From confession to self-knowledge. Singing as a connection between religious experiences, artistic activity, and self-knowledge

What came first, singing or the self?

Since early childhood, something in me wanted to sing. Long before I had concepts of singing or an identity associated with it, it was as if something flowed through me and urged to manifest itself in the world as tones. I sang unprompted and without any intended function or meaning attached to it. What event was this singing, long before I knew I wanted to sing? Perhaps this act can be understood as an expression of a desire for self-knowledge. At the time I did not “know better”, but when I sang, I was. And what can be more humanizing than to know oneself?

As a performing artist throughout my adult life, I have gradually become aware of new dimensions of singing. My experience spans from solo performances as a songwriter within genres like pop, rock, and folk, to classical and traditional music in choirs and vocal ensembles, both as performer and instructor. My interest in singing has been enhanced and informed by the steps I have taken within research, and vice versa. My commitments and experiences in music have been a catalyst for my desire to understand the phenomenon in a deepened manner, especially regarding the role of music in spiritual renewal and self-knowledge.

Steiner approaches the concept self-knowledge as a question of religious consciousness, founded upon the relation between the individual and the impulse of Christ. This impulse can be understood as the ability to fulfil a character of humanity and divinity simultaneously, i. e. a Christian existence modelled on that of Jesus. Man must “develop an awareness of what St. Paul meant when he said ‘Not I, but Christ in me’.” (GA 221, 21) How can such awareness be ignited and cultivated in modern times? Steiner refers to how the individual in earlier times “looked up to the cosmos from the earth; and in religious consciousness he looked up to God the Father”. (GA 221, 132) The situation has changed, and the modern individual must learn to look to the impulse of Christ within himself. This requires a higher consciousness, an “imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness” (GA 221, 135), through which a self-knowledge beyond the intellect can be reached, where man knows himself as part of the super-sensible world. I wonder if singing can enhance and cultivate these capabilities, and this has led me to investigate the epistemological dimensions of singing more consciously.

When I sing, I can get a sensation of becoming part of something bigger, a feeling of being connected to something sacred. The place of religion in society is constantly changing, and for some people today, religion is inaccessible. Religious practice is decreasing in both public and private spaces. Practices that traditionally have provided opportunities to enact devotion and something sublime are gradually being pushed out of society’s common arenas. What is at stake in this development and what has possibly been lost? Are there essential human experiences that are only accessible through religious endeavors?

The view of music has undergone profound renegotiations during the last century and is also characterized by the cultural and technological development where availability has increased substantially, both for composer, performer, and listener.¹ This has weakened its former status as something exalted. In current philosophy, much influenced by Elliot² and Small³, sociological viewpoints have gradually gained a stronger foothold. In this way of thinking, music is understood as a social phenomenon and something performative. In the past, music was explained as something essential with an inherent quality. This approach has had to give way in recent decades. This development can also be seen in the light of religion’s weakened position, where it is no longer legitimate to exalt something as essential or profound. Are there aspects of music that are at risk in this view of music, and what can societal developments of religion illuminate in this dynamic?

I intend to narrow my focus to the act of singing. Singing is a special domain in the realm of music, as it is so closely connected to speech and the whole of the human organism. Steiner describes how “When a human brings forth a tone or sound, his whole organism is actually involved” (GA, 283, 104). This distinguishes singing from music as such, as the tone or speech can be understood as “only the final culmination of what goes on within the entire human being” (GA, 283, 104). This proximity between the tone and the inner life of the human sets singing apart from other types of music, for example that of playing an instrument. It is this proximity or immediacy that has drawn my interest towards singing in the context of self-knowledge.

Religion’s altered position actualizes the investigation of new approaches to religious experiences. When music is understood based on sociology and psychology alone, a void emerges with the need for a life-explanation that neither religion nor science of today fulfill.⁴ Confession has traditionally been a central aspect of religion, but according to Steiner, dogmatic religion is incompatible with modern man’s development of consciousness, and indeed, in the “fifth post-Atlantian epoch”, that is, in the present age of critical self-conscious reason, dogmatism “will kill the religious life” (GA 168, 103) of our time. In contrast, an approach with an emphasis on self-knowledge can play a central role in a dogma-free religious life, and singing may open or reveal such experiences. This will generate epistemological questions concerning the relationship between religiosity, self-consciousness, and singing. Steiner has developed a substantial theory about self-knowledge understood as a capacity of the consciousness soul or Bewusstseinsseele. According to Steiner, the consciousness soul is the human capacity of “inner knowledge and awareness” (GA 13, 67) of oneself.

I intend to examine the role devotion plays in self-knowledge and look at how singing and devotion are connected. Singing can provide experiences of esteem, devotion, and self-knowledge. The inherent qualities of music must be recognized, and from there on the epistemological dimensions of singing and religion can be illuminated.

Through a life in music, I have become aware of how singing is something that takes place in several dimensions, both bodily, socially, culturally, and religiously. Hence, this article is an investigation of singing considering religion, philosophy of music, and epistemology, in what entails an intriguing rendezvous for them all. Both historically and through recent research, it appears that music can have a distinctive effect on people.⁵ Various established religions have important traditions of devotional singing in both eastern and western religions. The practice of Kirtan chanting in Hinduism consists of devotional chants or spiritual themes led by a lead singer and repeated by the audience. Psalm singing in Pietism and Gospel choirs in African American Christianity are examples of devotional singing traditions within religions in the Western hemisphere. Yet, these practices are closely connected to more institutionalized religious settings, which arguably are declining in extent and legitimacy in western parts of the world.

In the following sections, I will deal with the role of religiosity in the present time, singing as a phenomenon deliberating philosophical perspectives from Schopenhauer, Steiner, Bergson and Varkøy, and the epistemological meeting point between singing and religion. Next, I will shed light on epistemological dimensions of singing and examine singing as a connection between religious experiences, artistic activity, and self-knowledge.

Religiosity in the present day

We find ourselves in a time where the individual is increasingly abandoned in the search for truth and the practice of religion. The status and role of religious practice underwent fundamental changes in the Western hemisphere in the 20^th century. The established narrative of the demise of religion since the Age of Enlightenment has in more recent years been refuted. The narrative has been named the “secularization paradigm” within social sciences, and has been called into question, as researchers have increasingly advocated a more nuanced representation. Especially, established narratives about what drove secularization have been renegotiated,⁶ and efforts have been made to identify whether “Narratives of Secularization” have been inductive or deductive, underlining that “what counts as ‘secularization’ can vary significantly, often as a function of the disciplinary perspective adopted.”⁷

Regardless of the position in this question, one can observe tangible changes in the dynamic between religious institutions and civil society, which both causes and expresses a change in the relation between individuals and religion. Steiner and Charles Taylor are both convinced that society has been subject to a significant process of secularization in the most recent centuries and make up two vital critics of this development. Even though a whole century separates them, their ideas are remarkably similar. Steiner characterized contemporary issues in the early part of the century, but also made predictions about how these tendencies would continue. Despite apparent differences, they are two voices to be reckoned with when understanding religiosity in the Western world in the last 100 years. Taylor produced a substantial critique of secularization and “the expanding universe of unbelief”⁸, a secularization that has gained an increasing momentum from the 20^th to the 21^st century. Taylor has also pointed to the value of spirituality and the crucial role it plays in humanity’s quest for existential meaning. Steiner also produced a substantial critique of secularization, and in addition presented an entire cosmology consisting of eastern mysticism and western occultism.

The concepts of religion and spirituality are not easily distinguished, but one can understand religiosity as somewhat “firmer” regarding rituals, objectivity, and community. Koenig defines spirituality as “the personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate questions about life, about meaning and about relationship to the sacred or transcendent, which may (or may not) lead to or arise from the development of religious rituals and the formation of community”.⁹ According to Koenig, religion is generally more community focused, formal, organized, practice based and involves a doctrine separating good from evil.¹⁰ Religiosity is distinguished from religion by defining an “individual’s conviction, devotion, and veneration towards a divinity”,¹¹ but it can also be used to denote all dimensions of religion.¹² In light of these differentiations, this article will focus on the religious dimensions of singing. The reason for this is that I wish to investigate how singing can constitute a practice based and to some extent community-focused arena for developing self-knowledge. Hence, I understand this as a phenomenon closer to something described as religiosity rather than spirituality. The latter will also be a point of emphasis. Although based on the definition above, the more individual, existential and to some extent also nature-based dimensions described as spirituality will be understood as a part of a potential religiosity.

Steiner and Taylor two will function as a framework to understand characteristics of religiosity in the present day. Taylor is one of the few vocal philosophers in current times that argue for the importance of spirituality and has pointed to the effects of secularization. He describes this tendency of increasing abandonment as “the great disembedding”,¹³ where the individual has a large scope of possibilities, but little structural support in understanding its existence. Previously, the individual was part of social and religious contexts, which gave experiences of connection both with community and cosmos. Taylor describes that the contemporary individual is as “the buffered self”¹⁴ and characterizes it as closed to its surroundings “and not open and porous and vulnerable to a world of spirits and powers”.¹⁵ In this encapsulated state, the individual is filled with an urge to connect with its surroundings and origins, which becomes increasingly demanding as detachment from structures and contexts grows. Steiner characterized our time as the age of the consciousness soul. The term has a principal place and function in Steiner’s anthropology and implies a spiritual potential to develop a stronger individuality through clear thinking, with an associated increased risk of loneliness and selfishness. The potential of individual freedom and morality is intrinsically connected with the consciousness soul, because “Only the Consciousness Soul can be permeated by high moral and aesthetic ideals and by great, wide-ranging conceptions of the world” (GA 58, 174). “Through the consciousness soul man is much more an individual, a solitary traveler through the world” (GA 168, 94). Both Taylor and Steiner describe how the connections between the individual and the world have been weakened. So how can the embedded consciousness soul individual create and cultivate the connection between the inner and outer life?

Steiner pointed out how collective religious practice will no longer be experienced as relevant for the individual in our time (GA 168), a viewpoint supported by Taylor.¹⁶ This has also been pointed out in recent research, where the term private religiosity is used as a category for forms of religious belief and practice that are not expressed in collective and public contexts.¹⁷ Private religiosity is difficult to monitor, but is, according to Botvar, widespread in Norway and the Nordic countries. In this way, the practice of religion is subject to individual designs, created out of the individual’s context, intention, and experience. A general secularization has led to a weakening of the role of religion in organized forms, but on the other hand a “detachment from established social and religious structures is thought to contribute to a flourishing of new forms of religiosity”.¹⁸ According to Varkøy, “science has, despite of its leading position in our society, not fully been able to replace religion as a model of explaining life”.¹⁹ Individualization also leads to the confessional aspect of religion falling away. Whether it is a matter of confessing sins or professing one’s faith in any given institutionalized religion, this will be experienced as of little relevance to the individual who no longer finds meaning in the traditional religious and social structures. But the need for explanations of life not only persists, but presumably grows stronger when everyone must create or discover them themselves. This is how art has become a possible alternative.²⁰ For many people, religion has become a personal matter, and it is “the small sanctities” that gradually expand in the everyday lives of people, as universal myths lose some of their position.²¹

This description is consistent with my personal experiences of how religious practice changed from participation in traditional gatherings and celebrations, with regular personal prayer throughout childhood, to religious practices expanding beyond limited moments and becoming integrated in everyday consciousness in new ways. According to Ruud, this can be described as “an opening towards the sacred in everyday life”.²²

Through singing, I have had many experiences with this opening. Singing can offer a feeling of connection with one’s own life and destiny and can provide a kind of heartfelt identification with being human in the world, and a sense of becoming part of something that transcends time and space. Steiner maintains that “Indeed, song is an earthly means of recalling the experience of pre-earthly existence” (GA 283, 107). Botvar refers to several researchers when describing how religion has been privatized and individualized in modern society, and that this should not be regarded as something egocentric and anti-social. On the contrary, this development can have positive consequences for individuals, strengthening their opportunities for self-knowledge and acknowledging how different religious expressions can be. Taylor emphasizes the value of space for the religious, and states that life would be unlivable without unofficial zones where we can “think and feel with our whole being, and find various intense forms of community”.²³

In mapping musical experiences, a category of existential and transcendental experiences emerges, where people encounter parts of life that transcend the everyday. According to Ruud, this “can be religious experiences of feeling ‘whole’ in addition to ‘out-of-body’ experiences”.²⁴ Strong experiences linked to music are widespread, and descriptions of physical and emotional reactions are recurring. One can become inspired and indulge in the mood of the music, and this can give an experience of becoming part of a larger whole.²⁵

We have now seen that the role of religion in society is changing, which presumably leads to people seeking religious experiences in other forums and forms. We have also seen how singing, and music can provide experiences that can be understood as religious. I will now illuminate the basic features of the musical philosophical discourse to provide a deeper understanding of the cognitive theoretical dimensions of singing. I wish to demonstrate how this discourse has been full of contradictions, but that unification of the two basic views can contribute to a fuller understanding of music.

Philosophical foundations of music

The urge to understand music has resulted in a rich tradition within musicology, where debates about the emphasis of “inner” and “outer” values of music have been a catalyst in the debate. Conductor Felix Maria Gatz formulated two terms to identify the basic attitudes in the early 20th century: autonomy-aesthetic and heteronomy-aesthetic.²⁶ The terms indicate to what extent music is regarded as something with an inherent value or characteristic, or as an expression of something or as an activity. The autonomous aesthetics holds that the music itself contains all essential keys to understanding. Music is about music and is freed from the verbal language’s references to an outside world. A heteronomy aesthetic holds that the meaning of music arises out of an ability to symbolize other spheres of reality. According to The Harvard Dictionary of Music, the two approaches of Gatz are characterized by “whether they consider music (1) as a heteronomous art, i. e., as the expression of extramusical elements, or (2) as an autonomous art, i. e., as the realization of intrinsic values and ideas”.²⁷

In Music and thought. Main Directions in the History of Music Aesthetics from Antiquity to Our Time (1976) music historian Finn Benestad decribes how the concepts coined by Gatz became established as a conceptual framework within musicology. One emphasizes the functional or outer value of music and the other the aesthetic or inner value of music. According to Benestad, the function or outer aspects of music was essential for its value until the end of the 18th century, after which Romanticism emphasized the essence or inner dimensions.²⁸

The autonomy-aesthetic approach regards music as a “vehicle of ineffable truths beyond conceptualization”.²⁹ The music represents itself, and thus it must be understood as what it is, namely notes composed in rhythmic patterns and rows.³⁰ This understanding of music assumes that there is something essential in the art piece regardless of how it is experienced. The meaning of music is the music, nothing else, and the approach thereby rejects any point of view that does not regard music as an end in itself.³¹ This supports an objective knowledge of music. The dichotomy partly has its roots in the discussion around program music and absolute music in the 19th century, where the former viewed music as function and the latter as essence.

The view of music in Western Europe before Romanticism can be said to be heteronomy-aesthetic, and similar perspectives have experienced a renaissance after WWII, albeit in new forms.³² The theories that have gained the most influence in recent times are Elliott’s praxialism and Small’s musicking. Elliot considers music as a human activity, and not as a phenomenon that can be understood separately. The music points to something beyond itself and must be understood as situated, i. e., based on its context.³³ Thus, the meaning of music is understood by factors that are non-musical.³⁴ Emphasis is placed on the performer’s creation and process. Elliott advocates that this constitutes the essence of music rather than an orientation towards the art piece. In that sense, self-development, and self-knowledge constitute the goal of music in praxialism.³⁵ Considering music as something we do together is a growing tendency, where it is understood as process and verb, more than a product, object, and work of art.³⁶ The driving force behind the growth is praxialism’s critique of music as understood as universal standards or ideas of quality.³⁷ Praxialism can be described as anti-essentialist, as it “calls into question the hard distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values of music”.³⁸ The criticism directed against the aesthetic philosophy included “its relative neglect of musical context; its embeddedness in the aesthetics of Western art music; [and] its neglect of dimensions of music’s significance beyond the aesthetic, such as sociological, political, and cultural meanings”.³⁹

The criticism has spread widely within music philosophy and practice and culminated in concepts such as new musicology and the above-mentioned musicking. It rejects that there is something essential to music as such, because “there is no such thing as music”.⁴⁰ Praxialism’s critique of the elitism in Western musical traditions shifts the focus from music as product to music as process.⁴¹ The reprioritization is a consequence of the musicological criticism of Western classical music traditions,⁴² which argues that a one-sided autonomy-aesthetic approach to music leads to the exclusion of people, through institutionalization and thus limiting or denying individual experiences. These attitudes can be understood in the light of post-structuralism, and as an intention to dissolve the notion that music and man are separate. Hence, the assumption that there is no music, but there are human activities that can be understood as music.⁴³

Varkøy points out that understanding music as function has made its inroads in favor of, and at the expense of, what I interpret as the acknowledgement of music itself and its inner and timeless dimensions. If music is reduced to a means in educational contexts, there is a risk that musical education loses something that is essential: music as a goal. Such an approach lays the foundation for reproaching music as art, which in turn can lead to an expectation of music as entertainment.⁴⁴

Autonomy and heteronomy as center and periphery

A dichotomy can act as a catalyst in discussions, and in this context the imagined distinction between inner and outer characteristics has led to a rich discourse within the philosophy of music. But in the deepest sense, these explanatory models depend on the other’s contribution in order to embrace the fullness and depth of the music. The development of an elitism in European classical music, made possible by privilege and class in the 19th century, “does not negate the fact that there are genuine pleasures to be had in the aesthetic appreciation of music”.⁴⁵ To argue otherwise, is according to Alperson, a “genetic fallacy”, meaning that “the origin of a thing may be taken as sufficient grounds to discredit the thing itself”.⁴⁶ It is the art piece itself that is the primary target of the interpretation, and secondly the context.⁴⁷ If one examines music as a phenomenon, sooner or later one will arrive at a core that is manifested in the quality or essence of singular elements. When exploring music autonomous-aesthetically, one will discover that components such as tone, timbre, texture, rhythmicity, harmony, and essence unfold in a space of something, and one can imagine that this space is what constitutes man as a social being. Music ultimately comes to light through its effect – on humans as social beings. It unfolds in spaces which necessarily are circumscribed by something human. Furthermore, there must be something that forms the framework of the spaces, for example the interval between pulse beats, the frequency of breathing and people in a relationship.

Approached via a heteronomy-aesthetic perspective, one can find that the processual, social, and relational aspects of music require the essential singular components of music to take place. These parts will be characterized by something, and this ‘something’ is no less than the quality or essence of music.

One can also find that it is possible to create music that lives on beyond the moment of creation. Some musical ‘sculptures’ live longer than others and have an essence that transcends time and space. Autonomy-aesthetics encourages the awareness of what is specific to the music, and what goes beyond more pragmatic forms of human activity.⁴⁸ The heteronomy-aesthetic is about understanding how the music works, but this effect is a consequence of something essential. The mutual dependence between these views of music can be illustrated by the relationship between center and periphery – no center without periphery, no periphery without center.

Both the heteronomous and the autonomous aesthetic have their limitations in taking epistemological dimensions of music into account, and the purpose of this text is, among other things, to explore these limitations. According to Arthur Schopenhauer, “music is in no way, like the other arts, an image of Ideas, but an image of the very will of which Ideas are also the objectivization”.⁴⁹ Schopenhauer held that other artforms speak of shadows, whereas music “speaks of the essence of things”.⁵⁰ The approach is contrary to the current practical discourse of music, characterized by “psychological, therapeutical, educational, sociological, and cultural theoretical formulations”.⁵¹ Varkøy argues that Schopenhauer’s understanding of music is vital for the future development of musicology and advocates for a “re-romantization of thinking about experiences of music, a turn in the direction of awe and wonder”.⁵²

Steiner developed a romantic-cosmic view of music in the extension of 19th-century Neoplatonism. This way of thinking was based on the metaphysical world view of antiquity, and Steiner linked man’s attraction to great music to man’s attraction to his spiritual origin. According to Steiner, “music is most readily comprehensive to the soul, to the immediately sensitive realm of human feeling (Gemüt); on the other hand it also presents difficulties for those wishing to grasp its effects”. (GA 283, 11) Based on Schopenhauer and Steiner, upheld by Varkøy, a view of music is implied, whose further development can contribute to understanding music’s epistemological possibilities with emphasis on self-knowledge.

From the reflections on center and periphery, it becomes clear that the depth of music can best be understood by utilizing both the autonomy-aesthetic (center) and heteronomy-aesthetic (periphery) approaches, but that the existential dimensions of music must also be accounted for. Some possibilities have been implied by a romantic-cosmic view of music, and I will now explore singing considering these perspectives.

Singing as a way of practicing religion in our time

When I sing, I am often filled with an uplifting or flowing sensation, where an indulgent and benevolent warmth for myself and fellow human beings spreads throughout my constitution. These sensations can be understood in light of Steiner’s concept of the etheric body, as an “extremely delicate and finely-organized vehicle” (WE, 138; GA 10, 139) in continual motion, through which countless currents pass in every direction⁵³. When singing I get a sense of how these currents are affected, sometimes as if they are calmed or sped up, dissolved, or shifted. This depends on what music I sing, and how I relate to it. Furthermore, singing can be experienced as something strongly unifying and deeply reconciling, both in the encounter with myself, my life world, and in the encounter with “the other”, as conceptualized by Levinas, who describes how “knowledge of the other (autrui) requires, outside of all curiosity, also sympathy or love”.⁵⁴ The latter, I find, is often evoked when singing. The encounter with the other and our life world is always contingent on self-consciousness, and how it affects the relation and the ability to bridge the gap between individual and world.

Singing can therefore be a journey into a ‘spiritual space’ of the community, and hence play a significant role in an otherwise largely individualized religious practice. Singing can be performed and experienced at the same time, in addition to the fact that its aesthetics can also create devotion and arouse awe in the practitioner.⁵⁶ Furthermore, it also brings a sense of community by uniting people, both by virtue of the activity itself, the meaning of what is sung and the experience it provides. According to Ruud, this indicates how intertwined the relationship between music and performer is, to such an extent “that it becomes difficult to separate music and religious experience from one another”.⁵⁷ This implies a religiosity characterized by the individual’s experience of becoming part of a spiritual communion with the life world.

Singing has had a significant role in the practice of all known forms of religion.⁵⁸ The relationship between singing and religious experiences has been highlighted by several studies.⁵⁹ Gabrielsson’s studies span over several decades with close to 1,000 participants. Here, diverse examples of religious experiences through singing and music are given, both by believers and non-believers, and both inside and outside religious contexts.⁶⁰ Ruud describes how the body is fundamental to the experience of music, and how a wordless meeting between a perceiving body and a sounding musical object unfolds.⁶¹ Simply because something that was literally inside a person is allowed to come out, through tones created by the interaction between the breath and the body, described as a bodily expressiveness,⁶² singing creates a connection. The same can be experienced in an emotional sense, where what lives inside a person can manifest itself as something in the world, through what Ruud describes as emotional expressivity, which presupposes emotional awareness.⁶³ Connecting these dimensions of reality can contribute to a more congruent existence.

Epistemological perspectives in singing and religion

Based on the philosophical perspectives of music and the altered role of religion in society, I will now examine how singing can enable self-knowledge in a way that is relevant to religious practice. Among ancient philosophers, we find Pythagoras and Plato who believed that one could recognize the deepest meaning of life through music. Among contemporary music philosophers we find Bennett Reimer who advocates that arts provide dimensions of “insightfulness, of self-knowledge, of ‘wisdom’ if you will, to human experience”.⁶⁴ This leads to the question of whether the depth of existence only can be acknowledged by man’s self-knowledge. The romantic-cosmic view elevated music to a special position in terms of epistemology.

Schopenhauer’s concept of The World as Will and Representation⁶⁵ enunciates a divided human existence between experiencing the world as ‘representation’ and experiencing the world as ‘will’. He formulates how complete devotion can free us from the prison of individuation. The complete devotion can evoke a recognition of the world as “platonic idea”, by no longer considering “the Where, the When, the Why, and the Whither of things, but simply and solely the What”.⁶⁶ He states that if humans devote the entire power of spirit to perception, without letting abstract thinking, concepts of reason or consciousness occupy the mind, one can become entirely absorbed and let “the entirety of consciousness be filled with restful contemplation of a natural object just at that moment present to oneself – be it a landscape, a tree, a cliff, a building, or whatever – entirely losing oneself”.⁶⁷ Schopenhauer describes a state of unity, where “He thus draws nature into himself, so that he continues to experience it only as an accident with respect to his essence”.⁶⁸

In this regard, Schopenhauer had strong viewpoints on the position of music, stating that “It stands entirely apart from all the other [artforms]”.⁶⁹

This opinion was further developed by Steiner. Other art forms were viewed as expressions of ideas, or representations of the will, where what lies behind all things comes to light through art. “Thus music is in no way, like the other arts, an image of Ideas, but an image of the very will of which Ideas are also the objectivization”.⁷⁰ This Schopenhauerian conviction that music was considered as a direct expression of the will, was a point of view that Steiner was inspired by and developed further. (GA 283) Steiner states that “Out of an instinctive knowledge, Schopenhauer attributed to music the role of directly portraying the very essence of the cosmos” (GA 283, 13 f.). Steiner expressed a resonance with Schopenhauer’s views, saying that “From an intuitive knowledge of this Schopenhauer assigned the central position among the arts to music, and he said that in music man perceives the heartbeat of the will of the world” (GA 283, 18).

Varkøy builds on Schopenhauer’s and Steiner’s ideas when he argues that music reveals the deepest essence of existence.⁷¹ Reimer too emphasizes man’s self-knowledge through music,⁷² but how are self-knowledge and music connected?

One can imagine that self-knowledge is a result of an encounter between creation and revelation, which presupposes devotion. Rankin describes how you experience your own creator when you express yourself through art. When you are creative, you can experience “oneness with creation itself”.⁷³ This can be understood as an experience of the power of creativity itself without a subject, actor, or transcendental idea behind it. To experience unity with a greater creative force implies the potential of singing as individualized religiosity and self-knowledge. Taylor describes how absolute music moves man with what is powerful and deep without it being necessary to identify where this experience takes place, “whether in heaven, or on earth, or in the depths of our own being – or even whether these alternatives are exclusive”.⁷⁴ This expands the conceptual frameworks of religious experiences and operationalizes them in our time. Based on the Latin origin of the word (religio), it appears that religion describes connection to or a re-unification with a whole of which we are a part.⁷⁵ By enabling self-knowledge, singing can reveal a connection that had otherwise remained hidden. This dynamic is described by the ancient Greek word for truth; aletheia, which can be translated as unconcealedness or disclosure. The un-concealing of truth by the art piece “must be given to us, at the mercy of the piece”.⁷⁶ Furthermore, one can ask whether the disclosed (truth) is unconcealed through the activity, or whether it is created by it. Consequently, is truth revealed or created through self-knowledge, and can singing function as self-knowledge?

Singing and devotion

Devotion as a prerequisite for self-knowledge is an apparent paradox that is central in Steiner’s work. This paradoxical dynamic becomes apparent in the following quote:

Sparby builds on Steiner’s perspectives and describes how one can reach a transcendental state in an experience of timelessness through spiritually directed work, where “by giving oneself up, one expands, and transforms, temporarily, into something else”.⁷⁷ A similar concept of devotion can also be found in Henri Bergson’s intuition as sympathy of thought, which he set as a prerequisite for gaining insight into what underlies all reality. He regards ‘instinct’ as the opposite of ‘intelligence’, stating that “Instinct is sympathy”.⁷⁸ Furthermore, ‘instinct’ can be refined into ‘intuition’, by merging the faculties of intelligence and instinct. Intuition can lead us to the “very inwardness of life”.⁷⁹ He elaborates that “by intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely”.⁸⁰

Reaching experiences of the inwardness of life through a state of conscious devotion, is a central part of what I contend that singing can provide. If singing can offer self-knowledge, by constituting a directed devotion, the self becomes both the medium through which the activity unfolds and the object of the knowledge. In this perspective, one can ask whether the self not only experiences itself but creates itself through singing. This raises questions about the role of the self. In a modern and individualized religiosity, the self becomes the central actor in the practice, and can be understood as the point where all factors meet to form a new whole. A tentative description of individualized religiosity could be an activity that produces self-knowledge through an active joining of the esoteric and the exoteric—the hidden and the known. The encapsulated self longs for contact and connection, and thus singing as self-knowledge can provide modern human beings with (re)unification with their origins.

In a double stream

Through philosophical and epistemological perspectives, an image of singing emerges as something that unfolds in a double stream. Singing has both something autonomous and something heteronomous about it, and its epistemological potential unfolds in a dynamic where the individual’s self-knowledge presupposes devotion. This is a seemingly paradoxical dynamic because the self can reach an experience of itself by allowing music to become a part of itself and thus the self becomes a part of the music. Accordingly, one must let go of something in oneself to become oneself more. In this way, one gets a sense of how singing expresses itself through two movements: a descending and an ascending. In singing, we find the self as a point of growth between two currents, one coming from the outside and one from within. The current from outside can be understood as something that submerges into matter and embodies what is possible to experience through the sensory and emotional apparatus. The current from within is characterized by a rising gesture, which extends up and out of matter, and can be understood as an act of devotion where human beings can recognize themselves as part of something bigger. These currents are inseparable from one another, and they must therefore be seen as in a relationship of mutual creation. The descending current presupposes that the self makes itself available by surrendering and can thus function as an arena where new dimensions can be experienced.

This image of how individuality is expanded when human beings can devote themselves to a larger whole, where the whole is further completed through the individual surrendering to it, can also be understood as an image of the dynamic between individual and community, often illustrated with the already-mentioned image of point and periphery. Steiner describes this mutuality in a religiously-connoted meditation in the sense of a unio mystica: “In me is God […]; I am in God.” (GA 317, 154). This concept of a holy self-forgetfulness has accompanied humanity through millennia, and one could say that one forgets the lower self, and through focused devotion one finds the higher self.

We have now seen that singing has deep epistemological dimensions that actualizes singing in exploring an individualized religious practice for the present time. In conclusion, we shall see singing as a double current circulating three dimensions: an etheric, an aesthetic and an ecstatic. For these three dimensions singing can provide a tangible experience of the intangible or metaphysical dimensions of existence.

Individual and nature – etheric

When we sing, movements, resonance and vibrations are created in the body, and singing affects physiological processes. Singing is both bodily connected and bodily conditioned, and thus it is also intrinsically connected to the senses. Steiner describes how the etheric body “connects us with the surrounding cosmos, just as it is the physical body that connects us with the earth” (GA 163, 108). The physical body, on the other hand, “binds us to a certain extent to everything we have from the physical plan” (ibid.). According to Steiner, singing is supposed to connect the human being in a special way with the ‘cosmic forces’, particularly through breathing and sound production. Indeed, this ‘cosmic connection’ is actually nourished when we sing. “When man lives and weaves in the world of flowing tones, he himself is saturated by these tones” (GA 283, 16). In this way singing relates to the cosmic forces, connecting man to the most profound dimensions of existence.

In the ecosystem, we can observe an incessant urge to create, a will to life. Through the breath, humans can connect to the current of the life forces and enable these forces to take shape as tones. The life forces only become visible when they fill a physical form. Steiner’s view of Eurythmy is also based on this idea. He has described how the human body moves eurythmically (from Greek rhythmic order) when encountering music, but that the heaviness of the body limits human participation to only a small part, namely the vocal cords (GA 161, 16). The large, comprehensive movement condenses and concentrates in the vocal cords. Steiner describes how “When a person sings or speaks, a spectrum of the whole person always comes to light in the tone and in the vocalization”. (GA 161, 16). The voice then becomes a sounding representative of the whole person. In this way we get a picture of how something bigger can be produced through a relatively small human activity, where it is as if a large surrounding space is condensed as tone. One can imagine that this space is an omnipresent potential that eludes man, if he does not actively seek it out.

Individual and community – aesthetic

In the aesthetic dimension, the connection between the individual, culture, history, and the social community is experienced. In this area, the relationship between person and group is manifested and cultivated through singing. The individual is enabled to find its voice in the group, and the sound of the group becomes more complete when each individual finds its voice. This dynamic can provide experiences of consonance, cohesion, and the experience of an energetic and emotional community, manifested through phenomena such as ‘entrainment’.⁸¹ Entrainment describes a fusion or synchronization of our experience and the music.⁸² The aesthetic dimension can also be understood as the relationship between individual and cultural history. Through musical compositions, people can become familiar with and bring to life world history in their own time.

This is associated with music’s ability to set people in motion, both as individuals and as a group. The instrument is the body and the breath. The singer is both the instrument and the performer. In this way, singing becomes, in an absolute sense, something immediate, i. e., with no medium. As a performer, one can sing melodies from all times, cultures, and contexts. One can absorb something that originates in a different time and context and experience what a person from another context has felt and expressed. This does not take place outside the individual on an instrument or through listening to a recording, but it is created by and within the singing individual. In such manner, the greatest musical works can materialize in the individual. The beauty of the work “moves into” the body and resonates through it. The singer both creates and experiences the aesthetics of the art work simultaneously. The connection between the origin of the music and the singer is manifested in the body and unfolds in the moment to a synthesis. The singer and work become (one with) the origin, and where other art forms must be content with being experienced in the meeting between external sensation and internal images, singing fosters that these two dimensions are created in one’s interior.

Individual and self-knowledge – ecstatic

If singing can provide knowledge of the individual in the world and the world in the individual, this is also a possibility in existential terms. This brings us to the outer limits of the world of concepts. It is plausible that describing this dimension of singing would give a sense of the insufficiency of our concepts. Self-knowledge can be understood as the result of two factors, namely the phenomenon (self) and the concept (knowledge). We gain access to the phenomenon through the senses, and we gain access to the concept through the realm of thinking. In this third dimension of singing, thinking might not be able to provide us with answers. Varkøy speaks of traces of the invisible in the visible and of the unhearable in the heard,⁸³ which reminds me of how we point to the moon and say, “there is the moon”, and despite the words slipping from our lips effortlessly, we still have not come any closer to the moon. In this perspective, we can get a sense of how man experiences himself, in a way that cannot be experienced through senses and cannot be understood with concepts. However, the experience is no less real—quite the contrary—as it requires that it is brought to life again and again through the individual’s intention to devote itself to new dimensions of existence.

In the fall of man in the Bible, we see how man is condemned to a life conditioned by matter, and thus a part of man will always be cut off from himself (Genesis 1: 17–24). But at the same time this material hindrance is the only way to a deeper self-knowledge, or as Sparby formulates it in his account of Steiner’s concept of the guardian of the threshold: “it is precisely through adversity that a hero proves their heroism”.⁸⁴ Therefore, we can imagine that human existence is full of longing, and thus we are attracted to music that has something sublime about it. The musical element for Steiner can therefore provide man with a “reflection of a spiritual home”, constituting a “shadow image of the spiritual”, through which “the human soul finds its highest exaltation, the most intimate connection with the primeval element of man.” (GA 283, 17). Music can convey what we otherwise do not have access to through the mind: a (re-)unification with spiritual realms, and when we sing, we might sense this shadow of our spiritual origin. Steiner proclaims that “The soul feels at home there. Each time he listens to music man senses, ‘Yes, I am from another world!’ ” (GA 283, 17). The yearning in the human being reaches for unity; unity with body, feelings, thoughts, the moment, the other, nature and cosmos. Something in us reaches over the abyss we face as individuals on earth. Perhaps it is our God we seek, or perhaps we seek the divine within ourselves.