I-79 Art forms and their relationships to the 7-fold human being; the human being’s comprehension of musical relationships

Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, Lect. 2; The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone, Lect. 5; The Nature and the Origin of the Arts

Steiner shows how the different art forms, and the impulses behind them, are related to the 7-fold structure of the human being, as follows:

Steiner did not go on with a seventh, perhaps implying that the eurythmy he had initiated was itself the latest such expression. (If I correctly understood him, Sergei O. Prokofieff suggested in a recent lecture that the “Social Art” would be the seventh, while anthroposophy itself would be the octave expressive of the entire range of the arts.) It is probably not wise to anchor to any one such scheme. Steiner himself, in the allegorical lecture NOA, gave the following septenary sequence: Dancing, Acting, Sculpture, Architecture, Painting, Music, Poetry.

To show the complexity of each “body,” he then says it is as if each component, such as the astral body, were itself 7-fold such that one fold related to each of the seven components themselves in a system of laws for each such relationship. Musically expressed, it would be as though the astral body were the tonic in its scale relationship with the musical intervals of the second, third, fourth, etc. Thus, the interval of the third would be experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds with the astral body itself. Bearing in mind that the 9-fold human being is reduced to the 7-fold by combining components 3-4 and 6-7, the simile is thus expressed in the following tabulation:

The modification from 9-fold to 7-fold thus introduces the division between the major and minor scales, so that, for instance, the third in the left hand column represents the major third and that in the (implied) right hand column the minor third.

To experience a musical work depends upon the inner musical activity of the astral body, but while we listen to the music with our Ego we sink the experience into our astral body, i.e., into the subconscious. Steiner carries us further by supposing that we do not need to hear the physical sound of tones, but are able to listen to the creative activity of the cosmos—the universal music, or the “music of the spheres.” We have developed the spiritual strength of our astral body so that it is playing our own being. This thought was alive in human beings of ancient times, and in pointing this out one is also pointing to how materialistic we have become. Humanity is no longer aware that the astral body is a musical instrument. “There was a time when men said, ‘A man once lived who was called John,’ and this John was able to transport himself into a state of spiritual consciousness in which he could hear the music of the heavenly Jerusalem. They said, ‘All earthly music can only be a copy of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind.’” But some saw that humanity had absorbed impulses that had darkened the celestial music. This insight into the relationship between external, materialistic music and its heavenly prototype was still beautifully expressed in the 10th and 11th centuries when the following words were written:

which translates, “So that thy servants may sing with liberated vocal cords the wonders of thy works, pardon the sins of the lips which have become earthly [or, “which have become capable of speech”]—O Saint John.” And from this has been extracted what we today sing in the scale as “ut(do)-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si(ti).”

While the above comes from ALMW, in INMET Steiner goes on to show how the human being’s ability to experience the various intervals has developed, and is developing, only as its evolution proceeds through the ages. Prior to the Atlantean Epoch, the human being could not experience any interval of less than nine (beyond the octave), and the human being has still not come to the point of being able to experience the octave. Gradually, the human being’s ability to experience the intervals has progressed downward according to the following tabulation:

The ability to express major and minor moods in music thus began only in the fourth Age when the ability to experience the third was reached. Only in the future will the human being be able to experience the interval of the second (which may explain the general inability to appreciate the “discord” introduced by “modern classical” music, such as that of Sergei S. Prokofieff [grandfather of anthroposophist Sergei O. Prokofieff] and others); and even more distant is the time when the human being will experience the fullness of the tonic and the octave.

Steiner gives numerous other intriguing relationships of music to the reality of the human being’s evolution, but the above must suffice for this present work.