Sounding the Cosmos: Eurythmy Presentation - Harvard Divinity School

Johann Sebastian Bach Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor BWV 582 Gabrielle Armenier, Eurythmy Brigitte Armenier, Piano Presentation given at Harvard Divinity School on April 26, 2025 as part of the 2025 PES Conference: Spirituality and the Arts. Using the movement art of Eurythmy to reveal the artistic forms and principles at work in Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor, this presentation translates the numerology of the composer’s creative principles into a systems thinking Cosmology. Steeped in theological numerology, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue was composed as a musical Credo, or act of faith. Its thirty-three thematic entries of a musical Ostinato figure, separated in two parts whose mirror image of 21 + 12 theme iterations reveal Bach’s understanding and mastery of the creative process, have been traditionally understood according to Christian theological concepts. The standard interpretation by musicologists unfolds thematic entries of the Ostinato according to a linear conception of the Christian doctrine: the first ten entries as a symbol of the Ten Commandments, entries 11-16 as the wanderings of men away from a God figure, entries 17-21 as the Advent theme, and entries 22-33 as vague and somewhat obscure allusions to the themes of the New Testament. This presentation and performance aims at translating a common and somewhat outdated five-part conception of the piece into a new structure, to reveal a deeper and richer cosmological narrative. Tapping into the collective imagination of the Zodiac and Planets, we discover in Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue a sounding picture of archetypal qualities found in cultures throughout the world. The composition of the first twelve thematic entries offers twelve clear pictures of the Constellations. The following 9, of the qualities of the 7 Planets of classical Astronomy framed on each side by a mirrored image of a solid Earth and a resplendent Cosmos. The last 12 entries weave three voices, understood as sounding images of the Christian Trinity, or of the human soul capacities of thinking, feeling, and willing. Dividing the piece thus, we discover a reversal gesture that encompasses the entire piece: 16 thematic entries, thematic entry no. 17, unequivocally singled out by musicologists as bearing particular importance in the musical development of the piece, and 16 entries to reach the end. The central theme iteration corresponds in our qualitative research to the Sun iteration. The approach taken here thus gives expression to a cosmology based on the mathematical principles of reversal as worked with in projective geometry. In other words, to the mathematical reversal of space into counter space: Sun-space. The presentation will take the form of a spoken exposition of the artistic principles at work from entry to entry, played on the piano and demonstrated in Eurythmy, an art of movement and of forms whose gestures are choreographed directly from the score. Picture boards will show the 12 archetypes of form at work in the piece, as well as the seven colour gestures that accompany them. Further drawings will display how these geometrical ideals are drawn upon in the overall choreography, and demonstrate the translation of spiritual archetypes into artistic manifestation through the laws of projective geometry. A performance of the Passacaglia and Fugue in Eurythmy will close the event, bringing to visibility the spirituality of space according to mathematical beauty. As the use of the body and of space in this art form comes out of the principles of projective geometry, this presentation allows two spaces to resonate simultaneously: the human heart as center of artistic feeling, and the spiritual periphery of the plane at infinity. For more information, visit www.eurythmyagency.com