Following a query from a friend about the tarot and music, I thought I’d re-work series of posts from my old blog that I called Mind-Expanding Discographies, culled from a number of books that I’d been reading on music and spirituality.
The first selection comes from Peter Michael Hamel’s Through Music to the Self (1976), which I first found on the shelves of a composer whose music I was engraving in around 2006. Hamel is, to me, a profound musician and composer, and he succeeded Ligeti as professor of composition Hochschule für Musik und Theater – big boots to fill! Much of his own work is in the a new age/minimalist style, some electronic, some for ensembles such as his group Between.
The book includes a great primer on how to ‘listen’ to Indian classical music, as well as some illuminating material on vowel singing, and a number of meditative exercises and ‘social practice methods’. The discography itself is fairly mainstream (as far as these things go…), but there are a couple of unsung gems in there:
