BY C. JINARAJADASA

Among all the arts, music has ever stood alone. As was well said by Pater, all the arts seem to lead up to music since each art as it expresses itself fails to reveal itself completely unless it is ‘musical.’ Mystical traditions have always asserted that it was at the call of the Voice or Sound that the universe sprang into being. The ‘music of the spheres’ is no mere poetic phrase, but a reality to him who has the ‘divine ear,’ as they say in India.

In the main, we consider music as an isolated expression of our aesthetic nature. Some of us know that music can adequately express joy or sorrow. Others have found in music a comfort that is re-creation, since it sublimates and resolves, pain and discord. But a further fact concerning music still awaits realisation by us. It is that music synthesises.

It is this synthetic quality of music which is of the utmost significance today. Our life today, with its manifold appeals to the intellect through literature and science, through sociology and politics, has become for many merely a series of parts in juxtaposition, but not a whole where each part is inseparable from all the others. More than ever we ‘cannot see the wood for the trees.’ Should we be musical, then science does not specially interest us. If mysticism appeals to us, then social problems or international politics call forth from us no response. At best we are a little of everything, but not one Great Thing.

So long as a man thus lives on the periphery of things and has not yet come to the ‘centre,’ he is bound to be largely ineffectual. Not that he may not be useful, but his use and service put on a new dimension the moment he ‘gets to the centre.’ Music can lead to this centre more swiftly and more directly than any other art. And the moment a man gets to the centre, then, in Milton’s phrase,

One value of music lies in the fact, in these days especially, that we find through music a framework of the intuition within which we can harmoniously place all the facts of experience. This framework may not be expressible as any particular creed; but that it exists in a man’s mind is clearly shown by his swift response to Truth, and by his inability to be duped by sophistries which the Asat or ‘Unreal’ ever presents to his intellect. Indeed, without exaggeration, a true musical soul is ‘saved.’

This Spirit of Redemption is just the one characteristic lacking in the intense but discordant civilisation of the West. They have more than all the wealth they need, and a command over the powers of nature never dreamt of fifty years ago. Yet even the richest nations are floundering in a sea of doubt and experiment, having no compass and doubting greatly if such a thing as a compass can ever exist. Religion asks us to believe, but not to probe with the mind. Science arrays the facts before us, but they proclaim no idealism. Art does fly the flag of idealism, but the little or no relation which art today has to science or philosophy makes the message of art lack its fullest effect. Music can save the soul of all, and especially of the West, for music synthesises.

We all need to understand music, not as an aesthetic balm, but as re-creation of our selves in a truer and finer mould. If there were to be some community singing before a board of arbitration sets to work, they would come quicker to agreement. In several of the large cities of Australia and New Zealand ‘community singing’ is common. If the principle of our ‘getting together’ through music could be developed, we should not only quickly get together for all the affairs of life, but we shall be able to put together the scattered parts of our selves. Music leads to Unity, and how it does so is the fascinating adventure which awaits every one.

BACK