Rudolf Haase - Biography

Born Feb. 19, 1920 in Halle/Saale (Germany). Schooling and diploma (1938) in Halle/Saale.
1938-1948 military service and prisoner of war in Egypt. Educational
leave 1942-43 TH Berlin (engineer), further studies at the school for
prisoners of war in Egypt.
1948 study at the Universities of Münster, Bonn, and Köln. 1951
promotion to Ph.D. in musicology (minors in philosophy and church
history). 1951 guest auditor of the ethnomusicologist Prof. Dr. Marius
Schneider (Köln) and contact with Dr. Hans Kayser (Ostermundigen),
frequently visited until his death (1964) leading to a student-teacher
relationship.
1952 various duties as musicologist for radio and the press. 1955
lecturer, 1957 assistant managerial director at the Wuppertal
Conservatory. 1952 began scientific publications and lectures,
predominantly on harmonics.
1965 employment at the Vienna Academy (later University) of Music and
the Visual Arts, introduction of the field of “fundamental harmonic
research.” 1967 promotion to university professor and opening of the
“Hans Kayser Institute for Fundamental Harmonic Research.” Since then,
over 250 publications in 10 countries and 8 languages, as well as about
260 lectures on harmonic research in 12 countries.
5
Essays of Professor Haase's have been posted on this website, taken
from the following book. We intend to make this collection of essays
available through the website at some point, when we have organized the
final details and permissions for doing so….
The Hans Kayser Circle of Friends
ESSAYS ON THE HISTORY OF HARMONICS
Plato, Leibniz, Bahr, Hauer, Hesse
Rudolf Haase
Translated by Ariel Godwin
Schriften über Harmonik No. 11
Bern 1984
Contents
Foreword ................................................................................................................. 3
Remarks on Plato's “Harmony of the Spheres” (Plato 427-347 b.c.) .................. 6
Research
on Leibniz at the Hans Kayser Institute for Fundamental Harmonic
Research (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646-1716)
............................................................ 9
Hermann Bahr (1863-1934) and Harmonic Thought ......................................... 13
Cosmic
Harmony in Symbolism and Natural Science: On the World View of Josef
Matthias Hauer (1883-1959)
.............................................................................
20
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game.
Excerpt from the novel of the same title ............................................................... 32
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) and the Harmonic Tradition ................................. 41
Author's Biography ............................................................................................... 45
Foreword
Fifteen years have passed since the History of Harmonic Pythagoreanism
was published; but after ten years, the book was out of print.
Speculations have long been made as to how the ever-present demand for
copies could be met, particularly since this book was interesting not
only to scholars of harmonics and historians of the sciences, but also
served as three semesters' worth of fundamental lecture material for
students at the Vienna Academy of Music.
Meanwhile, the book was translated into Polish; yet the publication was
delayed due to the translator falling ill. It had to be revised in any
case, since many facts needed correcting, especially after new studies
on Thimus.
Suffice it to say that for this Polish translation, by Ursula Haase, a
new bibliography had to be prepared with 950 titles, the old edition
having only 558. There was a wealth of new literature on this subject;
therefore it did not make sense to publish a German version of the
corrected Polish one. It would be much better to write a whole new
book; and the Author will surely not have time for this until his
retirement!
In truth, the void is not as great as it seems from this introduction.
Various individual works were prepared by the Hans Kayser Institute for
Fundamental Harmonic Research in Vienna, in which predominantly
historical topics were further investigated. The Author himself studied
Kepler and Leibniz, and also wrote Kayser's biography; the compilation of Kayser's letters, by Ursula Haase, serves as its completion. Werner Schulze studied Nikolaus von Kues and Schopenhauer, while Leopold Spitzer (while also writing a book on Rilke) made a groundbreaking investigation of Albert von Thimus's Harmonic Symbolism of the Ancients, with far-reaching consequences.
The old suspicion that Thimus had made several mistakes was proven true
to a great extent; therefore the image of ancient Pythagoreanism that
he used, and his so-called “harmonic symbolism,” both had to undergo
numerous corrections.
We should also mention those historically oriented dissertations that
were written at Vienna, since their content-even those that were not
published-may become part of a future history of harmonics. These deal
predominantly with collections of material and special investigations
by the following historical personages: Johann Sebastian Bach, Antoine
Fabre d'Olivet, Philippe Rameau, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse,
Franz Werfel, Paul Klee, and Paul Hindemith.
But papers were also written, independently from the Vienna Academy, on
the topic of the Pythagorean tradition. Indeed, there is a wealth of
publications relating to this material, the titles of which are listed
in five bibliographies so far: Literature on Fundamental Harmonic Research. Of these only a few are given; they cover broader domains and should be approached as freestanding historical works.
In 1962 a groundbreaking work on Pythagoras was published: Walter Burkert's Wisdom and Science: Studies on Pythagoras, Philolaus, and Plato,
a standard work of classical philology, written mainly for experts in
the field. Not less extensive and important, but easier to understand,
is Bartel Leendert van der Waerden's The Pythagoreans: Religious Brotherhood and School of Wisdom. There is also much important material for our topic in History of Natural Science I: The Foundation of a Natural Science by the Greeks by Fritz Krafft. There are many thematic intersection points with harmonics in Hans Schavernoch's The Harmony of the Spheres: The History of the Idea of Universal Harmony and the Tuning of the Soul, in
which the literary tradition of the aesthetic foreground is closely
followed, whereas our concern lies more in the scientific-historical
realm. By contrast, Architecture and Harmony: Number, Measure, and Proportion in Western Architecture,
by Paul von Naredi-Rainer, is a purely art-historical work, which can
be thought of as an extension of our chapter on this subject in our History of Harmonic Pythagoreanism.
All the literature mentioned must be taken into account for a new
edition of our History, so that the vast scope of this work can be
seen. Since this new edition is not forthcoming, we have undertaken
this summary, with the help of which the interested reader can help
himself further. The same purpose is also served by the publication of
the following essays, which may fill a few gaps.
b) “Keplers Weltharmonik und das naturwissenschaftliche Denken,” in: Antaios, vol. 5, Stuttgart 1963;
c) “Fortsetzungen der Keplerischen Weltharmonik,” in: : Joh. Kepler, Werk und Leistung, Linz 1971;
d) “Marginalien zum 3. Keplerschen Gesetz,” in: Kepler Festschrift 1971, Regensburg 1971;
e) “Keplers Weltharmonik in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft,” in: Sudhoffs Archiv, vol. 57, no. 1, Wiesbaden 1973;
f) “Kepler's Harmonies between Pansophia and Mathesis Universalis,” in: Vistas in Astronomy, vol. 18, Oxford 1975;
g) “Joh. Keplers 'Weltharmonik,'” in: Wissenschaft und Weltbild, yr. 29, no. 3-4, Vienna 1976;
h) “Keplers zweifache Weltharmonik,” in: Grenzgebiete der Wissenschaft, yr. 26, no. 2, Innsbruck 1977;
i) “Von Keplers 'Weltharmonik' zu Hindemiths 'Harmonie der Welt,'” in:
Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, yr. 35, nos. 7-8, Vienna 1980;
j) “Die Bedeutung von Analogie und Finalität für Kepler und für die
Gegenwart,” in: R. Haase (ed.): Kepler-Symposion zu J. Keplers 350.
Todestag, report, Linz 1982
b) “Harmonik und Theologie dei Nikolaus Cusanus,” Vienna 1983 (Beiträge zur harmonikalen Grundlagenforschung, 13)