John Foulds
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
John Foulds was an English composer and Theosophist.
James Cousins described him as "John Foulds of England who has raised the requiem from the grave and made it once more the voice of praise for those who found the dying way to life.'"[1]
Early life
Musician career
Involvement with Theosophy
A lesser known British composer of Theosophical bent is John Herbert Foulds (1880-1939). Long fascinated by Theosophy's "light from the East," Foulds met Theosophist and fellow musician Maud MacCarthy in 1915. She had been a traveling companion of Annie Besant in India and was one of the first Western authorities on Indian classical music. Under MacCarthy's influence, Foulds experimented with developing musical clairaudience through fasting, meditation, and trance states. He hoped to take dictation from the musical devas Cyril Scott had written about.
Together, Foulds and MacCarthy collaborated on the magnificent World Requiem, first performed in 1923. The piece was intended to honor those who died in the First World War. The text was drawn from Latin and English masses for the dead, Psalms, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and even the poetry of Kabir, a Sufi mystic. One section brought together the Eastern Om (Aum) and the Western Amen—a musical first.
For many years, Foulds planned to compose an opera called Avatara, based on the life of Sri Krishna, an incarnation (avatar) of the Indian god Vishnu. He only completed three orchestral preludes, one for each act of the opera. These preludes are now performed under the title Three Mantras.
Foulds was fascinated with the concept in Indian music that certain musical scales called ragas could create heightened states of consciousness. Sanskrit phrases recited outwardly or inwardly as mantras ("words of power") during meditation have a similar effect—as in kirtan singing.
In Three Mantras, Foulds combined these ideas, using Indian scales and short repeated melodic fragments to create potent musical pictures of three states of consciousness. The first movement, "Mantra of Activity," depicts the state of consciousness Theosophists call manas (mind). The second movement, "Mantra of Bliss," depicts the state called buddhi, and the third, "Mantra of the Will," the state calledatma (spirit).
The second movement, with its wordless chorus, is especially effective as a musical depiction of buddhi. It resembles the mysterious " Neptune" movement from The Planets by Gustav Holst (1874-1934). The third, representing atma, surprises with its apocalyptic fury, reminding us that one function of the godhead is unmaking the old to bring in the new.[2]