SACRED MUSIC Its Origins, Powers, and Future (Traditional Music in Today's World)

What is modal music? Why did the ancient consider music the key of sciences, related to metaphysics? Is there a relation between Indian music, jazz, cante jondo, Gregorian chant? How should we understand African music? What are the relations between music and religion? And between music and magic, or therapy?

This collection of texts, covering a wide range of subject, concerns the amateur music lover as well as the professional musician. The renowned musicologist Alain Danielou here explains clearly and simply the profound concepts relating music to its essential roots.

Excerpts from Reviews

"Tradition is inevitably the basis on which innovations can develop. Change, if it results in the lost of tradition, is more often that not a loss rather than a gain."

"People who loss their language and their music cease to exist as a cultural and national entity and have no further contribution to make to world culture."

Alain Danielou

"Today, 'music from far afield' has become a reference for many specialists and connoisseurs. These treasures have inspired many contemporary composers. We owe all this to Alain Danielou. Today the existence all over the world, and especially in the Orient, of music, which is as classical as that of Bach and Mozart, is universally acknowledged: we owe that fact to Alain Danielou's farsightedness and unstinting efforts."

Noriko Aikawa
Director of the Intangible Heritage section of UNESCO

The Mleccha's Exercise Books by Jacqus Cloarec
Alain Danielou and the Musical Renaissance by Jean-Louis Gabin

1. THE ORIGINS OF THE MUSICAL LANGUAGES
   1. The Origins of Sacred Music
   2. Symbolism in the Musical Theories of the Oriented
   3. The Magic of Sound
   4. Magic and Pop Music

2. TRADITION AND MODERNITY
   5. Tradition and Innovation 6. Model Music and Harmonic Music
   7. Can Harmony be Introduced in Indian Music?
   8. Harmonic Aggression
   9. The Musical Cultures of the East in the Face of Western Hegemony
   10. Musical Nationalism and Universal Music
   11. The Musical Language of Black Africa
   12. The Impact of Writing and Recording on Musical Creativity
   13. Music in the Modern World
   14. Music and Meditation

3. THE SOURCE OF FUTURE
   15. Music, an International Language?
   16. Popular Religious Music in the Twentieth Century
   17. The Training of Professional Musicians
   18. Improvisation
   19. Basic Elements in the Vocabulary of Sound
   20. Comparative Musicology: Principles, Problems, Methods
   21. Categories of Intervals of Sruti-Jatis
   22. Elements of Formation of Scales
   23. Mantra. Principles of Language and Music According to the Hindu Mythology
   24. Publication of Sanskrit Treatises
   
   • The Semantic by Christian Braut
     
   • Alain Danielou. A Brief Biography by Jacques Cloarec
     
   • Alain Danielou's Musical and English Bibliography
   • Discography
     
   • Origin of the text forming this book.