the drama of the impossible love The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which can be interpreted in many ways, has inspired a number of composers – Monteverdi, Gluck and Offenbach – to put to music what is sometimes called the drama of the impossible love. This was not without reason: there is, after all, no form of art that approaches the spirit of the divine love (Orpheus) so well as music. Similar to the Spirit, music is filled with delight and ecstasy, but simultaneously, it is fleeting and elusive. Just as the Spirit, music has no past or future, but it comes to life, into action, in the actual now. And similar to a spiritual touch, sparks of divine fire may leap over in music.
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
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HE LEGEND ‘One day, Apollo, son of Zeus, saw that people on earth indulged in a sinful and wicked life and in all kinds of excesses. He saw that, although people had accepted God as a higher goal in their lives, this was no longer put into practice. He, Apollo, the god of the Light, eternal youth, the muses and medicine, decided to help humanity. He poured his spirit into a priestess who was devoted to him, called Calliope. Calliope, also the muse of poetry and eloquence, gave birth to a son whom she called Orpheus. This name of a Phoenician origin means: he who heals with Light (aour = light and rophae = healing). And to honour him, he received famous nicknames like: the mellifluous saviour of people, the thrice-crowned one: in heaven, on earth and in Hades. At a young age, Apollo gave Orpheus a sevenstringed lyre and the muses, his aunts, taught him to play and sing. Each string of this lyre represented one-seventh part of the harmony of the whole of creation, and each time that Orpheus elicited sounds from the strings, the whole of creation radiated with his Light. When Orpheus had reached adulthood, he left his mother and her sisters, the other eight muses, to bring the divine music to the earth,
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The voice and string music of this son of the Light were so pure, so exalted, so simple, that, as the story relates, warriors put down their weapons, wild animals lay down at his feet, enchanted, trees pulled up their roots from the soil to be able to be closer, indeed, even the rocks were set in motion and moved towards the heavenly singer.’ DIVINE INFLUENCE This image shows what
happens if ordinary nature is affected by a living, vibrating power from the original Supernature with its pure energies of a much higher vibration. To be able to understand the myth of Orpheus properly, we would best take the view of man of the ancient Greeks as our point of departure. This view of man is strongly permeated by the wisdom of the ancient mysteries, which represents the human being as a fundamentally twofold being. On the one hand, we see the human being of this nature, the restless human being, full of animal-like, but also more exalted inclinations, always seeking rest and balance in a world that is continuously in motion and in which ultimately no rest and balance can be found whatsoever. After all, the human field of life is wholly controlled by opposites: day-night,
