Dornach, Switzerland. April 9–11, 2010

The common conception of a music festival is one of performer and audience. There is a fixed program of concerts. All the details have been ironed out to the point where even the back-up plan has a back-up plan; where every organiser is certain of their function and the performers are certain of an audience. The combination of the words ‘music’ and ‘festival’ are often connected with many pre-conceptions and images that float to the surface of the mind. This phenomena is not limited to these two words. More often than not, images and concepts are connected to words out of previous experience. This is ‘natural.’ The question we now ask is: How can we tap our collaborative, creative intellect and together re-imagine the words ‘music festival’? Can we meet on fresh earth? The experiences that bind us to what we think we know inhibit our active intuition of the spaces between the tones.

In order to realise this imagination, a malleable foundation has to be laid. As organisers, we can provide you, the musician, with the stage, the practical and technical support, and the open invitation to participate and share your own unique, individual, professional, amateur or campfire musicianship. As organisers, we can provide you, the audience, with an opportunity to witness, support and participate with the musicians in search of the lost chord. Sardine or shark, face painter or the next Rembrandt, the sidewalk or the shoe, Bob Dylan’s voice or talent, this open stage hosts all.

We see the Goetheanum transformed; a venue in which all spaces can be enlivened by music. We imagine a metamorphosis, a stage without borders. We envision stages within a stage that, no matter what stage you’re at, has the strength to support your offering. Improvisation, concerts, learning, work, community, conversation, art, experience. There will be the opportunity to hear and appreciate highly skilled musicians in concert, as well as the opportunity to play familiar and unknown instruments.

An instrument can be a broomstick, a spade, a grand piano, a blues harp, a stairwell, spoons, a church organ, a clay jug or a voice. Music can be a mountain stream, a running horse, a conversation between strangers, a train whistle in the desert night or a falling leaf whisked by the breeze. Music can be anything we imagine. All objects are potential instruments. Subtle rhythms exist everywhere. Nature itself is a song.

If you are a musician or know a musician who may be interested in this endeavour, please get hold of us so that we can accommodate you in HeartChord. If you have ever, even once, listened to music, please contemplate participating. In order for us to achieve this vision, we need your assistance. We can provide a context. You can help by spreading the word and bringing all those who wish to actively participate in this exploration. HeartChord is pushing the boundaries and expanding the borders in this territory, and anything that can be imagined is a possibility if the inspiration to create it is individually present.

For the HeartChord Team,

– Silas Beardslee and Guy Collins

info(at)heartchord.org

www.heartchord.org

www.myspace.com/heartchord

Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses."

To many people in many cultures music is an important part of their way of life. Greek and ancient Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, "There is no noise, only sound."

The Muses (Ancient Greek αἱ μοῦσαι, hai moũsai: perhaps from the o-grade of the Proto-Indo-European root men- "think") in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature are the goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths…goddesses who embody the arts and inspire the creation process with their graces through remembered and improvised song and stage, writing, traditional music, and dance.

– Wikipedia

Some music is when the mathematically ordered stars are playing inside the human being.

– Philip Stoll

Challenging, heart lightning, trying, feeling joy in those tones. Those fine tones that reach deep insight, you trigger something unexpected, bring you alive. Showing yourself, being open for movement and change, forming a structure and re-forming it. The joy of listening to the other’s story, where everyone finds his own experience because of the life story we carry with us in the present. Bringing those pasts together in a present sharing of tones. Agreements are made to understand a language together and give everyone the freedom to create, staying aware that in the freedom we understand.

– Christianne Sinoo

"Loudest Silence"

Shape shifting shadows in shades of all color.
Blind blessings blowing on wind of all force.
The loudest silence lingers in waves of all tones,
As mischievous mists mask the music of notes.
Melancholic melodies mingle with sun lapped clouds.
A heartbeat's haste hears whole in all knowing,
And freedom, never forgotten, when in fates full glow.

Seldom slept through seeded wisdom,
Turns kings to peasants in the light of its tone,
And peasant to priest at thumbed chords resonance.
Raging rivers turned loose to redemption,
As sounds sing, light, white, bright on conversing veins.

The beat, beat, beat of passing feet.
The sleeping dead of night’s deceit.
Harvesting freedom in their retreat.
And soon, the note-less tones return, within minutes, blessing the blind and shifting the shadows in the loudest lingering silence, that is.
Eternal music.

– Silas Beardslee

Music is for me a movement

Moving my limbs 

Moving my heart

If I listen carefully

I hear music coming towards me

I welcome this invitation and answer

Opening all locked doors

And I let the music flow through me, from me...

In this meeting the World and I are one

And I fly

My hands filled with light

My heart filled with love

Can we fly together?

Yes, let us stretch out our wings and fly

Towards the horizon

Dancing the dance of creation

Trusting the never-ending stream

Of inhale and exhale

Life and death and life again

Together we can reach places

You and I have never been before

We have the possibility to reach the place

Where our rhythm unites with the breathing of the World

Where our harmony sounds with the harmony of the Spheres

And our melody... 

– Inga Muriboe

music allows us to travel, it opens our hearts and minds. in playing music together we create something more than the sum of its parts, a dynamic, a flow that can take us to new spaces, or hearing a piece of music can take us back to a space we were before. resonance of earth things like stone and trees, emanating from deep, deep within, gentle, growing. rhythm brings me back the beat anchors down rippling out I can place my feet on the beat. repeat the simplest line over again it never gets old it never grows cold, a psalm singing angelic fond infants of the world stand between sky and sea and earth hovering breaking free is that so? music is the language of us all, music is to listen.

– Ben Schlesier

“This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.” – Bob Dylan

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” – Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” – Plato

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” – Bob Marley

(Quotes from brainyquote.com)

In honour of all those musicians who share themselves:

From Philip: J.S. Bach, Gavotte en Rondeau (Partita No.3 in e-minor, BWV 1006)

Silas is listening to The Avett Brothers and Iron And Wine and State Radio.

Guy hears: Sipho Mchunu, a brave musician during apartheid in South Africa.

Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Edgar Myer and Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile; amazing bass.

John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, V Selvaganesh, U Shrinivas; Indian improvisations.

Ali Farka Toure and Vieux Farka Toure, from Mali.

Christianne: Dub Incorporation and Groundation; reggae vibration.

Ben: Michael Franti.

Echoes of the past surround my periphery;

shadows of pillars,

marble statues, wisdom of strength.

They stand beyond sight.

Reminders.

Murky colours, lost contours.

Faces and deeds unknown.

And before, in shining brilliance,

in colours true,

Steadily strong, stands the future.

Light streams, fueled by shadows behind,

Towards a knowledge unknown.

A point, a periphery, combined.

A direction, a hope, a feeling,

       it stands – in focus.

– Silvia Zuur

A new step, new possibilities, inside and outside youth, inside and outside anthroposophy.

Old and young.

Big impact, refreshing the movement.

What is living today in the souls of people? What new things will come? Which new abilities can we get conscious about?

– Martin Stenius

Melting parts of a thick sheet of ice.

A fogged up window wiped clear –

that last, miniscule twist of the lens

is what brings us into focus.

Brings immeasurable clarity to who I am,

and who you are,

and along which edges and lines we meet.

It’s a simple gesture,

that twist.

And it takes time, and attention, and intention

to see clearly.

It takes commitment:

‘I really want to see you.’

-----------------------------------------

rubbing sleep from tired eyes – day becomes clear.

eyes like windows like lenses,

and simple twists,

and differing shuttering exposures.

like flashes like knowing like being,

in an instant – that’s focus.

– Cailtin Balmer

Against the pregnant morning
Against the fire sky
Our translucent Selves
Drove the dark away
And for a while
We talked, just you and I

– Guy Collins

The world is singing a new song
I think you can hear it too
Let's sing it together
Let's sing this new world into being

– Katie Dobb

There is a cloud hovering above us, though it is not grey, but light-filled and luminous; far-reaching, growing. From time to time, lightening dips down onto the earth which rises up to meet it. One strike here, another there – lightning as bright as the cloud that connects it: made of the same. Lately, strikes have become more frequent. Fires are breaking out all over the place. They may look isolated, but they’re not. The cloud stretches further, wider, higher. The lightening seems never ending. We are in the midst of a great, fateful, storm. The world is ablaze.

– John Stubley

Not a conference. Not a report. But a fireplace where we can come and meet and talk. Meeting around the fire. Meeting around our fireplace. What are the frames / context so that I can grow? Crystals in the air. Crystals in the room. Crystal clear – something should be crystal clear by the end of it. A vision – a remembering – of why we all came together, and naming it. Something like a commitment. Like an urgency. What’s connecting us? Focus on what connects us. My task. Our task.

– Elizabeth Wirsching