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Self-Transformation through Music (Quest Book)

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At the time this book was published in 1986, Joanne Crandall (a professional jazz pianist) "For ten years was the accompanist for the Ballet West Dance Company... (and) a director at workshops that teach the use of music for the development of inner awareness. She also creates improvisational tapes for meditation."

She wrote in the Introduction, "This is a book about music. It is also about relationship, connection, wholeness. I have written it as an expression of gratitude for my experience resulting from the application of inner, spiritual truths to my work in the field of music... Perhaps this book may serve as a guide not only for other performing musicians who feel the need to make changes in their attitudes about their work, but for anyone wanting to experience the inner, spiritual qualities of music more fully... This book, then, is partly theory---ideas and thoughts about music---and it is partly suggestions on ways to test those ideas through actual personal experience."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"There are seasons of growth and development; there are corresponding periods of rest and dormancy. The woman's most obvious cycle is the menses, the onset of which marks the beginning of puberty and which continues to the end of her childbearing years. This exclusively female cycle that coincides with the cycles of the moon and tides may bring woman into far closer contact with nature, with Mother Earth, than man, lacking such a clearly visible cycle, can hope to attain." (Pg. 16)

"When we say we are 'moved' by music, what is being moved?... Music provides a spaciousness for our feeling, room for it to breathe and expand." (Pg. 41)

"As we begin to acknowledge our inner worlds, we can start using music as a conscious guide to reach those worlds. We can begin to allow the illusionary boundaries between the physical and the spiritual to dissolve." (Pg. 57)

"Creators are never separate from their creations. Musicians remain one with their music. This is obvious during the incubation period when the music is being dreamed about, felt but unexpressed. The music is the unborn child in the womb of the mother." (Pg. 78)

"Musicians are in a unique position to act as healers. Their tool, music, is enormously practical in bringing about integration." (Pg. 95)

"Even after the music ends, the vibrations that carried healing seem to continue shaping the space, moving into the unified field where all sound and all music reside... The healing interchange between performer and listener affects this field and all of nature: the planet, consciousness, God." (Pg. 157)