The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You will perhaps allow me to say just a few short words before our attempt to give a performance of Eurythmy. It is not my purpose to try to explain the content of this performance, for the very reason that all that is of the nature of Art must speak for itself. An explanation of any kind is not in itself “artistic” and would consequently be out of place here. It is, however, necessary to say some few words, because what we here call the Art of Eurythmy is derived from sources hitherto unfamiliar to the world of Art, and makes use of an artistic language whose forms are likewise rather unusual.

Eurythmy is the Art of Movement in Space carried out by individuals and groups of individuals in reciprocal relationships and positions. These movements are not mere gestures, nor are they miming. Eurythmy as we here give it cannot therefore be regarded as anything in the nature of dancing; it is a new Art, having as its instrument Man himself, and its movements are absolutely in accordance with law. The movements which are made in the larynx and the other organs of speech when a man expresses himself in sound have been studied by a kind of perception which is at the same time “sensible” and yet “super-sensible”—if I may use the expression of Goethe. But in speech those inner movements, or, better, those underlying principles of movement which it is the function of the larynx and the other organs of speech to bring into expression, are arrested as they arise and are transformed into finer vibratory movements which by means of the air carry the sound so that it can be heard. In Eurythmy, then, a process as yet within the human organs of speech is interpreted by one individual or by groups of individuals. Goethe's teaching of Metamorphosis forms the basis of this Art. Everything that we do here is founded an Goetheanism, and Eurhythmic Art is just one detail of it.

Goethe developed his teaching of Metamorphosis out of his universal world-conception. The following rather abstract remarks about the simple way in which Goethe applied this teaching of the Metamorphosis of plants are not made with the purpose of evolving a theory, but only of making myself clear.

Goethe sees in principle a complete plant in each single leaf, so that a plant as a unit originates from the right development of what lies as idea within each single leaf. The whole plant is, in principle, an elaborated leaf, and each individual leaf is a primitive plant. What Goethe worked out with regard to organic metamorphosis—for he expanded the range of his conception to cover all organisms—can be applied to organic functions and development and then transformed into Art. So that if we turn what exists in principle and as Idea in a single group of organs—such as the larynx, and other organs of speech—into movements carried out by the individual, making him or a group of individuals into a living larynx in movement, as it were, we get a visible speech. And what lies at the basis of our Eurythmy is this visible speech.

It is obvious, of course, that there will be opposition to an Art like this, employing, as it does, methods that are unfamiliar, but this opposition will all disappear in the course of time. The gestures are not accidental in our Eurythmy; there is no mere chance connected between some movement of the arms, for instance, and a certain emotion of the soul. Just as a definite shade of tone in speech corresponds to a psychic or soul process, and vice versa, do you find in our Eurythmy the logical sequence of movements. That which comes into expression in speech, in song, in music, is represented in Eurythmy by means of a different artistic medium, by a different form of speech. Hence, as you will see, Eurythmy can be accompanied by music, for that which in music is expressed in tone is there and then expressed by the movements of individuals. This visible speech of Eurythmy can also be accompanied by audible speech, such as recitation, or declamation. The poem is recited and the real artistic content of it is translated into Eurythmy into visible speech. We can in this way see how Eurythmy in this somewhat inartistic age may be able to develop a true artistic understanding and rendering of recitation and declamation.

To-day in reference to recitation and declamation it is the verbal content of the poem which is considered specially important. But the real artistic value of poetry is not determined by this verbal content so much as by the plastic-figurative, or musical element to be found in it. When recitation or declamation is to accompany Eurythmy, therefore, special care must be taken that they shall bring out the artistic element, the rhythm, the metre, and the inner form of the language used. In that way we shall get back to the understanding of the art of recitation as it existed in epochs which were truly artistic. It is interesting in this connection to remember that when Goethe studied his Iambic dramas with the actors, he always used a baton as if he were conducting music, showing that he attached more importance to the Iambic formation of his verses thin to their verbal content. Eurythmy will also have an influence upon recitation because the art of recitation must accompany that which forms the artistic basis of Eurythmy.

As the months have gone by we have developed the subject. At first we expressed the poetical content by the visible speech of Eurythmy while the recitation itself was going on. Now we are trying to impart the essential content of a poem, for instance, by means of evolutions which precede and follow it, so that the visible but unaccompanied language of Eurythmy can also be displayed to advantage by itself.

That, briefly, is the artistic side of the question, and it represents one aspect of Eurythmy as we practise it. The other is the pedagogic, didactic element, shall I call it. Our Eurythmy, besides being of the nature of Art, is a kind of spiritualised gymnastics. As such, it is used in the Waldorf School which was founded in Stuttgart by Emil Mott and arranged and directed by me. Eurythmy, as well as Gymnastics, has been introduced there as a compulsory subject in all the classes. It is true to say that in epochs more artistically impartial than ours, there will be a quite different way of judging Gymnastics. Just recently a famous modern physiologist came here, heard what I said as an introduction to the Eurythmy, and also saw the performance. His opinion was that from a physiological point of view ordinary gymnastics were not a method of education at all, but so much barbarism. Remember, it is not I who say that, but a modern physiologist for whose name people have a tremendous respect. I do not myself go nearly so far; I say that Gymnastics are carried out according to corporeal laws, built up upon a physiological basis merely, whereas when a child is allowed to carry out the movements of Eurythmy, all of which are full of meaning, then the whole of its being, body, soul and spirit, is affected and not the body only. We have already been able to see, by a year of experience in the Waldorf School, with what delight the children have made this Eurythmy Art their own. They really feel that these movements proceed from the human constitution itself. The natural joy of a child learning to speak may be compared with that of children between the ages of seven to fifteen who are beginning to practise these eurhythmic movements. They find that the human element in them is being guided into a course that is a right one. Out of the four hundred children in the Waldorf School there were at the very most two or three who did not enter into the thing as joyfully as was the case with all the others; the number of children who for some fundamental reason took to Eurythmy with difficulty was quite negligible, the remainder taking the very greatest delight in their Eurythmy lessons. I say without hesitation that Eurythmy develops in children something that is really needed; and that is initiative of soul and of will, which gymnastics, as such, cannot do.

We ask everybody to remember that we ourselves are the most severe critics of what we are attempting to do. Eurythmy is still at its most elementary stage; but while we realise that we are only attempting to make a beginning, we yet can affirm from association with this work that, by further development brought about either by ourselves or by others, Eurythmy will become ever more and more perfect, and will one day take up its rightful position as a young sister-art among the older and fully established ones.

In the short lecture before the eurythmy performance this morning, I pointed out how modern man’s relation to the celebration of the festivals has gotten ever deeper into materialism. Of course, in order to see this a much deeper view of materialism must be taken. The most threatening symptom is not that man is infected by materialism but he is infected by the superficiality of our time, and this is far more dangerous.

This superficiality exists not only in relation to the spiritual views of the world, but also in relation to materialism itself. One usually only pays attention to its most superficial phenomena. In this regard I pointed out this afternoon, for example how, in olden times people were still receptive to the moods which could be experienced in the course of the year and which came to be expressed in the festival celebrations. These moods were embodied in the winter solstice festival, the spring festival, the St. John’s festival and the Michael festival—these were embodied in ritual-like celebrations in which these moods were embedded, and they took hold of man as he consciously experienced the course of the year.

Thereby something was given to the soul which today is only given to man’s body. We all still participate in the course of the day. When the sun sends its golden rays announcing the dawn we eat our breakfast. When it is at its highest point and pours out its warmth and light with special love over mankind, we eat lunch, and so on through midday, snack, and supper. In those daily festival events, we accompany the course of the sun through the day by co-experiencing in our souls the fiery trip of the sun around the world. We participate in this fiery ride around the world by overcoming the craving for food with the contentment of feeling satiated. And so the mood for the physical organism exists in a very decided and definite way at different times of the day. We can call breakfast, snack, dinner, snack, supper, the festivals of the day. The human physical organism accompanies what takes place between earth and cosmos.

In a similar way the course of the year was experienced intensively in the soul in olden times through instinctive clairvoyance. Actually, certain things played from one sphere over into the other. You need but remember what has been left as remnants of these festivals: Easter eggs, stuffed geese, etc. The lower bodily region plays into the soul region which ought also to experience the course of the year. Well, the easiest way to stimulate interest in the course of the year in our materialistic time would be by making available—I do not want to say “Easter eggs”,—but “stuffed turkeys.”

But this is not the way it was meant in olden times with regard to festival moods. They were attuned, rather, to soul-hunger and soul satisfaction. The soul of man needed something different at Christmas, Easter, St. John’s, and Michaelmas time. And one can really compare the content of the celebration to a kind of satisfying the hunger of the soul at different seasons.

So as we look at the daily path of the sun, we can say that it is related to what serves the needs of the body; as we look at the yearly course of the sun, we can say that it is related to what serves the needs of the soul.

If festivals are to become alive again, it would have to happen out of a much more conscious condition, out of an awakening of the soul as it is striven for in anthroposophical endeavors. We cannot just base a renewal of the Festivals on old history; we would have to rediscover them through a new knowledge, a new world-conception, out of our own soul-being. But, besides the body and soul, we also differentiate the human spirit.

However, for modern man it is already difficult enough to have a clear picture when someone speaks of the soul. Everything becomes a sort of indefinite fog. Already in the nineteenth century when they began to speak of psychology, they began to speak of a soul-science without a soul. Fritz Mauthner, the great language critic, found that we really do not know anything about the soul, we only experience something indefinite, certain thoughts and feelings, but really nothing of a soul reality. We ought not, therefore, to use in the future the world “soul” but “dis-soul” (Geseel). Mauthner advises, that in the future, when a poet intends to write a real work he ought not to say: “Sing immortal Soul, the sinful man’s redemption,” but rather, “Sing immortal What-cha-macall-it, the sinful men’s redemption”—if in the future it still would make sense to speak of something like that.

Today we can really say that modern man knows nothing more of the connection of his soul with the sun’s yearly course. He became a materialist in this region, also. He sticks to the festivals of the body which follow the daily course of the sun. The festivals are celebrated out of traditional habits but no longer experienced. Yet we have, besides a body, also a soul, and yes, also a spirit.

Let us now take into consideration the historical epochs. Those epochs, which reach far beyond the course of the year, encompassing centuries, are co-experienced by the human spirit, if it experiences them at all. In olden times they were most certainly experienced. He who knows how to enter, carried by the spirit, into the way the course of time was followed in the past knows how it was said: at this or that time some personality appeared out of the heights of the world and revealed the spirit again. And this spirit entered as the sunlight enters the physical. If such an epoch then entered its twilight phase, something new appeared.

Historical epochs are related to the evolution of the human spirit, as the course of the sun through the year is related to the soul evolution. Of course, wherever such metamorphoses, such changes in spirit evolution occur, it must happen through fully conscious cognition. Today, one would like to ignore such metamorphoses completely. One is outwardly touched by the effects, but one does not wish to consider seriously those changes emanating from the spirit which are nevertheless expressed in the outer events.

It would be helpful to pay attention to a certain direction of thinking and feeling appearing in children and young people, which was unknown to earlier generations, and which, when looked at properly in the course of the development of humanity, can really be compared to the course of the year. Therefore it would be good to listen to what the different ages proclaim as a need, to listen to the way in which a new age arises and how human beings demand something different from what might have been demanded in ages gone by. But just for this contemporary man has a very inadequate organ.

When we approach the festival mood in the right way out of a contemporary consciousness, the great relationships of life can again fill our souls. When we, for example, let something like the St. John’s mood really enter our soul, then we try to gain for our soul what will be met by the cosmos.

Certainly, the great world connections have become a matter of indifference for modern mankind. There is no heart for getting to know the great world relations. It is quite evident how the spirit of littleness, narrowness, I would like to say, the spirit of the microscope, the spirit of atomizing appears, which, when mentioned in the way I do, seems paradoxical.

I would like to point to something definite in relation to the St. John’s mood which, however, seems quite far-fetched. What is more obvious (even if one has not developed an organ for the course of the year) than the impression of growing plants, growing trees: when spring comes, things sprout, grow, everything goes from leaf to blossom. All this growing makes the impression as though the cosmos, with its sun forces, calls upon the earth to open itself to the cosmos, and this happens at St. John’s time.

Then begins a retreat of the sprouting, and we approach the time when the earth collects the growing forces into itself, when the earth withdraws from the cosmos. How obvious it is that from the received impressions one gets the picture that the snow-cover belongs to winter, when the being of the plants crawls, so to speak, into the earth; that it belongs to summer for the plants to grow towards the cosmos. What is more natural than to get this idea—although in a deeper sense the opposite is correct—that the plants sleep in winter and wake in summer.

I do not wish to speak now about the correctness of this sleeping and waking. I wish to speak only of the impression one receives, which leads to the thought that summer belongs to growing vegetation, and winter to the withdrawal of growth. In any case, a kind of world-feeling develops in which one is engaged in relating to the warming, bright force of the sun when seeing this force again in the greening, blossoming plant-cover of earth, and immersing into the feeling of being an earthly hermit with regard to the cosmos when the plant cover is replaced with snow in winter. In short, by so feeling, one tears oneself free with one’s consciousness from earth existence. One places oneself in a larger relation to the universe.

Now comes modern research—and what I am saying now is in no way critical, on the contrary—now comes modern research and shrugs its shoulders whenever great cosmic connections are referred to. Why should one feel elevated to divine radiating warming forces of the sun when the trees are shooting, becoming green, when earth covers itself with a cover of plants? Why should one have to sense a cosmic relation on seeing this plant cover? It is disturbing. One cannot bring such sentiments into harmony with a materialistic consciousness. Plant is plant. It seems like stubborness of the plant to blossom only in spring, or to be ready in summer to bear fruit. How does this actually work? One is supposed to be concerned not only with the plant but with the whole world? If one is to feel, to know, one is supposed to be concerned with the whole world, not only with the plant? That doesn’t sit right. Is one not already making an effort to avoid dealing with substances existing in powder or crystal forms, but rather just to deal with atomic structures, atomic cores, with electromagnetic fields, etc.? One tries to deal with something enclosed, not with something that points in so many directions. In the case of the plant is one supposed to admit that a sensing is needed that reaches to the whole cosmos? It is really awful if one cannot narrow one’s view to a singular object! One is used to, when using the microscope, to have everything limited to a narrow view. Everything takes place in the small enclosure. It must be possible to look at a plant by itself, not in connection to the whole cosmos!

And look, at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century the scientists succeeded to an extraordinary degree in this region. It was known, of course, from some plants in hothouses, greenhouses, that the mere summer and winter aspects of the plant could be overcome. But on the whole, not enough could be discovered about the plant needing a certain winter rest. Discussions about tropical plants occurred. The researcher, who did not want to know about plants being connected with the cosmos, maintained that the tropical plant grows throughout the year. The others, more conservative, said: one thinks this because plants have their winter rest at different times, some only for eight days. This being so, makes it imperceptible when a certain species is dormant. Long detailed discussions concerning tropical plants took place. In short, one became aware of a tremendous discomfort concerning the relation of plants to the cosmos.

But the most interesting and grandiose experiments in this direction were made exactly at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, when one succeeded in driving the stubborness out of the plants in the case of a great number of not only annuals, but also trees, which are much stronger: to drive out the cosmic stubborness from the plant. It was possible to do this in plants known as annuals by creating certain conditions. In the case of most of the trees growing in the temperate zone, conditions could be established which caused them to remain green all year round, to give up their winter sleep. This then provided the basis for certain materialistic explanations. In this way really magnificent accomplishments were achieved.

It was discovered that the cosmic element could be driven out of trees if they were brought into enclosed spaces, given enough nourishing minerals, making it possible that plants in winter-time, when the soil is poor in minerals, can find this nourishment. If enough moisture, warmth, and light is supplied, the trees will grow. However, one tree in Central Europe was defiant: the Blood Beech. It was approached from all sides to give up its independence and subjected to isolation in a prison. It was provided with everything necessary, but remained stubborn, and demanded nevertheless its winter rest. But it was the only one that still resisted.

And now we must record that in the twentieth century, in 1914, the beginning of the war, another great historical event occurred: the immense, mighty accomplishment of the most capable researcher, Klebs, who was able to compel the Blood Beech to give up its independence. He simply was able to bring it into an enclosed space, provide the necessary nutrients, warmth and light, which could be measured, and the Blood Beech submitted to the demands of research.

I am not mentioning this phenomenon in order to criticize it, for who can help but wonder at this most diligent scientific labor. Besides, it would be silly to try to disprove the facts. They exist and are there. It is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, but something quite different.

Why should it not be possible if somewhere on neutral ground the necessary condition for hair-growing existed, to grow hair outside the human or animal realms? Why not? One need only bring about the conditions. I know many would rather have hair growing on their heads than in some culture, but we can imagine it to be possible. Then it would no longer be necessary to bring anything that happens on earth together with what happens in the cosmos.

With all due respect to research, one must look deeper. Aside from what I said recently about the being of the elements, I would like to say something more today. One must be clear that, for example, the following is the case: we know that once earth and sun were one body. Of course this is long ago, during the Saturn and Sun periods. Then there was also a short repetition of those periods during the Earth period. But something remains behind which still belongs there. And this we bring forth again today. And we bring it forth from the repetitious condition on earth not only by heating our rooms with coal, but we bring it forth by using electricity. For, what remains from those times after Old Saturn and Old Sun, when the sun and earth were one, that provided the basis for what we have today on earth as electricity. We have in electricity a force which is sun-force, long connected with the earth, a hidden sun-force in the earth.

Why should not the stubborn Blood Beech, when approached forcefully enough, be induced to use not the sun that radiates from the cosmos, but to use the sun force retained within the earth, the Old Sun force, electricity?

Looking in this way we become aware of the necessity of deeper knowledge. As long as man could believe that the sun force comes only from the cosmos, man arrived at the perception of the relationship of the plant world to the cosmos. Today, when from a materialistic point of view, one would like to separate from the cosmos what so easily can be seen as cosmic effect, one must, if one looks at the seeming independence of the plant, have a science which recalls that cosmic relation between earth and sun which once existed, but in a different form. By being narrowed on the one hand by the microscope, we simply need a much wider expansion on the other hand, and especially the details show how much we need an expanded view.

The problem is not a dilettantic anthroposophical opposition to progress in research. But since progress in research necessarily leads through one’s own nature, it can bring us to the often mentioned “night-crawler view” and prevent that wide view of the great cosmic historic connections between earth and sun, which enables us to be conscious not only of the present sun, but also of the Sun of long past conditions. Everywhere we need the polarity, the counter-pole: not opposition to research, but the spiritual counterpole is what is needed. This is the position we need to take. And I would like to say it is also the mood of St. John’s time. When we inscribe clearly into our sentiment that we now have to live in a world-historic St. John’s mood, we carry our gaze into cosmic distances. That is what we need in spiritual cognition. Nothing is gained by mere talking about spirit; what is important is real penetration into the concrete phenomena of the spiritual world. What we bring forth by pointing to Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth evolutions, etc., has a tremendous supporting force regarding historic cognition.

When our attention is called to such brilliant results of materialistic science as those discovered by Klebs, that even the stubborn Blood Beech can be compelled to grow with electric light, this will lead us, without spiritual science, to the point where we will shatter everything into pieces and have a very narrow view. The Blood Beech will stand before us, growing in electric light, and we will know nothing except what this very narrow picture tells us.

With spiritual science, however, we can say something else: Klebs took the sunlight from the Blood Beech. He then had to give her electric light, which is actually ancient sun light. Our view is not narrow, but greatly enlarged. So, those who do not want to know of the soul experience will say glibly that one day is just like the next. There is breakfast, snack, dinner, snack, supper,—it is even nice when at Christmas time we get a nice cake—but basically every day is a repetition of the previous day. In fact material man sees only the day. But what about cosmic connections? Let us free ourselves of such a world view. Let us become clear that the stubborn Blood Beech no longer needs the sun. If we imprison her and give her enough electricity, she will grow without the sun. No! She will in fact not grow without the sun. But we need to seek the sun in the right way when we do something like that. And we must be clear that it is different when the Blood Beech grows in the sunlight or when ahrimanic sunlight, originating from long-past, is forced upon her. And we recall what has often been mentioned as the two polarities of Lucifer and Ahriman.

With an adequately wide view of these things we will not admire our brilliance at having overcome the stubbornness of the beech, but go much further. We will progress on to the sap of the beech, and investigate its effect on the human organism, investigate both the beech we permitted to be stubborn and the one which we treated with electric light, and we might discover something very special about the healing forces of one as opposed to the other. But we must do this by considering the spiritual!

But of what concern is this to people today? One has an admirable interest in research. One sits in the classroom, is an experimental psychologist, writes down all kinds of words which must be remembered, examines memory, experiments with children, and arrives at most interesting information. Once the interest is awakened, everything is interesting, depending on the subjective point of view. Why should it not be possible that a stamp collection is more interesting than a botanical collection? Since this is so, why not also in other realms? Why should the tortures to which children are subjected when they are experimented with, be not interesting? But the question everywhere is, whether or not there are higher responsibilities, and whether it is really justified to experiment with children at a certain age. The question arises: what is one ruining? And the greater question: what damage is done to the teachers, when instead of asking of them a living, heartfelt relation, one asks of them an experimental interest out of the results of experimental psychology. So everything depends, in such research, on whether or not one has the right relation to the sense world, and also to the supersensible world.

Now certain people who emphasize the necessary objectivity of research will assert that there are some who find it immoral when Klebs takes the stubbornness out of the Blood Beech. This would not occur to me. I wouldn’t dream of it. Everything that is done ought to be done, but one must have a counterweight for it. In the time when one emancipates oneself with regard to the growing beech tree from the cosmos, one must on the other hand, in a civilization which does such things, also have a sense for how the spiritual progress of man takes place. One must have a sense for the epochs of time, like ours. I do not want to limit research, but one must feel the necessity of a counter measure. There must be an open heart for the fact that at certain times spiritual impulses want to reveal themselves. When on the one hand materialism takes over and great achievements result, then those who are interested in such achievements should also be interested in the achievements of research about the spiritual worlds.

This lies in the inner nature of Christianity. A true view of Christianity sees, after the Mystery of Golgotha, the continuing of the Christ being in the earth, in the Christ force, the Christ impulse. And this means that when autumn comes, when everything dries up, when the growing and sprouting in nature ceases, ceases for the senses, then one can see the growing and sprouting of the spirit which accompanies man during the winter time.

But in the same way one must learn to sense how, although justifiable, the view for detail is narrowed in a certain way, the view for the totality for the great whole is narrowed. With regard to Christianity this is the St. John’s mood. We must sense with understanding that the St. John’s festival mood is the starting point for that occurrence which lies in the words: He must increase, I must decrease.

This means that the impressions upon man of everything that is accomplished by empirical research must decline. As the sense details are ever more enhanced, the impression of the spirit must be more and more intensified. And the sun of the spirit must shine more and more into the human heart, the more the impressions of the sense world decline.

The St. John’s mood must be experienced as the entrance into spirit impulses and as exit from the sense impulses. In the St. John’s mood we must learn to sense wherein something weaves and wafts like a soft wind, wafts the spiritually demonic out of the sensible into the spiritual, and from the spiritual into the sensible. And through the St. John’s mood we must learn to form our spirit light so that it does not stick like tar to the solid contour of ideas, but finds itself in weaving, living ideas. We must learn to notice the lighting up of the sensual, the dimming of the sensual, the lighting up of the spiritual in the dimming sensual. We must learn to experience the symbol of the June bug: the lighting up has its meaning as does the dimming of the light.

The lightning bug lights up, dims down, but by dimming down it leaves behind in us the living life and weaving of the spirit in the twilight evening, in the dusk. And when we see in nature everywhere the little waves as in the symbolic lighting up and dimming of the lightning bug, we will find the right St. John’s mood if it is experienced with clear, bright, full consciousness. And this St. John’s mood is necessary, for we must in this way pass through our time if we do not want to fall into the abyss, pass through in such a way that the spirit becomes glowingly alive and that we learn to follow it.

The St. John’s mood:—towards the future of the earth and mankind! No longer the old mood which understands only the growing and sprouting on the outside, which is pleased when it can imprison this growing and sprouting under electric light what otherwise was thriving in the sunlight. Rather we must learn to recognize the lighting up of the spirit so that the electric light becomes less important than it is today, so that the St. John’s gaze becomes sharpened for that old sunlight which will appear when we open ourselves to the great spiritual horizon, not only to the narrow earthly horizon, but the great horizon from Saturn to Vulcan.

If we allow the light of the great horizon to shine in the right way, then all the trivialities of our time will appear in this light, then we will go forward and upward; but if we cannot make this decision we will go backward and downward.

Today everything revolves around human freedom, human will. Everything revolves around the independent decision of either going forward or backward, upward or downward.

Speech eurythmy has been developed up to a certain stage, and it may be said that we have achieved something in this domain. Until now tone eurythmy has only been developed in its very first elements, and due to a remarkable fact which has recently come to my notice, I have been led to give this short course of lectures. From various quarters it is strongly apparent that people have frequently found tone eurythmy more pleasing than speech eurythmy and comparatively easy to appreciate, whereas speech eurythmy has seemed much more alien to them. This sad fact, that more significance is attached to something still in its infancy than to something more fully developed, is really a proof that at the present time the understanding for eurythmy has not made much headway. It is of the utmost importance that this understanding should be fostered, and therefore I should like today to begin with certain introductory remarks which in the light of such understanding may enable you to work for eurythmy.

If we try to develop tone eurythmy out of eurythmy in the more general sense, the opportunity will arise of speaking about this understanding at least in an introductory way. It cannot be denied that on the part of eurythmists themselves, much can be done with a view to increasing a right understanding of eurythmy, for above all what is perceived by the onlooker must be borne in mind. The onlooker not only perceives the movement or gesture that is presented by the eurythmist, he also perceives what the eurythmist is feeling and inwardly experiencing. This makes it essential that the eurythmist actually experiences something while engaged in eurythmy, and especially that which is to be presented. In speech eurythmy this is the portrayal of the sound, and in tone eurythmy the portrayal of the musical sound.

So far [1915–24], with the exception of the forms [Note 1] which have been created for certain pieces of music, this portrayal of musical sound has consisted of nothing but the bare notes, nothing but mere scale [Note 2] If in speech eurythmy we had no more than we have today in tone eurythmy, this roughly would amount to the range of the vowels ah, a, ee, o, oo.

Just think how little we would have achieved artistically in speech eurythmy, if until now we had only been able to make use of the vowel sounds, ah, a, e, o, oo! But so far artistically we have actually had no more than this in tone eurythmy. This is why there is something depressing about the kind of judgements about tone eurythmy that reach us, which I have mentioned. And this is also why I believe it to be necessary that now we should at least begin to lay down the foundations of tone eurythmy.

It is necessary, above all, that in eurythmy we should get beyond the mere making of gestures and producing of movements, and that in the realm of tone eurythmy, and in speech eurythmy too, the actual sounds should be really felt. You must permit me to make this introduction, for in our speech today, and especially in our writing, we no longer have any conception of what a sound really is. This is because we no longer give the sound a name, but at the most briefly touch it.

We say ah. The Greek language was the last to say alpha. Go back to the Hebrew—aleph. The sound as such had a name then; the sound was something real. The further back we go in language, the more essentially real we find the sounds. When we name the first letter in the Greek alphabet, alpha, and trace back the significance of this word alpha (it is a word which really encompasses the sound), we find that even in the German language many words still exist closely related to what lies in the sound alpha or aleph—as, for instance, when we say Alp, Alpen—Alp, the Alps. And this leads us back to Alp-Elf, [the] Alp, [the] elf [but see Appendix 7. Translator's note], to a being in a state of constant activity, of becoming, of coming-into-being, of lively movement. The ah sound has completely lost all this because we no longer say alpha or aleph.

If the alpha or aleph is applied to the human being, then we can really experience the sound ah. And how do we experience ah? A snail could neither be an aleph, nor yet an alpha. But a fish could be an alpha, an aleph. Why? Because the fish has a spine, and because the spine is really the starting point for the development of such a being as an aleph. It is from the spine that those forces proceed which embrace an alpha-being.

Now try to understand that the spine is the point from which rays forth that which constitutes an alpha or aleph. Then you could roughly experience it by imagining that, as a human being, you could not receive much benefit from your spine [alone], if there were no ribs that go out from it, forming the body. If you then picture the ribs as detached and capable of movement, you get the arms. And then, if you consider it, you arrive at the eurythmic ah.

Fig. 1

Now you must not think that anyone watching eurythmy sees only this forked angle; if this were so, instead of stretching out your arms you might just as well open out a pair of scissors, or the firetongs! You cannot do this, however, for the onlooker must have a human being before him. And the human being has really to feel the alpha, the aleph, inside. He has to feel that he is opening himself to the world. The world approaches him and he opens himself to it. How do you open yourself to the world? You open yourself to the world most purely when you stand before the world in wonder. All knowledge, said the Greeks, begins with wonder, with amazement. And when you stand before the world in wonder you break out with the sound ah.

When you have made the eurythmy movement for ah, you have brought your astral body into that position which is indicated by the angle formed by the stretched arms. But this gesture will not ring true if you have never tried to experience the feeling of this fork-like movement of the arms, as has already been mentioned in earlier instructions. Feeling must be in it. You actually have to feel that the sound ah is an abbreviation in the air, some sort of abstraction as opposed to the living reality which the human being experiences.

When, let us say, we encircle something with rounded arms, we encircle it with love. When we open ourselves in the form of an angle, we receive the world in wonder. And this mood of wonder is felt by the astral body (contained as it is within the physical body, within the whole human being). This mood of wonder must be felt in practising, once or even repeatedly, if the ah is to be true. The making of signs is not the essential thing, but the feeling that it cannot be otherwise (corresponding to a specific inner experience) than that the arms assume a forked angle as you stand confronting the world.

Let us pass on to the sound a. [Presenting this sound accurately] depends on being able to feel the a—which means holding yourself upright while facing something. In ah we open ourselves to the world in wonder; we let the world approach us. When we experience a we do not simply allow the world to approach us, but we offer some resistance; we confront the world. The world is there and we stand facing it. This is why the movement for a demands that we touch ourselves (crossed hands [in Austrian dialect die Hand can begin at the shoulder; consequently it can mean ‘arm’. Translator's note.]). We touch ourselves. We say, as we experience the a sound: ‘I too am here confronting the world’. And you will learn to understand the a when, in making the gesture, you feel: ‘I too am here confronting the world, and I want to feel that I too am here.’ The bringing of one limb into contact with the other awakens this feeling that I too am here.

Now I would have liked things to have developed so that first what we call the letters or sounds would have been given, and then the urge would have inwardly arisen to develop these experiences out of the letters themselves, for then you would get hold of it. And certainly this has frequently happened subconsciously with many people, though it is not always definitely apparent. But the study of eurythmy must proceed from such things as these, too.

Let us take o. In making the gesture for o, you form a circle with both arms. You must feel that while experiencing the o-gesture, you cannot experience a. With a you confirm your presence: I too am here confronting the world. With o you go out of yourself, enclosing something within yourself You embrace something. It is important in the a that that which you are addressing stays outside and you are inside, within yourself With o there is a kind of going to sleep while awake, in that you allow your whole being to go for a little walk into the space which you enclose with the o-gesture. But now that other thing you are addressing is also within this space. Thus, when experiencing the o, your feelings are such as these: I approach a tree; I embrace this tree with my arms, but I myself am the tree; [Note 3] I have become a tree-spirit, a tree-soul. There is the tree, and because I myself have become a tree-soul, because I have become one with the tree, I make this gesture. I go out of myself. That which is important for me is enclosed in my arms. This is the feeling of o.

The feeling of oo is that of being bound up with something, yet wishing to get away from it; following the movement you make and going somewhere else, leaving yourself and preparing your way. I run along my arms when I make the movement for oo. I am convinced of it, that in oo I stream away, away, away—away in this direction.

You see that this is speech. Speech poses questions. ‘How does the human being relate to the things of the world?’ Speech always asks: ‘How does the human being relate to the things of the world? Does the world fill him with wonder? Does he stand upright confronting the world? Does he embrace it? Does he flee before it?’ Speech is the relationship of the human being to the world. Music is the relationship of the human being, as a being of soul and spirit, to him- or herself.

When, in the way I have just indicated, you try to enter into what may be experienced in the vowel sound o, let us say, or oo, then you have a distinct going-out of the soul from the body. This is also expressed in the pronunciation. Think of the way in which the sound o is spoken, right forward on the lips and with the lips clearly rounded: o. Oo is spoken with the lips pushed somewhat outwards: oo = away. We have, then, in the gestures made in the air by speech, this going-out-of-ourselves in the sounds o and oo.

The musical element presents the exact opposite of speech. When you are going out of yourself in speech, the astral body and ego leave the etheric and physical bodies, even if this only occurs partially and imperceptibly. It really is a falling-asleep while still awake when we utter a or oo, or when we do a or oo in eurythmy. It is a falling asleep when awake. When you are going out of yourself in o or in oo, you really are going with your soul into the element of soul. And when I say that with the sounds o and oo I am going with my astral body out of my physical body, I am speaking in terms of speech.

When I say: ‘In what I am now experiencing I am going with my soul into my spiritual being’ (for in spite of the fact that I go out, I am entering into my spiritual being; just as when falling asleep I enter into my spiritual being too, while forsaking my physical body), this is just the opposite [of what happens in speech]. Thus when I say: ‘I am entering into my spiritual being in o or in oo, I am speaking in musical terms. [Note 4]

Now when I reflect upon the sound o or oo, I am naturally denying the musical element. But the point in question is: what is the musical experience in this going-out-of-ourselves of o and oo? What is it in music itself that corresponds to the out-going connected with o and oo? The musical experience which is contained in o and in oo is, in the most comprehensive sense, the experience of the major mood.

In speaking of the experience of the major mood, it is certainly true that we experience this in the sounds o and oo. I cannot say that we change our interpretation into an experience of speech, but we change the way we live in this experience. Whenever the sounds o or oo are uttered, or when a word is uttered in which either of these two sounds is predominant, then, underlying the speech, we musically experience the major mood.

When we reflect upon ah and a, where we may very clearly perceive the experience, underlying the sounds, of the astral body remaining within the physical body (indeed, we are here made particularly aware of the physical body), this produces a different musical experience. Pay attention, then, to this growing awareness of the physical body. When you speak the sound ah, or fashion it in eurythmy, you cause your astral body to sink down as much as it can into your physical body. This entails a feeling of well-being. It is as if you could feel your astral body flowing through your limbs like—I will say ‘sparkling wine’ for the less abstemious people, while for the more abstemious I ought perhaps to say lemonade’! Thus in uttering the sound ah you actually sense something like the flowing of some sparkling fluid through your physical body. What is the kind of feeling that now arises in the physical body? Ah—a feeling of comfort or well-being arises.

Let us take the other sound. You stand upright confronting your surroundings and say: ‘I too am here.’ Now it is as if, let's say, you were to shelter from the cold by means of a protecting garment. You increase the intensity of your own existence. This feeling of being aware of something outside yourself and defending yourself against it, this reliance on yourself in the face of some other element, lies in the sound a. In both cases, in ah and in a, the physical body is taken hold of by the astral body.

The same thing can be experienced musically, too. Musically this can occur in the experience of the minor mood in the most comprehensive sense. The minor mood is always a retreat into yourself with the soul and spirit part of your being; it is a laying hold of the bodily by the soul and spirit. You will most easily discover what is to be felt in the eurythmic gestures as the differentiation between the major and the minor moods when you draw the experience of the major out of the living experience of the sounds o and oo, and when you draw the experience of the minor, again with feeling, out of the experience of the sounds ah and a—not out of the sounds themselves, but out of the experience.

When you enter into these things you will feel how little people today know about the nature of the human being. It must be said that in our modern world the understanding for such things is remarkably limited. But without this understanding, absolutely nothing productive can be achieved in so many realms. Unless such understanding is acquired, we shall never be able to stand with our whole being within the realm of art. Something artistic which has not been permeated with the whole human being is nothing; it is a farce. Something artistic can only endure when the whole human being has poured himself into it.

But then we really have to feel the connection between the world and the human being; we must feel how speech brings us into a relationship with the outer world, and music into a relationship with ourselves; how, in consequence, all the movements of speech eurythmy are, as it were, drawn from the human being and transplanted into the outer world, whereas the gestures of music [eurythmy] have to flow back into the human being. Everything which goes out in speech eurythmy has to lead back into the human being in tone eurythmy. [Note 5]

Today, as you know, the whole world of thought is chaotically fragmented. There is no living picture of anything. Take a person of what we call a sanguine temperament, one who lives intensely in what is outside himself. A sanguine person pleases us, that is, he makes an agreeable impression upon us, only when he utters the sounds o and oo. We get quite a bitter taste in the mouth when anyone of sanguine temperament speaks the sounds ah and a; it doesn't quite work. But people today do not possess such vivid perceptions, and this is why contemporary people create so little from the depths of their being.

Now let us take a person of melancholic temperament. To anyone who has understanding for such things, a melancholic person seems to be an absolute caricature when he speaks the sounds o and oo. It only seems right when he speaks the sounds ah and a. Here we have the going over into the everlasting major mood of the sanguine person and into the everlasting minor mood of the melancholic person.

Now let us think of a person who is simply bursting with health, as we say. Such an overwhelmingly healthy person is in the major mood, and for the most part his astral body makes movements which correspond to o and oo. His step is light; that is to say, he lives in a continuous oo. He takes on everything, because it pleases him; he can endure anything. He is continually in the feeling of oo; he is the major mood incarnate.

Let us take a sick person. He is continually in a state in which, without the element of wonder, but through the very fact of his illness, he imitates the mood of ah or the mood of a—more especially the latter. A sick person is perpetually in the minor mood. And it is not exactly a metaphor or something of an analogy when we ask: What is fever? Fever is the sound ah transposed into the physical realm, which a eurythmist or someone who speaks the ah produces in the astral realm. The mood of the minor projected into the physical plane produces fever; it is the same process which takes place when you utter the sound ah, but in speaking this process takes place on a higher level—the level of soul and spirit. The sound ah is a fever. Either it is fever or it is tears, but it is always a process which the human being produces in himself.

These things lead to a true knowledge of the human being only when they are understood through the feelings. And because the human being is partially healthy and partially ill, the development of that which is superabundantly healthy (which must be inherent in art) and the development of movements imbued with the power of healing are closely interwoven. The latter exists in the case of ill people. This close relationship exists because, in reality, the major and the minor moods are, on a higher plane, the same as health and illness—that is to say, the experience of health and illness. Now we must not think that because the minor mood is [connected with] illness, it is therefore something bad or in some way inferior. Being ill in the soul-world always signifies something quite different from being ill in the physical world. From all this, you will see that the moods of major and minor, when developed eurythmically, may in time bring about therapeutic results.

So you see there is actually a bridge between speech eurythmy and music eurythmy. And when in speech eurythmy we experience the vowel sounds rightly, in the way I have described for ah and a on the one hand and for o and oo on the other hand, we really have something that leads us towards the experience of major and minor. But the important fact we could seriously bring home to ourselves is that we tend to push (schieben) the musical element more inwards, whereas the movements of speech eurythmy we have to push away (abschieben).

Imagine the following: Take a step forwards with the right foot, trying to feel this step as vividly as you can; do it in such a way that you also express in feeling the involvement of the head: you take a step forward (your head not too far back, but more forward). This is the first gesture. Now we carry out a second gesture. Try to accompany the gesture you have just made with a movement of the right hand, palm outwards, as much as possible in the direction of the foot taking the step. Now you have made a second gesture.

Take the first gesture: the stepping. Take the second: the movement. And now try to add a third gesture by making a light movement of the left arm, touching the right arm as if you wanted to push it away (left arm slightly pushing the right). You take a step forwards, following in the same direction with the right arm, and finally pushing the right arm with the left. Here you have a certain gesture in its most extreme form. You have the step and the movement, with what you add with the left arm bringing about a forming gesture—for when you follow on with the left arm, you arrest what you have poured into the movement in the right arm and hold fast the movement. We then have:

Step,
Movement,
Formation.

Here you are really involved in something threefold, and you are so much within this threefold occurrence that you will actually be able to feel this as a threefold occurrence. In the stepping you are in a position to discover an intimation of the outgoing of your astral body. In the following on of the movement, which you make with the right arm, this outgoing feeling is intensified. And in what I have described as the formation, you can feel how the movement is held fast.

Now if you really feel what I have indicated in this gesture, if you put yourselves into it, having no other wish than to enter with your whole being into this step, movement and formation, then you have something that is threefold. And you will easily realize that the step is the foundation of everything; it is the starting point. The movement is felt as the continuation, and must be in harmony with the foundation. And the formation establishes the whole process.

You must experience all this yourselves. You can experience it in the most varied ways if you take the notes into consideration; you can make the gesture in the upper, lower or middle zones. If you do it in such a way as to have C below, the E in the middle (thus beginning with the step, leading the movement over into E, and trying to confer the G in the formation) then in this step, movement and formation you have presented the major triad. Fashion the major triad quite naturally and objectively, and put the experience of the major triad into what you yourself present as a human being in the world. Just as in the gestures presenting the sounds of speech you have to feel the inner content of the sound, so here, in step, movement and formation, you have to experience the chord. This is a first element.

Step: C
Movement: E
Formation: G

Now let us try to step backwards with the left foot, allowing the head to follow [in the same direction]. And now try to follow this with the left arm. You must follow your backward step with the left arm, taking care to hold the palm of the hand inwards. Be really relaxed as you start. Make the backward step together with the movement of the head and arm (hand on the chest) trying to achieve completion by putting the right arm across. Try to hold fast this position. The whole gesture should be done in such a way that it can actually be seen how the left arm is led inwards towards the body, the left hand being brought to the body, and how the right hand is carried over towards the left hand as though to hold it fast [Hand is probably Austrian dialect for ‘arm’. Translator's note].

Here you have presented in the step:
C in the movement: Eb
and in the formation: G

You have presented the minor triad, and when you keep these gestures in view and have repeatedly tried to keep them in view, you will come to the conclusion that these basic elements of music, the major triad and the minor triad, can be presented in no other way. It is only when you have become convinced that there is absolutely no other way of expressing the matter that you will really have felt it. You may try as you like to find some other way of doing it; it is only when another method pleases you less than the gestures shown here that you can really be said to have realized what dwells in them.

Now you see, you have basically expressed in the realm of music what is expressed for the vowel sounds in speech eurythmy. If I ask you to produce an ah in speech eurythmy it is really the same (in speech eurythmy) as when I asked you just now to produce a major, or a minor, triad. It is simply doing vowels.

Now there is one thing which I have not yet characterized. I said that we can experience the major mood as such in o and oo, and the minor mood as such (which unlikely as it appears, is really the case) in ah and a, but I have not yet mentioned the fact that there can be something which lies between. Consider the transition. Try to experience the transition from the mood of wonder to the embracing feeling in the sound o, or, vice versa, the transition from the embracing feeling of o to the mood of wonder. Here you go from without inwards; you pass from the ‘going out’ of the astral body to a ‘diving down’ of the astral body. Here you pass from illness to health, from health to illness. This is the ee. Ee is always the neutral feeling of yourself between the experience of going outwards and the experience of being within—both in relation to the physical body. Thus ee stands between ah and a on the one side, and o and oo on the other side.

And now try (you can think these things over before tomorrow and apply them for yourselves) to pass over from the experience of minor to the experience of major by simply changing [direction]. You first produce the experience of the minor, then you change it by placing yourself forward. Simply incline the head somewhat forward (in the minor experience it lies in a backward direction), and incline yourself forward, thereby changing the whole movement of the muscles. Instead of the step backwards with the left leg, you would now have to step forwards with the right leg; you simply bring that which you have in front out of the minor into the major; that is to say, you pass out of the major into the minor mood, or out of the minor into the major mood. The experience underlying this transition corresponds to the experience of ee in speech eurythmy. You will already sense the interesting variety of life underlying this transition from the major to the minor mood if you really carry out what I have just indicated.

You see, the point is this. When we initially enter into the nuances which lie in the major and the minor moods and the transition between them, we are really entering into what, in the realm of music, corresponds to the vowel sounds. You must take deeply into your soul this first principle, as I have described it. The gestures you have made for the major and the minor moods and the transition from the one to the other are the musical way of doing the vowels. The starting point is taken from the major and the minor moods.

The musical realm carries the fundamental moods corresponding to the vowels throughout its entire tonal configuration, through tension, resolution, and so on. [Note 6] And just as we can pass over from the spoken vowel sounds into words, so we may also pass over from the understanding of the elements of music (as, for instance, the simple chordal nature of the major and minor triads) into eurythmic understanding of the musical realm, the inner musical configurations.

Tomorrow at this time we shall continue.

Gesture which is to be used for the expression of music must be gesture rising out of actual experience, and this can only be an experienced gesture if the underlying experience is there first.

You will understand this if you once more place before your soul the origin of music and speech in the human being. [7] Music and language, that is to say, the sounds of music and of speech, are connected with the whole human being. When the human being sings or speaks, the experience of the singing or speaking is in the astral body and ego.

Now everything that lives in the astral body and ego has its physical manifestation in air and warmth. Let us suppose that someone is singing or speaking. Imagine to yourselves as vividly as possible how the sound-formation of speech or music comes about. The formations of speech and music live purely as soul-element in the astral body and ego. Along with the astral body and ego they are then imparted to the air, to the organs of breathing and everything connected with them; they are imparted to the air and the organs of breathing by and through the astral body.

But you know that when any body, [like] a volume of air, is compressed, it becomes warmer. It becomes inwardly warmer. Compression causes an increase of inner warmth. When such a body expands, it uses this warmth again in the process of expansion. In the oscillating air, that is to say, in the alternation between condensed and rarefied air, there are continual fluctuations of temperature: warm, cold; warm, cold; warm, cold.

Thus there enters into the stream of singing or speaking the element of warmth. The ego lives in this element of warmth, and singing and speech gain their inwardness through this. Musical sound and the sounds of speech actually acquire their inner quality of soul from the warmth that, as it were, is carried on the waves of this air (which form the sound purely outwardly); warmth is carried on the actual flowing waves of the air. The astral body is active in the flowing air itself, and the ego lives in the warmth which flows on the waves of the air. But the astral body and ego are not only present in the air and warmth, they are also present in the fluid and solid elements of the human body. When a human being speaks or sings, the astral body and ego are partially withdrawn from there, and limit themselves to the air and warmth. Singing and speaking do in fact entail a withdrawal of the astral body and ego from the structure of the human body, but not completely, as in sleep. This is a partial withdrawal from the solid and fluid elements of the human body, which then remain behind. From this you will see that when someone speaks or sings, something takes place in his whole body.

We will now try to become aware of how the human being perceives what is taking place here. We know that the sounds of speech and of singing are activated by the larynx and all that is connected with it. The human being perceives by means of the ear. Here we have two organs clearly placed at the periphery of the body. Feeling is poured into these organs. In the senses there is the actual active feeling, active feeling of the soul. We feel with the eye; we feel with the ear. But it is also feeling which stimulates activity in the larynx and its neighbouring organs. Feeling is at work here. The imagination (Vorstellung) is merely pushed into the feeling. It is feeling which is at work. The human being, as it were, is specialized in the organs connected with hearing, speech and singing when he sings or takes in what is sung, or speaks or takes in what is spoken. Hence the actual experiences remain in the ear and larynx, and do not really enter into consciousness. [8]

Everything that can be laid hold of by the senses, and everything that can be expressed through the organs of speech, can also be expressed by the entire body, by the entire human being. In the movements of eurythmy, the whole human being becomes a sense-organ. The whole range of feeling, as it streams and strongly pulsates through the body, becomes incitement and an organ of perception—the whole range of feeling with the human being as the instrument. And so what otherwise remains an experience of the ear or larynx only, now has to become an experience of the whole human being. When it becomes an experience of the whole human being, it quite naturally becomes gesture. Once the experience is understood, is laid hold of, then the experience becomes gesture. Let us make this clear with a few examples. Think of a musical sound as such, and in order to have a starting point, take any note as keynote.

The connection of the sound with feeling will become clear to you when you recall that the animal (which is of a lower order than man) breaks forth into sound as the result of a sensation of well-being, of pleasure, or of some sort of pain. Now pleasure, comfort and pain are experiences of feeling. Ultimately every sound uttered by the human being originates from some such basic source. When the human being experiences pleasure or well-being, he feels impelled to utter sounds. Why? Why does the human being utter sound? You might say he could also remain silent. Why does the human being break out into sound when he is overcome with delight?

What does a feeling of pleasure imply? To be overcome with pleasure really means that we lose ourselves in our surroundings. Everything which induces pleasure means that the human being is losing himself. And everything painful means an excessive awareness of himself. You are aware of yourself too strongly when you are in pain. Just think how much more aware of yourself you are when you are ill, or experience some kind of pain, than you are when the whole body is free from pain. When we are in pain we are too strongly within ourselves, and we are excessively aware of ourselves. In pleasure, on the other hand, we nearly, or even utterly, are losing ourselves. Harmonious feeling is brought about by the balance between pleasure and pain, by giving ourselves up entirely to neither the pleasure nor the pain.

Why does the human being give vent to sound when experiencing pleasure, pain, or any other nuance of feeling—each of which in the last resort leads back either to pleasure or pain? Why does he produce sound? He does so in order to keep a hold on himself when he is at the point of losing himself in pleasure. The sound enables him to keep hold of himself; otherwise in this pleasure his astral body with his ego would leave him. By giving vent to sound he is able to keep hold of himself. This is at the root of all phenomena in which sound is produced by a living being. (For instance, the moon works very strongly upon certain creatures, such as dogs. It threatens to tear away a dog's astral body. And the dog barks at the moon because by this means it anchors its astral body.)

When the human being gives vent to sound for itself (and any note may be regarded as the keynote) it means that he is resisting this tendency to lose himself in pleasure. He is holding fast to his astral body.

And when the ego and astral body sink down into pain, then, because the human being is too intensely aware of himself, he quite rightly tries to tear himself away from himself by the utterance of some note or sound. In the plaintive sound of the minor mood there is an effort to tear free from an excessive awareness of self.

When we think of it, by saying this we are already speaking in gesture. There is not the least need to interpret anything artificially, because we speak in gesture. We need only to understand what occurs here, and we speak in gesture. If I say: ‘I have sunk too deeply into myself and must tear myself out of myself- then indeed it is beyond doubt that some sort of gesture which proceeds from me is a natural gesture, and is the actual expression of what I experience. It expresses what the experience is. And so the understanding of such an experience already indicates the gesture. You cannot do otherwise when describing the experience than to describe the gesture. For this reason the movements of eurythmy are not arbitrary, but actually reveal what is experienced.

Now let us suppose that someone, either in pleasure or pain, has produced a sound which we will regard as the keynote. The underlying mood is unfinished; it cannot stay like that, for if it did, the person in question would be constantly obliged to sing the keynote or to utter a sound. When experiencing pleasure he would never be able to cease uttering this sound; he would have to sustain it forever if the sound itself did not exert a certain calming influence. The human being cries out into the world as a result of pleasure or pain, and here is an incomplete condition of human experience, an unfinished condition of soul for human experience.

Let us now take the transition from keynote to octave. In the transition from keynote to octave, the octave simply falls into the keynote. It is as if you stretched out your hand and came into contact with an object. Through this external touch the longing you felt for something outside yourself is satisfied. In the same way the octave comes to meet you from the world in order to calm the prime within itself. That which was unfinished to begin with is now complete. When the octave is added to the prime, a wholeness is created again. In the course of these lectures you will see how the gestures come about by themselves if we penetrate to a true understanding of the underlying experience. [9]

Let us consider [the interval of] the fifth—the fifth which is united in some way to the keynote. It is essential here truly to acquire the experience of the fifth. The remarkable thing about the fifth is that when the human being holds the keynote and the interval of the fifth from it, he feels he is a completed human being. The fifth is the human being.

Naturally such things can only be expressed in the language of feeling—nevertheless, [we can say] the fifth is the human being. It is exactly as if the human being inwardly extended as far as his skin, as if he laid hold of his own skin and enclosed himself off within it. The fifth is the skin as it encloses the human being. And never, in the realm of musical sounds, can the human being feel his humanity so strongly as he does when he is experiencing the fifth in relation to the keynote. What I have just said may be more intelligible in the following considerations.

Let us now compare the experience of the fifth with that of the seventh and the third. The experience of the seventh (sounding either harmonically or melodically) involves those sounds which were especially favoured in the world of ancient Atlantis; it was the interval that gave them special delight. [10] Why was this? It was because in the epoch of ancient Atlantis, people's experience of going outside themselves was still a positive one. In the seventh we really do go out of ourselves. In the fifth we go as far as the skin; in the seventh we are outside ourselves. We leave ourselves in the seventh. Indeed in the seventh as such there is absolutely nothing soothing. It might be said that when a person cries out in the keynote because he is being hurt, and then adds the seventh to it, he is really crying out about the crying, in order to escape from it again. He is quite outside himself. Whereas the fifth is experienced at the surface of the skin, and the human being feels his humanity, in the seventh there is the feeling of breaking through the skin and going into his surroundings. He goes out of himself; he feels he is in his surroundings.

In the third there is a distinct feeling of not reaching as far as the skin, but of remaining within yourself. The experience of the third is very intimate. You know that what you settle with the third you settle with yourself alone. Just try out how unfamiliar the experience of the fifth is compared to the experience of the third. The feeling of the third is an intimate one which you settle with yourself in your heart. In the fifth you feel that other people too can see what you experience, because you go as far as the skin. It is only by means of feeling that such things can be experienced. And in the experience of the seventh you are outside yourself.

And now recollect what I said yesterday. The gesture which characterizes the keynote is the step. This step gives us the position. The third is characterized either by an accompanying or a following gesture of one arm, indicating an entering into movement, while following in the direction of this gesture. The direction of the gesture is followed in such a way that if it is the major third, you still remain within your arm. You remain within it. I have characterized the fifth as something that you form. You return, just as the skin forms the human being on all sides. In the triad, regardless of whether it is major or minor, we have:

Inner activity: the step
Remaining within yourself: the movement
Closing off what is outside: the formation

Now the point is this: When trying to give clear expression to the remaining-within-yourself in the third, it is possible to vary the movement. In order to introduce some variety, you might, for instance, stretch out your arm and, while continuing the direction of the gesture, move in some way such as this (right arm stretched out, the hand moving up and down). Now you are within yourself. Thus the interval of the third is well expressed when you first take up the position, and then make the movement—continuing, however, to move within the movement. Now you have inwardness.

Suppose that you are dealing with a major third. Then you will show inwardness by making the arm movement go away (out) from yourself. If you express the minor third, you remain more within yourself, which you indicate with your arm back towards yourself (inwards). You have a gesture that really expresses the experience of the third. [11]

If you want to experience these things you must repeatedly practise the corresponding gesture and try to see how the experiences of the intervals actually flow from the gesture, and how they are within it. Then the corresponding experience will grow together with the gesture, and you will possess that which makes the matter artistic. The experience will grow with the gesture. Only then will the matter become artistic.

In the experience of the seventh this is especially apparent. With the seventh, the essential thing is that you go out of yourself, for it is a going-out-of-yourself. Somehow the gesture has to show that you go out of yourself (you stretch out the arm, turning the hand while shaking it). The natural expression of the seventh is a movement which you do not follow, but in which the hand is allowed to be shaken. And when you compare the experience of the fifth with that of the seventh, you will feel in the fifth the necessity of closing off, of giving it form, of making so to speak an enclosing movement. This is not possible in the experience of the seventh, for in the seventh it is as if your skin disappears while experiencing the seventh, and you stand there as a sort of flayed Marsyas. [12] The skin flies away and the whole soul goes out into the surroundings. If you want to introduce the other arm as well into the movement to support the seventh experience, you can do so, of course, for there is never a question of pedantry or retaining something schematic. In such a case you would have somehow to indicate the seventh with the other hand. Of course this must be beautifully done.

Thereby you will experience, when you enter deeply into the matter in this way, that the experience itself becomes gesture. And eurythmy will only prosper when the experience itself becomes gesture.

A eurythmist must become in some respects a new human being compared to what he or she was before, because in general, through the fact that we speak or sing, we have brought about a certain attentiveness to what we actually want in the gesture. We lead over what we want in gesture into speech and song. When we retrieve it, gesture arises. And a professional eurythmist (if I may use such a philistine expression)* has to feel it absolutely natural to translate everything into gesture. Indeed, when mixing in ordinary, polite society, a eurythmist cannot help feeling a sense of restraint and restriction at not being able to eurythmize all sorts of things in front of people. Isn't it true, that just as the painter itches to paint when he sees something and is unable to (for he would like to paint everything but cannot always be at it, and thus has to restrain himself), so too a tired eurythmist is actually something terrible? A eurythmist cannot manifest fatigue as something natural. It is really dreadful to see a eurythmist sitting down tired during a rehearsal, for it is exactly (isn't it?) as if someone suddenly became rigid or got paralysed. I have sometimes observed in eurythmy rehearsals that eurythmists sit down when there is a little pause. Such things do not, I believe, happen in Dornach, but here and there it does occur. I probably turn quite pale, for my blood runs cold at this quite impossible sight of a tired eurythmist. There is no such thing! In life, of course, there is such a thing, that is the paradox, but you must sense that this is so. So I do not say you must not sit down if you are tired, but I do say: If you do, you must regard yourself as a caricature of a eurythmist!

These things must be said in order that the fundamental mood of the artistic process may be brought into the matter, for art has to be based upon the mood, upon that which runs through everything like a connecting thread. And especially such an art as eurythmy, where the whole human being is involved, can never prosper if this mood is lacking, if this mood does not permeate everything.

When these things have become real experiences, you will simply and truly feel eurythmy as you do speaking and singing. You must accustom yourselves, however, just as you experience the sounds of language, to experience singing too for the activity of eurythmy. It is quite true to say that the eurythmist must experience the musical element in a fuller sense than, for instance, a singer does. With a singer it depends upon his entering right into the musical sound, taking hold of it, being able to hear it, and living in an element in which his body comes to his assistance to a marked degree. The body does not come to the assistance of the eurythmist; for in eurythmy it is the soul which must engage in the gesture what the senses or larynx have to do in singing and speaking.

It is necessary to preface the description of the actual movements by this somewhat lengthy introduction, for these things are especially important for the whole feeling of the eurythmic element. The eurythmic element will not be understood if such things are not entered into with intensity. An understanding must be acquired by the eurythmist for all that I have stressed when giving introductions to performances, but which in the present time is rarely correctly understood. I often say that the prose content of the words do not make for the poetical element, the artistic and poetic element. There are people today who read a poem as though it were prose. You do not have the poem there. The prose content does not constitute the poem. The poem is what lives in the musical, sculptural and pictorial element of the words, in their melodic motifs, rhythm and beat, and so on. Anyone who wishes to express what should be expressed in poetical form, must be vividly aware that the words must not be used merely on account of their meaning, but arranged according to the beat, the rhythm, the melodic motifs, or that which is pictorial in the formation of the sounds, and similar things.

We have, consequently, to go one stage beyond the mere content of language, for in so far as its actual content is concerned, language is inartistic. It exists for prose. This is the inartistic element in language. Not until language is fashioned, not until it is given shape and form, does it become artistic.

What has been said here about language is quite obvious for singing, of course. We can see that our age does not care much for real artistic creation, for it happens that modern music [1924] too exhibits the tendency that does not allow the actual music, the progression of notes, to speak for itself, but tries to express something quite different by this means.

Now you must not misunderstand me, for it is not my intention to make any anti-Wagnerian propaganda. Time and again I have emphasized Wagner's significance in the culture of our age. This, however, is not because I regard his music as being ‘musical music’, but rather because we have to admit the demand of the present age for ‘unmusical music’. It is apparent to me that unmusical music has its justification in our age. Fundamentally speaking, Wagner's music is unmusical. [13] And it is really necessary in an age like ours, when music should also become gesture, to point the way to musical experience as such, when musical experience is to be expressed in gesture, and to show how the interval of the third represents inwardness, and the fifth a boundary, the seventh a going-out-of-yourself. And what is it that gives the feeling of inner satisfaction in the octave? The inner satisfaction in the octave is due to the fact that here, I would like to say, we get away from the danger inherent in the seventh. We escape from this danger inherent in the seventh and re-find ourselves outside.

With the octave it is like this, as if—with the seventh—you had become a flayed Marsyas, without your skin, the soul departing, the skin flying off and is getting away; but now you feel in the octave: ‘I am stripped of my skin, but it is coming, returning, I'll have it in a moment, it is about to return, it is there approaching and yet it is still outside.’ You have indeed grown somewhat, you have expanded and become fuller. It is as though you grow while experiencing the octave.

Obviously, then, the movement for the experience of the octave is not the same as that for experiencing the seventh. The experience is attained by turning round the whole hand outside yourself. The interval of the octave is expressed by turning the hand, starting with the palm facing outwards. If you wish to give full expression to the octave, you can of course make the same movement in this way too (in the same way, but carried out with both arms and hands). Here again it is self-evident that these things must be practised so well that they become second nature. Just as the musician has to get the producing of the notes into his fingers, so the eurythmist must get the corresponding gestures into his or her whole body.

This is why it is so necessary for the basic elements of eurythmy to be repeatedly practised. Such elementary movements as those I have briefly indicated (and shall develop further in the course of the next few days) must become second nature so it is no longer necessary to think about them, any more than it is necessary to think about the letters of a word that is spoken. If we say the word ‘letter’ we do not need to think, for we know quite well how its component sounds have to be pronounced. And so we have to reach the point where the movements for the intervals, triads, and so on, are produced out of ourselves quite naturally. You will then see how easily the other things arise. And above all you will increasingly realize how the experience passes over into gesture.

In order to understand this, let us deal with the difference between concords and discords. As you know, triads are concordant or discordant; a four-note chord is actually always discordant.

You will have realized yesterday from the movements for the triads, that in order to give expression to the experiences of the triad, the assistance of the whole human being must be invoked. In the first place we have what I characterized as the step. The step essentially entails the use of one leg. Then, with both major and minor chords, we have the movement with one arm, and the forming with the other. You may say: ‘I have nothing else to use.’ Well, as you do have two legs, you have a means of expressing a chord of four notes. And now you may say: I really cannot step forwards with one leg and backward with the other, simultaneously. And yet you can do this if you jump. You see, we arrive at this quite naturally.

There is no other means of presenting a four-note chord than by jumping somewhat, moving one leg forwards and the other backwards. This is how a four-note chord is presented. But think for a moment what happens here. It would be difficult, as well as not looking particularly beautiful, to jump without bending the knees. You cannot jump easily with totally stiff legs, quite apart from the ungraceful appearance. In jumping you must bend at the knees, so that in the jumping movement necessary for the four-note discord (because of the nature of the body and its relation to the environment) you really get the bending of the knees as the gesture for the discord. The natural movement for a discord is the bending of the knees entailed by jumping.

From this, however, something else arises. If you have a discordant triad you can again apply the same principle. With a concordant triad you take a step forwards; with a discordant triad you must also make a bending movement. There is no necessity to bend as with jumping, but you can bend. And so you express the discordant triad by moving with bended knees. You can discover this from the fact that a four-note chord (which is always a discord) can only be done by a jump in order to set both legs into movement; for you just do not have four members of your body in order to express a discord of four notes, so you have to jump, coupled with bending. This gives us, therefore, bending as the expression of the discord.

Now just as a musician has to practise his exercises, a tremendous inner liveliness is attained by practising the alternation between discords and concords, passing from one to the other simply with a view to experiencing in their gestures the change of mood, the change in the actual feeling.

If you think of all I have just said, you will find the experience of the fourth of particular interest. In the third we are intimately within ourselves. In the fifth we come just to the boundary of the body. The fourth lies between. And the fourth has this striking characteristic, that here the human being experiences himself inwardly, although not so intimately as in the third. But he does not even reach his surface. He experiences himself beneath this surface. He remains, as it were, just beneath it. He separates himself from the surrounding world, and creates himself within himself. He does not form himself, as in the fifth, where the external world also compels this forming, but he forms himself out of the needs of his own soul. The experience of the fourth is such that the human being feels his humanity through his own inner strength, whereas in the fifth it is through the world that he feels his humanity. In the fourth he says to himself ‘You are really too big; you cannot experience yourself because you are so big. Make yourself a little smaller, yet stay as important as your size.’ In the fourth you make yourself into a snug, comfortable dwarf Thus the fourth demands a very strong relation to yourself. You can achieve this when, instead of simply going outwards or inwards as in the third, you draw the fingers sharply together as if to concentrate the strength of the hand in itself In this way the fourth is expressed and revealed.

These, then, are the principles which have to be considered before entering more deeply into the gestures of the musical element, for without the experience of these principles no truly artistic gestures can come about. I am sure you will have plenty to do when you come to work through all these details. It is better therefore not to give too many gestures in one session, for what has been given must first be assimilated. So we shall continue tomorrow.

#160;

Notes:

1. It has a bourgeois ring in German. Translator's note.

Let us first see if you can manage the following exercise. With the right arm, try to make a movement similar to the one I gave for the forming of the seventh; now try to hold the arm still whilst stepping forwards, so that the arm remains stationary, the body following the direction of the arm. To do this you must bend your arm as you step. The arm, the hand that is, must remain in the same place while you step forwards. This exercise must be carried out in such a way that the arm, the hand, remains where it is, while you come up and join it. This must be practised.

Now try another exercise: While stepping forwards try to draw the hand back somewhat—not too strongly, however. Now we have two exercises. Try to experience in succession seventh and prime, and sixth and prime. The first movement just shown expresses the succession of notes: seventh—prime; and the second movement for the experience sixth—prime; the sound [of each interval] imagined in succession. They can, however, also be imagined simultaneously; I will speak about this a little later on. In this way you are able to bring movement into the gesture.

The movement first shown is one which, in a certain way, throws life back into the lifeless. And indeed, as may be seen from yesterday's description of the seventh, this is also the case in regard to its relationship to the keynote. If you picture the keynote as the embodiment of calmness and quiet, and the seventh as actually lying outside the physical body, so that in the seventh the human being goes out of himself, then it will be possible for you to imagine that by your going out, the seventh brings back the spiritual quickening element into the resting, bodily part.

You see, these things become vividly real when we pass over from the musical element to the eurythmical element. Music naturally is something perceived, as it is produced in the first place in order to be heard, whereas eurythmy brings the whole human being into movement. And you will best recognize the inner reality of what has just been said about the relationship of the seventh to the keynote, from the fact that this can be therapeutically effective. When for instance a hardening process in the lungs or some other organ in the chest is diagnosed, it will be found that this very exercise, as it has now been demonstrated, will have a healing, re-vitalizing effect, helping to bring the condition back to normal.

It is precisely tone eurythmy in all its elements, when suitably carried out, which is a factor in eurythmy therapy. Only it is necessary to penetrate into the nature of the musical sounds in a really living way, as we endeavoured to do yesterday, and as we shall try to continue.

In this connection let me also say the following. If, in a similar way to that which I have just indicated, you go on from the seventh to the sixth in relation to the keynote, you will find in this interval a noticeably weakened relationship, and it is strikingly characteristic that the hand, which is held stationary from outside in the case of the seventh, here goes backwards. This does not express the relation of the living to the lifeless, but the sixth in relation to the keynote is so expressed that you feel it merely as motion, as a setting into activity. It may be compared to a stimulation of feeling rather than to something which imparts life. The sixth in relation to the keynote induces a picture of feeling. The seventh in relation to the keynote induces a picture of life; it imparts life to the lifeless.

And now, bearing in mind these gestures (which will have shown you that in its essential being, tone eurythmy must be movement), I will ask you to consider how tone eurythmy, just as speech eurythmy, may after all provide a correcting influence upon art as a whole.

It was necessary to tell you that speech eurythmy has a corrective artistic influence upon recitation and declamation. In introductions to public performances, for instance, it is difficult to make use of the necessary drastic expressions which are demanded if we are to describe the inartistic nature of our modern age, for people would only be shocked, and very little would be gained. Things have to be put mildly, as indeed I try to do. But the truth of the matter is that in our inartistic age, recitation and declamation have become completely degenerate. The laws of true art are no longer observed in recitation and declamation. Everything is read like prose in a thoroughly materialistic way. People think it must be felt out of the gut instinctively; emphasis is determined by pathos, or something of the sort, indeed by anything that makes an appeal to sensation or sense-impression. Now true recitation and declamation must be based upon the forming and shaping of the actual language, upon making speech musical, and upon a sculptural, pictorial treatment of speech. And when on the one hand we have a eurythmy performance, and on the other hand recitation, then it is not possible to make use of recitation and declamation in their present degenerate state. Attention must be paid to speech.formation. I always describe this as a ‘hidden eurythmy’, for eurythmy is indicated in recitation and declamation. Attention must be paid to the shaping and forming of speech. In such a way eurythmy can also exert a corrective influence upon everything that is musical.

We are actually living (this is naturally still more shocking) in a terribly inartistic age where music is concerned, too. This cannot be denied—we are living in a terribly inartistic age. For today there is an exceedingly widespread tendency to drive music as such into mere noise. [14] We have gradually ceased to be musical in the real sense, and instead we now make use of music in order to portray all sorts of sounds which are meant to represent something or other; the listener cannot always be sure what actually is intended, but at any rate it is a question of portraying something or other. Now please do not regard me as one of those Philistines who are only out to denegrate all that is being produced today in the sphere of music—doubtless with the most honest intentions! But it is necessary, when dealing with an art such as eurythmy, to raise it upon the foundations of what is really artistic, and to be able to speak about such things radically, too. It is impossible to do otherwise. Thus it is easy to see how eurythmy can work correctively upon musical taste.

You must forgive me if I now introduce something in the nature of an exercise; I have to do so in order to show how something can be built out of the fundamentals of art. Try first of all to become inwardly completely quiet, indifferent to sense impressions, as well as to any inward passions. Having achieved this state of indifference, sit down at the piano and play one of the middle notes (any note will do) and try while going up the scale to the octave really to experience the progression of notes. [15]

Having experienced this in peace and quiet, stand up and try to realize in eurythmy gestures what you have experienced. You will arrive at much, both in regard to what I have already mentioned and to those things about which I have still to speak. Endeavour, when attempting to reproduce in gesture what you have just played (single notes in an ascending progression) to bring into the eurythmy gestures (into the gestures for the triad, for instance) something similar to the gestures we have been discussing during these last few days. You will find it comparatively easy to feel a very strong connection between what you produce, feel and experience as gesture, and the notes as you play them successively on the piano.

Try striking a chord and try to reproduce in eurythmy the harmony of the notes. You will now discover that something within you does not want to go along with this. When striking a chord you are faced with the problem of having to carry out the step and movements of both arms simultaneously, as I indicated, let's say, for the movements for the major triad. You are impelled to do this, but it will certainly arouse in you a feeling of inner opposition. A certain tendency will become apparent in your soul to transform the chordal, harmonic element into the melodic element, to transform the notes sounding simultaneously into a progression. And you will only feel really satisfied when, as it were, you release the chord, when you actually lead it over into Melos, making three movements for the three notes, one after the other.

It may be plainly stated as a law that eurythmy actually compels us to release continually the harmonic element into Melos. This is the corrective element about which I now want to speak. When you feel this in the right way you will come to the conclusion that, drastic as it sounds, the chord is really a burial. The chord may be likened to a burial. The three notes which are played together, and which are thus dependent upon space and not upon time—these notes have died in the chord. They only live when they appear as melody. When you really feel this you will discover the actual musical element is only to be found in the melodic element, the effect of the notes living in time.

You will then realize how senseless it is to ask: ‘What do the notes express?’ Today people have gone so far in this direction that they try to make music represent the rippling of water, the sighing of the wind, the rustling of leaves, and all sorts of things. This, of course, is really apalling. Naturally, it is not my intention to campaign against this kind of thing, nor to detract from the pleasure anyone may take in it; I am only concerned that we correctly understand the matter out of the fundamentals. The notes, or progressions of notes, speak for themselves. They are indeed only there to speak for themselves, to express what the third says to the fifth, what the third says to the prime, or what the three of them say together when played in succession. Otherwise we find ourselves in the position of the distinguished European musician who once played a most complicated piece of many voices to an Arab. The Arab got into a terrible state of agitation, and said: ‘But why go so quickly? I should like to hear each song in its turn.’ He wanted each voice to be played separately, for he could not take in that the piece represents something quite other than a basically unmusical, noisy conglomeration of quite different things. [ 16]

I want to make clear to you the fact that in the musical element a real world is present, wherein we rediscover the impulses of the rest of the world.

Let us consider one fact. We die. The physical body remains, but it disintegrates. Why does it disintegrate? Why does it dissolve? The process of dissolution begins after death; up to that point the body does not disintegrate but remains intact. Why? Because previously we bore time within ourselves. From the moment when death occurs, the corpse lives only in space; it cannot participate in time. Because it can no longer participate in time, because it exists only in space and is subject to the laws of space, this fact makes it dead, this makes it fade away. We become a corpse because of the impossibility of bearing time within ourselves; we live, during earthly existence, because we are able to carry time within ourselves, to allow time to work within ourselves, because time is active in the material which extends in space. Melody is manifest in time. The chord is the corpse of melody. Melody dies in the chord.

As far as the understanding of music is concerned, our present age is in a sorry state. All these discussions about tone-colour in the overtones, and so on, are really only an attempt to make the single note into a kind of chord. People today have an innate tendency to find the harmonic element even in a single note. In reply to various questions as to how music ought to be developed, I have frequently answered that we must become aware of the melody in the single note; [ 17] in the single note we must become aware of the melody, not of the chord, but of the melody. One note conceals within itself a number of notes—every note at all events contains three. With the one note that you actually hear as sound, which is produced by an instrument and is actually audible, we have the present. Then there is another note within it, which is as if we recalled this second note. And there is a third note within it, which is as if we expected this third note. Every note really calls forth recollection and expectation as adjacent, melodic notes. This will come to be presented one day. [18] People will surely discover the possibility to deepen music by the single note becoming deepened into melody. Today people look for the chord in a single note and think about how this chord exists in the overtones. This, however, actually points to their materialistic conception of music.

Now the following question is unusual, but from the point of view of eurythmy it is fully justified: Where does the musical element really lie? Today there would be no doubt that the musical element lies in the notes, because such a terrific effort is required in the schools to put down these notes correctly, to arrange them in the right way. As you know, it all depends on mastering the notes. But the notes are not the music! Just as the human body is not the soul, so the notes are not the music. The interesting thing is that the music lies between the notes. We only need the notes in order that something may lie between them. The notes are necessary, of course, but the music lies between them. It is not the C nor the E which is essential, but what lies between the two. Such an element lying in-between, however, is only possible in the melodic element. In the chord it would be quite senseless. In harmony, such a lying in- between would be quite senseless. The transition from Melos to the harmonic element is really a stepwise transition from the musical to the unmusical realm. For through this the music is buried, through this the music is killed.

I could give you a somewhat peculiar definition of music. Naturally I should not want to give it in a music school, but I have to give it to eurythmists, for anyone really wishing to promote tone eurythmy has to understand these things. It is a negative definition, certainly, but nevertheless correct: What is the musical element? It is what you do not hear! [19] That which you hear is never musical. If you take the experience which exists in time, which lies between two notes of a melody, then you hear nothing, for it is only the notes themselves which are audible. What you inaudibly experience between the notes, that is music in reality, for that is the spiritual element of the matter, whereas the other is the sensory manifestation of it.

You see, this enables you in the most eminent sense to bring the human personality, the human personality as soul, into the musical element. [20] The more you are able to bring out that which cannot be heard, the more you use the audible as the vehicle for the inaudible, so much the more is the music permeated with the soul. To feel this in the musical element is precisely the task of the eurythmist. And this is why, in the gestures of eurythmy, in the manner we saw earlier (or as we have otherwise already seen them, or shall be showing them) with these gestures he or she should feel delight not in the position, but in the bringing about of the positions, that is, in the movement. In the whole extent of eurythmy, the essential thing is not in the making of poses, but in the movement.

You may never say (I have frequently emphasized this, but frequently see the opposite conception in practice), you may never say: This is an ee (stretched arm). For now it is an ee no longer. It is only an ee as long as it is being formed, as long as the arm is in movement; so long is it ee. Nothing in eurythmy ever retains its meaning once it has come into being. In eurythmy, the significance lies in the process of coming into being.

Consequently, the eurythmist has to pay great attention to the forming of the movement, directing the greatest care to that movement through which a form arises. And consideration must be taken, as soon as one form arises, to transform it as quickly as possible, to lead it over into the subsequent form. The eurythmist regards movement as his element, neither standing in, nor holding on to, the form.

Anyone sensitive to these things in eurythmy will especially feel the sort of things which we have already done, in the following way. Some piece of music has just finished; the piece is over and you stand in the last position until the curtain falls. (I have asked for this to be done in performances, but it must be felt too.) It is quite finished. The final position, the final figure has come to rest, and the curtain is drawn. What feeling should live here; what should we feel? That the eurythmist seizes up! We actually arrive at the annulling of the artistic, eurythmic activity. It is finished. We say, as it were, to the audience: [21] ‘Friends, we have now killed the performance so that you may come to yourselves and think about it a little.’ Standing still may certainly have this significance. That is why it is justified in relationship to the audience, but only in this relationship.

All this serves to show you how much it matters in every possible form to make a study of the human being in movement. There are three observations we can make about the human being. We know the human being exists in space, but that which is spatial in him does not belong to eurythmy. But what can manifest in space as movement; that is what belongs to eurythmy. And it is clear that the human being lives in space in a threefold manner.

Fig. 2

We have thus the human being extended from above downwards, and from below upwards. But we have also the human being extended in the directions right-left and front-back, back-front. The other directions of space may be related to these three directions, which are so clearly to be distinguished in the human being. [23]

When the human being carries musical experience over into eurythmy, he carries it into movement. And he has no choice in his movements but to enter, in some way or other, into these three different directions. He has to find some way of making use of these three directions if the musical element is to be carried into movement, for they represent him and [all] his possibilities of movement. In eurythmy [all] the human possibilities of movement should become apparent.

When you take the directions of up-down and down-up (you will have gathered this from the still relatively primitive tone eurythmy we have had hitherto), when you take the directions up-down and down-up (also taking into account what I have said about the major and the minor triads, and so on, and in connection with the foot and the head), then you will be able to feel: The height of the human being, the up-down and the down-up, corresponds to pitch. We have no other means of expressing pitch than the upwards and downwards movement of the arms, of the hands, and indeed, if you like, the upwards and downwards movement of the legs or head. When making pitch visible, we move in the vertical direction (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Now let us take right-left. This direction immediately carries us over into the gesture of movement. Where is it that the direction right-left makes itself especially apparent? The right-left is especially apparent when someone walks. Walking really is the bringing-into-movement of the right-left: right leg, left leg, right leg, left leg. And the direction right-left will remain lifeless just so long as you walk in life in a philistine manner; there will be no life in the right-left. But life is immediately introduced when we make some differentiation between the right-left, as nature does in that people usually write with the right hand and not with the left. A differentiation may also be shown simply by taking a strong step with the right leg, the left leg being drawn back, before placing it again. Everything that comes about in this way through the differentiation between right and left is connected with beat (see Fig. 3). Beat in music is carried over into eurythmic movement by means of the right-left.

There still remains the front-back. The point here is that the front- back is inwardly taken hold of, and in order to do so we must look at the human being a little more closely.

Now, you know, the front-back is not merely, let's say, as if some signpost is written with ‘front’ on the one side and ‘back’ on the other. The essential element of the front-back is that we see in front of us, but do not see behind us. Behind us is a world of darkness, in fact, of which we have scarcely an inkling, whereas in front of us lies the whole visible world opening out. And in our movement, we can turn the ‘front’ to the whole visible world, and then we are dealing with that which is in front. And when we turn to this ‘front’, it means that we make the movement short. We are right in the midst of the world. We make the movement short.

When we are not able to enter this world, when we are held back, stuck, as it were, to the darkness lying behind us and unable to get out of it, we make the movement long. And so we may simply differentiate the relationship between front and back by means of ‘short-long’. We have then u—or—u, iambus and trochee (see rhythm in Fig. 3). That means, we have rhythm; front-back confers the rhythm.

Now we possess three of the musical elements, and these may be used in your musical forms. If I may thus express it: you step the beat, you express the rhythm by means of quick-slow, and you express the actual musical element, Melos, leading the movements up or down accordingly. The entire human being is engaged in eurythmy by means of beat, rhythm and Melos.

Fundamentally speaking, music is the human being. And indeed it is from music that we may rightly learn how to free ourselves from matter. For if music were to become materialistic, it would actually be lying: it is not ‘there’ Every other form of matter is present in the world and is insistent. But musical sounds originally were not to be found in the material world. [8] We have to devise a means of producing them; they must first be made. The soul element, which lies between the notes, this lives in the human being. But today, because the world has become so unmusical, people are scarcely aware of it.

This will once again be taken into account when people realize that the note corresponds to the calm posture of the eurythmist. Let us now look at the major triad. (This was demonstrated.) Now you are no longer engaged in eurythmy, for eurythmy lies in the process of arriving at this position. The major triad lies in the going forwards, in the tending-towards, the coming-into-being, not in the accomplished fact. But the note as such corresponds to the completed posture. That means, the very moment a note is completed, the musical element ceases.

In this connection the following is of special interest: We have to be able to feel a relationship between the musical element and speech. If you endeavour in your listening to draw out the scale from the main vowels, most interesting things result:

C may be said to correspond to u (‘oo’ )
D to o (‘o’)
E to a (‘ah’ )
F to ö (‘ir’) (English equivalent as in: birth)
G to e (‘a’)
A to ü (‘eu’) (English equivalent as in: feud)
B to i (‘ee’)

This is the approximate correspondence between the scale and the main vowels, purely according to their sound. [24]

Now I would like you to make an oo with the legs. That is the keynote, as you all know. And now try to make the movement of a major or minor triad in the way we have already discussed, marking the third with its completing fifth. If you relate the movements and push them somewhat across, the fifth will be expressed in the movement of the a; it will become an a of its own accord.

After this try to make an ah; and now try most strongly to make a third, not with one hand as we otherwise do, but do the movement for the third with both arms, after imagining the keynote. Then you will find yourself in the eurythmy movement for the sound ah, with the third.

You see something very striking from this. If we listen very attentively it is almost possible to hear approximately this correspondence between the main vowels and the scale; if the sounds are articulated properly they do approximate to the scale. The movements of eurythmy bring this about of themselves. These movements rendering the formations of the musical sounds, also indicate those of the formations for the sounds of speech. This means that we cannot do otherwise in eurythmy than, when doing the right movements, to introduce the right conditions between the musical sounds and the sounds of speech, too.

We have never considered this other aspect of the movements that we have been studying all these years from the point of view of the sounds of speech and their formation; now we must try to realize them in their relationship to the form of the musical sounds. We have to become clear about the approximate correspondence between the scale and the formation of the sounds of speech. And when we compare the formation of the musical sounds with those for the sounds of speech, we find that their resemblance corresponds to the same degree as that between the musical sounds and the speech sounds as such. Of course, it's not the same; there is simply a resemblance. Neither in eurythmy are the two identical.

You see from this how naturally what we call eurythmy arises out of the very essence of speech on the one hand, and of the musical element on the other. That is quite plainly to be seen. And when you have entered into these things, you will be able to feel in no other way than: A musical sound or sound of speech can have only one gesture; it cannot be expressed in a variety of ways.

Let us continue tomorrow.

As you will have gathered from yesterday's lecture, a proper presentation of eurythmy has to take its start from Melos, from the melodic element, or we could also say, from the motif or phrase. [25] It is the progression of the motif, the musical motif in time, which indicates the path which eurythmy must take on the basis of the musical element.

Let us concentrate on this today. Here again you will see how necessary it is to pay special attention to the actual musical element. Now, the musical element makes sense in the progression of the motifs—that is, the musical element as such, not as it manifests in expression. And this sense has absolutely to be brought out in a presentation of eurythmy. The question, then, is how the progression of a musical phrase must be treated in eurythmy.

Usually in music itself, even when listening.to it, people fail to observe the musical sense progressing within the motif itself You all know that a motif frequently includes the bar line [American: bar]; indeed this is generally the case. The bar, the change of bar that is, interrupts the motif And when passing from one completed motif to the following formation you often feel that something like a ‘dead interval’ lies between them (musicians frequently even use this expression). It is further said that such a dead interval corresponds to the progression from the end of one spoken word to the beginning of the next. The matter is frequently regarded in this way. But this very comparison, as I said yesterday, demonstrates that people have no feeling for the fact that the true musical element actually is that which is inaudible. When the dead interval is spoken about, and is compared with what lies between two spoken words, the comparison is not valid. Anyone wishing to speak out of an understanding of art really should not speak of the ‘dead interval’ between two words, but on the contrary should place the greatest value upon the way the transition proceeds from one word to another.

Just think that in speech, in the treatment of speech, we can observe the following fundamental difference between good and bad treatment. You can treat each word separately, but this is quite different from a clear feeling that one word ends in a specific way and the next begins in a specific way. And you look for meaning between what is apparent to the senses (that is to say, between the end of one word and the beginning of the next), where the spirit lies, which you are endeavouring to express. The spirit also lies between the words. Furthermore, the sounds we hear in words are only the sensory impression; when we speak, too, the spirit lies in the inaudible realm. It is sad that people today have so little feeling for the inaudible realm, and are no longer able to listen between the words. A lecture on spiritual science can never be understood when you follow merely the actual words; you have to listen between the words, even listen into the words, discovering in the words what lies behind them. In this case words at all times are an aid to express what cannot be heard.

The question, then, is to find some means of differentiating in eurythmic movement the position of a bar line in a motif, and the transition from one motif to the next. This difference may be shown by holding the movement at the bar line, so that whoever carries the movement does it, so to speak, within himself, wherever possible indicating through the position of the arms and hands that he is pushed together, and especially in moving a form by contracting the movement of the form into himself—in other words, becoming stuck whilst in the form. Conversely, in the transition from one motif-metamorphosis to the next, we are dealing with a swinging-over (Schwung) from the one metamorphosed motif to the other. We swing in a spirited manner from one metamorphosed motif to the next; in the actual bodily movement itself we have a kind of upward swing. And where the bar line appears within a motif we aim for a rigidly upright posture.

Try to practise this until it becomes a matter of course when moving. This will be of great significance. It would be quite good to make sure that the matter is clear. Let us take the following to clarify this. (It is important to make a beginning with the very simplest of examples, and it is no matter if this simplicity is somewhat home-baked.)

Here, then, we will select as simple a phrase as possible to make clear to ourselves the real significance of what I have been speaking about. The phrase starts with a G and progresses to B, returns to G, progresses to F#, and so on. Thus we have the first motif, then the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth, and the question is: How should this progression of motifs be carried out in eurythmy? In the first motif we hold ourselves back, in the second we boldly swing onwards to the next motif: the curve is first up, then down, and between we have the bar lines. The phrase continues (see Fig. 4) with holding ourselves back, boldly swinging onwards, holding ourselves back.

Fig. 4

Thus, if I draw the whole thing: up, down, up, down, up, down—we always find the bar line in between, and in the fifth and sixth motifs, two bar lines each. The progression is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight restraining-ourselves, and one, two, three, four, five swinging-onwards. Try to be quite upright, but go together with the whole movement; to be upright at the bar line and boldly swinging onwards at the transition from one motif to its following metamorphosis. The bar line must be strongly indicated by means of a strong holding-on to yourself. This may never take place simultaneously with the notes, however, but must always occur between them.

This, hopefully, is clearly understandable. Always show the bar line, and its holding-on movement, very distinctly. This, of course, is something I ask you to ponder about, what it means for the various forms of phrasing. I wanted to show you this with as simple an example as possible. You see, the presentation of eurythmy reveals that the melody receives the actual spirit and carries it on. Fundamentally speaking, everything else does not add the spirit of the musical element, being at all events a more or less illustrative element. But in order to gain a real conviction of this for yourselves, I ask you to try first and foremost to seek the whole human being in the musical element. The eurythmist is really obliged to study the way in which the human being streams out, as it were, into the musical element.

It is a fact that when we stand with our physical form, whether slim or short, fat or thin (that part of us which is actually visible), this is really the very least part of us. It even remains, in fact, for a short period after we have gone through the portal of death. But yet how much of the human being is present in the corpse? When we look at the human being as he stands before us in the physical world it is only the corpse, or hardly more than the corpse, that may be seen. Now in music, the physical form of man corresponds to what may be called the least significant of the musical elements; it represents the beat. It is therefore quite natural that with the bar line there should be an emphasis of the physical form, a holding-on to yourself. [26]

When you pass over to rhythm, presenting the ‘short-long’, you already go beyond what is represented by the human bodily form. In rhythm you already show a very considerable part of the life of your soul. With beat in eurythmy, you always feel that a person's heaviness is the determining factor in its expression. When the beat is shown in eurythmy, you always feel (as you just saw from these attempts) that it becomes evident how heavy a person is. A heavier person will be able to mark the beat in eurythmy better than a lighter person. This is less apparent in the case of rhythm. Rhythm brings the human being into movement. And here already it is quite easy to differentiate whether the movement has artistic taste or is tasteless, whether the movement is permeated with soul: slow—quick, slow—quick. You see, here the etheric element in the human being makes its appearance. It is the etheric human being which is revealed in rhythm.

If, however, we turn our attention to melody, which conveys the actual spirit in the musical element, then the astral being of man is revealed. When you are active in the musical element the whole human being, with the exception of the ego, is brought into play. It is really true to say: ‘As physical human being I mark the beat; as etheric human being, the rhythm; as astral human being I am the evolver of Melos: it is thus that I appear before the world.’ And, you see, the moment when you pass over from the musical realm to that of speech, the ego steps in. Naturally, speech is then transmitted into the astral element and even into the etheric, but its original impulse lies in the ego. [27]

At the end of yesterday's lecture I indicated the hidden parallel between the scale and the vowels, and we even saw how the musical element enters eurythmically into the vowel element. Now we must also be clear about the fact that in singing the realm of the pure musical element is already exceeded. The pure and real musical element is expressed in the astral make-up of the human being. This is why singing becomes more essentially musical in proportion to the degree in which it holds to what is purely musical—the more it follows Melos. And indeed this following of Melos will be the most sympathetic in singing.

Passing from singing to speech (to declamation and recitation), we find marked disharmony between Melos and something that has also to be borne in mind by the reciter, namely the sense of the words. It ought to be emphasized that the musical element has to be active in recitation and declamation, but an inner conflict will always exist, a conflict which the singer can only solve in the musical element. The more musical a singer, the more he will enter into the sphere of the astral, into Melos, thus solving for himself the problem of how to remain musical in singing. Consequently it requires greater skill to remain musical in singing than for instance it is to remain musical in instrumental music.

But now let us consider the following. I think everyone must feel that a certain poem of Goethe's produces an extraordinarily musical effect. I refer to the poem:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch. [28]

Let us take the principal words from this poem: Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh: Gipfeln, ist Ruh, Wipfeln, Hauch, auch, warte, balde.

If you enter into this poem with your feeling, you will find that what is appealing and musical (for it is extraordinarily appealing and musical) lies in the use of the words Gipfel, Wipfel, ist Ruh, Hauch, auch, warte, balde. It is in these words that the actual musical element lies. Now I ask you, what have we got here? Let us compare this with what I told you yesterday of the correspondence of the vowel sounds, with the scale. I always write the scale thus (naturally any note can be written on a C [i.e. tonic]) but I write C in the usual way, as the note from which the scale starts. Of course, the matter is not dependent on this way of writing it, but when you write in the way I did yesterday, then we have in the word Gipfel B G, BAG—a descending third. It has the effect of a minor third (Moll-Terz). It is the mirror image of a third. And it is the repetition of this mirrored third in Wipfel and Gipfel which initially renders this wonderfully subtle musical effect.

Going further, we have ist Ruh. In ist Ruh, according to the model I described yesterday, we first have a B, and the u [‘oo’] represents C: B C. We find the seventh relating back to the prime, and in this relationship we have an example of everything I said both yesterday and the day before. When the human being enters into the seventh he goes out of himself. There is a relating back when he returns from the seventh to the keynote; he regains himself, as it were. You can feel this in ist Ruh, because it is inherent in the words.

Now it is especially interesting that in balde and warte we have E G—once more a kind of third, but the other third which moves in the opposite direction; it is the mirror image of the previous third, a kind of major third (Dur-Terz). Consequently we have a marvellous correspondance here: thirds which relate to each other as mirror images and the descending seventh chord, seventh harmony, in which the human being is given back to himself.

And now we will go further. Hauch and auch are words in which the diphthong makes its appearance. What are diphthongs? Where may we look for them in music? Here, you see, we may reverse our usual process. We have often found a transition from music to speech, and now we will pass over from speech into the diphthong element, into the musical element. If you possess an ear for such things, applying the principle about which I have often spoken, you will ask: Where does the essence of the diphthong lie? - of ei, for instance, or au? Does it lie in the e or the i, in the a or the u?[1] No, it lies between them. The actual sounds ei, au, are uttered (Ausgesprochene), but the ‘essence’ (Ausgegeisterte, ‘spirited out’) of the diphthong lies between them, and for this reason we must look in the diphthong not for notes, but for intervals. Diphthongs are always intervals. And the interesting thing about Goethe's poem is that Hauch (au, that is to say) is truly the interval of the third. You only need call to mind yesterday's model Wipfel—B G, ist Ruh—B C, Gipfel—B G, Hauch—third, auch—third, warte—E G, balde—E G. In this way Goethe not only makes use of clear thirds and their mirror images, but in order to employ every possibility in this matter, he adds true intervals of the third in the diphthongs. Here you have what matters.

When someone reads or recites this poem of Goethes, it does not matter that he should think it contains intervals of the third and even the seventh. Of course he does not think about it! Nevertheless, when the poem is rightly felt, something of this will be expressed by the reciter. It will find its way through. But what have we here? What is it that is almost as spiritual as the meaningful utterance of the ego, and which yet remains unknown? It is the astral element. And so behind the meaning of the poem there is a deeper, unconscious meaning for the human being, which is the musical meaning to be found in the astral element; this is especially effective in this poem. In this poem Goethe has transferred the effect of the poem, as far as this is possible, from the ego back into the astral realm.

Now you will best express this poem in eurythmy when you actually manage to emphasize the separate sounds less, but rather to indicate them wherever possible, without finishing them. Thus the i (‘ee’) in Wipfel and Gipfel is not quite finished, but left hovering in the air. This whole poem is most beautifully expressed, both eurythmically and musically, when the movements for the vowels are left hovering, and the eurythmist pulls back before completing them.

These are the things I have in mind when I say that eurythmy should be studied with feeling. Feeling should not be allowed to disappear while you are engaged in eurythmy, but rather cultivated. For the onlooker can clearly differentiate (he is not aware of this, for it does not reach his consciousness, but unconsciously the onlooker can tell quite clearly) whether a eurythmist automatically goes through the motions in eurythmy, or whether feeling is poured into the forms he or she creates. And two eurythmists, one of whom is an intellectual, only presenting the meaning of what has been learned, whereas the other feels through everything down to the details of curved or stretched arm movements, feeling through the finger movements—two such eurythmists will really be as different as the virtuoso is from the artist. A person can know perfectly well how to be a virtuoso, but is not therefore an artist. These things, when brought to full consciousness, will be apparent in the beauty of your eurythmic movements. Consequently it should not be a matter of indifference whether or not you know the relationship that exists between a eurythmic presentation of music and a eurythmic presentation of recitation. Through a knowledge derived from feeling- experience you will assume the attitude which must be embraced if eurythmy is increasingly to develop into a real art.

Just consider how the sense of the words actually destroys melody. It might be said that the necessity of attending to the meaning of the words entails a certain fear lest the melody be destroyed. The result is that speech does violence, as it were, to the musical element. These words are naturally somewhat drastic, but speech does do violence to the musical element. Must this be so? Can it be confirmed anywhere in the world?

Yes, how this is confirmed in the world may be seen from the following: Speech consists, on the one hand, of the vowel sounds, which mainly serve to express what lives within. In the vowel sounds, as we have seen, it is easy to see that the musical element leaves its mark, whereas in the consonants this is very difficult to find. But you also know how often I have emphasized the fact that the vowels have been wrested from man's inner being. They are the direct expression of feeling, of the inner essence of the soul; wonder, amazement, shrinking back in fear, holding yourself in relation to the outer world, self- assertion, giving way, loving embrace—all this is clearly expressed in the vowels.

The consonants are entirely adapted to the outer world. If you study a consonant you will find that it always imitates some thing or process existing in the outer world. When someone speaks i [‘ee’], you can feel quite definitely that here someone asserts himself. Certain German dialects even use i instead of ich, and here the human being feels his own being the strongest, as I know, for until my fourteenth or fifteenth year I myself spoke in dialect: ‘Na, nit du, i!’ [‘No, not you, me!’]; I know how one's own being asserts itself when one says i [‘ee’]. When speaking this sound i, you first jump into the air and then you stand on the ground. This is what has to be felt.

Now for the consonants—let us take l—you can picture the sound, but i has to be heard; ah has also to be heard. At most they may be pictured astrally. But you can quite well picture l or r. L—if someone creeps along, you straightaway have l. The r. someone skips while running; you have r, which is a process. An ordinary wheel creeps along, it l’s, so to speak, but a cog-wheel r’s along! You can immediately picture it. If you have ever noticed a stake being driven into the ground with a hammer, you cannot picture anything else but a t; it is a t. An external process is a consonant. It is always an external process. Thus the consonantal formations of speech plainly point to the world outside. The vowels fit themselves into the consonants.

You know, of course, that in [certain] languages the consonants are interchangeable with the vowels. Every consonant has something of the vowel about it, and every vowel something of the consonant. We need only remember that in some languages the l becomes i; a consonant becomes a vowel. In certain German dialects, for instance, the final l is always pronounced i. When speaking dialect ‘Dörfl’ is always pronounced ‘Dörfi’, [approximately, ‘Dirfee’]. The sound is i, and the l is very softly indicated in it; it is the i which is really pronounced.

But this also brings the vowel sounds towards the outside, towards the outer world. Speech is something which comes into contact with the outer world; in a certain sense it may be said to be an image of the outer world.

This is why speech does violence to the musical element, and why great skill is necessary if we are to retrieve the musical element in recitation. Great skill is necessary in order to strive back to the musical element, and we will only find the melodic element in speech if the musical element in the poet comes to meet us; indeed rhythm and beat have to be taken into account when reciting any passage of poetic language. If we neglect this, we sin against rhythm and beat (which in the musical realm itself do tend, of course, more towards the outside), and this results in incorrect recitation. The nearer you approach the musical element itself, the more you enter into Melos. Melos is the musical element.

When you examine everything I have just said, you will find that in the world outside the human being, the musical element is only present to a limited degree. By proceeding from within outwards, passing from musical experience to the experience of speech, we ourselves retreat ever further from the realm of music. Why do we retreat ever further? Because speech has to lean on external nature. But external nature can only be laid hold of by speech when an element is introduced into speech which is really foreign. For nature scorns beat, rhythm, and indeed our melodic speech. And a purely naturalistic materialist deems poetic speech of any sort, that is, artistic speech, affected and sentimental.

I once knew a fellow student, for example, who regarded himself as highly gifted. This was at the time of certain lectures held by Schröer, of which I wrote in The Course of My Life. [29] The classes took the form of practical exercises in lecturing and essay-writing. This student arrived one day, saying that he was prepared with subject-matter of the very greatest, indeed world-shaking, importance. He went on to tell us what these world-shaking ideas were. They amounted to the following: All metrical, poetic language is fundamentally wrong. People write in iambic, trochaic rhythms; they write in rhyme. This, however, is entirely wrong, for it is not natural but artificial. It must all be abolished from poetry. Such was the discovery he had made. He declared that a new poetry must make its appearance—without rhythm, without iambus or trochee, and without rhyme. Later on I even experienced that such poetry is actually written. At that time my fellow student only put it forward as theory. We thrashed him so thoroughly that he never held his lecture!

You will see from all this that it is perfectly obvious that what comes from nature does not form the basis of the musical element, for the musical element itself is a creation of the human being. And if we examine the inner nature of music and speech, we shall realize why it is that the musical element is so far removed from anything naturalistic. It is the self-creating force in the human being, and imitating nature is an aberration of the musical path.

As I said before, I do not mean to cast aspersions on the imitation of ‘rustling forests’, soughing winds, bubbling springs, ‘a brook in March’, [30] and so on. It is far from my intention to criticize these things in any way; but there does lie behind them the urge to pass out of the actual musical element, to enrich music by the introduction of something unmusical. In certain circumstances the result may be very agreeable, for it is possible to enlarge the sphere of every art in every direction, but because eurythmy demands that music be taken still more musically than it already is, terrible difficulties will arise if attempts are made to express in the right way in eurythmy something that is not purely musical.

Yet another thing can be understood from this, and that is the beneficial effect of tone eurythmy therapy; for this must gradually be developed side by side with usual tone eurythmy. Why is this? Fundamentally speaking, a large number of illnesses are caused by the fact that people have an inward tendency to turn into nature in some way, instead of remaining human. We always turn into a piece of nature when we are ill. Now we are human beings through the very fact that we inwardly do not tolerate natural processes to remain as they are, but instantly subject them to an inner transformation; we instantly make them inwardly human. There is no process in the human being (with the exception of the dissolving of salt, the metamorphosis of salt) [31] which is not a transformation of some process of nature. We become ill when we are powerless against natural processes in this inner transformation, if we cannot metamorphose them (a process they have to undergo within the human being), and when they still run their course as natural processes. If in any part of the human organism a natural process preponderates over the human, and we then make the person practise tone eurythmy, this is a therapeutic factor; for by this means we lead the part of the body in question away from nature and back into the human realm. When we let someone do tone eurvthmy because nature in him is too strong, it is as though we said to the natural process in the organ: ‘Out you go!’—for these movements are solely human and have nothing of nature about them. The musical element belongs only to man, not to nature. [32]

In earlier times the musical element itself was recognized as a means of healing, and music in such times did bring about many cures. But because the musical element comes especially to the fore in eurythmy, so the therapeutic forces of the musical element must also come to the fore with an efficient therapy. This is what I wanted to tell you today. Tomorrow at the same time we shall continue.

Notes:

1. For pronunciation of German vowels, see p. xiv. (Translator's note.)

You will have seen that it is quite possible for a single individual to express in eurythmy the essence of the musical element as musical element. We have tried to show how, for instance, the triad and the progression of the phrase may be mastered by a single person.

But the eurythmical expression of the musical element by a single person, from a certain point of view, is necessarily rather primitive, and is somewhat meagre when presented on the stage—although most beautiful and impressive performances can be given by a solo eurythmist. It is to be hoped that these solo performances will be valued, for they are a means whereby the actual essence of musical eurythmy may be revealed. In spite of this, it cannot be denied that a musical impression can also be given by means of the concerted working of a number of people, in other words by means of choral eurythmy. The point, however, is that we must not merely take these things schematically, but also enter somewhat into the quality of working together in artistic presentation.

I have emphasized what doing eurythmy entails: it is work to raise (heraufarbeiten) the physical human being (which really only ‘sounds’ in beat) to the etheric and the astral human being [see Appendix 2, final quotations]. And if we seek for Melos as such in the astral organization of the human being (and we seek for speech in the ego-organization), then we can perceive that which forms the fundamental basis of musical eurythmy. What you experience as astral human being usually remains stuck in a state of repose. But when you proceed a step further and present to the world that which otherwise remains in repose in the astral human being, you show, as it were, your spirit and soul nature. And it is this power of making things manifest which constitutes the most predominant element of all artistic endeavour.

At this point I will take the opportunity of alluding to a very, very remarkable contemporary phenomenon. My reason for doing so is, that if as eurythmists you can awaken a feeling for it, it would do much to help you in the actual artistic development of eurythmy.

During this course of lectures on tone eurythmy, I have often found myself thinking of a very significant Austrian musician of the present day. This musician, who was born in Wiener-Neustadt, opposes all modern music with extraordinary vehemence, denouncing it as ‘bad European music’. This in itself is an interesting phenomenon, and should be of special interest to eurythmists. Hauer [33] began to study music at a very early age, between his fifth and eighth to ninth years, by playing the zither, and he progressed far, coming to the view that it does not take much to acquire all that we presently call music. We can feel in Hauer's whole manner of expression that in a certain respect he is inwardly extraordinarily honest. On the one hand, he came to the conclusion that what goes by the name of music today is exceptionally easily come by, but, on the other hand, that precisely the musical element is missing, that we are led away from the musical realm. Indeed, very much of what I have to say about the eurythmic presentation of the musical realm can be found in Hauer's writings, although he expresses it in a stark and radical way. He speaks, for example, about atonal music.

I have said that the actual musical element, the spiritual element in music, lies between the notes, in the intervals, constituting that which we do not hear. In speaking about atonal music Hauer touches on something that is very significant and true. He is of the opinion that the production of a note or chord is nothing more than an appeal to the emotions or the senses—merely a means to express externally the inaudible Melos, which presents the inmost life of the human soul.

Now there is something so decadent and chaotic in the culture and civilization of the present day, especially where the arts are concerned, that your heart may well warm towards anyone who, with a certain instinctive flair, realizes that the music of today [1924] is not really music, but simply noise, and perceives that on which the musical element depends. It is, moreover, not difficult to understand that a man who has developed by himself out of all this can be absolutely furious with all European art. And this is true of Hauer. European art is absolutely repugnant to him.

All this is very interesting, and I have long been interested in this man Hauer. At the time when I was trying to lead over the musical element into eurythmy, I had to seek for some things that appear in Hauer, and I had to say to myself ‘It is certain that you could never take Hauer's atonal Melos as a basis for the gestures of eurythmy.’ The movements of eurythmy could not be found in this way. I had to ask myself: ‘Why is this so? Why is it not possible to come to eurythmic movements in this way, when Hauer undoubtedly feels the movement of Melos with such inwardness, and sees so clearly what is essential in the musical realm?’ In the case of Hauer, the explanation is simple. Hauer hates that civilization which marks the beginning of European culture—a civilization which the rest of humanity admires tremendously. He hates the civilization of Greece. He is a man who hates to excess the civilization of Greece.

Now it is interesting for once to come across a man who honestly and truly hates Greek civilization. There are any number of people who venerate it insincerely, by which I do not mean to imply that there are not others who venerate it with sincerity. To honour Sophocles and Aeschylus is a matter of course today, whereas to find anyone abusing Sophocles and Aeschylus as destroyers of art is an interesting phenomenon, and one which should not be overlooked. Hauer's view of the Greeks is based on the fact that, in his opinion, they brought everything that is related to art into the theatre, thus pouring everything that is audible into visibility: Now, after all, that is quite true. The question is whether we can also love the visible realm. If we are to find our way to eurythmy, we must of course be able to love what is visible. If we do not love the visible realm, honestly do not love it, preferring to remain in the audible realm, to stop with Melos, then we shall never be able to find any satisfaction in Greek culture, where everything was transferred into the sphere of what can be seen and understood.

Now among the orientals there were inspired teachers who truly wanted to listen to the audible realm. Oriental architecture was really music in space; it has within it a great deal of eurythmy. You actually see Melos pouring itself into movement. Europe possesses very little understanding for a musical architecture, as has been built with the Goetheanum here in Dornach, for the Goetheanum was, in a sense, a revolt against Greek architecture. There was very little suggestion of Greek architecture about it; but the Goetheanum was musical, it was eurythmic. [34]

Now, you see, Hauer actually hates speech, too, because speech does not stop with Melos, but (as I have already shown) does violence to it, pushing it into the outer world. For from the moment we utter sounds (and in so doing give ourselves up to what is demanded of us by the meaning of the sounds), from that moment onwards we become in a certain sense unmusical. The speaking of sounds is an art that in fact can only indicate a sounding of Melos. Melos may thus peep through, but it cannot be fully developed. You cannot form words according to the arrangement I proposed, as if the vowel sounds contained in them were really thirds or other intervals. You cannot do this, for the world does not permit it.

When (let us say) you feel wonder, an ah, and just after experiencing this sound you experience some feeling (let's say) which lies in the interval of the third compared to the former feeling, the world does not allow you to feel it. It's not possible, wouldn't you agree?—Life continually destroys that which is musical. Nature too is unmusical, and it is not from nature that we are able to derive that which is musical.

This destruction of what is musical extends to recitation and declamation. If there were only vowel sounds in speech, there would be no recitation or declamation, for the human being would always be yielding up his inner being (through pronouncing the vowels) to the outer world. There would be no declamation or recitation, for we would have to go along with the experiences of the world, and it would not be possible to conserve the musical element. That is why we have the consonants. The consonants are, as it were, the apology for the vowels. Man apologises to himself for the fact that, in the vowel sounds, he follows his own experiences. And when he fits in the consonants between the vowels, it is an apology for having become so foreign to himself. When you make the sound a follow an ah, forming thus either warte or balde (I have already spoken about these things) you have at the same time, in the consonants fitting themselves in between the ah and the a, an apology for the succession of the vowels.

In the case of that particular poem by Goethe, however, the vowels really make a musical effect, and consequently this apology of the consonants is not so much needed. When listening to this poem, a subtle, musical impression would be received if the speaker could achieve a swallowing of the consonants as much as possible, so that only the vowels were audible, with the consonants merely indicated.

Many other poems, however, really need the consonants. It may be said that the less musical a poem is, the more careful you must be to make the right use of the consonantal instrument (palate, mouth, lips, teeth, and so on). Then, in recitation and declamation, we have the apology for the offence committed by the vowels.

This will demonstrate that with the vowel sounds, which are an externalization of what is inward, the human being places a kind of caricature into the world. He is no longer himself. The human being is himself as long as he remains musical. When he becomes a vowel sound, he places a caricature in the world. With the consonants he once again recasts this caricature into the human form, and is then outside. He lays hold of an image of himself This corresponds to the vowel when framed by the consonants. In music we go more and more inwards. In speech we go further and further outwards. It is infinitely important for eurythmists to feel and experience these things, to develop a rounding-off of the artistic process, which is more than simply making or copying movements.

Taking this as your starting-point you will also be able to feel how choral eurythmy can be effective. In choral eurythmy we are dealing with a number of people. Let us first take the musical case: We have a metamorphosis of the motif, or phrase. We might express this metamorphosis of motifs in choral form by somehow grouping people together—three, let us say. We will let the first person present the first motif in eurythmy by moving in the form to the place of the second person, who will now take over the second metamorphosis of the motif. The first person remains standing. The second person moves on, passing the next metamorphosis of the motif over to the third person, who now continues the form to the place of the first (see Fig. 5). A kind of round dance can be brought about in this way.

Fig. 5

It is only necessary in such a case for those who remain to continue to carry out the corresponding motifs while standing. In this simple way (where one person develops the motifs by moving, while the others retain their original motifs in standing), we have introduced a new variation into the motifs by means of eurythmy. By means of the motif which is in motion and the motif which is formed, in eurythmy we are able to introduee into the musical realm something which could never be expressed by the pure musical element, for in the pure musical element the previous chord or motif can no longer be retained after the new one has begun to sound.

Only think how often I have observed that, in the spiritual world, the past remains. In this development of the motifs through the chorus, the past remains (becomes engraved, so to speak, hardened), through the fact that the bearer of the motif in question carries out the movements while standing. This is one way.

Another variation appears when we have chords in the progressions of the motif. Here you can arrange the chorus in such a way that the chord is carried out by several people, and the motif is carried over to another group of people. In this way, one group expresses the harmonic element, and the harmonic development is then expressed by letting the harmony flow over from one group to another. Here we reach something very significant and totally different in its effect. When the progression of the motif is expressed in movement (the chord can also be represented by a single person, and the progression of the motif can also be expressed in movement by an individual), the space in which the movement occurs, and all the metamorphoses and transformations of the music, are filled out by the physical human being.

When making use of a chorus, however (we will suppose that you have one group of three people, and three more, and a further three, each carrying the progression of the motif from one group to the next), the element of visibility ceases to be [paramount], for when the motif is passed from one group to the next an invisible element wends its way through this choral dance. Here we approach very near to making this invisible element musical, very near especially to atonal music. Thus, by transferring to a chorus, the whole matter takes on quite a different aspect [from a solo performance]. In this way the aspect of the musical element which is becoming progressively unmusical, may be made musical once again by means of eurythmy, because movement makes it possible to appeal to that which is invisible. Thus, in this direction too, we shall possibly find that tone eurythmy is able to exert a corrective influence upon the musical element.

Now in the continuation of a motif everything will naturally depend upon the movement, but when the chord is being represented by a group, the relative positions of the people are of importance. The people in question (even when their group is moving) must endeavour to retain their relative positions. Your feelings will have to tell you this. Let us now suppose that we have to represent a triad. You can't place yourselves one behind the other (left of the diagram). You can and have to feel that you place yourselves in such a way that the first person stands here, the second here and the third in the middle (see Fig. 6).

Fig. 6

Then, when the lowest note is taken by the first person, the next highest note by the second person, and the third note (if you wish, the fifth) by the third person, then you can tell by looking at it that the right thing has happened. The motif, when brought into movement, is carried over to the next group of people. And when the whole chorus is moving, each individual must endeavour to retain the right position in relationship to the others, so the whole design of the form (which is determinded by the relative positions of the people) may be expressed through this.

If we have a combination of two notes, the people can only be placed in this way:

Fig. 7

We can feel that this is incomplete.

But now for the four-note discord. When you consider the artistic effect of placing three people as we did for the triad, and observe the complete grouping (which really does make the triad stand before us), then you will say to yourself: Where shall I put the fourth person? Whoever has artistic feeling will not find a place for a fourth person. Indeed no such place can be found. The fourth person can only be provided for by letting him or her move around the third person. There is no other way of doing it. You come to this by direct intuition. So now you already have an indication for the discord in the grouping. The group, the fixed configuration, can only express concords. The moment a discord enters, movement must be introduced into the grouping.

When you introduce movement into the grouping, you bring a challenge, and you can no longer remain still. The movement made by the fourth person (a movement necessary to the progression, to the resolution of the discord) is disclosed by its own nature.

Fig. 8

You see, we have to look at things in this way if we are to gain insight into the gestures as the essential matter. Having gained this insight, you will say to yourselves: ‘What we do is the outcome of an intrinsic necessity.’ This is no infringement of freedom, although it does not open the door for purely arbitrary ideas. What always remains is the freedom to carry out the movements beautifully.

Choral eurythmy may be developed from the usual eurythmy which the individual presents. In particular, however, the following can be done. Let us suppose that in some piece of music we have the tonic, the dominant and the subdominant. To present this we take three groups of people and place the tonic with the first group, the dominant with the second group and the subdominant with the third, making those presenting the tonic have larger movements, whereas those presenting the dominant and subdominant make smaller ones. Now try to imagine how this would look. The frequent recurrence of the tonic is shown by the larger forms. The tonic is given prominence by the larger movements. It follows that the eurythmist who is moving these larger forms will quite naturally make larger gestures too, prompted by his or her feeling. The tonic, which recurs time and again, also recurs in the eurythmy forms. If these things are well practised in the way that has been explained, you will find that the character of each individual key [35] will be revealed, for you will be obliged to make the corresponding movements in the transitions.

The difference between major and minor keys appears very clearly with this interplay between the different groups [see Steiner's lecture notes, p. 24]. And when, in addition, you take into consideration the fact that every time a sound goes higher there should be the feeling that the eurythmist has to approach nearer to the audience, whereas when the sound goes lower the eurythmist has to move more towards the back of the stage—when all this is added you will have the whole musical element in a visual image.

There is still another point which belongs to this, that when a group comes to high notes, there must be a feeling that the movement has to be made more pointed, whereas when it is a question of lower notes, then it has to become rounder. Thus it may be said that a movement carried out with this gesture is lower, and a movement with this gesture is higher.

Fig. 9

You will say: ‘These things present us with a great deal to learn, for in actual practice they are very complicated.’ Quite true! But they are no more complicated than learning to play the piano, or learning to sing.

I have indicated how the transition can be made from solo eurythmy to choral eurythmy. Real difficulties only make their appearance when we come to polyphonic music, but we shall speak about this tomorrow. In movement the whole affair will become even more disjointed than in the musical element as such. When we have a piece with many voices, therefore, we also have to make use of different people, and the quality of belonging together can only be achieved by means of a certain relationship in the form.

At this point I should like to develop a brief, esoteric ‘intermezzo’ for you. It has to do with the fact that the eurythmist has to use his or her body as an instrument. Only think of all that goes into the making of an instrument and how we appreciate certain violins which today can actually no longer be made. [Instruments made by Stradivarius, Guarnerius, and so on. (Translator's note.)] Think of everything that is involved in an external musical instrument. Now it is true that the human being is, in a certain way, exempt from these demands, for the divine-spiritual powers have already built him as an exceedingly good instrument. But actually the case is not so rosy, for otherwise every individual would find his body were the most perfectly suitable instrument. The eurythmists sitting here will be well aware of the great difficulties they have in overcoming bodily hindrances and impediments, if it is a question of arriving at eurythmy that is really worthy of the art.

The fact is that quite a bit can be done in order to work inwardly upon your body so that eurythmy to the sounds of speech and of music may gradually appear out of this body in a truly artistic, complete form. There is very little opportunity for this in the civilized life of Europe. European civilization has developed a view towards outer nature, but has not developed that which is necessary to give the human being a place in the world commensurate with true human dignity. And so people today have great difficulty feeling their real humanity within themselves.

Now what I have to say in this direction will not be immediately clear. It will become apparent through doing it. What I want to say in this connection is as follows. Listen to this progression of notes, which will at first seem very strange to you:

. Fig. 10

And now (to the pianist): Play the first two notes together and the next two notes consecutively, sustaining the last note for a long time. The first two notes, accordingly, played together and the last two notes one after the other, the final note sustained for a long time.

Now will someone who can do it well show this in eurythmy, simply in standing: B, A, along with E and D; the E short, and sustaining the last note for a long time.

And now I need somebody who will sing a word to this progression of notes; for there is a word which rings true when sung to this peculiar progression of notes, namely, the word ‘T A 0’. We are dealing here with the following: When expressing this in eurythmy (and here you must apply what has been given in these lectures) you have the seventh, the sixth, and only then the other notes. But you also have to feel the descending progression of notes, and then try to express this in eurythmy, not merely the notes. Hitherto you have become stuck in what is elementary, but you really have to express what I have said and then you will see that in the TAO you have a wonderful means of making your inner bodily nature flexible, inwardly supple, and able to be artistically fashioned for eurythmy. For when you lead the seventh and the sixth, as I have indicated them, down into the E and the D (that is to say you come into this second), you will see how by carrying this out you will gain an inner strength which you will be able to carry over into all your eurythmy. This is an esoteric exercise, and when it is carried out it means meditation in eurythmy.

And when you ask someone else (either singing or speaking in a reciting or declamatory way) to accompany these gestures with declamation or singing of TAO, you will see that in connection with singing, eurythmy and recitation, this is something like that which meditation is for general human life.

What I have given here is indeed an esoteric ‘intermezzo’, and it points the way to eurythmic meditation. We must go very far back, back to the ancient civilization of China, if we are to find our way into this meditation in eurythmy. [36] And you will understand that we can exercise a certain sympathy for someone who wants to get back to the ancient Orient in order to re-discover music, and whose feeling leads him to say: The Greeks have totally ruined music, and that is why the Greeks really had no proper musician—with the exception of the mythological figure, Orpheus. [12, end]

On the other hand, we can love the Greek civilization for its way of entering into the sculptural, plastic element. But one thing is true, that the Greek culture with its sculpture gradually was led away from eurythmy. Here we must compare the forms of oriental architecture, which really did transpose music into movement, with the forms of Greek architecture, which basically exhibit a dreadful symmetry. Here this dreadful symmetry rules. This, too, had to make its appearance in the world at some point.

The Greek culture did (I might almost say) tragically suffer the consequences of its civilization. It was a short-lived civilization, bringing about its own dissolution. The fault does not lie in the Greek culture: the fault lies in the fact that Greek culture is supposed to be forever reproduced in European civilization. It is, however, a kind of dissolution of this Greek element when we derive our movements directly from speech and singing, from the realms of speech and of music themselves. The difficulty people have in understanding eurythmy lies in the fact that European understanding has been, as it were, frozen into the reposing form, and is fundamentally no longer able to live in movement. The reposing form, however, should be left to. nature. When we come to the human being, we have to enter into movement, because the human being transcends the reposing, purely sense-perceptibly visible form.

That is what I wanted to say to you today.

If, in the forthcoming lectures, we are to become acquainted with a few things in further detail, today we have to put the question: If music essentially is the flow of Melos, and if it is Melos in particular which should be expressed in the gestures of eurythmy, what then is the musical element as such, the music shown in eurythmy, meant to express?

Here we meet with two extremes. On the one hand it may be said that the melodic element is tending more and more towards what is thematic, towards the expression of something which is not in itself musical. I have often mentioned that, especially in recent times through a Wagnerian influence, as well as other influences, music on the one hand has become expression, expression of something that is not music. On the other hand, especially in the beginning of the age of Wagner, we also find pure, absolute music (the musical element as such, simply the weaving of musical sounds)—of which it was said (not without a certain justification) that it made music into a tonal arabesque, a progression of notes without content.

Naturally these are both extreme cases. To put forward the idea that music embodies nothing and is merely a tonal arabesque [37] is nonsense, utter nonsense. But such nonsense may very easily arise when there is no real understanding of where the essential musical element lies. It cannot lie in the notes themselves, as I have repeatedly emphasized. The person engaged in tone eurythmy has constantly to bear in mind the necessity for expressing in the movements, in the actual gestures themselves, that which lies between the notes, regarding the notes as merely giving him the occasion for the movement.

It may help you to carry out these gestures I have already indicated, with inner correctness, and the right inner feeling, if we make a certain basic provision. And the provision should consist that you, as eurythmists, regard the actual note, and in a certain sense the chord too, as that which pushes you into movement, causes you to move, and gives the impetus (Ruck: ‘jolt’) towards movement. You must continue the impetus between two notes and again regard the next note as the impetus which is given to you. In this way the movement will not express the note, and will not emphasize the note, but will express in the fullest possible way everything that lies between the notes and what comes to the fore, for instance, in the intervals. This is of great importance.

Now, why is there such a strong urge in our modern age to deviate from the purely musical realm? Something quite beautiful may sometimes result from this deviation from what is purely musical, but why is the urge to deviate from it so strong? It is because the contemporary person has gradually acquired an attitude of mind in which he is no longer able to dream, no longer able to meditate. He has nothing within to set him into movement, and wants to be set into movement from outside. But this being-set-into-movement from outside can never produce a musical mood. In order that modern civilization could furnish proof of its unmusical nature, it has laid hold of a drastic means to do so. It is really as though, in its concealed depths of soul, modern civilization wanted to provide the clearest proof that it is unmusical. And the proof is given in that it has produced the film. The film is the clearest proof that those who like it are unmusical. For the whole basis of films is that they only permit those things to be active in the soul which do not arise out of the inner life of the soul, but which are stimulated from outside [See Appendix 6].

It must be admitted that a lot of modern music-making [1924] tends to lay special stress upon that which is stimulated from outside. Attempts are made to imitate what is external—not by means of the pure melodic element, but rather by employing some subject matter as far remote from the melodic element as possible.

There is a very simple way, once more a kind of meditation (I recently spoke to you about the TAO meditation, which may be helpful to eurythmists in the way I have already explained), whereby you may gradually accustom yourself to seek for that which is musical even in what lies outside the musical sphere. It consists in comparing a sequence of vowels, such as: Lieb ist viel or Eden geht grell. There need be no meaning. Compare these for instance with: Gab man Manna or Ob Olaf warm war.

And now repeat such sentences one after the other:

Lieb ist viel ... Eden geht grell ... : does not resonate
Gab man Manna ... Ob Olaf warm war ... : musical

You will most certainly feel that the second examples are musical, whereas the first exist as if they would not resound. Just try to repeat these sentences one after the other: Lieb ist viel. Gab man Manna. Eden geht grell. Ob Olaf warm war. You will easily recognize that the vowels ah[1] and o lie within the musical sphere, whereas the vowels ee and a depart from it. This is an important matter for eurythmists to observe, for eurythmy must, of course, represent a wholeness. When in tone eurythmy you wish to express something very inward, the movements may be led over into ah or o, or likewise into oo. But the gestures of tone eurythmy may not readily be led over into e or a. Thus the sounds ah, o, oo may be employed in pieces of music for eurythmy in order to emphasize the mood, but a and ee should only be used when it is definitely intended to pass, at some point or other, out of the musical realm. This is important.

These things are of such a nature that we have to acquire a consciousness of them above all. It is interesting, for example, when we follow the German language through several centuries, to observe that it has gradually dropped many ah, o, and oo sounds, and has taken on many ee and a sounds. In other words, the German language has become progressively more unmusical in the course of centuries. (I am speaking now of the vowels, not of the intervals.)

It is really important to bear this in mind in tone eurythmy, and indeed in other eurythmy too. For the knowledge that the German language has a marked tendency towards a distorted phonetic imagination may be quite valuable. With the western Germanic languages this is even more the case. But all this rightly leads us to put the question: ‘What does music really express?’ This question cannot easily be answered by anyone who is unable to dream. For, you see, in very truth the poet, the artist, must basically be able to dream, to dream consciously—that is to say, to meditate. Either he must hold dream- pictures in recollection, or be able to find dream-pictures of the realities of the spiritual world.

But what does this mean? It means leaving behind everything that makes sense in the sensory world. Take a dream (I have often spoken of these matters). Take a dream: if we are to get at its nature, we must not look at it as an interpreter of dreams does. For the interpreter of dreams takes the dream's content. Anyone who really understands the nature of dreams does not take the dream's content, but considers whether the dream rises up in fear and calms down, whether the dream stirs up an inner uneasiness which is intensified to anxiety, ending perhaps in this anxiety, or whether there is a state of tension which is afterwards resolved. This is really the decisive thing in a dream. And in the description of spiritual processes this becomes even more necessary.

It is, of course, exceedingly difficult today to speak to humanity about the things which spiritual science has to impart. For instance, when I described the progression of world-evolution (Saturn, Sun, Moon and so on), people thought the very things important that were unimportant to me. It is certainly correct that the processes on Saturn were as I described them. But that is not the essential point. The essential point is the inner movement which is described. And I have always been most delighted when somebody said that he would like to compose in music what has been described in the evolution of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Of course, he would have to leave out some of it, leave out the colour element, as I described, the warmth phenomena, even the smells on Saturn (for apart from the ‘smelling-harmonium’ [38] we have no musical instrument functioning to smells, do we!). Even so, particularly Saturn evolution is such that its essence could be expressed quite well in music and could be composed. [39]

When anyone dreams, and (setting aside its content) takes the tension and relaxation, the culmination of the picture sequence, or the culmination of bliss when flying, and so on; if he takes all this movement and says: ‘I am quite indifferent to the meaning of the dream; for me it all depends on how its movements take place’—then the dream already is a piece of music, then you cannot write it down except in musical notation. Once you feel that the dream can only be written down in musical notation, then you are just beginning to understand the dream, I mean really to understand it by looking at it directly.

From this you will see that the musical element has content: not the thematic content, which is taken from the sensory world, but a content which appears everywhere when something is expressed in terms of the senses, but in such a manner that everything sensory can be left aside, revealing the essence of the matter. You have to treat the musical element precisely in this way. And the eurythmist has above all things to bear this strongly in mind. And he will bear it strongly in mind when he pays more attention than is usual in listening, when he pays attention to the sustained notes and the rests.

For the eurythmist, the sustained note (the pedal-point) and the rest are of special importance. And it is a serious question whether a pedal- point or anything that recalls in some way the sustained note (this really is of great importance) is being adequately treated. It will be adequately treated if, every time he or she comes to a held note, or to something which either is a pedal-point in germ, or might become such, the eurythmist carries out the eurythmy in the greatest possible calmness, emphasizing standing calmly, in other words not proceeding further in space as long as the sustained note is heard.

On the other hand, it is important for the eurythmist to penetrate inwardly into the musical significance of everything connected to the rest. And so it will be good to take an example. Here (see musical example) you have the opportunity of moving up after the descending mood, with a corresponding rest which even contains a bar line, something which may seem a contradiction, from the point of view of the eurythmist.

(Fig. 11 From Mozart's Piano Sonata in F major (K.332), III, bars 58–61)

I mention this because after what I just said it must appear contradictory to the eurythmist. I previously said that the bar line signifies a holding-on, doing the movement in yourself; that the transition from one motif to another signifies moving in space, if possible with a swinging movement—naturally suited to the notes in question. As a eurythmist you may say: ‘Now here I really do not know what to do. I am supposed to move forwards and yet at the same time remain standing.’ That is in fact just what you should do! You should move forwards two steps and remain standing between them. You should accomplish this when you want to express anything similar to this example, taken from Mozart's Piano Sonata in F major, where you can have a longer rest during which the bar line occurs—then you should move with a swing from one note to the other, but calmly stand still in yourself in the middle of this swinging movement, in the rest. Here you will see how you radically indicate, precisely through eurythmy, that the musical element lies between the notes, for in such a case it is the rest which you specially emphasize through eurythmy. It is this that is so very important.

And now consider I said on the one hand that when a note is sustained, you should try as far as possible to stand still, remaining within yourself. Now, the pedal-point, the sustained note, frequently lies in a second voice and of course it may be aesthetically expressed when the two parts are taken (as they always have to be) by two people, each moving a different form. In this way a very beautiful interplay (Variation) may result between the two people. When the one proceeds in the movement, the other remains standing with the sustained note. The movements are carried out so that the person remaining standing moves a shorter curve, during which time the person moving onwards in the form makes a fuller curve—and they re-encounter each other. In this way the whole thing is brought into a satisfactory movement, which on the one hand may be shown between the swinging over, between the interval (which may go as far as the rest), and on the other hand in the pedal-point or the sustained note in general.

Fig. 12

It is in this way that the actual quality of tone eurythmy has gradually to develop. Only when you feel things in this way will you be able to bring out the actual quality of tone eurythmy.

This shows you at the same time that music of several parts will essentially be expressed by a number of people moving a number of forms. The forms must be carried out in such a way that they really correspond to each other, just as the different voices correspond in the music itself.

When you further develop the feeling of which I have spoken (the realization that the musical element lies in the tension, relaxation, in the rising and falling of the movement), you will indeed have something which the music expresses. For music does not express that which creates the meaning of words, but it expresses the spiritual element itself living in the movement of musical sound. It is consequently specially important for eurythmists to pay great heed to what the movement expresses quite inwardly in the greatest sense, that is discord and concord. Now, you know, a composer will never make use of a discord unintentionally, and indeed music without discords is not really music, because it is without inner movement. Composers and musicians in general make use of discords. Concords are actually there in order to calm the discords, to bring the discord to some sort of completion.

In the experience of discords and concords something makes its appearance which approaches the mysteries of the world closer than we can put into words. Let us suppose that we hear a discordant phrase which resolves into a concord. Let us observe what the eurythmist does. He or she of course can bear in mind all that I have indicated, and shall possibly still indicate, with regard to forms. He or she will go on to a concord and may use as form the various intervals that I have indicated. But the transition from a discord to a concord, or vice versa, should be brought out in the presentation. It should be that the eurythmist, while moving on in a discord, at the moment of going over from a discord to a concord, must insert an abrupt movement (Ruck) into the movement itself.

Fig. 13

Something very significant is expressed in this way. By this means we express the fact that here, with the transition from discord to concord, or vice versa, something is brought about which the human being places outside of himself. What I have drawn above could also be drawn like this:

Fig. 14

Observe how I erase a small part. That is where you go back. You will feel that a small part has been erased. It is a passing over into the spiritual. When you erase a piece of your path you annul all musical sound [that is present] in the movement, and you indicate: ‘Something is present that is no longer possible to express in the sensory realm. Here I [the eurythmist] can only suggest the bounds to you [the onlooker]; your imagination must take you further.’

You see, it is only when we come so far in doing such things that we reach the point where the arts should be. Philistines may think, when they see something of this kind (see Fig. 15, drawing on the left), that it is a face. It is not a face; it is a line. A face is as follows: I must manage in such a way that no actual line is drawn, but a line, as it is, is allowed to arise out of the light and shade (see drawing on the right). Anyone who draws these lines, from the very moment he begins to draw, is no painter, indeed no artist at all. Only someone who allows the lines to arise either out of the colour, or out of the chiaroscuro [light and shade], is an artist.

Fig. 15

You can draw in a philistine fashion, like this:

Fig. 16

This represents the boundary between sea and sky. But in reality it does not exist! It is absolutely non-existent. The sky exists: blue. The sea exists: green. The boundary between them both comes about because they touch each other (see Fig. 17).

If you want to paint a house, surrounded as it is by air, leave room for your colours within the area which the air leaves free. The house will come about. That's what art has to work for! In this matter one can indeed sometimes reach a fine state of despair. [40]

`
` Fig. 17

You see, such despair is very difficult for someone of today to understand. Now, many and various are the types of people who apply for teaching posts at the Waldorf School [Stuttgart], amongst them, teachers of drawing. They have certainly learned something (namely drawing) that is quite useless at the Waldorf School. They say: ‘I can draw.’ Indeed there is no such thing as drawing! It is damaging when children are taught to draw, for there really is no such thing as drawing.

When you reach the point of understanding this erasing of your line in eurythmy, you will also have reached the point when this understanding of the musical element in doing eurythmy really leads into the artistic realm. Thus whenever transitions occur, try (once again without being pedantic) to develop a movement which goes back over itself so that the onlooker is obliged to go back, so that he says to himself: ‘He or she was already further and is now going back.’ He will notice all this unconsciously, but he will at that moment be urged out of the sensory realm, to enter into the spiritual realm where everything to do with the senses is erased.

In this way you will discover the possibility of looking for the essential nature of eurythmic movement in the rest, (Pause: ‘rest’, ‘pause’), even bringing more and more into the rest. Let us once more consider our example (see Fig. 11). Here you have a transition which, in its note values, already presents a marked feeling of going-out-of-yourself, of going with your inner being out of your skin. With the interval of the fifth there is still the feeling of being just at the boundary of the skin.

The fifth is the human being. Going further, we actually pass over into what lies beyond the human realm, but in this case, because we are dealing with music, into the spiritual realm. If you achieve this emphasis of the rest by means of specially pronounced movement, and yet introduce into this movement a momentary calmness (as I have indicated), you will express the whole meaning of this ascending passage in a really satisfactory eurythmical way.

When you are practising, try to find examples of musical phrases containing long rests and very pronounced leaps in pitch, and then try to make the movement as characteristic as possible. This will result in a eurythmy perfectly adapted to the expression of instrumental music; I might say, a singing eurythmy. This will also affect your eurythmy as a whole. For by this means you will feel the very marked contrast which lies between the vowels and the consonants for eurythmic expression. Even if it is true that ee and a actually tend towards a distortion of phonetic imagination, they are nevertheless vowels, and remain within the sphere of music, whereas the consonants are merely noises and lead away from the musical realm.

I have also said that the consonants are really the apology for using the vowel sounds for something in the outer world. This will closely concern you, for in speech eurythmy it will cause you to introduce as much of the vowel element as possible into the consonants. This means, in other words, that you should try in eurythmy to make the consonants as short and the vowels as long as possible.

Now this is not what I wanted to impress on you (for this will arise from your feelings) that there must be a certain parallel between declamation and recitation, and eurythmy. What I do want you especially to take to heart is that for speech eurythmy, too, it is most important to bear in mind that it is also the task of the speaker not only to say something when he speaks, but at times to say something even more essential when he doesn't speak. I do not mean by this those dashes of which recent poets are so enamoured, presumably because they have so much spiritual matter to communicate that they are compelled to express it in continual dashes! I expect you are acquainted with an ironical poem by Morgenstern, consisting only of dashes. [41] It does not contain a single sound, not a single word—simply dashes. I do not mean these dashes, then, but rather the fact that, in order to bring out certain effects in a poem, it is absolutely necessary, just as necessary in declamation as in eurythmy, to understand how to make proper pauses.

Think of the hexameter, with its caesura, where a pause has to be made, and you will realize that something is actually said by means of the pause. Sometimes the pauses need only be short, but it is important that they should also be given their place in declamation and recitation. Imagine the phrase: Was hör ich draussen vor dem Tor was auf der Brücke schallen? recited without any pause—appalling!

Was hör' ich draussen vor dem Tor—
Was auf der Brücke schallen?

is correct. Now as eurythmists, when you are concerned with the expression of a rest, and in speech eurythmy too, the effect will be eminently correct and aesthetically good as well as intrinsically justified, if you cultivate the goingback-into-yourself (going back in the form) which you have been able to learn from tone eurythmy. So that at times even in the short pauses of speech eurythmy, this retracing, this erasing the form, should by all means be seen.

In conclusion I only want to add something which will serve to complete what was left out in the preceding lectures. It is this: You know that the keynote is best expressed by the position, or also by means of the step: position, step (as I explained in connection with the triad). Now imagine that you have to form the interval of the second. The second in music is something which actually does not quite express the musical element, but in which the musical element makes a beginning. It stands at the gateway of the musical realm. The second is a musical question. Thus it is necessary (and you will feel the necessity) when forming a second, which follows any keynote, that you as second (whilst the second follows from another note) strive to turn the palms of the hands upwards. Any sort of movement you like can be produced while trying to arrive with the palms of the hands turned upwards, when ascending from one note to the next, or just a movement upwards, straightening the palm of the hand. Of course you must see to it that the hand does not appear in this position beforehand. The important thing is always to acquire a view of the whole. Through this, it [the second] manifests itself

Now, on the basis of what I have said, we have still to arrange the next two sessions.

Notes:

1. Phonetic spelling, see p. xiv. (Translator's note.)

I have often stressed that eurythmy is drawn from the nature of the human organization, from the possibilities of movement prefigured in the human organism. The human organism on the one hand contains the musical element, which in fact is built into it, and on the other hand (as should be especially mentioned in connection with tone eurythmy) it contains music translated into movement. It will doubtless be obvious to you that the musical element is situated, so to speak, in the human chest structure, above the chest. If we put the question: ‘How are we to find in the actual human organization the transition from singing, and from the inner musical organization upon which the human being is founded, to the “organism of movement” of eurythmy?’—then (as is immediately apparent) we must turn to the limbs attached to the chest structure, which reveal themselves as limbs of movement out of the chest organism. [42]

Now in regard to the whole human organization, the hands and arms are the most wonderful human ‘organs’. And you need only exert your intuitive vision a little to recognize that that which is latent in the human singing apparatus through the palate, jaw, and so on appears as limbs. In a certain respect it is like arms and hands which have become solidified and brought to rest. Try the following: Bring your arms and hands into movement before you by means of an interlocking of the fingers (folded hands), and now compare this with what happens when the lower and upper jaws are interlocked, as may be observed in the skeleton. If you take into account the muscles stretched across this, you will easily begin to discern the process of metamorphosis from a mobile state to a state of rest.

Now we see how that which serves the musical element in singing is continued below. That which is connected to voice production and to initiating the sound is actually surrounded by the muscles and bones which end in the arms and hands. And because movement depends upon making use of these muscles and bones, it is consequently a question of learning to feel how the muscles and bones have to be used in order to do eurythmy in the musical sense.

In voice production, the singer seeks the point of departure for initiating the sound. Can we too find a point of departure in eurythmy, where we make use of those most expressive ‘organs’, the arms and hands?

The human being possesses a singular ‘organ’ which may be said to form the anatomical, physiological starting point between the chest and the arms. This is the collar-bone. It is S-shaped—truly a most wonderful bone. At one end it is connected with the human middle system, and at the other end (after making the S-form) it goes out towards the periphery, towards directing the movements of the arms and hands. Now I must ask you to consider the following. Animals which make use of their fore-legs and their fore-paws for dexterous climbing (the bat, for instance, or the monkey) have quite an ingeniously formed collar-bone. Beasts of prey, animals such as cats or lions, which do not exactly climb but make use of their fore-paws when tearing their spoil to pieces, possess a less well-formed collar-bone, but they do have one. The horse, which only makes use of its fore-legs for the purpose of running, has developed no skill in their use, and their formation permits no mobility in itself; the horse has no collar-bone. Now, it is in the collar-bone that we may feel the starting point from which tone eurythmy originates. It is located there. And when you become conscious that a force goes out from your collar-bone with its muscles into the arms and hands, then vitality will be brought into your tone eurythmy. Then you have the point of departure. It really has to do with livingly feeling your limbs so that they can be used for such movements as we have done. Anyone who is unable to feel at a specific place will never discover the right point of departure.

The most necessary preparation for tone eurythmy, therefore, is a concentration of your consciousness to the left and the right sides of the collar-bone. And when starting to do tone eurythmy, with the first step, [42] transfer your consciousness to the left and right of the collar-bone. Feel that all the subtle possibilities of movement which you pour into your arms and hands really proceed from your collar-bone, just as the voice proceeds from its starting point. [43]

Then feel that you pour this feeling, which you consciously stimulate in the collar-bone, first into the socket of the upper arm. And feel too when you express the keynote with the legs, with the step, the following:

Already while unfolding the arm, the force which causes the arm to be unfolded goes to the keynote from up here, proceeding from the point of departure of the arm. Feel as if the whole forearm (and indeed the upper arm too) together with the hand and fingers were quite light, as if they had no weight, as if they really were not there, as if you were dealing with them quite usually. But here, at the point of departure, feel a strong unfolding of force; then you have held fast the keynote in the arm.

And now feel a raising or turning of the upper arm, in connection with the movement I have already shown for the second. Feel the second itself, by holding the hand in a certain way so that the force enabling you to retain this position of the hand starts in the upper arm. Then you have the right unfolding of the second; then it really is a second.

The stream flowing out from the collar-bone passes by way of the upper arm and on into the forearm; and only then does the flowing into the forearm become the third. And here something extremely remarkable makes its appearance. In order to form the third, you unfold the movement as I described it in the first lecture. For this, you need the forearm, both hands [probably Austrian dialect for ‘arms’. Translator's note], and the right or left hand [arm], depending on where you will form the third. When you allow the feeling which you have already made use of in the upper arm to stream on further, it will pass over the elbow and flow into the back part of the forearm. This is possible. When you go by way of the elbow, you come to the starting point for the third. Now you can ask yourself: ‘Can I also allow the feeling to stream hither (along the inside of the arm towards the hand)?’ Here, if your feeling is sound, you will say: ‘This is not possible. I can let the feeling stream forth up to the back part of the hand. But if I try to let it flow down the inner part of the arm, this is not possible. I have to imagine it as coming towards me, from below upwards. I have to imagine to myself as though I were laying hold somewhere with my hand, as though the feeling were flowing over along this side.’ And so we have two possibilities. If the beginning of the upper arm is here (see Fig. 18), the feeling streams in this direction (downwards). We pass from the second to the third. We can also unfold the feeling that comes towards us, and here we have to think of it as flowing from the hand inwards (direction of the arrow).

Now, you see, isn't this something wonderful! The human arm possesses one bone in the upper arm, for [the interval of] the second, and it possesses two bones in the forearm (radius and ulna) because there are two thirds. The bone at the back of the forearm [ulna] presents the major third, and the inner bone of the forearm [radius] the minor third. The way the scale is active in the bones and muscles of the arm is simply marvellous. When you now reach the place where the hand begins (where the small bones are) you still feel exactly as if you were inside yourself.

It is only when coming to the hand itself that you go out of yourself. The fourth is still within. It is here at the place where the hand begins. Here you have to feel the movement that gives you the fourth. The fifth is here on the hand itself. Feel the sixth here in the base of the fingers [proximal phalanges], and the seventh (as I showed you) you can produce in particular with the ends of the fingers [distal phalanges]. You must send your feeling into the ends of the fingers.

Fig. 18

You see, it is not a mere figure of speech to say that eurythmy has been drawn out of the organization of the human being. So strongly is this the case that you can keep completely to the structure of the human form. There are the two bones in the forearm for the major and minor thirds, and here too you have to develop the feeling corresponding to a major key and a minor key. The major key is felt in the feeling flowing downward, passing by way of the elbow into the ulna and from there into the back of the hand. [44] When you feel this stream as flowing down into the back of the hand, the feeling is of the major mood.

When, however, you feel a slight current of air or a feeling coming towards you, passing through the palm of the hand and here at the lower arm into the inner bones, then you have the feeling of the minor mood. If you acquire a sensitivity for this transference of feeling in the human organism you will find yourself becoming inwardly musical, for you yourself are really living the scale.

Take some opportunity of observing two people engaged in eurythmy, of whom one makes the movements as if they were being carried out by an artificial, papier mache, mechanical person, whereas the other really feels the origin in the collar-bone, feels the keynote at the point of departure of the upper arm, the second proceeding from here (upper arm), the third in the forearm, and further out in the hand itself the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. We have to get out of ourselves in the hands. We are out of ourselves the most at the ends of the fingers. It is here that the seventh arises. The goal in eurythmy is not to invent worked-out movements, but rather to draw out the possibilities of movement that are inherent in the human form itself. This is where eurythmy differs from every other modern attempt to develop an art of movement. In none of these attempts do we find in what is practised the movements drawn out in this way from the human being himself. For it is necessary, in the first place, to know that the human arm with the human hand, from the point of departure through the collar-bone, is precisely the scale itself.

If you look at a horse, you will feel that it actually could not do eurythmy. A horse engaged in eurythmy would be an appalling sight! A kitten would make a more charming impression, and a little monkey better still. The eurythmy of a little monkey might be quite pleasing. Why? Because the horse has no collar-bone. A kitten has a collar-bone, even if less perfectly formed than that of a monkey, which possesses the most perfect collar-bone [of the three]. The eurythmic movements of an animal, if you could imagine them, would be pleasing in proportion to the development of its collar-bone.

Everything arising from the appendage of lungs, larynx, and so on, when metamorphosed and correspondingly projected outwards, is represented in the conglomeration of collar-bone (the shoulder blade serves as a completion) collar-bone, shoulder-blades, upper arm, forearm, and the bones of the fingers.

Now when the first four notes of the scale are played, or shown in eurythmy, you will undoubtedly feel them as a progression. Play the scale up to the fourth: prime, second, third, fourth; it is a progression. With the fifth you feel that something is changing. And with the sixth and seventh you will distinctly notice at the same time a spreading out; the whole scale expands. Even this is reproduced in the hand. If you consider the simple structure of the upper arm and the two bones of the forearm, you find there the entire musical image of the first stages of the scale. When the scale widens out (from the fourth onwards), everything is indeed situated in the hand itself; and here there are twenty-seven bones designed for inner mobility. Thus, when you ascend to the upper notes of the scale, you can develop considerable powers of expression, especially in the use of the hands.

You know, however, that from the anatomical point of view there is much similarity between the arm and the hand, and the leg and the foot even if such points of departure are not present. And it is possible to transfer the movements (which we have used to express the notes) to the legs and feet, harder though they are to carry out, and necessarily remaining as an indication. When you transfer the gestures for the notes to the legs and feet, the effect will be less beautiful, but you have here a different means of expression for the legs and feet from dancing, as we have already tried in the most various ways in speech eurythmy and the like. Now you will easily gather that in the case of legs and feet, the beginning of the thigh-bone, the whole thigh-bone, corresponds to the keynote, when you flex the muscles. When you try to produce a movement in which the lower part of the leg hangs, to a certain extent, while strong movements are made by the upper part of the leg, then you are in the sphere of the keynote and the second. Passing over the lower part of the leg to the fibula and tibia (shin-bone and splint-bone), you again find the major and minor thirds—the major third in the tibia and the minor third in the fibula. In this way the thirds may be expressed once again by means of the leg. But essentially such movements will be differentiated very strongly from those most expressive movements the human being is capable of (the movements, that is to say, of the arms and hands), just as the double-bass differs from the violin.

When, with two people, a piece of music is so carried out that the notes down to the C two octaves below middle C are strongly articulated with the arms, while the bass notes beyond the C two octaves below middle C are correspondingly expressed by the legs (either by the same or another person) you will find this renders a remarkably expressive possibility.

Thus it is really possible today that all the musical elements may be included in eurythmy. It is, of course, impossible to work out the actual exercises during these lectures; you will, however, understand how matters lie, and in the future it will be a question of thoroughly practising all the things which I am putting before you. It is only through practising that you really get into it. Then you will see that this is precisely the method of tone eurythmy.

Now if a person wishes to show the lower notes (the notes two octaves or more below middle C) by emphasizing them as strongly as can be done with feet and legs, at the same time only slightly indicating the same notes with the arms, the effect will certainly be fine, too. This is one possibility.

Another possibility is this. While carrying out the movements with feet and legs, the arms may in a certain way retain confirming movements enveloping the whole thing, varying according to the degree of liveliness in movement that you wish to express (a) (see Fig. 19), or, when stronger and more lively, a movement of this sort (b), or, when specially lively in mood, a movement of this sort (c). You see, it is quite possible to say to yourself: ‘Yes, there are different possibilities of expressing the notes.’ For this is the case. Eurythmy will never lead anyone into pedantry.

If you have thoroughly practised the things we are here discussing, many different variations and possibilities of expression will be revealed—but only if you base your work on the realization that everything does actually depend upon being conscious of the point of departure, of developing the consciousness: seconds are in the upper arm, thirds are in the forearm. With your awareness correspondingly transferred to the upper arm or forearm, you will create aesthetically beautiful movements. Then your soul is brought into play.

Fig. 19

Just imagine one of you carrying out the movements of eurythmy. Eurythmy is a singing through movement; it is singing. It is not dancing; it is not mime; it is singing. This is why you cannot sing and do eurythmy at the same time. Instrumental music can be expressed in tone eurythmy, but not singing. Anyone who imagines that this is possible has not yet grasped what eurythmy is. He is not looking upon it as an autonomous art, but is making use of it in order to illustrate what is being sung. In such a case eurythmy would only be an art of illustration, and this, of course, is a complete misunderstanding. A better understanding may perhaps be furthered by mentioning something in this connection. Imagine that one person is expressing in eurythmy something that another person is singing, both exactly the same thing. Anyone possessing spiritual vision would see in the etheric body of the singer precisely the same movements; it would be as though a spirit were perched on the singer's shoulders, making the very movements that are being made by the eurythmist. Singing is nothing other than a carrying out with the etheric body of the same movements resonating in the vocal organs, which you permit the physical organism to perform in eurythmy. That is why it is difficult to bear the sight of anyone doing eurythmy whilst singing to it at the same time. For then you are aware of the same thing duplicated; you perceive with the physical eyes, and then you see another, etheric being, with his legs dangling on the shoulders doing these movements up there, doing the very same thing! [45]

Should you ever have the opportunity of examining a collar-bone (perhaps managing to acquire some knowledge of the surrounding muscles, and especially studying the direction they take) then you will notice something very remarkable about this S-shaped collar-bone. The form of that part of the collar-bone which tends outwards will give you the feeling that it is receiving something, that it allows things from outside to approach it. In that part which goes out from the middle you will feel an out-streaming tendency. In the collar-bone (see diagram) you really have an out-streaming and an in-streaming. The outward stream passes through the back part of the arm, via the ulna, down into the back of the hand. The inward stream passes through the palm of the hand, up the radius and back again here [to the collar-bone]. Here two streams continually exist, the one flowing upwards this way, and the other outwards (see arrow). The one gives something out, the other is receptive. Following this, you arrive directly at a real understanding of the major (Dur) and minor (Moll) moods.

Fig. 20

The things that are said about major and minor and which are found in books on music are actually appalling. [46] Many such theories with regard to major and minor have been put forward in recent times. If people, in such a case, did not listen in a sounder way than they think, the fate of music would be the same as the fate that would undoubtedly overtake the art of eating if the numerous physiological theories had to be followed instead of the instincts. It is a mercy that in music (and consequently in eurythmy) we can, up to a point, follow the instincts; for the real secret of the difference between major and minor lies in the fact that everything of the nature of major streams out from the will, that is, a streaming out from the fullness of the human being. Everything that is major is related to action (Tat). Thus a certain activity must be introduced into all motifs in the major mood. All phrases in the minor mood are receptive. They possess something of recognition, of acceptance, of laying hold of something. All phrases in the minor mood are related to feeling. When passing over from a phrase in the major mood to a phrase in the minor mood, we must definitely show that this is a transference of activity from the outer structure of muscle and bone to the manipulation of the inner structure of muscle and bone in the arm and hand of the eurythmist. It is from feeling and experience of the impulse towards action that all eurythmy has to proceed.

It is a fact that anything based on the musical element may be expressed in tone eurythmy. To be convinced of this, you need but to remind yourselves, for instance, not only of how this or that occurs in the musical phrase, but also in the musical element that which brings about a close for musical feeling as such (where the progression of a phrase leads in a certain direction, resulting in a feeling of being checked). In the cadence we have something (the expression is somewhat crude, but I think it is applicable) which dams up the flow of the music.

When you experience the cadence and the whole progression towards the cadence, you will find the following to be quite obvious. As an example, let us take the cadence in the major mood (see Fig. 21).

How would you express this in eurythmy? In the fashioning of your movement you have to bring it to a conclusion, and you will certainly feel a tendency to lead the movement over towards the right, stopping it.

This gives the effect of a close. Thus a cadence in the major mood leads you to move in a turning from left to right; the eurythmic movement is made in this way, towards the right side.

Fig. 21

If, instead of this, we have a cadence in the minor mood, the process is reversed; the stopping movement would then proceed from right to left, for now the element of feeling has to be present. It is only the ignorance of our civilization which gives rise to the wish to teach children to write with both right and left hands. This differentiation in the human organism is fundamental. For there is a great difference, is there not, whether the heart is situated on the right side or the left. (Cases are known in which the heart lies on the right side, but they are exceedingly rare; in such a case the person in question would differ from all his fellow-men.) Now, this fundamental difference does indeed exist. It is based upon the inner organization of the human being. And so, when approaching a close it is necessary that you feel: cadence in the major mood (towards the right side), cadence in the minor mood (towards the left side). And when, in the progression of the music, at the moment when you reach a close in the music itself (where you cannot imagine continuing), then at this point you have to introduce something into your movement whereby this movement is inwardly brought to a conclusion. You will feel the necessity of expressing the cadence in eurythmy in just this way.

You see, in this course of lectures it has been my full intention to direct your attention precisely to those things relating to the inner feeling of the movement. For I have been struck by the slight attention paid by eurythmists to that aspect of the eurythmy figures designated as ‘character’. [47] I have always emphasized that a real attempt has to be made to concentrate the feeling and to stimulate a strong muscular tension at those parts of the eurythmy figures where the ‘character’ is applied. This makes quite a different impression upon the audience from that which is created when (if you will pardon the expression) the matter is carried out phlegmatically to the utmost. Eurythmy is fundamentally based on the possibility that these things can be used.

Now, because speech eurythmy is more bound up with the sense of the words, it will not be quite so noticeable if feeling does not accompany the activity. But if the movements of tone eurythmy are not permeated through and through with feeling the whole thing becomes utterly meaningless. If your feelings are not incorporated just as I have indicated today for the scale, the audience will feel the movements as arbitrary and disjointed. Everything depends upon your feeling: Here the upper arm begins, and you form the keynote—or whether you feel: A humanly-felt impulse is situated here in the upper arm, and you fashion the second in the way I told you yesterday. These feelings determine whether the movements which you carry out for any progression of notes appear filled with human motivation or whether they appear unmotivated. For in everything artistic, nothing is as important as motivation.

From this, however, you see (and this is a point I would like to touch on at the end of this lecture) that eurythmy has to develop gradually in such a way that auxiliary subjects are studied, just as in other forms of art. [48] The painter and sculptor are obliged to acquaint themselves with sculptors' and painters' anatomy. They cannot get on without it. The eurythmist should endeavour to acquire a thorough knowledge of the human being, and should study such things as the physiology of the collar-bone, and so on, as an auxiliary study (or whatever you'd like to call it).

When you now consider this intimate connection between eurythmy and the whole organization of the human being, it will no longer seem strange to you that in the case of tone eurythmy too (although perhaps with occasional variations) we are able to speak of a eurythmy therapy. Only think of all that lies behind what I have discussed today! We have realized that there is both an inner and outer organization in the formation of arms and hands (see Fig. 22). They fit each other as does the nut to the nutshell; they are built up out of the same forces. Consequently, if we have to treat a diseased lung, it is possible to work back on this lung by encouraging the patient to do tone eurythmy in a certain way, as eurythmy therapy.

Fig. 22

It is in afflictions of the throat, however, that tone eurythmy can work with particularly far-reaching results. For the whole muscular and bony structure of hand and arm is in reality nothing but an outer, concave image of what exists in inner, convex form in the lungs, and proceeding further, in the heart-organization and in everything concerned with speaking and singing right out as far as the lips.

And so, a really practical awakening of the eurythmy that is within you, will enable you to gain deep insight into the human organization; indeed, I would like to say, the study of eurythmy may lead over into the esoteric realm if a practice is made of transferring the inner impulse of feeling from collar-bone to upper arm, radius, ulna, and so on, or correspondingly in the legs and feet.

Tomorrow, then, at the same time, we shall begin by adding what is still lacking, and in retrospect complement our studies.

Today, I will try to pass on some things which will bring our studies of tone eurythmy to a provisional conclusion, so that a stimulation for the advance of the substance of tone eurythmy will have been given. The first step in this direction will be to digest those things I have given. Then, a little later on, it will be necessary to hold a further series of lectures, either on tone eurythmy or speech eurythmy, [50] for it is quite clear that a living stream of development has to be maintained. I have frequently said that eurythmy is only just beginning (perhaps only an attempted beginning), and it must be developed further.

From yesterday's study, which dealt more with the bodily aspect of the human being, and with the way in which the body is brought into activity in the movements of eurythmy, I should like to pass over today to the aspect of soul, and make clear to you how the life of the soul is brought to expression in every single movement or gesture. Your attitude to eurythmy must always be such as to prevent any form of pedantry. You will realize more and more that many things can be expressed either in one way or another, and that in art it is a question of taste. And with several things you will have to consult your own feelings: ‘What special means must I employ to bring this or that to expression?’

Let us consider an effectual means of expressing that most essential element of music, the phrase in Melos. Let us consider the progression of the phrase (since it really is the phrase which truly carries music into being), and direct our attention to that which gives the phrase its actual content, and makes it a true means of expressing the musical element: pitch. Further, we must distinguish note values and dynamics. The three elements of pitch, note values and dynamics really give us the inner content of the musical phrase. The more external aspect will be considered later.

Now everything musical, in so far as it is wrought out of the inner nature of the human being, comes from feeling, from the realm of feeling. And it is true to say that nothing is musical which is not in some way rooted in human feeling. Similarly, when music streams over into eurythmic movement, everything which is brought to life in this movement must also be rooted in feeling. When we studied the anatomical, physiological aspect of the matter yesterday, we saw that in its more physical, bodily aspect, movement springs from feeling. The scale is the human being, but actually the human being as he encloses his chest, or in so far as his chest is able to be revealed outwards via the collar-bone. The chest is connected with feeling, and carries within it the central organ of feeling, the heart. And the physical characteristic we touched upon yesterday simply points to the fact that in music we have to do with feeling.

If I may put it in this way, feeling can be coloured either more towards the head- or more towards the limb-organization. Should feeling tend in the direction of the head, it is expressed so to speak in the roundabout way of the intellect. Now I must beg you not to misunderstand this, and think that it is my intention to intellectualize the musical element. I have no such intention! It is a fact, however, that precisely in the element of pitch, something is manifest which causes feeling to tend in the direction of the intellect, only it does not reach the intellect, but remains in the realm of feeling. And so a musician need not in the least be interested when the intellectual physicist comes along and speaks of the frequency and the pattern of sound-waves. The musician can justifiably answer: ‘This may be all very well, and so on, but it has nothing to do with me. I am not interested in this.’ An intellectual conception of music leads away from the sphere of music. It may be left to the physicist. [51] That element of music which tends towards the intellect is also felt. Pitch, in all its differing manifestations, is an experience of feeling. And it is just because music inclines away from the intellect that the head has so little to do in tone eurythmy. Indeed in speech eurythmy, too, the head should play practically no part, though naturally it should humanly accompany the movements carried out by the speech eurythmist.

Of course, in a humorous poem it would not be good for a eurythmist to make a face as if he had drunk a pint or so of vinegar! This would obviously be out of place. Generally speaking, the whole mental attitude should be suited to the content of the words. But if anyone attempted to do eurythmy with the face (and some people miss mime or a special play of the facial features) we could well answer that this would be equivalent in real speech eurythmy to someone accompanying his speaking with grimaces.

In tone eurythmy, exactly the same as in speech eurythmy, the head need not remain inactive. But just where it is a concern of manifesting the intellectual tendency of the musical element, that is pitch, the activity of the head should be restrained as much as possible. Otherwise interpretation, or the element of seeking meaning, enters into the musical element, and this is its ruination. This introduces thinking into art, and the moment you begin to think, artistic activity ceases. I am not saying that art may not present thoughts, but thoughts must be there already in finished form, they cannot just be made up on the spot. A majestic, elevated thought may, for instance, be contrasted with lesser thoughts, or an idea may frequently recur in a train of thought, just as a musical motif may recur, for then the musical element is effective in the . train of thought. This is certainly possible. But you must not be thinking! [52] The same even applies to poetry. When a poet begins thinking he ceases to be a poet. Certainly he may embody thought in artistic form—but that is a very different matter.

Now as we have already seen, pitch (which lives in the musical phrase) initially finds expression in movements made in the upward-downward direction. The expression of pitch is up, down. Why should the movements be upwards and downwards? What lives in pitch?

You see, in the case of ascending pitch we feel a rising up into the spiritual element, in the musical element a rising up into the spiritual, rising with the ascending pitch. This is exceedingly significant. What really happens here is that the astral body and ego ascend. The human being is freed from his physical and etheric bodies. If he were to do this in an inartistic or even an anti-artistic manner, then he would faint. If he were to go out of his physical body without sufficient preparation, he would faint. The experience of musical sound (so long as it remains an experience of musical sound, of Melos) permits us to pass out of the physical body. Then we instantly come back into it. In ascending pitch there is a continuous rising out of the physical body, an identification of the human being with the spiritual element. In tone eurythmy every ascending movement basically signifies ethos. Ethos of the human being is a uniting of the soul with the spiritual weaving and essence. Ascending pitch: ethos.

When, alternatively, pitch descends, and we are consequently obliged to follow, to make the movements lower in space (making each movement lower than the one preceding), we sink more deeply into the physical body with the astral body and ego. We are united more with the physical element. Descending pitch signifies a closer connection than normal with the physical element. This is pathos. Ascending pitch: ethos. Descending pitch: pathos.

If you observe the unfolding of a piece of music with sound musical feeling, you will see that this is always the case. You will always experience ethos, that is to say, a uniting with the spiritual element, when the pitch carries you upwards. You will always feel something of the nature of pathos present in the music when the pitch causes you to descend. This can find expression in change of posture, and may indeed be specially clearly expressed by the movements of tone eurythmy.

Note values: note values are the feeling element as such. The faculty of feeling tends neither in the direction of the intellect nor in the direction of the will, but lives in its own element in note values. From what I have said about the way in which rests, for instance, or the pedal- point may be expressed in eurythmy, you will already have realized that feeling is active in note values. For it is indeed a fact that feeling is active to the greatest extent in note values. You need only recall in a feeling-way what you experience concerning a semibreve (whole-note), let us say, or a minim, crotchet or quaver (half-note, quarter-note or eighth-note). The shorter the length of the notes, the more your soul becomes inwardly filled, inwardly more formed and shaped. A vivid means of musical expression is made possible to a high degree by the contradistinction between notes which are short and those of longer duration. Long, slow notes denote a certain indifferent emptiness of soul (to put things baldly), an indifferent emptiness of soul. And in this fullness in the soul or this emptiness in the soul, the second factor, the actual feeling element, is active. The feeling concerning long notes may be likened (there is a real resemblance here) to that of waiting for something which still does not want to come. pn the other hand, when someone continually seeks to stimulate us to activity, this is akin to the feeling- experience underlying short notes.

The head may be brought to our assistance when it is a question of experiencing note values; indeed, a certain use of the head in eurythmy now becomes necessary. But the question is: How may this be done?

You see, in pitch, the soul is purely concerned with itself. Consequently in pitch, the soul rises up to God or sinks down to the Devil, [53] living to the extreme completely within its own essence.

In note values a certain enjoyment and participation in the world outside, a contact with the world, exists. A relationship of the human being with the outer world is expressed in note values. For this reason an aesthetic and pleasing impression will be created when, in the case of short notes (beginning perhaps with minims, or half-notes, [54] and working up in ever-increased activity) you look in the direction of what you are doing with your arm, fingers or hand, looking at your own eurythmy, carefully following your own movements with your eyes.

When, alternatively, you have long semibreves (whole-notes), do not look towards but rather away from your movement, either straight in front of you or in some other direction. You will see that although this does not fully express the feeling involved here (this must be expressed through sustaining the note or through moving on), it will be accompanied in the right manner. There can be no doubt about the fact that in note values we have to do with feeling. That is why the head may be brought to our aid. The head is not used here as a little interpreter; it simply expresses its participation in the feelings, and that looks quite pleasing.

The third element is dynamics. In the phrase, dynamics, the realm of feeling (which is always the source of the musical element), are coloured towards the element of will. The will as such does not come into play in the musical element, for the musical element always remains in the sphere of feeling. But just as in pitch, where feeling tends to be coloured towards the intellectual element, so in dynamics, feeling tends to be coloured towards the will. Here it is somewhat different than with the head. In the head, that which is manifested in the arms as movement is brought to rest. The jaws can only move a little; they are at rest. Indeed the head is entirely at rest. On the other hand, the legs and feet do retain a certain similarity to the arms and hands, so the movements of the arms and hands might possibly be accompanied with parallel movements of the feet when expressing a certain emphasis, or a certain dynamic marking. If this were not so, there would be no dancing. Eurythmy should not become dancing, but there may be times when a tendency towards dancing may be a justifiable means of expression (when the dynamics demand that feeling be coloured through the element of will). In musical dynamics, the human being's relationship with the world is even more relevant. Only pitch remains entirely inward. Note values bring the human being into a certain connection with the outer world. Dynamics make this complete, for forte gains its strength from the will, whereas in piano the will-impulse is lacking. Here, then, the movements of hand and arm can be reinforced by corresponding leg movements. These movements, of course, have to be graceful in the highest sense of the word; they should not be awkward, but have to be similar in style to what the arms and hands do. You will feel then what the legs have to do.

Dynamics may be substantially supported if you are aware of the fact that increased dynamics find is expressed by pointing the fingers, and a weakening of the sound makes the fingers rounded, so you can achieve something very expressive. Just think how much expression can be brought into the phrase which is already very expressive from a musical point of view. Think, in the first place, how we are able to express the phrase by emphasizing varied pitch in the way we have learned. This may be accompanied by bringing out note values by a use of the head, looking either towards or away. The dynamics of the phrase may be lit up by a pointing or rounding of the fingers. This gives you the possibility of becoming a very expressive being within the phrase. You will be able to express much when you observe this variety in the phrase, in the continuation of the phrase, and so on.

There is another way of accompaniment which can increase your means of expression. You see, with certain very high notes (notes which ascend two octaves or more above middle C) [55] you may follow the movements with your eyes. Try, however, not to conjure up an active gesture of looking (looking gives an impression of note lengths), but let your eyes be swept up with the movement. And so when you would especially like to express very high notes, you will follow the movement with your eyes, too. You will try, though, not to produce the gesture of looking, but of being swept up with your eyes. Produce the gesture of being swept up with your eyes, as if they [56] would do this movement—and they should be swept up with the movement! In such a case the eyes do not look, but turn in the direction of the movement. Here we have still another means of expressing the things that are present in the phrase.

These things are initially bound up with the inner essence of the phrase, with the actual life of the phrase. And if you concern yourselves further with the phrase you will actually find, fundamentally, when you use these things; that you will be able to follow transforming and developing phrases.

I should just like to add the following. It is, of course, necessary that everything we have studied in these lectures (which have aimed at deepening eurythmy) should be developed with particular inner activity.

Let us now take the development of a phrase as it progresses through various musical sentences. Here we are able to differentiate whether it is developed in the form of repetition—so that the development signifies a certain intensification, a confirmation of the original phrase. In such a case, if other aspects do not indicate the contrary, much can be expressed by the treatment of the form.

Let us suppose that you have to carry out some form such as this (a) in a certain piece of music. Quite apart from what you express by means

Fig. 23

of your body, this form has to be carried out. If you follow your musical feelings you will be able to add, according to the progression of the phrase, certain steps backwards and forwards, still following the direction of the form (b)

Fig. 24

Fig. 25

If, however, the progression of the phrase is such that a second phrase follows the previous one similar to that between question and answer, it would be good if the progression of the form were treated in this way (c)—with a more complicated development introduced into the form.

Another means of expressing either a sequence or an answering phrase, the repetitive sequence or the contrast of phrases, is this. At specific points in the progression of a phrase, where the progression of the phrase is specially felt (where, let us say, a new metamorphosis of the phrase commences), the direction of the form can be directed towards the right (b). If another phrase is brought into conjunction with the first, at the point where this second phrase begins, make a turn towards the left.

Such things make the movements exceedingly expressive. And further, if you make the movements of this latter type stronger in a four-bar phrase, let's say, and bring out the eight-bar phrase (which has four main accents) by clearly showing the alternating direction of left-right, then you will succeed in expressing in eurythmy this plastically-formed development in the progression of the phrase.

When you come to apply the things we have been discussing, you will invariably reach a point where, in some way or other, the essential nature of the musical element is revealed in its onward progression. Here you actually pass out of the inner experience inherent in the soul of Melos (as I'd like to put it) and you approach instead the life of Melos. We can certainly differentiate between the soul and the life of Melos. And the element which is less bound up with the soul and more with the life of Melos is tempo, especially tempo changes. The human being, by living in time, has to live either at a quicker or slower pace. This is something which exerts a certain influence on his or her life from outside. A person certainly does not become someone else if circumstances compel him or her to do something in a shorter time than usual. It is not a question of becoming cleverer, or more stupid, but simply of becoming quicker. It is, then, the external element of time which causes increase of tempo

Now it is a fact that in the musical element nearly everything depends upon changes, just as in movement generally everything depends upon changes. For this reason, change of tempo must be given special consideration in eurythmy. Let us suppose that we have an increase in tempo. An increase in tempo may not be shown simply by increased speed of movement, as this may be applied for pitch, for note values, and so on, but the body must make an abrupt movement (Ruck) towards the right. When you change to a retarded tempo, the body must be drawn (Zug) towards the left. Here you have a means of expressing change of tempo in such a way that the external element in it is given its adequate place in the moulding of the phrase.

You will say: ‘What a terrible amount there is to do!’ But bring imagination to your aid and think how beautiful it will be when you carry out all this detail, how articulated and expressive a piece of music will become when interpreted in this way. A tempo remaining either quick or slow may be particularly well expressed when, with a quick tempo, the head is turned forwards to the right, and, with a slow tempo, backwards to the left. Naturally this cannot be intellectually proved, but, as with everything in art, has to be felt and experienced.

You will, then, have to do many different things simultaneously, and by means of this simultaneous attention to one thing and another, it will be possible for you in the whole management of your body to go beyond yourself and enter into the movement in such a way that you will succeed in giving a perfectly adequate revelation of the musical element.

Now, in doing all these things just feel how far we remove ourselves especially in tone eurythmy from anything of the nature of mime. Mime can have no place in tone eurythmy, and anything in the nature of dance is only permissible at most as a faint undercurrent. It is only with deep bass notes that the eurythmist may be tempted to add dance-like movements to colour his eurythmy. In this way eurythmy will really be kept in a sphere which justifies the name of ‘visible singing’. Eurythmy is not dancing, not mime, but visible singing—a visible singing by means of which everything sounding in one way or another in instrumental music may be expressed. The feeling must never arise that we are dealing with anything other than visible singing. Here we come across something very instructive. With the means given here you will have no difficulty expressing anything that is purely musical. Certain difficulties will only appear when you have a musical phrase which you cannot bring to a conclusion. I am not going to rail against what is called ‘continuous melody’, but you will invariably experience difficulty when you try to express this in eurythmy. As we saw yesterday, genuine cadences can be expressed in eurythmy. But what always wants to move on (and not to come to a close) will hold great difficulty in store for you when you try to find a means of expression for it. I will suggest, then, that you accompany the passage where a melody fades away, which just meanders on (as is frequently the case with Wagner's ‘continuous melodic phrases’) [57] with some sort of movement, but this, when you pursue it eurythmically, will in fact appear extraordinary, will appear forced. In eurythmy it will appear laboured and artificial. It cannot be otherwise.

It may well be said that by its very nature, eurythmy will oblige people to return more and more to the pure musical element. When you come to apply all the means of expression of which I have been speaking, it will be necessary to engage your feeling for phrasing in music to the utmost. If you do not divide the separate phrases correctly, and are not clearly aware of how the notes should be grouped together, and then try to apply what I have discussed for a rest or a sustained note, it will appear ugly. Wrong phrasing, or a note falsely grouped and included wrongly in a phrase or allowed to remain isolated, will instantly be apparent. The very moment you phrase wrongly, the movement will become uncouth and clumsy. This is why it is of primary importance, when practising tone eurythmy, first to come to terms with the larger matters. As soon, then, as you have determined upon the phrasing and made up your mind about the progression of the music, the next step will be to discuss the phrasing with your pianist. [58] This simply belongs to the matter. When you are practising it will be necessary first Co experiment and find your way into the experience of the music. Only then will you realize what the effect of this or that kind of movement will be. You will be filled with inner warmth or inner cold. This is what the inner life is. A eurythmist may often be able to feel how notes are grouped even better than the person sitting at the instrument. It is really necessary to come to an understanding with the musician so that the phrasing may be correspondingly carried out. Of course, people do generally phrase correctly, but in eurythmy it will be frequently noticeable that an accepted phrasing must be altered, owing to the very nature of eurythmy. You will discover that several matters need correction.

Now, these are the things I wanted to give you in this course of lectures. In the first place it should be a stimulus to deepen tone eurythmy, and eurythmy in general. If in the near future it is shown that, through this, much in eurythmy (in tone eurythmy in particular) achieves a greater degree of perfection, and if it may be seen that speech eurythmy too receives fresh life through what has been said, we will hold another course. In this way we shall be able to develop ever further what today is still only a beginning. But if, instead of the eight lectures, I had given fourteen, I would have been concerned that the subject matter be properly assimilated. Then let us stay with what we have now received as a stimulus.

Herr Stuten: [59] Dear Herr Doctor, I know that I speak for everyone when I express our heartfelt thanks to you at the close of these lectures. Once again you have cast light on so many questions which we all carried within us, and given us much stimulus, that we see a great but completely unconstrained work before us. It is a great joy especially today to be allowed to express our thanks.

Dr Steiner. Thank you very much. I have intentionally not asked for questions because I think the material needs to be worked through and in the course of time there will be many opportunities where the one or other question can be dealt with. Very little comes when questions are asked after the first hearing, and everything becomes hurried and mixed up.