Alain Daniélou

There remain no data in the West on the nature of music except for a few technical and mostly arbitrary rules about the relations of sounds and the structures of chords. The strange phenomenon by which coordinated sounds have the power to evoke feelings or images is accepted simply as a fact. Attempts are made to define the effects of certain combinations of sounds, but these effects are discovered almost fortuitously and no search is made for their underlying cause.

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Originally published as Chapter 1 of Music and the Power of Sound: The Influence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness, 1995.