DANE RUDHYAR

23 March 1895 – 1985

Renaissance man.

Astrologer, composer, philosopher, artist, writer, poet, occultist, and psychologist.

Dane Rudhyar was a seed man dedicating his life to the human race at our particular stage of evolutionary development. He saw our Western world as being at that point where it draws to a close. He spent a lifetime studying Cycles and his thoughts point the way forward to the next stage of our journey. Here are a few of his own words:

“When Pythagoras taught his disciples how to refer personal experiences of tone to a measurable length of vibrating string (the monochord), he may have given the impetus which led the Greek culture to glorify the practice of measuring and the meaning of “proportion.” Yet for him, Number and Proportion were not merely abstract concepts but were cosmic principles which could be experienced directly, or at least reflectively. Pythagoras is said to have been able to experience the “Music of the Spheres”; but when he referred to the planets and the spatial intervals between them, and to what became known as the Pythagorean scale, he was not thinking of the physical mass of celestial bodies, but of principles of organisation of what he already knew to be a sun-centred cosmos (heliocosm).”

“I feel we are at the threshold of a new age and that we need now, more than anything else, a new approach to human relationships and to social organisation. We need a planetary approach, we need a synthetic approach. We need something in which the individual learns his own function in the world, because if you are able to have a global world, the individual has to be so well established in his own identity that he can afford to cooperate with other people all over the world, independent of their culture, their race, their traditions and so on.

It is very important therefore, that one should learn how to establish oneself in one’s own identity. We need a new type of human being. We need something which is based no longer so much on conflict, but on a full acceptance of the total human being, body, mind, soul, feelings, everything. An aesthetic approach versus an ethical approach, so that you can see the relationship in which everything stands inside of the whole, so you can look at the whole and become identified with the “wholeness” of that whole, rather than with nay particular part.

Now this is, of course, a very difficult situation. We are certainly in a difficult time and what is ahead of us today, I do not know. I am rather pessimistic as far as the immediate future is concerned, considering the way the world is moving at the present time. But you must realise that crises are sometimes necessary to accomplish what is to be accomplished. The only problem, however, is this: something must be ready before the great crisis comes – when the new cycle begins - for it will have to begin on the foundations of those seeds which have been sown before the crisis. If you have a winter followed by a spring, but there was no harvest in the fall, no seed will germinate during the spring, and you will have to start at the very beginning into the most primitive time of manifestation.

This is why I have stressed so much all my life the idea I call: the “seed man.” The man who is willing and able to gather within himself, as it were, the past of humanity and particularly of our western world of course, but also of other cultures, because what we want to emerge from the future - after whatever crisis will come - is a global world.

We therefore need men of great vision, men who are not specialists (generalists as they are sometimes called today), men who have the vision and courage to wait and to, in some way, through their lives, through their example and through whatever they leave after their deaths, become the seeds of the future world.

That is of course the great choice we all have to make and we all can make it. We can follow the mass vibration and decay, like all the leaves of the world in the fall (however beautiful the golden leaves may be), they will have to decay and become manure for the future of civilisation; but it is only the “seed men” that really count and it is those you should look for, if you yourself do not feel yet to the point of being ready to become a “seed person,” because it is that only which is the insurance for the future rebirth of humanity.

I think today it is of no use to try to look to the immediate future, because it looks very dark; but it is to look – to prepare – for the possibility that a new world may arise, if not tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. I think it is the only thing which gives value to all our sacrifice, all our courage, decisions and choices today: it is to become seeds for the development of the future world.

So I hope every one of you, each in his own life, in his own way, can someday soon, very soon – if you have not done it already – make the choice and become “seed men” and “seed women.” I thank you.”

Dane Rudhyar.

Music: -

These recordings were available on LP, whilst some may have found their way onto CD.

· Five Stanzas for string ensemble on CP2 105 Colonial Symphony Orchestra, Paul Zukofsky conductor. Alongside Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande. (CD)

· Sinfonietta on Varese Sarabande label VC 81046. Berlin Radio symphony Orchestra Jonel Perles, conductor - alongside works by Don Gillis, Peggy Glanville-Hicks & John Freeman.

· Piano music on CRI 247 – Paens, Stars (from Pentagram No.3), Granites (William Masselos, piano)

· Piano music on CRI 372 – Tetragram No. 4, Tetragram No. 5 & Transmutation (Marcia Mikulak, piano)

· Piano music on Orion ORS 7285 - Syntony & Pentagrams, Book 111 ‘The Release’ (Michael Sellers, piano)

· Piano music on Serenus Corporation SRS12072 - Tetragrams – First Series (Dwight Peltzer, piano)

· String Quartets on CRI 418 (Advent, and Crisis and Overcoming) featuring a young Kronos Quartet. (CD)

You may purchase books on Rudhyar etc via the Rudhyar Archival Project - simply follow the link here: Rudhyar

“Rudhyar’s music is a music of speech – his instrumental voices surge and flow with the emotions of human discourse (as in the classical music of India), rather than follow the rhythmic and harmonic conventions of most other composers contemporaneous with him (much of western European classical music is founded on North European dance forms). And so such stirring music as his Pentagram No. 3 for piano (“The Release”), his Sinfonietta, his piano music “Granites,” and “The Surge of Fire” for orchestra never fails to move me, speaking as they do with a youthful vigour which must have mystified many listeners in the twenties when they were composed.

Whatever burned so brightly in the spirit of the young man, brimming with intellectual and psychic energy, who wrote a book on Debussy at the age of 16, who had his unorthodox ballet scores performed at the Metropolitan Opera House at the age of 21, and who composed a substantial and vigorous body of music by the age of 35, burn brighter still as we honour his 80^th birthday. His life and his music – such perfect realisations of his vision of the new Seed Culture – will continue to inspire us, every one.”

Charles Amirkhanian Music director, KPRA Radio Berkely, California.

Through the Master, the mastery speaks;

Through the flame, the fire burns;

Through all worlds, space is revealed.

O seeker after ultimates,

Will you strive to reach the Master?

Is your heart entranced by the flame?

Do you still hunger for substance?

Or will your emptiness call

For mastery to speak through,

For the fire to burn through,

For space to find in you

A focus

For the ever-new birth

Of ever-renewed worlds?

THE TEST by Dane Rudhyar.

MEDITATION ON POWER.

Watercolour, Fall 1946

Websites featuring rare articles by Rudhyar:

Rudhyar #1

Rudhyar #2

© Frank Perry, 2000. All of these articles are copyright. They may individually be copied and shared with others in a spirit of knowledge-sharing and fair play, but they may not be sold, printed or reproduced in quantity or changed in form without the permission of the copyright holder. None of this material may be reproduced in workshops or lectures of any kind unless quotes are credited or properly attributed.

Magazine and other editors may e-mail me for permission to reprint.

O. M. Aivanhov Manly P Hall Nicholas Roerich