From Inner Music to Sound in Space

Coming Soon From Inner Music Productions


About My Forthcoming Publication

I am transcribing my research material on Inner Music. This work will be available shortly in multiple formats, including both hard and soft copy. For some background about the topics this work will cover, please refer to the following:

If you have any questions about this book, please feel free to contact me.

Abstract

Introduction

In this publication, I will discuss the theory and practice of composers imagining their works inwardly, as musicians did in the past [6], hearing music mentally before hearing it as acoustical sound. Limited chance procedures also can sometimes be used as a compositional technique. My web site compositions page contains some examples.

Supporting Research

Gerald Bennett [1] wrote the following on this subject:

..the acoustical knowledge of each age provided the framework within which composers imagined their music and that this relationship is of special relevance to electroacoustic music, where composers actually compose the sound itself.

Surgeon Wilder Penfield [8] demonstrated the reality of Inner Music by stimulating specific sections of a patient’s brain with an electronic charge from a galvanic probe, causing the patient to vividly "rehear" music.

Carl Seashore [9] observed that in various individuals, the capacity to recall tones of music range from an inability to mentally hear the tones at all to the ability to mentally hear them as vividly as in actual perception. He measured the ability to conceive Inner Music in numerous individuals on a scale of 1 to 7. Seashore pointed out that the capacity to hear music in recall and to supplement the actual physical sounds in musical hearing is the most outstanding mark of the musical mind.

Helmholtz [4] observed that pitch intervals made the Inner Music easier for human perception.

John Cage [2] seemed, for the most part, to devalue Inner Music. I asked his opinion if he heard music in his dreams, and if it was sometimes music he had heard before. He answered "music sometimes runs through my head without my willing it."

Among four theoretical types of Inner Music [7], that heard in dreams is but one type. Inner music types include volitional, non-volitional, previously heard, and new. Freud [3] observed that some individuals experience this music as containing "what is essential and new in their creations" coming to them "without premeditation and as an almost ready-made whole."

Varese [10] too, seemed to be referring to Inner Music, when, in a speech he said, "When new instruments will allow me to write music as I conceive it, taking the place of the linear counterpoint...the movement of sound-masses, of shifting planes, will be clearly perceived."

References

  1. Bennett, Gerald. Music Acoustics and Contemporary Musical Composition. ASA/EAA/DAGA 1999 Meeting, Berlin, Germany. Presented Tuesday afternoon, March 16, 1999.
  2. Cage, John, Letter by John Cage to Francis Leach, February 5, 1970.
  3. Freud, Sigmund, The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. Modern Library, New York, 1938.
  4. Helmholz, Hermann, On the Sensations of Tone, translated by Alexander J. Ellis, 1885. Reprinted by Dover Publications, page 253, 1954.
  5. Leach, Francis, Inner Music. Dreamworks Quarterly. Pages 315-317, Volume 2, Number 4, Summer 1982.
  6. Leach, Francis, A monograph on Inner Music. Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, NM. 1967.
  7. Leach, Francis, A Theory of Types of Imagined Music. Proceedings of the second conference of the International Imagery Association, San Francisco, 1980.
  8. Penfield, Wilder, Memory Mechanisms. AMA Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry. Page 67, 1952.
  9. Seashore, Carl, Psychology of Music. McGraw-Hill, 1938.
  10. Varese, Edgard, A lecture given at Mary Austin House. Santa Fe, NM, 1936.

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