Meditation music
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Meditation music includes music played with or listened to during meditation, music the performance of which is a meditation, or music which is meditative. Music may distract from or enhance meditation, and meditation may involve music making.
Meditation music should be simple and soothing.[citation needed] There is an esoteric branch of yoga called Nada yoga, in which it is said that advance meditators hear divine "unstruck" sounds that arise from within the heart.[citation needed] Some of the sounds heard in meditation are said to be[weasel words] in nature or have been duplicated by human beings. Some of the classical sounds include the rumble or thunder, the buzzing of bees and the deep sound of the waves.[citation needed] Some of the instruments that are inducive to meditation are the tamboura, tibetan singing bowl, the flute and the sitar.[citation needed]
Some of the trailbrazers in producing meditation music have been organizations such as the Sanata Society, Sounds True and Inner Splendor Media.[citation needed]
Musical training is similar to meditation and musicians may study meditation for the benefits during performance, such as deep breathing and concentration.[citation needed] Some composers have combined meditation and music, for example, John Cage, Stuart Dempster, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young; others have written meditative pieces. Some examples are Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mantra (1970), Hymnen (1969), Stimmung (1968), and Aus den sieben Tagen (1968), Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (1941), and Ben Johnston, whose Visions and Spells (a realization of Vigil (1976)), requires a meditation period prior to performance. R. Murray Schafer's concepts of clairaudience (clean hearing) as well as the ones found in his The Tuning of the World (1977) are meditative (Von Gunden 1983, 103–104).
Stockhausen describes Aus den sieben Tagen as "intuitive music" and in the piece "Es" from this cycle the performers are instructed to play only when not thinking or in a state of nonthinking (Von Gunden asserts that this is contradictory and should be "think about your playing"). John Cage was influenced by Zen and pieces such as Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for twelve radios are "meditations that measure the passing of time" (Von Gunden 1983, 104).
There are a number of outlets for meditation music. Some musicians[weasel words] have posted their work on Youtube and other music websites. There are also free internet-radio stations, such as www.mindyourintention.com, which was founded in 2009.
[edit] Source
- Von Gunden, Heidi (1983). The Music of Pauline Oliveros. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-1600-8.
[edit] Further reading
- Johnson, Tom (1976). "Meditate on Sound", Village Voice, May 24.
