Sandor Szabo - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Sandor Szabo

In the topic of sacredness it is scarcely possible to tell more than Mircea Eliade wrote in his b... more In the topic of sacredness it is scarcely possible to tell more than Mircea Eliade wrote in his book called The Sacred and the Profane. At most, more thoughts can be added to it analyzing the relationship of music, sacredness, and the human. Sacredness as a word should not exist in the world. The reason why it still exists is that some thousand years ago something happened in the world. A new force appeared which created the sacredness as a notion. Until there was wholeness in the world of humans, it was unnecessary to give name to a feeling, which manifested in the constant empathy pervading the whole existence. The human slowly detached from pure existence, it lost its contact with the Creator, and as a consequence, the lack of experiencing the existence started to abound. It was necessary to distinguish the wholeness and its shortage conceptually. The thing which then appeared in the world it was a shortage in the life of humans and this can be named as Profane. Until the human still lived in the state of wholeness, the sacredness as a notion did not exist, because it was needless in the self-evident state of sacredness. The human experienced that shortage which induced the force to distinguish the separation of the natural state in which it could experience the wholeness with the spiritual world. The human named this state sacredness. As the profane and sacredness appeared and extended to the life and in the mental space, it was necessary to determine the two states. The sacredness is an experience of the divine, spiritual empathy when the human directly lives through the spiritual forces in its all acts. This human attitude originates from a different form of consciousness. In the state of sacredness, a feeling passed through the human being which was induced by the consciousness that everything in which exists it could be manifested only by an external will. The consciousness, focused on the constant empathy of existence, lost its continuity and was replaced by only occasional empathy. A break occurred in the focus of consciousness to perceive the spiritual forces; this is called the profane state. It is a kind of shortage which created a new form of consciousness. To enter the previous form of consciousness, experiences were necessary to recall the state before the segregation. The tools or devices used by humans to recall that state is organized religion, art, and especially music. Music as a natural, spiritual force appeared in the world pervading the life of humans. The living space and the way of life of humans determines the character of the music, and as a result it shows up in the most versatile and colorful forms. The feeling induced by the music can directly recall the certainty of the Creator's presence in the human soul. The reality hidden behind the sound perceived the deeper and higher actuality in the spiritual world. The spiritual powers incorporated into the sound directly show the reality of

In 1980, an American-published handbook turned up introducing exotic music scales for jazz musici... more In 1980, an American-published handbook turned up introducing exotic music scales for jazz musicians and I was surprised to discover a special sounding scale called Hungarian Major in the book. However, this scale is unknown in the Hungarian folk music and is also unknown to the modern Hungarian composers. In the last 100, years many researchers worked to collect all the Hungarian folksongs and now we can say we have a uniquely rich collection, but in spite of this treasure of songs, the Hungarian Major scale does not occur in any collections. The scale surfaced in the Western culture and this fact raises a few questions.
-What is the origin of the Hungarian Major scale? A few Western musicologists were asked about the origin of the Hungarian Major, but they referred to the South Indian Melakarta system.
-What is the relationship between the Melakarta system and the Hungarian Major scale? How and when they did the scale get into the Western culture?
In the last centuries, many books have been published containing collections of exotic scales to help modern composers and creative musicians. Almost all of them include the Hungarian Major scale.
-Who named the scale as Hungarian Major? -Was its name Hungarian Major originally or someone named it later when it turned up in the Western culture?
When the Hungarian Major is compared with other similar scales used in ethnic music and analyzed, further questions are raised, like:
- How did the knowledge of higher culture filter down into the lower level of the association?
One of the mode (VII.) of the Hungarian Major scale is the Japanese Nohkan.
-What is the relationship with the Japanese Nohkan scale?
Many questions are raised in this study. We have limited knowledge but we have more suppositions in this topic.
The aim of this study is to raise the attention of Oriental and Western music scientists to discuss this topic and to help to unfold this mystery.

Conference Presentations by Sandor Szabo

In our present culture, the different ritual activities and ceremonies are a significant part of ... more In our present culture, the different ritual activities and ceremonies are a significant part of the culture and the religious life. The ritual as a term is defined here as the religious ceremony. Studying and analyzing the rituals became the part of the ethnography and art, though the topic extends to metaphysical domains; namely that the nature of the ritual cannot be understood without it. If we want to know something of the original meaning of the ritual, we must study the life of cultures living close to nature, who still apply the various ritual sacrifices, healing, and other ritual activities. Everything which happens in a ritual is an integral part of their life. In most cultures, the music is an essential and inevitable part of their ritual. Why? The human being instinctively knows and feels that the music originates from a higher level of reality. It used this talent as a possibility to make contact with its creator and to initiate a communication. The ritual is always an attempt to make direct contact with higher levels of existence. This is why humans stated to use music as a direct communication passage to the higher transcendent world. This kind of communication is so much the more possible, because the content of music as information flows back and forth. The music exists in the mental domain, and when it moves to the physical world it comes via the intuitive channel of the human. When the human plays music with ritual and sacred attitude, the music gets back to the mental world via the soul of the human. This is a connection between the mental and physical world. The ritual activity came in the world of humans not as a result of conscious thinking, but from the collective consciousness through inner inspiration. The need of ritual is encoded in our soul, so it originates in the spiritual world. The ritual is an essential part of indigenous knowledge. The essence of the ritual can be captured if we think over the principle of Hermes Trismegistos.

Books by Sandor Szabo

Zenélő Őskelet, 2015

The music has deep cosmological aspects backing to archaic times. The following study seeks to f... more The music has deep cosmological aspects backing to archaic times. The following study seeks to find answers to why relationships were formed in ancient music culture between cosmology and music. Cosmological contexts of ancient arts may seem atmost poetic for the modern man. The whole knowledge of cosmology and astrology got to the consciousness of human kind by intuitive channels, which was consolidated to practical knowledge by thinking and empiric cognition. Since the ancient works of arts were made in a different form of consciousness, their cosmological aspects cannot be interpretable in our paradigm. The important cosmic pillars that are important to man in his life are the celestial bodies that have been well observed since ancient times, the Moon, the Sun, the planets, the stars, and of course, the Earth from which we look. The basis of the ancient cosmological view is that one sees the celestial bodies as a cosmic manifestation of existence and life. In this celestial world, the Sun, as a source of all life, played a particularly important role, and this privileged status created cult. For man Sun was considered to be as Deity, but also the whole cosmos to be as a living entity. For man, the cosmos was a sacred being. He sensed the phenomena of the outside world, tied to the cosmic aspects. It is based on the consciousness of the spiritual and physical unity of the Universe and its own being.
In the archaic times, man had fully experienced his unity with nature and was in close contact with the cosmos. The decisive presence of the Sun and its importance to man in the corresponding periods of the day, expressed in music. In Eastern classical music, this tradition remains. At certain times of the day, only certain pieces are played.
Over time, not only music but cosmic relationships have become more and more complex in man's life. In fact, the musical, mood-adjusted adjustment to the times of the day means harmonious tuning of the emotional life of man to the cosmological aspects of the world. In the organic system of relationships, the celestial bodies are obviously connected with the whole being of man, with all the moments of earthly life, as the voice world is related to the human soul, there is also a connection between the cosmos and the sound world.
The sound world is a projection of physical reality that directly affects the human soul. This is why perhaps the music is the most direct passage between man's inner spiritual world and the outside world, connecting the inner cosmos with the outer cosmos

Zenélő Őskelet, 2015