DETAILS
- Author:
Daniel Levy - Languages:
English, Italian and Spanish - Formats available:
Paperback (266 pages), EBook (PDF), Kindle - Description:
Euphony means harmony in sound. This definition not only indicates an acoustic fact, but above all the deep experience of Joy and Beauty within Sound in the human being as a whole.Euphony is a Science-Art that, through progressive stages, leads to experiencing the potentialities inborn in the human being; from the therapeutic effect of sound to the harmony within human relationships, from psychophysical relaxation to a re-discovery of intellectual vigour, from the expansion of sensibility to Self-knowledge.Daniel Levy’s book deals with the effects of sound on the human being, offering a detailed analysis of the meaning and function of music, its great potential as a Science/Art, and the reasons why it is a golden key to the knowledge of ourselves and of the universe.
Daniel Levy
The classical pianist Daniel Levy is world-renowned both as a live performer and a recording artist, with a vast repertoire ranging from Bach through to contemporary music. He has performed within the world's most celebrated music venues and concert halls, alongside major symphony orchestras. Levy has recorded over 60 CDs for music labels including Edelweiss Emission, Syntony and Nimbus Records and has been critically acclaimed as ‘one of the leading pianists of our time’. During a successful career he has coupled a busy schedule of musical activity with a leading role as a researcher and educator, delivering workshops, seminars and conferences, dedicated to the development of techniques derived from studies and experiences regarding the effect of sound and music (as a Science/Art) on the environment and the human psyche. Levy worked alongside esteemed musicologists including Alain Daniélou and Marius Schneider. He has organised three international exhibitions of ancient musical instruments, a series of Indian and Asian classical music concerts and chamber music concert cycles within important European cities. He is the author of a broad range of articles on the subject of Euphony and his books “Eternal Beauty”, “Echoes of the Wind – The story of a journey towards the centre of Sound” and “The Teachings of Pythagoras” have been published in various languages. Levy has been the Main Tutor of the project “Euphony – Implementing Teacher Knowledge” which is part of the European Union’s Socrates Grundtvig I project, where ‘Euphony – The Sound of Life’ has been chosen as the main teaching resource for the project. He is the co-founder of the International Academy of Euphony which is a Swiss cultural association dedicated to the education and training of Euphony professors and the dissemination of innovative educational projects apt for developing creativity and intuition.
Reviews
Daniel Levy is a pupil of Alain Daniélou the renowned musicologist and Sanskritist, author of Music and the power of Sound and Myths and Gods of India as well as several other serious books on Indian Yoga and Philosophy.
Today there is a proliferation of books purporting to be on sound (particularly through mantra) therapeutics. These are often patchy, poorly researched, particularly regarding the pronunciation of Sanskrit mantras, and productive of mood rather than true transformation.
It is therefore a refreshing pleasure to come across Daniel Levy’s book, which treats the essence of Sound, acoustics of the Self, the relationship between Sound and Space. Resonance, Vibration, Harmony and the experience of Self both in sound and, perhaps more importantly, in silence.
Daniel Levy has a considerable portfolio of recordings, not the least his "Syntony” recordings of the Pythagorean Therapeutics through harmonic sound recordings. Having gone to the essence of the Western Musical Therapeutic/Harmonic Tradition (Which in Socrates governed the whole field of "Humanistic/Artistic endeavour, as well as the Vedic Tradition of sound- Chandas (rhythm) and musical expression, one can only acknowledge Levy's devotion and breadth of understanding of this vital expression of our Being and unreservedly recommend this book to all genuine seekers of Self recognition through Sound and Silence.PETER HARRISON – DIRECTOR OF WATKINS BOOKS – LONDON, UK
Co-author of Dhatu Patha - a study in the roots of language, author of "Sounds of Siva - a commentary on the Mahesvara Sutra"
Levy deals with the extremely powerful theme of the Central Archetype: the Self, the place where ‘the Self irradiates a spheric sound, all-inclusive and complete, which does not exclude, but synthesises’.
An even more significant undertaking when one thinks that the author is a musician and, as such, one can imagine the effort he must have made to emerge from sound performance and enter, as he often declares, into Life Music. Euphony focuses on a series of practices to approach the internal world and its symbols of totality, to discover the entirely human possibility of making contact with the concert of phylogenesis, searching for the bridge between Macrocosm and Microcosm.
Here one sees how much Daniel Levy has elaborated upon the thinking of Alain Daniélou and how much he has concluded from that which his work had left to the intuition. Euphony, as the place to encounter the origins of music-life, works to reunite us with the natural function of music, which recent years of technicalism have interrupted. What Euphony points to is an ecology of the unconscious, an attempt to re-find the consciousness of natural functions, on which the symbol of archetypes depend.PROF. RAFFAELE MORELLI, RIZA PSICOSOMATICA MAGAZINE, ITALY
We all encounter, in the course of our lives, books that leave deep and enduring impressions, books that have taught us, through the way they have looked at various themes, something new, something which has a resonance within our deepest being. So, whoever has the good fortune to read Daniel Levy’s ‘Euphony The Sound of Life’ will find in this book the key that, by opening our inner door, leads us to harmonic knowledge of ourselves, and teaches us, through musical movements of the Self, how to use the best of our personality by following biological rhythms and the relationships which exist between sound and the psychophysical organism in each of us. Levy offers, in new ways, some meanings and aspects of sound and the function of music in all manifestations of existence. Physical sound is the reverberation of inaudible Sound matter. All bodies, whether animate or not, have their own resonance. We learn that in every individual there exists a euphonic nucleus, which can be unveiled, enlarged and utilised.
Penetrating the essence of Euphony means rediscovering our own resonant reality. Once we have found the syntony between our interior rhythm, the rhythm of the world and the environment in which we live, we will succeed in evolving and giving sense to life.
Levy's book is pleasant and easy to read, even though it discusses profound and specific matters. Those for whom it is intended will recognise the message and the teaching, and, after having read and understood it, will no longer be the same...PROF. G. ZUCO, INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE OF PSYCHOLOGY - ITALY
In this excellent book - a true hymn to the sense of hearing - all the paths that lead to the profound experience of the individual and universal Self are taken through Sound. Sound as an acoustic vibration, as a musical inspiration, as a language, as a listening experience, as harmony and health for body and mind, as space and as an archetype of forms. The body is an amplifier, a musical instrument, if its sound waves are blocked it is because we block them. To have knowledge of our inner note and to attune ourselves to it, is the equivalent of knowing the secret name of the ancient Egyptians... Therefore, every shape is a sum of vibrations and to recognize this is to learn the universal language of Nature. A text, by Daniel Levy rich in ideas to reflect upon and grow by on an inner level.
HERA MAGAZINE, ITALY
Extract
The premise of Euphony is the certainty that every living being is destined to radiate (to release light from the nucleus). The nuclear fusion which creates a sun so that the Earth has energy is the physical expression of a spiritual reality, implanted as a nucleus in every creature, from the mineral to man, and, certainly, beyond. Here is the realm of Universal Music, from whence we all come. ‘In Music the soul senses its own celestial Fatherland’. Robert Schumann thus expresses what irradiates in his music.
Perceptions, sensations, feelings, thoughts, and intuitions are aligned as in a column of light and all the contradictions of existence meet in Beauty and Joy. The ‘fixedness’ of relative patterns shows this narrowness when man, who lives within their compass, no longer finds pure air to breathe, for he was not born to be imprisoned in the space/time cobweb, but to experience freedom within apparent limits. Daily contingencies, if resolved in the ‘euphonic space’, acquire overtones. Hence every action is a communication bridge.
Every instant is composed of many moments that we can catch a glimpse of through the infinite. One second may encompass true experiences of eons. All that is needed is to grasp temporal reality. Units of time, like tenths of a second, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, and centuries are of little interest. In Music, great experience can occur in the ‘twinkling of an eye’. The Mystery of the connection between the dimensions exists right in the middle of time and space, not in the interfaces. Euphony is ageless, likewise the realm of Music did not begin when a few men on earth ‘created’ Music. When does the real history of mankind begin? Is there a year, a month, a day? Matter, energy and light are inseparable. And they reveal truth. Time, Space and Music are inseparable. Our task is to penetrate them.
