THE CLASSICAL COMPOSER AND MUSICOLOGIST PETER HÜBNER
on his International Project of the INTEGRATION OF SCIENCES & ARTS
 
NATURAL
MUSIC HEARING


OUVERTURE
CONVEYING TRUTH IN MUSIC


TEIL I
THE OBJECT OF GAINING KNOWLEDGE IN MUSIC


TEIL II
THE LOGIC OF THE MUSICAL FIELDS OF COGNITION


TEIL III
IMMORTAL AND MORTAL TRADITION OF MUSIC


TEIL IV
THE LIVING EXAMPLE OF THE MUSICAL COGNITION OF TRUTH


TEIL V
THE THREE GREAT STEPS OF THE MUSICAL PROCESS OF GAINING KNOWLEDGE


TEIL VI
THE SYSTEM OF INTELLECTUAL DISCUSSION IN MUSIC


TEIL VII
ERRORS IN GAINING KNOWLEDGE IN MUSIC


TEIL VIII
EQUIVOCATION


TEIL IX
THE SECRET OF MUSIC


TEIL X
THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF GAINING KNOWLEDGE IN MUSIC


TEIL XI
INDIRECT AND DIRECT GAINING KNOWLEDGE IN MUSIC


TEIL XII
THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE GOAL OF TRUTH


Ancient Truths in Music


 
The knowl­edge about our in­ner hu­man forces is defi­nitely not new; most proba­bly it is very an­cient.

 
The Knowledge about the Inner Human Forces
Mu­sic is par­ticu­larly quali­fied to convey this very knowl­edge – which might in­clude all other knowl­edge – but how then should one ex­pect mu­sic to sud­denly pro­duce some­thing com­pletely new?

 
The tools with which the tone crea­tors draw from the an­cient well of knowl­edge since times im­me­mo­rial have cer­tainly be­come obsolete again and again in the course of time – rusted, or in need of repair or even of re­ne­wal.
But nev­er­the­less, at all times the pure spring wa­ter in the well of eter­nal wis­dom was drawn vigourously and in­ces­santly.

 
Imperishable Source of Musical Truth
And those who pos­sessed the great­est skill here are known as the great com­pos­ers.
Cer­tainly, their urge arises from their per­sonal knowl­edge – their own in­ner ex­peri­ence – of the true nour­ish­ing value of this im­mor­tal­ity-grant­ing sound­ing sap of life.

 
The Immortality-Promising Nectar in Music
The im­pulse for their greater crea­tive deeds, how­ever, came just as much from their knowl­edge of the de­mand for this nectar in their sur­round­ings.

 
The Great Sound Creators as Dutiful Administrators of the Truth
Only in this way can we ex­plain the tirelessness and imperturbabil­ity with which they repaired the ves­sels of mu­si­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion of truth which had be­come leaky and there­fore less ef­fi­cient, or with which they in­vented and em­ployed com­pletely new sound­ing ves­sels to convey knowl­edge.

 
All this ac­tiv­ity we com­monly call “mu­sic his­tory,” and we in­ter­pret it as the “de­vel­op­ment of the mu­si­cal forms.”

 
Unreal Musical History
This craft of re­pair­ing, im­prov­ing, and newly de­signing the mu­si­cal con­tainers for the ob­tain­ment of truth, was then mis­taken for the evo­lu­tion of a mu­sic the­ory.

 
Music Theory as the Evidence of the Systematic Strive for the Conveyance of Truth
But just as lit­tle as a vessel is iden­ti­cal to the wa­ter it car­ries, as lit­tle is our outer mu­si­cal his­tory and the mu­sic the­ory linked to it iden­ti­cal with the mu­sic – al­though it bears wit­ness of it.

 
No sur­prise then, if to­day one at­tempts to iden­tify mu­sic by its as­pect of sound, by ana­lyz­ing the grossest as­pects of the sounds, their rela­tive pitch and du­ra­tion, mak­ing one­self be­lieve to know mu­sic.
This effort re­minds of some­one look­ing from all sides at the wreck of a bucket, riddled with holes, and meas­ur­ing it, in or­der to deduce the na­ture of wa­ter in this way.

 
Conventional Musical Research Searching for the Means of Cognition
Cer­tainly, from the tightness and size of a con­tainer we may deduce, by usual stan­dards, its po­ten­tial of car­ry­ing wa­ter.
But the na­ture of the con­vey­ance of knowl­edge in mu­sic is not such that it al­lows in­sight into its magi­cal realm by so sim­ple a logic.

 
Conventional Music Analysis beyond Life
If we in­tended to enter the finer mu­si­cal layers of knowl­edge with a mu­si­cal vessel to fathom the truth en­closed in mu­sic, then we would need to adapt the struc­ture of the con­tainer to the con­di­tions of the mu­si­cal or­der pre­sent in each mu­si­cal layer.

 
The Density of the Musical Fields of Cognition
Now, a con­tainer for draw­ing mu­si­cal truths may be com­pared to a sieve which has holes of vari­able size so as to sift out the pieces of knowl­edge that are em­bed­ded in the vari­ous mu­si­cal layers of knowl­edge, and that are most con­spicu­ous there.
Thus the sieve re­mains very light, for if the holes were filled it would be harder to han­dle.

 
The Structural Flexibility of the Musical Tools of Knowing
If one re­stricted one­self to draw­ing wa­ter, for ex­ample, then a com­pletely closed vessel might be re­quired.
If, how­ever, one wants to catch live fish in the wa­ter, then for vari­ous rea­sons the shape of a net is more suited, and it has there­fore been most widely adopted.