Rudolf Geigenfeind is looking for new approaches to social issues. His instrument is music. He’s using the elements of music to help in group processes: participants themselves become the resonant instruments for events in their surroundings.
The setting is a continuing education course for teachers on how to use musical elements to harmonize everyday working life. At the first meeting, eighteen women of all ages sit in a circle. Some arrive out of breath and take off their shoes, while others look for a place to put their bags. On the carpet in the middle of the room are guitars and fiddles of all sizes, violins, cellos, and even a double bass. All the instruments have been prepared in such a way that no discordant note can be played. Starting with the guitars, the instructor tunes each instrument, and the tuned instruments are then passed on to the left. The sound grows steadily. After the guitars come the other string instruments, followed by the double bass. The group is now tuned together.
The instruments are played with a little hesitation at first, but within the protective space of the group—all are “seekers”—everyone feels confident and courageous. Wonder is in the air. Hardly anyone has ever made an instrument sound with their own hands before, and certainly not in such a large group. A cloud of sound rises in the room, building a frame for every tonality—this could be pentatonic, a modal key, a major, or a minor. A common tempo, a common pulse emerges, as if by itself. The leader of the course improvises a simple melody. Everyone adopts the meter. A rondo form arises. In the intermediate parts, they play softer, louder, a little slower, faster, only one group of instruments plays, only “con arco” [with the bow] or “pizzicato” [plucking], and a few brave participants sing along with the improvisation, varying the melody as they wish. Confidence in making music together has grown, and everyone seems to feel at ease. The musical changes begin to come naturally. The improvisation leads to a conclusion that’s sensed and accepted by everyone. After everyone puts their randomly chosen musical instrument back on the carpet in the middle, they go around and make introductions; until now, hardly anyone had spoken. The third person to speak is a woman with a slight undertone of indignation in her voice. She says she thinks it’s a shame that everyone knows each other already except her, and that she’s the only one sent to this course by her institution. The group begins to laugh. Only two pairs of two actually know each other; everyone else has never met before.
How is it that fifteen to twenty minutes of playing music together can so strongly unite a scattering of people into a feeling of solidarity as a group? It’s clear from the echoes of the participants that they all inwardly feel the effects. There’s no need for an outside authority to exhort discipline or call everyone to order. An authentic interconnection among the group now seems to be present “all by itself.” Is there a power of resonance present—the organizing power of music? What are these forces exactly? How do the individual components really work? And what are they working upon?
Life is Musical
No prior knowledge is required for this approach to the essence of music. No one needs to know how to play an instrument or read music. It’s not about “mastering” it either, but rather about “serving”, about humility, about removing our perceptual filters. And about real playing, in the sense meant by Schiller, freely, without need or compulsion. Hermann Pfrogner, the anthroposophical musicologist, said in Mein Vermächtnis [My Legacy]: “Service to the human being, selfless service to the human being, that’s what we await from the music of the future. . . . Long ago, in the age of Ambrose and Augustine, music was the handmaiden of the church, ancilla ecclesiae. Today, it should be the helpful handmaiden of the human being, ancilla hominis, server of the human being.”
Music serves humanity, equipping us with stamina, from our physical nature into the depths of our soul; it is our support; it equips us with new life forces; it revitalizes our soul and body. Music requires mobility on all levels. Everyone can perform simple physical movements, as well as hold a certain gesture in their soul, if they allow themselves to be open and curious. The whole self has to be involved. It’s not helpful to wallow in a pool of emotions or give merely a sober analytical assessment; what we need is a holistic willfulness. This can lead to a reconnection with ourselves, which then becomes the basis for healthy contact with our surroundings. Our own personality becomes an instrument of resonance on all levels for the events in our surroundings.
In everyday life, it’s essential that we take things at our own pace. This can be quite different depending on life’s situation. For example, Rudolf Steiner describes how “the head goes about three times as fast as the rest of the organism; the rest of the organism has time, it goes three times slower, it goes at a completely different pace . . . . If it takes a day for the head to absorb something, wait three to four days until one has fully absorbed it.”1 In the lectures series, Occult Signs and Symbols,2 there are also indications of tonal relationships for the four members of the human being: Physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ‘I’ as 12 : 7 : 3 : 1. Converted into tones, the following ascending values result, taking D as the tonic, as the ‘I’: D—A—(seventh) C/C#—A. But one could also take string lengths as the measure, and then we arrive at the following descending tone series: D—G—(seventh) F/F#—G. When orchestrating a tightly coordinated collaborative work or when simply organizing our own lives, we have to set priorities. These days, we’re constantly flooded with information and impressions, often against our will; it’s necessary that we practice and develop our ability to set priorities. What it ultimately comes down to is the ability to separate the essential from the trivial and to act accordingly. Working with music can help.
We often have difficulties dealing with the shortening and lengthening of time. A violinist practices this with every stroke of the bow: starting with the very first contact, they have to measure their speed of movement so that the bow produces a melodious sound through the whole length of the note. In our day-to-day life, adjusting the time we spend doing certain activities is not often as important, or can be annoying if we’re always rushing towards a goal, one we may never reach or which we don’t actually even understand. It’s often difficult to find opportunities to stop and reflect today. Focused practice with the alternation of long and short notes leads us precisely to a healthy balance of activity and reflection.
The World of Numbers
The first three numbers present the whole spiritual world. Steiner said: “There is no revelation without the divine reigning behind it; therefore, behind every duality [two-ness], there is still a unified [one-ness]. So, three is nothing other than two and one, namely, the revelation and the divinity behind it. Three is the number of divinity, of the divinity that reveals itself.”3 In ancient Greece, the numbers were referred to as “demiurges,” the creators of the world. As musicians, we understand this well. We find these first three numerical personalities in sudden tempo changes, in metric structures, and in the length ratios of rhythms. We first have to realize that these essential numerical relationships also play a decisive role in the world of pitch. The tones of the “modern” scale, as adopted from Ptolemy by Pythagoras, follow these primal relationships: ⁹⁄₈ = 3².2-³, ²⁵⁶⁄₂₄₃ = 2⁸.3-⁵ [9:8 is the modern whole tone relationship; 256:243 is called a Pythagorean semitone, the relationship between two notes in the Pythagorean scale]; all from the numbers 2 and 3, and their powers.
Hertz, the unit of measurement, has to do with seconds; so, not with intervals, but with 1/60 of a minute, with the rotation of the earth. It’s a measure set in relation to our surroundings. The Pythagorean scale thus represents “natural phenomena,” both in terms of absolute pitch and in relation to the seven individual tone personalities; also, in their respective relationship to a ground tone. Music moves within the “small world” of the first three numbers (with exceptions, of course), which ultimately encompass everything. The number five was added to music only in the late Middle Ages.4
The musical sign of our times is an irrational number. Can you imagine a number that, when multiplied by itself twelve times, results in two? This is what we need in order to get from one key to the next (¹²√2 , the twelfth root of 2). Johann Sebastian Bach, considered obsolete in his own time, not only dared to use this tempered tuning with ingenious anticipation, but also used a theme in his Well-Tempered Clavier that could have easily come from Arnold Schoenberg. Mozart’s not the only one to say that music lives “between the notes.” It’s the same where intervals are concerned. As we have already seen in the tuning of fifths, harmony is the decisive quality of music. Thus, a musical interval is the oscillation between two independent personalities. For instance, when we meet a married woman on her own and then meet her husband separately. Then, when we encounter them together as a couple, we form an entirely new impression. This can be beautifully observed when tuning a low-pitched string instrument. We can concentrate on the lower note, on the higher one, and on the harmony of the two. This is the decisive phenomenon for the “locking in” of a pure fifth. A counterexample is the golden ratio: there, all subdivisions refer to one single foundational unit. It’s always self-referential and never refers to a second personality.
From and For the Moment
In music that’s alive, there’s no phenomenon that isn’t connected to everything else. This is part of the secret of the unifying forces of making music. We also have to consider the external circumstances that support making music with a sense of freedom. In addition to the spatial setting, it’s also about the instruments themselves. As Hermann Pfrogner once said: “Last but not least, our richly equipped instruments will have to be questioned and thoroughly looked over to find out what previously unused, healthy forces may lie dormant here. Which hitherto unused healing powers can be instrumentally released and mobilized to promote health?”5
When approaching non-professionals, we’ve dealt with this question by working with instruments where the production of the sound is made by one’s own hands, meaning that it is tangible, in the true sense of the word. Also, the instruments are tuned so that one would have to expend a lot of energy to be able to produce discordant tones. This allows the participants to concentrate on themselves while experiencing the group as a whole at the same time. Shaping a melody always involves increased concentration for those new to playing music. This takes attention away from the handling of one’s own instrument, the musical components of the bar level, and the processes in the group. Focus through limitation is, therefore, the magic phrase here. The transformation of events and moods into a melody requires basic musical knowledge, which is solely introduced by the group leader at first. This work with melody has an additional task of incorporating all events, be they material, spiritual, or soul events. This is a highly demanding artistic process and a tribute to the true immaterial character of music.
In relation to telling fairy tales, Steiner attached special importance to the process of shaping the story as a whole.6 This is also the experience we had with our project for families with newborns, “Harmonisch ins Leben” [Harmoniously into life] (2004–2007). Music was created from out of the moment and for this moment only. An image that gives a strong impression would be a father humming quietly to himself, “singing” a bedtime song to his little child. We need not ask: Who is making music? Why are these people playing? Who are they playing for? Why are they playing this particular music?
Musical Installation
Despite its healing effect, a musical installation is not music therapy. Therapy has a specific goal. With musical installation, making music is itself the goal. Of course, no new Brandenburg Concertos will be created. There’s no intention of declaring this to be the sole method for making music. But it could, perhaps, develop into a musical style in its own right. When we observe the conditions for preparing this type of musical activity, we can consider it as a “social work of art,” per Joseph Beuys. Perhaps the concept of a “musical installation” comes closest, with the difference, however, that it’s a temporary phenomenon and not suitable for an “exhibition” (in contrast to Beuys). It’s an art tailored to the available space, to the abilities of the participants, to their state of mind, to their age, to the time of year and day in which the event takes place. But there may still be a sense of wonder for someone witnessing the installation from outside. It would be absolutely wrong to record the activity or to make a video. We can only experience a musical installation by actively participating.
So, here is a call to all those convinced they’re unmusical. To all those afraid of making music themselves. Let us dare to harmonize our lives through musical activity. Let’s call it the “adventure of musical installation.” The path is the goal. “I do not seek, I find. It is a risk, a holy adventure. The uncertainty of such ventures can only be taken on by those, who feel safe in insecurity, who are lead in uncertainty, in guidelessness, who let themselves be drawn by the target and do not define the target themselves. This openness to all new knowledge, to all new inner and outer experience is the essence of the modern human being, who, in the face of all fear of ‘letting go,’ nevertheless experiences the grace of feeling sustained in the manifestation of new possibilities.”7
Contact rg@educultura.com
Images/Info educultura
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Footnotes
- Rudolf Steiner, Dying Earth and Living Cosmos. The Living Gifts of Anthroposophy. The Need for New Forms of Consciousness, CW 181 (Forest Row, East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2015), lecture in Berlin on Jan. 29, 1918.
- Rudolf Steiner, Occult Signs and Symbols, GA 101 (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1992), lecture in Cologne on Dec. 29, 1907.
- See footnote 2, lecture in Stuttgart on Sept. 15, 1907; cf. Ernst Bindel, “The Special Position of the First Three Numbers,” in The Spiritual Foundations of Numbers (Dr. Gopi Krishna Vijaya, self-published, 2025).
- Ernst Bindel, Die Zahlengrundlagen der Musik [The Numerical Basis of Music] (Stuttgart: Freies Geistesleben, 1985).
- Hermann Pfrogner, Mein Vermächtnis: Die Zukunftsaufgabe der Musik [My legacy: the future task of music]. Three lectures for Bayerischer Rundfunk (public radio), first broadcast on Dec. 17, 1988.
- Rudolf Steiner, The Renewal of Education, CW 301 (Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, 2001), lecture in Basel on April 26, 1920.
- Pablo Picasso quoted in Graham Sutherland, “A Trend in English Draughtsmanship,” Signature 3 (1936), pp. 7–13.
