Johann Hasler
Currently teaching:
- History of music from antiquity to the renaissance
- Musical composition
Recently taught at the undergraduate level:
- History of 20th century music
- Techniques of musical composition
- Advanced timbric techniques for composers & orchestrators
- Two different levels of music composition.
- Cultural History of Western Esotericism (Dept. of History, UdeA)
- Dodecaphonism & Serialism (Dept. of Music, UdeA)
- Musical Composition (Dept. of Music, UdeA)
- Salome and Elektra: the first modern operas?
- Introduction to post-tonal theory
Supervising 1 PhD thesis on Barbara Storzzi (1619-1677)
Recently supervised 1 MA thesis in composition & popular music studies; 1 undergraduate thesis in historical musicology of Colombian contemporary music & 1 undergraduate theses in anthropology
Recently taught at the postgraduate level:
- The module on music for stage at the Masters Degree in Stage Directing and Dramaturgy, (Dept. of Theatre, Universidad de Antioquia).
- The module on esotericism at the Masters Degree in Anthropology, (Dept. of Anthropology, Universidad de Antioquia).
Supervisors: Paul Attinello and Agustín Fernández
- History of music from antiquity to the renaissance
- Musical composition
Recently taught at the undergraduate level:
- History of 20th century music
- Techniques of musical composition
- Advanced timbric techniques for composers & orchestrators
- Two different levels of music composition.
- Cultural History of Western Esotericism (Dept. of History, UdeA)
- Dodecaphonism & Serialism (Dept. of Music, UdeA)
- Musical Composition (Dept. of Music, UdeA)
- Salome and Elektra: the first modern operas?
- Introduction to post-tonal theory
Supervising 1 PhD thesis on Barbara Storzzi (1619-1677)
Recently supervised 1 MA thesis in composition & popular music studies; 1 undergraduate thesis in historical musicology of Colombian contemporary music & 1 undergraduate theses in anthropology
Recently taught at the postgraduate level:
- The module on music for stage at the Masters Degree in Stage Directing and Dramaturgy, (Dept. of Theatre, Universidad de Antioquia).
- The module on esotericism at the Masters Degree in Anthropology, (Dept. of Anthropology, Universidad de Antioquia).
Supervisors: Paul Attinello and Agustín Fernández
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Book chapters / Capítulos de libro by Johann Hasler
En este capítulo examinaremos desde una postura etnográfica y analítica una de las organizaciones con más panorama dentro del contexto Colombiano, especialmente en la ciudad de Medellín, Antioquia (en un contexto de pluralidad religiosa) como es “La Iglesia Gnóstica Cristiana Universal de Colombia” de Teófilo Bustos conocido por su nombre esotérico, V.M Maestro Lakshmi: “El Restaurador”, quien surge como una propuesta alternativa entre la división de la gnosis weorita, comandada por dos frentes: El Movimiento Gnóstico del V.M Rabolú (y su sucesor el maestro Thot Moisés) y la Iglesia Gnóstica (transformado luego en el Patriarcado gnóstico) del Maestro Gargha Kuichines. Se evidenciará aspectos como la visión de los investigadores para acceder a la organización, y puntos doctrinales y de filiación que comparte con otras organizaciones pero que a su vez son el punto de inflexión que les impide una unidad.
Papers / Artículos by Johann Hasler
bajas, derivados de las proporciones de las distancias de los planetas entre sí (para interpretar dichas distancias como intervalos musicales) y derivados de una combinación entre ambos cuando ni las distancias ni las velocidades son fijas, como en el caso del modelo de órbitas elípticas y las tres leyes de movimiento planetario de Kepler. El aporte original de este artículo consiste en que presenta dichos modelos en un texto compacto y su clara clasificación, lo que facilita enormemente su utilización práctica
para la creación musical, o bien en composición preescrita, o bien para extemporización en tiempo real, y así posibilita la utilización artística de modelos cuyo alcance histórico ha estado circunscrito al ámbito teórico de la música especulativa o de la percepción sonora de modelos cosmológicos.
The deduction, calculation or assignment of musical parameters to the celestial bodies is known as the ‘tradition of music of the spheres,’ and, in the West, it goes back to the Pythagorean school of the sixth century BC. In this article, several proposals in this regard will be reviewed, cataloged and discussed, starting from the first century with the proposals of several authors of the Roman world, until the end of the 1980s, with the proposal of Swiss mathematician Hans Cousto. Here, I will limit myself to the proposals that assign the height parameter to the celestial bodies, and save for future publications the topic of the rhythm of celestial bodies, also addressed by the tradition of the music of the spheres, but which will not be covered here. I have grouped the reviewed proposals in four groups, based on their theoretical and procedural base perspective: either interpreting the translational speeds of the celestial bodies as musical heights, interpreting the orbital distances between them as musical intervals, or combinations between both parameters (as in the case of Johannes Kepler’s proposal in his book The Harmony of the World, of 1619), or a more radical Pythagorean-Platonic perspective that ignores the observational and assigns these equivalences between music and celestial bodies from proportional mathematics and pure music theory.
degrees of commitment to occult movements and systems have drawn inspiration from the mystical and occult for their works.
This paper argues that a careful study of the classical repertoire based on or inspired by occult themes will show that there are three main levels of representation of the occult in music, and that the decisions on the level of representation that a composer makes while working on a piece may modify the musical material, from a mere thematic or otherwise extra-musical connection in some of the subtler approaches, to a complete re-appraisal and re-design of the whole musical system and theory in the more radical ones. The paper also proposes that this is seems to
be dependent on the level of familiarity of the composer with the chosen occult system or theme, and perhaps also with his ideological commitment to it.
Este escrito aspira a contribuir, inicialmente a partir de la revisión de la literatura relevante, a este campo menos estudiado de la historia de la ciencia de la modernidad temprana desde el modelo medieval del quadrivium (aritmética, geometría, astronomía y música).
This paper wishes to bring to a wider audience the importance of Johannes Kepler’s efforts in the updating, modification, continuity and transmission of the theories of musical correspondences between the planets of the Solar System and the pitches of the musical scale. This tradition is known as “The Music of the Spheres”, and its evolution and development constitutes a long chapter (from Pythagoras to the present day) in the history of ideas, science, and musical theory, through the area known as “speculative music”, which researches on the connections between music (especially musical theory) and the occult, esoteric or mystical. As such, it warrants further research from the perspective of history of mentalities (understood in this case as a double take from both historical musiclogy and the history of science), and this is precisely the approach that his paper aims at.
en Colombia a partir de las enseñanzas de un líder “carismático” y “mesiánico” que se presentaba como poseedor y revelador de un “conocimiento trascendental”, capaz de encarnar una fuerza impersonal interior o “Cristo”, para la reintegración de la esencia al “Dios Interior o Absoluto”. Este artículo se centra en la fundación, fragmentación inicial y antecedentes doctrinales de este movimiento.
The Universal Christian Gnostic Movement of Colombia was a worldwide esoteric organization which became the axis of multiple neo-gnostic institutions relevant inside Colombia and abroad. One of them kept its name till today. It was founded in the 70´s in Colombia following the teachings of a “charismatic” and messianic” leader who presented himself as been gifted with a revealing “transcendental knowledge”, able to incarnate an impersonal force or “Christ”, destined to reintegrate the essence into an “Interior or Absolute God”. This article deals with the foundation, initial fragmentation and the doctrinal background of this movement.
en torno a cómo –en mi opinión– la educación musical tal como
se practica hoy en día en Colombia, contribuye al preocupante fenómeno
de la alienación estética del sujeto histórico, de tal forma
que éste no entiende ni disfruta –en suma, no puede comunicarse–
con el arte musical de su propio tiempo.
In this position paper the author wishes to
share some thoughts on how –in his opinion–
musical education as currently practiced in Colombia
contributes importantly to the worrying
phenomenon of aesthetic alienation of the historical
subject, in such a way that the subject can
not understand or enjoy –in short not communicate–
with the musical art of their own time.
Neste artigo de re exão proponho compartilhar
algumas meditações em volta a como h
em minha opinião – a educação musical tal
como se prática hoje na Colômbia contribui a
o preocupante fenômeno da alienação estética
do sujeito histórico, do jeito que este não
compreende nem curte - em resumo não pode
se comunicar – com a arte musical do seu próprio
tempo.
The exact nature of these sparks of consciousness is still a matter of lively debate among occultists, and several interesting interpretations and proposals of what they might actually be have been put forward recently, in the light of the theories and world views taught by the modern sciences, especially psychology, quantum physics, information systems theory, and even memetics (Blackmore 2000). Yet for many centuries Hermeticists simply considered them as spirits of various kinds: archangels, angels, so called “intelligences,” elementals, demons, and so forth, and dedicated a whole branch of Hermetic magic, that of evocation or conjuration, to the art and practice of establishing safe and productive communication with them.
How music can express the order of the universe, and how everything in the universe may have a musical equivalent that we may or may not perceive through our physical hearing is the subject of study of speculative music (Clark and Rehding 2001).
Since it is the purpose of speculative music to look at the cosmos musically and at music cosmically (Godwin 1982), a speculative music that adopts the standpoint of the Hermetic world view must therefore take serious notice of the spiritual entities that populate the universe according to this mystical and philosophical tradition (Van Den Broek and Hanegraaff 1988).
A lot of musicological work has gone in the analysis and discussion of how composers have used magical squares, sigils or other Hermetic or cabalistic magical material in certain of their compositions, especially in the later twentieth century (Lister 2005; Hirsbrunner 1998; Sherlaw-Johnson 1998; Sterne 1983–84). I am aware of some of this work, but in this article I do not intend to duplicate it, expand on it, or generally collaborate in the project of analyzing or pointing out these mystical/magical/numerological bases of some pieces in the contemporary art-music repertoire. This article is not in any sense analytical or repertoire-based, but centers on the history of ideas, in this particular case of the idea of translating sigils of spirits into pitch rows.
What I am interested in doing in this paper is reviewing the theoretical bases which allow the sigils of spiritual entities as proposed by the Hermetic Tradition to be translated into musical material, limiting the specific scope of this article to the translation of the sigils into pitches. In a way, I am reviewing or proposing some methods to achieve the
“sonification” of the sigils of spiritual entities of the Hermetic tradition, comparable to the sonification of other empirical data observed through the methods of modern science. After all, the Hermeticist, as a sort of occult scientist, considers the entities as separate personalities, and thus the information derived or obtained from them—such as their sigils—as empirical data subject to be interpreted and critically evaluated.
The reasons for the limitation of the present study to pitch include, of course, a consideration on the final length of the paper, but they also constitute my first and germinal musical interpretation of the sigils: as will be discussed later at greater length, most sigils, and certainly the sigils of a planetary nature in particular, tend to be very linear in their design, and this immediately suggests the “line” of a melody, or a tone row, in less traditional terms. The planetary seals proper are constituted of several such lines crossing and locking into each other, in a manner that suggests counterpoint, with its interplay of several simultaneous musical lines, as will be discussed in section V., at the end of this paper.
"HaShem", which is an approach to an interpretation/transcription of a Cabalistic exercise proposed by the Sephardi mystic Abraham Abulafia in the thirteenth century. The basis of Abulafia’s exercise is the recitation of all the possible vowel combinations in the Tetragrammaton, or secret name of God, which is traditionally written as only four consonants. The purpose of the exercise is to exhaust all possible consonant-vowel combinations and thus “hit the nail on the head” by uttering, among the many combinations, the true and original form of the Lost Name of God, which in Cabalistic mysticism is the key to Creation and enlightenment. As a composer, I have interpreted Abulafia’s textual instructions as sound, and have transcribed my interpretation of his exercise into musical notation. This paper comments on the background and rationale of such interpretation/transcription.
of speculative music whose work has focused on
assigning pitches to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
with the intention of being able to deduce the musical
equivalence of texts written in Hebrew, often used in Hermetic,
magical and cabalistic rituals, seals, or talismans.
This first part deals with the direct attributions of letters
to pitches; that is to say, the kind of attribution that is not
based on gematria or cabalistic numerology, which will be
discussed in a later piece.
Este artículo reseña cuatro propuestas realizadas en el siglo
xx por teóricos de la música especulativa, cuya intención
ha sido relacionar las alturas musicales con las letras del
alfabeto hebreo para deducir la equivalencia musical de
textos hebreos utilizados en rituales, sellos o talismanes
cabalísticos y de la tradición Hermética del esoterismo
occidental. En esta primera parte se examinan las atribuciones
“directas”, (las que no utilizan el valor numérico de
las letras hebreas como factor intermedio de conversión)
comparables a sistemas de decodificación criptográfica.
La gematría musical se discutirá en una segunda parte.
has existed since ancient times in parallel with more
mainstream aspects of music theory and musicology. Far
from becoming extinct after the scientific revolution of
the 16th and 17th centuries, speculative music has survived
modernity, and recurs in times of cultural crises,
repeatedly offering hopes of a spiritual and humanistic
renewal through the return to more “natural” forms of
music, closer to the physical and acoustical bases of sound
than the elaborate and “artificial” intellectual constructs
developed during “high modernism”. This article offers a
general overview of this less known aspect of musicology
and musical theory, in its conceptual, historical, and
current aspects.
correspondences of plants. They include a manual of evocation of spirits, a manual on planetary magic, a commented and edited reprint of Agrippa, a manual on the construction of talismans, two manuals on practical alchemy and several magical reference works, either specifically devoted to botanical magic, magical herbalism and magical aromatherapy, or of a wider scope.
Apart from Donald Tyson’s reprint of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy (first appeared in Antwerp in 1531) all of the
sources are modern, and most are still in print and easily obtainable through bookstores or the Internet. I have chosen these types of sources because the intention of this series is to be an aid to practicing spargyricists, rather than a bibliographical referencing source for historical studies. I have included the Agrippa not only because it is perhaps the single most important original source of contemporary natural magic (magia naturalis) but also because, as the rest of the sources I refer to, it is readily available commercially, having been reprinted by Llewellyn in 2004.
En este capítulo examinaremos desde una postura etnográfica y analítica una de las organizaciones con más panorama dentro del contexto Colombiano, especialmente en la ciudad de Medellín, Antioquia (en un contexto de pluralidad religiosa) como es “La Iglesia Gnóstica Cristiana Universal de Colombia” de Teófilo Bustos conocido por su nombre esotérico, V.M Maestro Lakshmi: “El Restaurador”, quien surge como una propuesta alternativa entre la división de la gnosis weorita, comandada por dos frentes: El Movimiento Gnóstico del V.M Rabolú (y su sucesor el maestro Thot Moisés) y la Iglesia Gnóstica (transformado luego en el Patriarcado gnóstico) del Maestro Gargha Kuichines. Se evidenciará aspectos como la visión de los investigadores para acceder a la organización, y puntos doctrinales y de filiación que comparte con otras organizaciones pero que a su vez son el punto de inflexión que les impide una unidad.
bajas, derivados de las proporciones de las distancias de los planetas entre sí (para interpretar dichas distancias como intervalos musicales) y derivados de una combinación entre ambos cuando ni las distancias ni las velocidades son fijas, como en el caso del modelo de órbitas elípticas y las tres leyes de movimiento planetario de Kepler. El aporte original de este artículo consiste en que presenta dichos modelos en un texto compacto y su clara clasificación, lo que facilita enormemente su utilización práctica
para la creación musical, o bien en composición preescrita, o bien para extemporización en tiempo real, y así posibilita la utilización artística de modelos cuyo alcance histórico ha estado circunscrito al ámbito teórico de la música especulativa o de la percepción sonora de modelos cosmológicos.
The deduction, calculation or assignment of musical parameters to the celestial bodies is known as the ‘tradition of music of the spheres,’ and, in the West, it goes back to the Pythagorean school of the sixth century BC. In this article, several proposals in this regard will be reviewed, cataloged and discussed, starting from the first century with the proposals of several authors of the Roman world, until the end of the 1980s, with the proposal of Swiss mathematician Hans Cousto. Here, I will limit myself to the proposals that assign the height parameter to the celestial bodies, and save for future publications the topic of the rhythm of celestial bodies, also addressed by the tradition of the music of the spheres, but which will not be covered here. I have grouped the reviewed proposals in four groups, based on their theoretical and procedural base perspective: either interpreting the translational speeds of the celestial bodies as musical heights, interpreting the orbital distances between them as musical intervals, or combinations between both parameters (as in the case of Johannes Kepler’s proposal in his book The Harmony of the World, of 1619), or a more radical Pythagorean-Platonic perspective that ignores the observational and assigns these equivalences between music and celestial bodies from proportional mathematics and pure music theory.
degrees of commitment to occult movements and systems have drawn inspiration from the mystical and occult for their works.
This paper argues that a careful study of the classical repertoire based on or inspired by occult themes will show that there are three main levels of representation of the occult in music, and that the decisions on the level of representation that a composer makes while working on a piece may modify the musical material, from a mere thematic or otherwise extra-musical connection in some of the subtler approaches, to a complete re-appraisal and re-design of the whole musical system and theory in the more radical ones. The paper also proposes that this is seems to
be dependent on the level of familiarity of the composer with the chosen occult system or theme, and perhaps also with his ideological commitment to it.
Este escrito aspira a contribuir, inicialmente a partir de la revisión de la literatura relevante, a este campo menos estudiado de la historia de la ciencia de la modernidad temprana desde el modelo medieval del quadrivium (aritmética, geometría, astronomía y música).
This paper wishes to bring to a wider audience the importance of Johannes Kepler’s efforts in the updating, modification, continuity and transmission of the theories of musical correspondences between the planets of the Solar System and the pitches of the musical scale. This tradition is known as “The Music of the Spheres”, and its evolution and development constitutes a long chapter (from Pythagoras to the present day) in the history of ideas, science, and musical theory, through the area known as “speculative music”, which researches on the connections between music (especially musical theory) and the occult, esoteric or mystical. As such, it warrants further research from the perspective of history of mentalities (understood in this case as a double take from both historical musiclogy and the history of science), and this is precisely the approach that his paper aims at.
en Colombia a partir de las enseñanzas de un líder “carismático” y “mesiánico” que se presentaba como poseedor y revelador de un “conocimiento trascendental”, capaz de encarnar una fuerza impersonal interior o “Cristo”, para la reintegración de la esencia al “Dios Interior o Absoluto”. Este artículo se centra en la fundación, fragmentación inicial y antecedentes doctrinales de este movimiento.
The Universal Christian Gnostic Movement of Colombia was a worldwide esoteric organization which became the axis of multiple neo-gnostic institutions relevant inside Colombia and abroad. One of them kept its name till today. It was founded in the 70´s in Colombia following the teachings of a “charismatic” and messianic” leader who presented himself as been gifted with a revealing “transcendental knowledge”, able to incarnate an impersonal force or “Christ”, destined to reintegrate the essence into an “Interior or Absolute God”. This article deals with the foundation, initial fragmentation and the doctrinal background of this movement.
en torno a cómo –en mi opinión– la educación musical tal como
se practica hoy en día en Colombia, contribuye al preocupante fenómeno
de la alienación estética del sujeto histórico, de tal forma
que éste no entiende ni disfruta –en suma, no puede comunicarse–
con el arte musical de su propio tiempo.
In this position paper the author wishes to
share some thoughts on how –in his opinion–
musical education as currently practiced in Colombia
contributes importantly to the worrying
phenomenon of aesthetic alienation of the historical
subject, in such a way that the subject can
not understand or enjoy –in short not communicate–
with the musical art of their own time.
Neste artigo de re exão proponho compartilhar
algumas meditações em volta a como h
em minha opinião – a educação musical tal
como se prática hoje na Colômbia contribui a
o preocupante fenômeno da alienação estética
do sujeito histórico, do jeito que este não
compreende nem curte - em resumo não pode
se comunicar – com a arte musical do seu próprio
tempo.
The exact nature of these sparks of consciousness is still a matter of lively debate among occultists, and several interesting interpretations and proposals of what they might actually be have been put forward recently, in the light of the theories and world views taught by the modern sciences, especially psychology, quantum physics, information systems theory, and even memetics (Blackmore 2000). Yet for many centuries Hermeticists simply considered them as spirits of various kinds: archangels, angels, so called “intelligences,” elementals, demons, and so forth, and dedicated a whole branch of Hermetic magic, that of evocation or conjuration, to the art and practice of establishing safe and productive communication with them.
How music can express the order of the universe, and how everything in the universe may have a musical equivalent that we may or may not perceive through our physical hearing is the subject of study of speculative music (Clark and Rehding 2001).
Since it is the purpose of speculative music to look at the cosmos musically and at music cosmically (Godwin 1982), a speculative music that adopts the standpoint of the Hermetic world view must therefore take serious notice of the spiritual entities that populate the universe according to this mystical and philosophical tradition (Van Den Broek and Hanegraaff 1988).
A lot of musicological work has gone in the analysis and discussion of how composers have used magical squares, sigils or other Hermetic or cabalistic magical material in certain of their compositions, especially in the later twentieth century (Lister 2005; Hirsbrunner 1998; Sherlaw-Johnson 1998; Sterne 1983–84). I am aware of some of this work, but in this article I do not intend to duplicate it, expand on it, or generally collaborate in the project of analyzing or pointing out these mystical/magical/numerological bases of some pieces in the contemporary art-music repertoire. This article is not in any sense analytical or repertoire-based, but centers on the history of ideas, in this particular case of the idea of translating sigils of spirits into pitch rows.
What I am interested in doing in this paper is reviewing the theoretical bases which allow the sigils of spiritual entities as proposed by the Hermetic Tradition to be translated into musical material, limiting the specific scope of this article to the translation of the sigils into pitches. In a way, I am reviewing or proposing some methods to achieve the
“sonification” of the sigils of spiritual entities of the Hermetic tradition, comparable to the sonification of other empirical data observed through the methods of modern science. After all, the Hermeticist, as a sort of occult scientist, considers the entities as separate personalities, and thus the information derived or obtained from them—such as their sigils—as empirical data subject to be interpreted and critically evaluated.
The reasons for the limitation of the present study to pitch include, of course, a consideration on the final length of the paper, but they also constitute my first and germinal musical interpretation of the sigils: as will be discussed later at greater length, most sigils, and certainly the sigils of a planetary nature in particular, tend to be very linear in their design, and this immediately suggests the “line” of a melody, or a tone row, in less traditional terms. The planetary seals proper are constituted of several such lines crossing and locking into each other, in a manner that suggests counterpoint, with its interplay of several simultaneous musical lines, as will be discussed in section V., at the end of this paper.
"HaShem", which is an approach to an interpretation/transcription of a Cabalistic exercise proposed by the Sephardi mystic Abraham Abulafia in the thirteenth century. The basis of Abulafia’s exercise is the recitation of all the possible vowel combinations in the Tetragrammaton, or secret name of God, which is traditionally written as only four consonants. The purpose of the exercise is to exhaust all possible consonant-vowel combinations and thus “hit the nail on the head” by uttering, among the many combinations, the true and original form of the Lost Name of God, which in Cabalistic mysticism is the key to Creation and enlightenment. As a composer, I have interpreted Abulafia’s textual instructions as sound, and have transcribed my interpretation of his exercise into musical notation. This paper comments on the background and rationale of such interpretation/transcription.
of speculative music whose work has focused on
assigning pitches to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet,
with the intention of being able to deduce the musical
equivalence of texts written in Hebrew, often used in Hermetic,
magical and cabalistic rituals, seals, or talismans.
This first part deals with the direct attributions of letters
to pitches; that is to say, the kind of attribution that is not
based on gematria or cabalistic numerology, which will be
discussed in a later piece.
Este artículo reseña cuatro propuestas realizadas en el siglo
xx por teóricos de la música especulativa, cuya intención
ha sido relacionar las alturas musicales con las letras del
alfabeto hebreo para deducir la equivalencia musical de
textos hebreos utilizados en rituales, sellos o talismanes
cabalísticos y de la tradición Hermética del esoterismo
occidental. En esta primera parte se examinan las atribuciones
“directas”, (las que no utilizan el valor numérico de
las letras hebreas como factor intermedio de conversión)
comparables a sistemas de decodificación criptográfica.
La gematría musical se discutirá en una segunda parte.
has existed since ancient times in parallel with more
mainstream aspects of music theory and musicology. Far
from becoming extinct after the scientific revolution of
the 16th and 17th centuries, speculative music has survived
modernity, and recurs in times of cultural crises,
repeatedly offering hopes of a spiritual and humanistic
renewal through the return to more “natural” forms of
music, closer to the physical and acoustical bases of sound
than the elaborate and “artificial” intellectual constructs
developed during “high modernism”. This article offers a
general overview of this less known aspect of musicology
and musical theory, in its conceptual, historical, and
current aspects.
correspondences of plants. They include a manual of evocation of spirits, a manual on planetary magic, a commented and edited reprint of Agrippa, a manual on the construction of talismans, two manuals on practical alchemy and several magical reference works, either specifically devoted to botanical magic, magical herbalism and magical aromatherapy, or of a wider scope.
Apart from Donald Tyson’s reprint of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy (first appeared in Antwerp in 1531) all of the
sources are modern, and most are still in print and easily obtainable through bookstores or the Internet. I have chosen these types of sources because the intention of this series is to be an aid to practicing spargyricists, rather than a bibliographical referencing source for historical studies. I have included the Agrippa not only because it is perhaps the single most important original source of contemporary natural magic (magia naturalis) but also because, as the rest of the sources I refer to, it is readily available commercially, having been reprinted by Llewellyn in 2004.
Pero esto no se da únicamente en música con texto cantado: la llamada “música programática” busca expresar un sub-texto – generalmente narrativo (Almén, 2008) que no está lingüísticamente explicitado en ninguna parte de la música (a veces ni siquiera en su título) sino que hace referencia a un discurso diferente, que en ocasiones se ofrece como complemento a la experiencia musical, por ejemplo como notas de programa (Kregor, 2015). Investigar los nexos entre estos diferentes textos (el musical y el no musical) es una de las áreas de estudio del campo teórico de la semiótica musical (Tarasti, 1995, 2002).
Durante mi trabajo doctoral investigué la música con sub-textos místicos y esotéricos, indagando por el problema de cómo diferentes compositores han articulado y relacionado los sub-textos esotéricos de partida a su material musical, cuando el texto en sí mismo no se explicita en las obras musicales. Como resultado de esta indagación desarrollé una categorización de tres niveles de expresión de estos contenidos extra-musicales dependiendo de qué tanto afectaban el sistema de composición musical, es decir, qué tanto de los materiales musicales se derivaba o desarrollaba a partir del tema o sub-texto esotérico. En mis resultados identifiqué tres niveles: un primero en el cual es simplemente la “atmósfera” de la obra que hace referencia a esos sub-textos, sin que el material en sí mismo se pueda diferenciar de materiales musicales utilizados en otros contextos; el segundo nivel apela al nivel simbólico, en el cual ciertas relaciones importantes para el sub-texto esotérico están también codificadas de manera explícita en el texto musical; y en tercer nivel que deriva el material musical radicalmente (en el sentido literal) del material pre-musical incluido en el sub-texto esotérico.
Bibliografía
Almén, B. (2008). A Theory of Musical Narrative. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Kregor, J. (2015). Program Music (Cambridge Introductions to Music). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tarasti, E. (1995). Musical Signification: Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Tarasti, E. (2002). Signs of Music: A Guide to Musical Semiotics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pero esto no se da únicamente en música con texto cantado: la llamada “música programática” busca expresar un sub-texto – generalmente narrativo (Almén, 2008) que no está lingüísticamente explicitado en ninguna parte de la música (a veces ni siquiera en su título) sino que hace referencia a un discurso diferente, que en ocasiones se ofrece como complemento a la experiencia musical, por ejemplo como notas de programa (Kregor, 2015). Investigar los nexos entre estos diferentes textos (el musical y el no musical) es una de las áreas de estudio del campo teórico de la semiótica musical (Tarasti, 1995, 2002).
Durante mi trabajo doctoral investigué la música con sub-textos místicos y esotéricos, indagando por el problema de cómo diferentes compositores han articulado y relacionado los sub-textos esotéricos de partida a su material musical, cuando el texto en sí mismo no se explicita en las obras musicales. Como resultado de esta indagación desarrollé una categorización de tres niveles de expresión de estos contenidos extra-musicales dependiendo de qué tanto afectaban el sistema de composición musical, es decir, qué tanto de los materiales musicales se derivaba o desarrollaba a partir del tema o sub-texto esotérico. En mis resultados identifiqué tres niveles: un primero en el cual es simplemente la “atmósfera” de la obra que hace referencia a esos sub-textos, sin que el material en sí mismo se pueda diferenciar de materiales musicales utilizados en otros contextos; el segundo nivel apela al nivel simbólico, en el cual ciertas relaciones importantes para el sub-texto esotérico están también codificadas de manera explícita en el texto musical; y en tercer nivel que deriva el material musical radicalmente (en el sentido literal) del material pre-musical incluido en el sub-texto esotérico.
El grupo de Investigación Artes y Modelos de Pensamiento de la Universidad de Antioquia ha estado estudiando la edición facsimilar en idioma original de este importante texto desde inicios de 2016, enfocándose principalmente en el contenido musical. Al presente hemos logrado hacer un recuento y descripción general de todas las apariciones de partituras en los dos volúmenes que componen la obra (más de 550 páginas con escritura musical), y en esta ponencia deseamos presentar nuestros resultados preliminares. Hemos encontrado que el autor plantea un acercamiento “evolutivo” al fenómeno sonoro, empezando con los sonidos de la naturaleza animal y ascendiendo, en una suerte de escalera de complejización creciente, a la música generada por Dios durante el proceso de la Creación del Universo, pasando por supuesto por la música humana en varias de sus expresiones y encarnaciones a lo largo de la historia de diversas culturas.
El grupo de Investigación Artes y Modelos de Pensamiento (Universidad de Antioquia) estudia el facsímil en idioma original de este importante texto desde 2016, y se enfoca principalmente en su contenido musical.
Hemos encontrado en el libro VIII un interesante reporte sobre músicas extra-europeas de países como Grecia, Etiopía y Armenia entre otros, con ejemplos de partitura y textos en idiomas originales con traducciones al latín académico del renacimiento. ¿Será este un indicio de los ideales de inclusión multicultural del enciclopedismo musical en el barroco, específicamente desde la misión evangelizadora de la Compañía de Jesús?
El grupo de Investigación Artes y Modelos de Pensamiento de la Universidad de Antioquia estudia la edición facsimilar en idioma original de esta importante enciclopedia desde inicios de 2016, enfocándose principalmente en el contenido musical. Los 10 libros de la Musurgia están estructurados cosmológicamente en forma de peldaños, desde lo mundano hacia lo divino; el libro IX, está dedicado completamente a instrumentos musicales automáticos o “autofónicos”, capaces de imitar voces animales o reproducir sonidos de diferentes instrumentos. ¿Por qué dedicar el penúltimo libro en esta narrativa al estudio de la música automática? ¿Podríamos acaso interpretar que en el nuevo paradigma de la naciente revolución científica el autómata se puede entender como una nueva entidad, en una escala superior al ser humano?