| no previous musical experience is required. |
Since Jung was not a musician he rarely commented on the subject. Yet he maintained that music expresses in sounds what visions express in images. Jung suggested that music, like drama, shows the dynamic aspects of the collective unconscious.
Yet the personal experience of professional musicians is far less abstract. What drives aspiring musicians to endure the dismantling rigors of training? The endless hours of practice, the discipline, the joy and the suffering are evidently accompanied by an underlying feeling of being drawn forward by something higher, something primal. Body, mind and soul seem to have innate vibration and movement patterns that resonate through repeated practice on the instrument. The constant repetition is meditative. It tunes the whole person. Viewed in this way,
| the path can also be seen as alchemical: |
it burns away what stands in the way and clarifies what seems to have been there from the beginning. On such a journey one may recognize the archetypal essence of music, the cosmic meaning of the phenomenon of Number, which manifests itself through inner and outer vibrations.
Music seems to emerge less frequently in most people's dreams than do images. Yet in waking life
| people may be suddenly and deeply touched by music. |
The following experience during a violin lesson with students at the Graz University of Art left a lasting impression. At the beginning of the lesson, a student fell into a deep trance while tuning her instrument (through the interval of the fifth). Her clear absence intuitively called upon us to wait and trust in this exciting event. After a while, she woke up as if refreshed and rejoined the group quite as a matter of course. The intervening time remained a secret but made it clear that music is the epitome of wholeness.
An example of music from active imagination is given by the physicist Wolfgang Pauli in his well-known piano lesson. In dialogue with the figures of his imagination, modern physics and depth psychology are bridged by musical symbolism.
Let the composer Charles Ives attune and inspire you: The Unanswered Question.
