to be the ultimate Aquarian musician, and like him, I have been devoted to the colour and healing aspects of sound for the last twenty two years. Many of my titles include names of colours, and the extreme esoteric nature of my vision has led me to pursue a largely solitary creative path.
Yet, as I have said, there is nothing new in my concept - it has all been echoed in the great civilisations of the past for whom music was a sacred art......as it is to me. Even the ancient Greeks placed music as a vitally important part of their educational curriculum. Their main subjects - (seven in number)....(seven and the cosmic and magnetic nine being holy numbers) - were mathematics, geometry, astronomy, logic, grammar, linguistics and music - geometry being taught separately from the other branches of mathematics....
In ancient Egypt and especially in ancient China, the emphasis in music was on the maximum potential from single tones - indeed, the subtlety of the cheng and other instruments led the old Chinese emperors to decree a tone for the whole of their race, known as the yellow tone, and masters of sound would go to every province setting individual tones in accordance with dragon/ley lines, and astrological and geographical position - in our day, it is perhaps hard for us to understand the ancient idea of linking.... Music, medicine, healing, geometry, architecture, colour, astronomy, geography, astrology, and other seemingly unconnected subjects ....as one whole!
Imagine a modern orchestra playing a piece of well-known and well-loved piece of music. The conductor and/or the leader of that orchestra suddenly stops and tells all the other musicians that - according to the position, astrological sign, shape and design of the hall, the seating arrangement, the numerological significance of day, date, time &c, that every player will need to retune their instrument and play it in a key concordant with all these mentioned facts, plus, to also take into account the phases of the moon-cycle......... Can you imagine that happening today, or musicians or conductors ever caring about such matters; well, I believe that the ancient races - the Mayans as well - did take these into consideration, to a greater or lesser degree, the Chinese being the most dedicated and persistent! The oldest and earliest emperors in China would make decrees that the most sacred music was to be kept from the masses, and to be used for the very highest purposes. As soon as the attunement of tone became obsolete the Chinese civilsation went into decline, and much the same happened in India.
Music is linked with the spiritual development of root-races more than any other art. Composers need to find the harmony through conflict & resolve dissonance into consonance & resolve atonality into tonality.
To be creative is to be expressive to God's ultimate perfection, and no matter how conflicting a harmony or a contrapuntal texture can be, there can always be a resolution, and the greatest composers have always stated and resolved dissonance - those who have done this on a cosmic scale - Wagner and Scriabin - have placed their musical visions on such a level as to be perpetually resonant, even for several hundred years.
In my own music, sounds continue to form shapes.....strands and striations of colour - auric visions of etheric architecture ....... all long after the cessation of the music by the performer or singer. In one of my longer piano works - Angelic Nocturne - the composition ends with very long and sustained harmonies - simple inversions of G-Major with added sixths and sevenths, resonating long after the sound in the piano has been lost.
I have utilised - in my music - the sacred consonant intervals - in direct statement, and, in resolution - the octave, the unison, the third and the sixth, and also the bare but powerful fourth and fifth. But, seconds and sevenths and higher forms of chromaticism can still be used for spiritual effect just as well!
So many people ask me for my views of the future of music. They give pessimistic visions of what is to come simply because they think that everything has been done and developed - there is nothing more to say - nothing more to achieve - what else can one do?
Well, my answer to all this is always very simple, clear and concise. The future and development of music will depend on how spiritual humanity wishes to be. Unless everybody on this planet aspires to higher levels of consciousness, then progress on the spiritual plane will be evasive, to say the least! However, the rewards for efforts will be immense. Now sounds and colours will be the norm - exactly what form all this will take is unclear at the present time, but, I clearly predict new vistas of creativity opening up as the vibration and frequency speed up. Time will be more compressed, we will all hear and see in other dimensions and what only a few people can do now in the psychic and astral fields will expand to unimaginable vistas of possibility. Music will be created on higher and more refined pitches and everyone will see clearly, the colour and shape produced by these pitches - so much so that composers will no longer be confined to manuscript paper and electronic and synthesised sounds without overtones - musicians will also be scientists and architects of sound, creating incredible edifices of multi-dimensional crystal musics which - in comparison with what we are doing now will be like a structure of toy bricks alongside a magnificent cathedral.
Is this all a silly pipe dream? How can we hear fourth dimensional harmonics? Well, we can, definitely, if we use the massive powers of our subconscious minds and live in and with 'the flow'. The Mayans predicted that the end of the world would come in the year 2012. I firmly believe that the years before and after this highly significant date will see planetary energy levels increase at a very rapid rate. Therefore, I and my fellow composers are all working hard to increase the speed of vibration and reception, to prepare for momentous times to come. One cannot say for sure exactly how people will react to the new level of frequency, but, adapt we must! One cannot remain in stasis - there is progress for all and unique and wonderful creative opportunities - we are surely living in the most exciting era, and it is no accident that this is so - we have all chosen our incarnations before we were ever born into physical bodies.
To relate musical keys to specific colours can be a little self-defeating, as everyone has their own views on the subject. But, broadly speaking, I have - of late - tended to emphasise the colours of violet, the higher forms of red, the gold, and the pure white light, as well as some work on the more soothing and healing blue/turquoise/green. Again, as a personal choice, I would say that the F-sharp (yellow to green) holds the resonance of the planet in its overtones. The violet ray of transformation has its roots in B Major and I would hope to see more use being made of this key. On the other hand, the C Major harmonies are still transmutatory. Along with chord clusters, a crystal sheen of white-gold can quite easily be visualised. However, I am making general points only due to the vast nature of the subject concerned, and the fact that different forces, solo and in combination, will produce colours and shapes on the same note.
The Russian composer Scriabin used trills and tremelandos and I believe that correctly used, particularly at the interval of the third, sixth and octave, these can produce an effect which is of releasing the boundaries between one dimension and the other. I have used this technique myself in my thirty-minute composition 'Homage to the Holy Mother Isis', for piano and strings.
Finally, one can heal the body, mind and chakras through music, but, it is also important to push forward the boundaries of tonality to ever new enharmonic modalities.
When we all strive to express the sacred through creativity, then the whole of humanity can live in the fourth dimension - to experience new harmony and see new colours, as explained earlier. The alternative is also straightforward - to progress only from the standpoint of technology, but remain spiritually and morally and artistically stagnant.
The choice is ours - let us all hope we make the right choice.
© Keith Barnard, 2000