A Music Lens on History

In 1939, dismayed by the approach of yet another World War, Martha S. Russell sat down to write, hoping that in so doing she would begin to understand how human beings had gotten themselves into such a mess once again. The resulting book is A Music Lens on History. In it Mrs. Russell examines Western European and American history by considering how world events move much like a musical phrase from impulse to climax, with a cadential period in which we deal with what we have created in the phrase. She explores how inner values of dignity and freedom become entangled with outer desires for temporal power and grandeur, resulting in such cultural evils as inequality, injustice, and war. In her quest to understand the players on the world stage, Mrs. Russell examines the folk music of Western European countries and how the development of a country's musical heritage reveals the character of its people. A Music Lens on History is a fascinating look at the development of our modern world.

Martha S. Russell is the founder of Creative Motion, an approach to music and life based upon a wholistic perception of how human beings function. Modeled upon the pattern of the breathing mechanism of the body, Creative Motion explores the energy of inhalation (the inner feeling or intuitive loop of energy) as it moves into exhalation (the outer movement or action in the world). Creative Motion encourages a focus upon an inner, intuitive "experience" of the action before taking that decision into the outer world in the form of activity. Ideally, inner experience always precedes outer action, yielding balance.