Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Godwin has an uncanny knack for writing about very interesting subjects and still managing to be boring. This book mainly goes into how French composers in the 1700's were encoding Pythagorian/Rosicrucian/Alchemical symbology/magic into the music they were creating. Some of the historical stuff was interesting but maybe its because I'm neither a musician or a Pythagorian occultist when he got into deep specifics and the technical side of what these guys were doing I was bored out of my mind.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Music and the Occult: French Musical Philosophies, 1750-1950 (Eastman Studies in Music)
This book is an adventure into the unexplored territory of French esoteric philosophies and their relation to music. Occultism and esoterism flourished in nineteenth-century France as they did nowhere else. The book beginswith the anti-Newtonian 'colour harpsicord' of Peere Castel, and closes with the disciples of Rene Guenon and their fierce anti-modernity. The major forces in between - Fabre d'Olivet, Charles Fournier, Wronski, Lacuria, Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, and their disciples - were all at odds with the world. They were truly Renaissance men ranging over the whole field of learning and not shying away from the enigmas that beset the human condition. For them, music was a blend of science and art that could bring insight into the cosmic order. Theirs was a speculative music in the tradition of Pythagoras, Plato, Ficino, and Kepler, which is generally thought to have died with the coming of the Enlightenment. On the contrary, as this book shows, it flourished more vigorously than ever.
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