HALL OF HARMONY CONCERTS
 

 
Successful Application of the Harmony Laws of Nature
Peter Hübner “Scientific Fundamentals of Music Aesthetics”
Excerpt from Peter Hübner's Book: “Natural Music Creation”” 
 
Reversal of the Reality of
Creating Music


    
 
In the con­ven­tional tech­nique of com­pos­ing, the motif or the melody al­ways seemed to be the first thing the com­poser no­ticed while lis­ten­ing inside, and it was as­sumed that he formed the se­quence around the motif or the melody, and then de­ter­mined the har­mony.

  
Analysis of Conventional Composing
  
 
In this view of lim­ited mu­si­cal edu­ca­tion how­ever, the in­ner re­al­ity of natu­ral com­pos­ing was turned upside down. The re­sult of such de­fi­cient in­sight into the true proc­ess of cre­at­ing mu­sic was ho­moph­ony, in which the motif seems in­deed to be al­lowed some life of its own, in which, how­ever, such an in­de­pend­ent life does not really exist.

  
The Sounding Results of the Conventional Technique of Composing
  
 
Thus, an in­ner ab­stract mu­si­cal re­al­ity, which is the natu­ral basis of what is heard inside, was not at all taken into ac­count in the con­ven­tional tech­nique of com­pos­ing.

  
The Creative Accomplishment in the Inaudible Field of Music
  
 
The ef­fect was pre­sented as the cause; and upon this pseudo-cause a cor­re­spond­ing pseudo-ef­fect was build with the un­der­stand­able aim of pre­sent­ing in a cer­tain co­her­ent or­der, as a pseudo-whole, the parts which had been heard inside, of the whole which usu­ally had not been heard inside.

    
 
Hence, a se­ries of tones which had been heard inside was com­bined with the ar­ti­fi­cial sys­tem of an added-on tech­nique of com­po­si­tion, but the very un­derly­ing or­der had not been rec­og­nized.

    
 
The na­ture-given re­al­ity of cre­at­ing mu­sic is ex­actly the re­verse: the first to exist in unity, and to ex­pand in mani­fold ways, is the har­mony and, within it, the logic of the com­po­si­tion. The last to be brought to life in the mind of the com­poser is the tone. It is the end of his proc­ess of cre­at­ing mu­sic and rep­re­sents the physi­ol­ogy of the com­po­si­tion. Thus the tone is the fin­ished prod­uct, some­thing ex­ter­nal, fi­nal – and from here there is no mu­si­cal fur­ther.

  
The Nature-Given Reality of Creating Music
  
 
In the me­chan­ics of the think­ing proc­ess of a com­poser, the in­ner ab­stract knowl­edge of har­mony is the first thing to exist. From the har­mony emerges, as the first crea­tive spark, the com­pre­hen­sive vi­bra­tion of the har­mony-tech­nique: the in­ner breath of the com­po­si­tion.

  
The First, Creative Musical Spark
  
 
From this com­pre­hen­sive vi­bra­tion of the har­mony-tech­nique, the more lim­ited, large waves of the se­quences ex­pand and move as smaller waves, as melo­dies and mo­tifs, to­wards the shore of the mu­si­cal sound-space.

  
The Wholeness of the Musical-Creative Idea in Its Unfoldment
  
 
Only in this last phase of mu­si­cal un­fold­ment, in this out­er­most range of mu­sic, the ele­ment of mu­si­cal sound arises, the com­po­si­tion which can be heard within.

    
 
That, which natu­rally seems sig­nifi­cant to the in­ac­cu­rate lis­tener and ob­server, are only the small­est, lim­ited waves and a cer­tain ar­range­ment of small waves, i.e. the motif and the melody.
The larger waves, on which in turn the smaller waves travel, are be­yond the scope of the lim­ited ob­server.
There­fore, the se­quence as such is not rec­og­nized, let aside the har­mony-tech­nique on which it is based, or even the har­mony which is fun­da­men­tal to them all.

  
The View-Point of Conventional Music Analysis
  
 
The con­ven­tional les­sons on com­po­si­tion de­vel­oped from the ig­no­rance of the true, in­ner, natu­ral proc­ess of com­pos­ing. It re­sem­bles the at­tempt to cre­ate fire from smoke, smoke be­ing but the out­er­most, most pas­sive ex­pres­sion of fire.

  
The Basis of the Conventional Technique of Composing
  
 
Just as, from smoke, the pres­ence of fire was de­duced, even if one could not see the fire, like­wise, from the in­ner hear­ing of se­ries of tones the ex­is­tence of a real com­po­si­tion was de­duced. Con­se­quently, one com­bined tonal pat­terns, con­structed a formal, logi­cal sound pat­tern from a col­lec­tion of mu­si­cal ele­ments and thought one­self to be able to “com­pose.”

  
Lack of Inner Hearing as the Starting Point for Composing
  
 
Here, the his­tori­cal de­vel­op­ment of our ana­lyti­cal think­ing comes to light. But this way of ap­proach­ing the liv­ing re­al­ity from out­side – cor­re­spond­ing to the method of mod­ern sci­ence – does not touch the in­ner re­al­ity of the true crea­tion of mu­sic at all.
As the ex­pres­sion “crea­tion of mu­sic” in­di­cates, one cre­ates some­thing di­verse from an origi­nally ex­ist­ing entity. This proc­ess of crea­tion can be com­pared to a tree grow­ing to­wards mul­ti­plic­ity, as an ex­pres­sion of that sin­gle seed which con­tains this whole mul­ti­plic­ity al­ready in a latent, ab­stract form.

  
The Abstract Diversity in the Unity of Music
  
 
“To com­pose” lit­er­ally means “put­ting to­gether,” and cor­re­sponds to the as­sem­bly of an ar­ti­fi­cial tree by join­ing to­gether the roots, trunk, bran­ches, twigs, and leaves, and pre­sent­ing them as the “tree.” Such an ar­ti­fi­cial tree does not breathe life; it will not blos­som, and the study of such com­po­si­tion is a waste of time.

  
The Conventional, Unalive Technology of Composing
  
     
     
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  With kind permission of AAR EDITION INTERNATIONAL
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