Mystery plays and miracle plays (sometimes distinguished as two different forms,^[1] although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre. The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle,^[2] but an occasionally quoted derivation is from misterium, meaning craft, a play performed by the craft guilds.^[3]

Origins[link]

The plays originated as simple tropes, verbal embellishments of liturgical texts, and slowly became more elaborate. As these liturgical dramas increased in popularity, vernacular forms emerged, as travelling companies of actors and theatrical productions organized by local communities became more common in the later Middle Ages.

The Quem Quaeritis? is the best known early form of the dramas, a dramatised liturgical dialogue between the angel at the tomb of Christ and the women who are seeking his body. These primitive forms were later elaborated with dialogue and dramatic action. Eventually the dramas moved from church to the exterior - the churchyard and the public marketplace. These early performances were given in Latin, and were preceded by a vernacular prologue spoken by a herald who gave a synopsis of the events.

In 1210, suspicious of the growing popularity of miracle plays, Pope Innocent III issued a papal edict forbidding clergy from acting on a public stage. This had the effect of transferring the organization of the dramas to town guilds, after which several changes followed. Vernacular texts replaced Latin, and non-Biblical passages were added along with comic scenes, for example in the Secunda Pastorum of the Wakefield Cycle. Acting and characterization became more elaborate.

These vernacular religious performances were, in some of the larger cities in England such as York, performed and produced by guilds, with each guild taking responsibility for a particular piece of scriptural history. From the guild control originated the term mystery play or mysteries, from the Latin misterium meaning "occupation" (i.e. that of the guilds). The genre was again banned, following the Reformation and the establishment of the Church of England in 1534.

The mystery play developed, in some places, into a series of plays dealing with all the major events in the Christian calendar, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. By the end of the 15th century, the practice of acting these plays in cycles on festival days was established in several parts of Europe. Sometimes, each play was performed on a decorated cart called a pageant that moved about the city to allow different crowds to watch each play. The entire cycle could take up to twenty hours to perform and could be spread over a number of days. Taken as a whole, these are referred to as Corpus Christi cycles.

The plays were performed by a combination of professionals and amateurs and were written in highly elaborate stanza forms; they were often marked by the extravagance of the sets and 'special effects', but could also be stark and intimate. The variety of theatrical and poetic styles, even in a single cycle of plays, could be remarkable.

English mystery plays[link]

Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise in a performance by the Players of St Peter

There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays; we may no longer call all of them "cycles". The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants; there are also the Towneley plays of thirty-two pageants, once thought to have been a true 'cycle' of plays acted at Wakefield; the Ludus Coventriae (also called the N Town plays" or Hegge cycle), now generally agreed to be a redacted compilation of at least three older, unrelated plays, and the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction of older medieval traditions. Also extant are two pageants from a New Testament cycle acted at Coventry and one pageant each from Norwich and Newcastle upon Tyne. Additionally, a fifteenth-century play of the life of Mary Magdalene, The Brome Abraham and Isaac and a sixteenth-century play of the Conversion of Saint Paul exist, all hailing from East Anglia. Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia, and several cyclical plays survive from continental Europe.

These biblical plays differ widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity, the Raising of Lazarus, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Other pageants included the story of Moses, the Procession of the Prophets, Christ's Baptism, the Temptation in the Wilderness, and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the newly emerging Medieval craft guilds. The York mercers, for example, sponsored the Doomsday pageant. The guild associations are not, however, to be understood as the method of production for all towns. While the Chester pageants are associated with guilds, there is no indication that the N-Town plays are either associated with guilds or performed on pageant wagons. Perhaps the most famous of the mystery plays, at least to modern readers and audiences, are those of Wakefield. Unfortunately, we cannot know whether the plays of the Towneley manuscript are actually the plays performed at Wakefield but a reference in the Second Shepherds' Play to Horbery Shrogys ([1] line 454) is strongly suggestive. In "The London Burial Grounds" by Mrs Basil Holmes (1897), the author claims that the Holy Priory Church, next to St Katherine Cree on Leadenhall Street, London was the location of miracle plays from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London (c 1500 - 1569) stopped this in 1542.^[4]

The most famous plays of the Towneley collection are attributed to the Wakefield Master, an anonymous playwright who wrote in the fifteenth century. Early scholars suggested that a man by the name of Gilbert Pilkington was the author, but this idea has been disproved by Craig and others. The epithet "Wakefield Master" was first applied to this individual by the literary historian Gayley. The Wakefield Master gets his name from the geographic location where he lived, the market-town of Wakefield in Yorkshire. He may have been a highly educated cleric there, or possibly a friar from a nearby monastery at Woodkirk, four miles north of Wakefield. It was once thought that this anonymous author wrote a series of 32 plays (each averaging about 384 lines) called the Towneley Cycle. The Master's contributions to this collection are still much debated, and some scholars believe he may have written fewer than ten of them. These works appear in a single manuscript, which was kept for a number of years in Towneley Hall, Burnley, home of the Towneley family; the manuscript is currently found in the Huntington Library of California. It shows signs of Protestant editing — references to the Pope and the sacraments are crossed out, for instance. Likewise, twelve manuscript leaves were ripped out between the two final plays because of Catholic references. This evidence strongly suggests the play was still being read and performed as late as 1520, perhaps as late in Renaissance as the final years of King Henry VIII's reign.

The best known pageant in the Towneley manuscript is The Second Shepherds' Pageant, a burlesque of the Nativity featuring Mak the sheep stealer and his wife Gill, which more or less explicitly compares a stolen lamb to the Saviour of mankind. The Harrowing of Hell, derived from the apocryphal Acts of Pilate, was a popular part of the York and Wakefield cycles.

The dramas of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods were developed out of mystery plays.

Spanish mystery plays[link]

The oldest liturgical drama (12th century) written already in old Spanish language was a codex found in the library of the Toledo Cathedral. The Auto de los Reyes Magos belongs to the Christmas cycle. It is a play of Biblical Magi, the three wise men from the East who following a star visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.^[5]

The Misteri d'Elx (in English, the Elx Mystery Play or Mystery Play of Elx) is a liturgical drama dating from the Middle Ages, which is enacted and celebrated in the Basilica de Santa María in the city of Elx on the 14 and 15 August of each year. In 2001, UNESCO declared it one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. It commemorates the Assumption of Mary.

Miracle play[link]

Miracle plays, or Saint's plays, are now distinguished from mystery plays as they specifically re-enacted miraculous interventions by the saints, particularly St. Nicholas or St. Mary, into the lives of ordinary people, rather than biblical events;^[6] however both of these terms are more commonly used by modern scholars than they were by medieval people, who used a wide variety of terminology to refer to their dramatic performances. Robert Chambers, writing in 19th century notes that "especially in England, miracle [came] to stand for religious play in general".^[7]

Modern revivals[link]

The Mystery Plays were revived in both York and Chester in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain. The Mysteries was a re-working of the Wakefield Cycle and others produced at the National Theatre in 1977. The Lichfield Mysteries were revived in 1994. More recently, the N-Town cycle of touring plays have been revived as the Lincoln mystery plays. In 2001, an African version of the Chester plays was performed in London, under the direction of Mark Dornford-May and musical direction of Charles Hazlewood.

In 2004, two mystery plays—one focusing on the Creation and the other on the Passion—were performed at Canterbury Cathedral, with actor Edward Woodward in the role of God. The large cast also included Daniel MacPherson, Thomas James Longley and Joseph McManners. The performances commissioned a further supporting cast of over 100 local people and were produced by Kevin Wood.

See also[link]

• Biblical Magi
• Chester Plays
• Easter drama
• Lincoln Mystery Plays
• Liturgical drama
• Medieval theatre
• Passion play
• Wakefield Cycle - a collection of thirty-two mystery plays performed in medieval and early Renaissance England.
• York Mystery Plays - a collection of forty-eight mystery plays

References[link]

• Anderson Magalhães, Le Comédies bibliques di Margherita di Navarra, tra evangelismo e mistero medievale, in La mujer: de los bastidores al proscenio en el teatro del siglo XVI, ed. de I. Romera Pintor y J. L. Sirera, Valencia, Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2011, pp. 171-201.

External links[link]

• The Official Lincoln Mystery Plays Website
• The Official Chester Mystery Plays Website
• Records of Early English Drama (REED) at Victoria University of the University of Toronto
• The York Mystery plays
• 2002 and 2006 York Mystery Plays
• 2012 Lincoln Mystery Plays
• A simulator of the progress of the pageants in the York Mystery plays
• The Lichfield Mysteries
• The York Cycle as performed in Toronto in 1998
• Medieval Imaginations: literature and visual culture in the Middle Ages
• Texts:
  • The Towneley (Wakefield) Cycle in Middle English. Available from Michigan or Virginia
  • The York Cycle in Middle English. Available from Michigan or Virginia
  • The York cycle modernised by Chester N. Scoville and Kimberley M. Yates
  • The n-Town cycle modernised by Stanley J. Kahrl and Alexandra F. Johnston
  • The Chester Cycle in middle English
•  "Miracle Plays and Mysteries". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 

Sarah McLachlan
Sarah McLachlan after a performance at JFK Airport, July 2010
Background information
Birth name	Sarah Ann McLachlan
Born	(1968-01-28) January 28, 1968 (age 44) Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Genres	Pop, soft rock, adult contemporary
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, painter, executive producer
Instruments	Vocals, piano, keyboard, guitar, banjo, harp[1]
Years active	1988–present
Labels	RCA Records, Arista, Nettwerk
Website	sarahmclachlan.com

Sarah Ann McLachlan, OC, OBC (born January 28, 1968) is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter.^[2] Known for her emotional ballads and mezzo-soprano vocal range,^[3] as of 2009, she has sold over 40 million albums worldwide.^[4][5] McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards (out of four nominations) and four Juno Awards. In addition to her personal artistic efforts, she founded the Lilith Fair tour, which showcased female musicians. The Lilith Fair concert tours took place from 1997 to 1999, and resumed in the summer of 2010. Since 2006 she has also been known as a highly visible supporter of the ASPCA, as well as various other charities.

Biography[link]

Sarah McLachlan was born on January 28, 1968, and adopted in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. As a child, she took voice lessons, along with studies in classical piano and guitar. When she was 17 years old and still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School, she fronted a short-lived rock band called The October Game. One of the band's songs, "Grind", credited as a group composition, can be found on the independent Flamingo Records release Out of the Fog and the CD Out of the Fog Too. It has yet to be released elsewhere. Her high school yearbook predicted that she was "destined to become a famous rock star."

Following The October Game's first concert at Dalhousie University opening for Moev, McLachlan was offered a recording contract with Vancouver-based independent record label Nettwerk by Moev's Mark Jowett. McLachlan's parents insisted she finish high school and complete one year of studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver and embarking on a new life as a recording artist, and McLachlan finally signed to Nettwerk two years later before having written a single song.

In 1994 McLachlan became the target of a lawsuit, when she was sued by Uwe Vandrei, an obsessed fan from Ottawa, who alleged that his letters to her had been the basis of the single "Possession." The lawsuit was also challenging for the Canadian legal system—Vandrei was a self-admitted stalker whose self-acknowledged goal in filing the lawsuit was to be near McLachlan physically. Consequently, special precautions were planned to ensure McLachlan's safety if at any time she had to be in the same location as Vandrei. The lawsuit never came to trial, however, as Vandrei was found dead in an apparent suicide before the trial began. This topic was explored at length in Canadian author Judith Fitzgerald's book, Building a Mystery: The Story of Sarah McLachlan & Lilith Fair.

In 1997, Sarah McLachlan married her drummer, Ashwin Sood, in Jamaica. McLachlan lost her mother to cancer in December 2001, while McLachlan herself was pregnant. McLachlan gave birth to a daughter, named India Ann Sushil Sood, on April 6, 2002, in Vancouver. By this time, McLachlan had already completed three-quarters of the production on her next record, Afterglow. On June 22, 2007, she gave birth to her second daughter, named Taja Summer Sood, in Vancouver. McLachlan announced her separation from Ashwin Sood in September 2008.^[6]

Sarah McLachlan currently resides in Vancouver.

Musical career[link]

[edit] Touch and Solace

The signing with Nettwerk prompted McLachlan to move to Vancouver, British Columbia. There she recorded the first of her albums, Touch, in 1988, which received both critical and commercial success and included the hit song "Vox". During this period she also contributed to an album by Manufacture, and embarked on her first national concert tour as an opening act for The Grapes of Wrath.^[7][8]

Her 1991 album, Solace, was her mainstream breakthrough in Canada, spawning the hit singles "The Path of Thorns (Terms)" and "Into the Fire". Solace also marked the beginning of her partnership with Pierre Marchand. Marchand and McLachlan have been collaborators ever since, with Marchand producing many of McLachlan's albums and occasionally co-writing songs.^[9]

[edit] Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and Surfacing

McLachlan at a 1993 benefit for Clayoquot Sound

1993's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was an immediate hit in Canada. From her Nettwerk connection, her piano version of the song "Possession" was included on the first Due South soundtrack in 1996. Over the next two years, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy quietly became McLachlan's international breakthrough as well, scaling the charts in a number of countries.

In 1993, Darryl Neudorf filed a lawsuit against McLachlan and her label, Nettwerk, alleging that he had made a significant and uncredited contribution to the songwriting on Touch, and alleging that he wasn't paid properly for work done on Solace. The judge in this suit eventually ruled in McLachlan's favour on the songs; though Neudorf may have contributed to the songwriting, neither regarded each other as joint authors. The judge ruled in Neudorf's favour on the payment issue.

Following the success from Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan returned in 1997 with Surfacing, her best-selling album to date. Earning her two Grammy Awards and four Juno Awards, the album has since sold over 11 million copies worldwide and brought her much international success. Still in the spotlight from the album, McLachlan launched the highly popular Lilith Fair tour. Her song "Angel"—inspired by the fatal overdose of Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin—made sales skyrocket. In Spring 1998, the motion picture City of Angels featured "Angel". It became the No. 1 album on the Billboard chart. More than five months after the movie disappeared from the theatres, City of Angels: Music from the Motion Picture remained firmly entrenched among Billboard's top 40 albums. This soundtrack earned quadruple-platinum status.^[10]

Lilith Fair[link]

In 1996 McLachlan became frustrated with concert promoters and radio stations that refused to feature two female musicians in a row.^[11] Bucking conventional industry wisdom, she booked a successful tour for herself and Paula Cole. At least one of their appearances together – in McLachlan's home town, on September 14, 1996 – went by the name "Lilith Fair" and included performances by McLachlan, Cole, Lisa Loeb and Michelle McAdorey, formerly of Crash Vegas.

The next year, McLachlan founded the Lilith Fair tour, taking Lilith from the medieval Jewish legend that Lilith was Adam's first wife.^[12]

In 1997, Lilith Fair, featuring McLachlan as one of the headlining acts, garnered a $16 million gross, making it the top-grossing of any touring festival.^[11] Among all concert tours for that year, it was the 16th highest grossing.^[11] Lilith Fair tour brought together 2 million people over its three-year history and raised more than $7 million for charities. It was the most successful all-female music festival in history, one of the biggest music festivals of the 1990s, and helped launch the careers of several well-known female artists. Subsequent Lilith Fairs followed in 1998 and 1999 before the tour was discontinued.

Nettwerk CEO and Lilith Fair co-founder Terry McBride announced that the all-female festival would make its return in summer 2010.

Hiatus[link]

McLachlan performing for Good Morning America in 1998

In 1998, in addition to performing her own set, she performed a cover of "Sad Lisa" with rock band Phish at the annual Bridge School Benefit concert in California, hosted by Neil Young, after which McLachlan began an extended period away from recording or touring. Six years elapsed between the release of Surfacing and that of her next studio album, Afterglow.

However, she did release a live album in 1999, entitled Mirrorball. The album's singles included a new live version of her earlier doubles "I Will Remember You", a studio recording of which had previously been released on The Brothers McMullen soundtrack as well as Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff.

Also that year, McLachlan (in the singing voice of "Jessie") recorded the Randy Newman song "When She Loved Me" on the Toy Story 2 soundtrack. This song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song in 2000, and McLachlan performed it at the awards ceremony, but the award went to "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan, written and recorded by Phil Collins.

In 1997, McLachlan co-wrote and provided guest vocals on the Delerium song "Silence" for their album Karma. This song achieved a massive amount of US top 40 airplay when released as a single in late 2000 and also featured on the soundtrack for the movie Brokedown Palace. In 2001, McLachlan provided background vocals, guitar, and piano on the closing track "Love Is" from Stevie Nicks' eighth solo album, Trouble in Shangri-La, in addition to drawing the dragon used for the "S" in Stevie's name on the album cover. In May 2002, her duet with Bryan Adams was released on the Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron soundtrack. She sang harmonies and played the piano on the song "Don't Let Go" while Sood did the drum work.

McLachlan also participated in several concerts during her break, such as Sheryl Crow's Live from Central Park in 1999, the Arista Records twenty-fifth anniversary celebration in 2000, as well as the 2002 British Columbia Cancer Foundation Benefit Concert in memory of cancer victim Michele Bourbonnais. She participated along with four other Canadian artists: Bryan Adams, Jann Arden, Barenaked Ladies, and Chantal Kreviazuk.

[edit] Afterglow

McLachlan in Menlo Park, California, USA

McLachlan returned to public life and touring with her 2003 album release, Afterglow, which contained the singles "Fallen", "Stupid", and "World On Fire". Rather than shoot a conventional music video for "World On Fire", McLachlan donated all but $15 of the $150,000 budget to various charitable causes around the world and then used the video to explain how it benefited the communities that received the money.

Another live album, Afterglow Live, was released in late 2004. The CD consisted of several tracks from a full-length concert, which was included in its entirety on a DVD, as well as the three music videos from Afterglow.

In 2004, Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels, who credits McLachlan and her music for lifting him from a period of depression, invited her to join him on a track from his solo album. Although the album was not released until early 2006, remixes of the song "Just Like Me" were included on a number of compilations in 2005.

In 2007, McLachlan's song "Answer" featured in The Brave One starring Jodie Foster.

[edit] Wintersong

In October 2006, McLachlan released a Christmas album called Wintersong. The album included 11 new recordings, featuring covers of Joni Mitchell's "River", Gordon Lightfoot's "Song for a Winter's Night", and John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", which she recorded with her outreach children and youth choir, and seasonal favourites: "Christmas Time Is Here", "O Little Town of Bethlehem", "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", "Silent Night", "The First Noel", and "Greensleeves (What Child Is This?)", among others. The title track is an original work of McLachlan's.

Wintersong debuted at No. 42 on the Billboard 200 album chart the week ending 4 November 2006. It peaked at #7. For the week of 5 December 2006, it was the #1 album on iTunes. Worldwide the album has sold over 1.1 million copies to date. It has been certified Platinum in the U.S. and 2x Platinum in Canada.

Wintersong was nominated for both a Grammy Award, in the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category, as well as for a Juno Award, for Pop Album of the Year.

Guest appearances[link]

In November 2006, McLachlan performed the song "Ordinary Miracle" for that year's feature film, Charlotte's Web. The song was written by Glen Ballard and David A. Stewart of Eurythmics. McLachlan was the subject of rumours of an Oscar nomination for the song, but in the end was not nominated. She helped to promote the song and movie by performing it on The Oprah Winfrey Show as well as during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. She also performed the song during the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in her hometown of Vancouver, in front of an estimated 3 billion television viewers worldwide.

In early 2007, she sang on Dave Stewart's Go Green, alongside Nadirah X, Imogen Heap, Natalie Imbruglia, and others.^[13]

McLachlan also appeared on Annie Lennox's album, Songs of Mass Destruction. Together with Madonna, Céline Dion, Pink, Sugababes, Angélique Kidjo, k.d. lang, Faith Hill, Fergie, Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, Shakira, Anastacia, Joss Stone, Dido, and KT Tunstall, she performed on the song "Sing".

In 2010, McLachlan appeared as herself on the television series Life Unexpected and performed. On September 8, 2010, McLachlan performed and sang "Forgiveness" from her 2010 album Laws of Illusion on a semi-final show of America's Got Talent; she did so again on the Tonight Show, two days later.

Sarah appeared alongside Aimee Mann on the IFC series Portlandia, as a pinata and a yard maintenance person.

On November 22, 2010, McLachlan again performed and sang "Forgiveness" this time on the Regis and Kelly show.

On September 10, 2011, she performed I Will Remember You and Angel at a ceremony in Stonycreek, Pennsylvania, commemorating the passengers and crew of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 who fought the hijackers and brought down their airplane on September 11, 2001. The event marked the dedication of the Flight 93 National Memorial and was attended by U.S. President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker John Boehner.^[14]

[edit] Rereleases, Rarities Vol 2, and Greatest Hits

On October 3, 2006, the live album Mirrorball was re-released as Mirrorball: The Complete Concert. This release contains 2 discs that were compiled from 2 concerts performed on consecutive nights in April 1998 at the Rose Garden arena in Portland, Oregon.

On April 29, 2008, Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff Volume 2 was released. The tracklist includes McLachlan's recent covers of Joni Mitchell's "River" and Dave Stewart's "Ordinary Miracle", as well as collaborations throughout her career with The Perishers, Cyndi Lauper and Bryan Adams, among others.

On August 5, 2008, the 15th anniversary 3-disc edition of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was released. The set includes the original re-mastered album, The Freedom Sessions and a DVD that includes live performances, music videos and more. The album was released by Legacy Recordings.

McLachlan released a greatest hits album, Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan, on October 7, 2008. On August 12, 2008, she released a new song from the album, "U want me 2", a mid-tempo contemplative love song, as a digital single on iTunes; also accompanied with a video performance. McLachlan also admitted the song was inspired by the dissolution of her marriage, which she announced in September 2008, during initial promotion. Being quietly released as a single on 3 February 2009 the other new song found on the album, "Don't Give Up on Us", signalled a wrap.

[edit] 2010 Winter Olympics, Laws of Illusion and Lilith Fair 2010

A new single, "One Dream," was released on September 29, 2009 and was the official theme song of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.^[15] McLachlan's first studio album of original material in seven years, Laws of Illusion, was released on June 15, 2010. New York Times music critic John Pareles says about Laws of Illusion - "It’s a kindly, enveloping sound that Ms. McLachlan has long used to conjure passion and empathy laced with melancholy. But now it encompasses a new anguish, deeper and sharper than what she hinted at with Afterglow in 2003." It features 10 new songs in addition to the previously released tracks "U Want Me 2" and "Don't Give Up on Us," as well as various bonus tracks. Previews of the tracks and bonus materials were made available on iTunes and Amazon.com for listening and viewing on May 26, 2010. Lilith Fair kicked off in Calgary, AB on June 27, 2010. In anticipation of the album and the summer's tour, McLachlan appeared on the WNYC-produced radio show Soundcheck. During the wide-ranging interview, McLachlan discussed with host John Schaefer the last eleven years of her life and how she has changed, especially as a working mother of two.

Guitars and equipment[link]

For years, Sarah McLachlan's main stage guitar has been a late-'70s Larrivée C-10 with rosewood back and sides, a spruce top, and a Florentine cutaway. The guitar is amplified with a Fishman Rare Earth Blend (which combines a magnetic pickup and an internal mic), running through a Radial JDV Mk3 active DI. She has also performed with Canadian-made Morgan guitars, and at the time of the interview, she was trying out Taylor models with Expression System electronics.

McLachlan strings her guitars with phosphor-bronze or vintage bronze Dean Markleys. She uses medium-lights (.012–.054) for her guitars in E A D G A D and D A D G A D tunings. Sometimes she uses lights (.011–.046) and raises E A D G A D a whole step so her capo positions can be two frets lower. For instance, in the past she played "Building a Mystery" in E A D G A D with a capo at the seventh fret, but now she tunes to F# B E A B E and capoes at the fifth fret. McLachlan's capo of choice is a Dunlop C-Four.^[16]

Awards and achievements[link]

McLachlan has been nominated for twenty-one Juno Awards and awarded eight. In 1992, her video for "Into the Fire" was selected as best music video. In 1998, she won Female Vocalist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year (along with Pierre Marchand), Single of the Year for "Building a Mystery", and Album of the Year for Surfacing. In 2000, she won an International Achievement award and in 2004, won Pop Album of the Year for Afterglow and again shared the Songwriter of the Year award with Pierre Marchand for the singles "Fallen", "World on Fire", and "Stupid."

She has also won three Grammy Awards. She was awarded Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1997 for "Building a Mystery" and again in 1999 for the live version of "I Will Remember You." She also scored Best Pop Instrumental Performance in 1997 for "Last Dance." Among these, she is credited for various nominations.

Her song "Building A Mystery" came in at 91 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s.^[17]

McLachlan has been extensively profiled by media including cover stories for Rolling Stone, Time magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Flare, a Canadian fashion magazine.

Through her career, she has also received many awards, primarily in recognition of her efforts in launching Lilith Fair. She was awarded the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Visionary Award in 1998 for advancing the careers of women in music. In 1999, she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada by then-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson in recognition of her successful recording career, her role in Lilith Fair, and the charitable donations she made to women's shelters across Canada. In 2001, she was inducted to the Order of British Columbia.

On February 12, 2010, McLachlan performed her song "Ordinary Miracle" at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

On June 15, 2011, she was recognized with an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University.^[18]

Philanthropy[link]

McLachlan contributed the track "Hold On" to the 1993 AIDS-Benefit Album No Alternative produced by the Red Hot Organization. She also performed at the Leonard Peltier Defense Fund Benefit Concert on February 12, 1997 and went on to release a haunting cover version of Unchained Melody created as part of her support for Peltier and later included on the album Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff Volume 2.^[19]

In early 2005, McLachlan took part in a star-studded tsunami disaster relief telethon on NBC. On 29 January McLachlan was a headliner for a benefit concert in Vancouver along with other Canadian superstars such as Avril Lavigne and Bryan Adams. The show also featured a performance by the Sarah McLachlan Musical Outreach Choir & Percussion Ensemble, a children's choir and percussion band from the aforementioned Vancouver outreach program. In addition to her own headliner show she also joined Delerium live on stage for their first-ever performance of 'Silence'. The concert was titled One World: The Concert for Tsunami Relief, and raised approximately $3.6 million for several Canadian aid agencies working in south and southeast Asia. The show was the brainchild of McLachlan's manager, Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk. It ran for four hours and aired live on CTV across Canada.

She is an avid supporter of the ASPCA and animal welfare. She filmed a two-minute advertisement for the organization which featured her song "Angel".^[20] The advertisement's imagery of shelter animals mixed with the soundtrack and McLachlan's simple appeal for donations has raised $30 million for the ASPCA since it began to air in 2006, which allowed the organization to air appeals in higher profile prime-time cable ad slots; subsequently the organization produced a new ad for the 2008 holiday season featuring McLachlan appealing for the ASPCA over her Wintersong performance of "Silent Night", and a new ad with her was released in January 2009 featuring the song "Answer".^[20] In 2012, McLachlan wrote a letter on behalf of PETA to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, protesting that country's annual seal hunt.^[21]

In 2008, she donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of the devastation done to Southeast Asia from the 2004 Tsunami.

On July 2, 2005, McLachlan participated in the Philadelphia installment of the Live 8 concerts, where she performed her hit "Angel" with Josh Groban. These concerts, which were held simultaneously in nine major cities around the world, were intended to coincide with the G8 summit to put pressure on the leaders of the world's richest nations to fight poverty in Africa by cancelling debt.

McLachlan also funds an outreach program in Vancouver that provides music education for inner city children. In 2007, the provincial government announced $500,000 in funding for the outreach program.^[22]

For raising millions of dollars for causes including women's charities, AIDS sufferers and inner-city kids, Simon Fraser University conferred Sarah McLachlan the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa on June 13, 2011.^[23]

Discography[link]

• 1988: Touch
• 1991: Solace
• 1992: Sarah McLachlan Live EP
• 1993: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
• 1995: The Freedom Sessions
• 1996: Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff
• 1997: Surfacing
• 1999: Mirrorball
• 2001: Remixed
• 2003: Afterglow
• 2005: Bloom: Remix Album
• 2006: Wintersong
• 2008: Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff Volume 2
• 2008: Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan
• 2010: Laws of Illusion

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sarah McLachlan

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sarah McLachlan

• Official website
• Sarah McLachlan at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Sarah McLachlan

This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (November 2011)

Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III (born December 27, 1931) is an American guitarist. He is best known for his backing of Elvis Presley in the first part of his career, between 1954 and the beginning of Elvis' Hollywood years. He was ranked twenty-ninth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2011.^[1]

Career[link]

Scotty Moore was born near Gadsden, Tennessee. He learned to play the guitar from family and friends at eight years of age. Although underage when he enlisted, Moore served in the United States Navy between 1948 and 1952.

Moore's early background was in jazz and country music. A fan of guitarist Chet Atkins, Moore led a group called the "Starlite Wranglers" before Sam Phillips at Sun Records put him together with then teenage Elvis Presley. Phillips believed that Moore's lead guitar and Bill Black's double bass were all that was needed to augment Presley's rhythm guitar and lead vocals on their recordings. In 1954 Moore and Black accompanied Elvis on what would become the first legendary Presley hit, the Sun Studios session cut of "That's All Right (Mama)", a recording regarded as a seminal event in rock and roll history. Elvis, Black and Moore then formed the Blue Moon Boys. For a time, Moore served as Elvis's personal manager.^[2] They were later joined by drummer D.J. Fontana. Beginning in July 1954, the Blue Moon Boys toured and recorded throughout the American South and, as Presley's popularity rose, they toured the United States and made appearances in various Presley television shows and motion pictures. The Blue Moon Boys, including Moore, appear in the few 1955 home movie clips that survive of Elvis before he achieved national recognition. Moore, Black, and Fontana also appear on the Dorsey Brothers, Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and Ed Sullivan live TV shows of January 1956 to January 1957, and also reunite on the 1960 Timex TV special with Frank Sinatra welcoming Elvis' return from the Army.

Moore played on many of Presley's most famous recordings, including "Good Rockin' Tonight", "Baby Let's Play House", "Heartbreak Hotel", "Mystery Train", "Hound Dog", "Too Much" and "Jailhouse Rock". Moore and the Blue Moon Boys also perform (and have additional small walk-in and speaking roles) with Elvis in three of his movies (Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole) filmed in 1957 and 1958.

In 1964, Moore released a solo album on Epic Records called The Guitar That Changed the World^[3], played using his Gibson Super 400. He performed on the NBC television special known as the '68 Comeback Special, again with his Gibson Super 400 which was also played by Elvis.

For his pioneering contribution, Moore has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In 2000, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Style and influence[link]

Moore's playing on his Gibson with his unique finger-picking style with pick at same time, as on the Sun and early RCA recordings, was unique and exciting, representing a move of the Chet Atkins style into a more rockabilly mode. Moore's best performances are often considered precedent-setting.

Moore is given credit as the pioneer of the rock 'n' roll lead guitarist. Many popular guitarists cite Moore as the performer that brought the lead guitarist to a dominant role in a rock 'n' roll band. Although some lead guitarists/vocalists, such as Chuck Berry and blues legend BB King, had gained popularity by the 1950s, Presley rarely played his own lead while performing, instead providing rhythm guitar and leaving the lead duties to Moore. As a guitarist, Moore was a noticeable presence in Presley's performances, despite his introverted demeanor. He became an inspiration to many subsequent popular guitarists, including Bruce Springsteen and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. While Moore was working on his memoir with co-author James L. Dickerson, Richards told Dickerson, "Everyone else wanted to be Elvis--I wanted to be Scotty."^[4] Richards has stated many times (Rolling Stone magazine, Life autobiography) that he could never figure out how to play the "stop time" break and figure that Moore plays on "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" (Sun), and that he hopes it will remain a mystery.

Equipment[link]

While with Presley, Moore initially played a Gibson ES-295 (nicknamed "The Guitar that Changed the World"^[5]),^[6] before switching to a Gibson L5^[5] and subsequently a Gibson Super 400.^[7]

One of the key pieces of equipment in Moore's sound on many of the recordings with Elvis, besides his guitars, was the use of the Ray Butts EchoSonic, a guitar amplifier with a tape echo built in, which allowed him to take his trademark slapback echo on the road.^[7]

Portrayal in popular culture[link]

Mark Adam portrayed Moore in the 2005 CBS miniseries Elvis.

Emory Smith portrayed Moore in the 1981 documentary film This is Elvis.

Jesse Dabson played Scotty Moore in the 1990 ABC television series Elvis: The Early Years.

The book That's Alright, Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis's First Guitarist and Manager, is written by Scotty Moore as told to James Dickerson. A recent book called The Blue Moon Boys also tells the story of Moore, Black, and Fontana before, during and after their tenure with Elvis.

Compositions[link]

Scotty Moore co-wrote the songs "My Kind of Carrying On" and "Now She Cares No More" which were released as Sun 202^[8] on Sun Records in 1954 when he was a member of the group Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers^[9] with Bill Black as the bassist.^[10] He co-wrote the instrumental "Have Guitar Will Travel" in 1958 with Bill Black, which was released as a 45 single, 107, on the Fernwood Records label.^[11]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Scotty Moore website
• Interview with Scotty Moore

Rudolf Steiner

Born	Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner 25(27?) February 1861 Murakirály, Austria-Hungary (now Donji Kraljevec, Croatia)
Died	30 March 1925 (aged 64) Dornach, Switzerland
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Phenomenology, Holism, Monism
Main interests	Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of science, Esotericism, Christianity, Spiritual Science, Freemasonry
Notable ideas	Anthroposophy, Anthroposophical Medicine, Biodynamic Agriculture, Eurythmy, Spiritual Science, Waldorf Education
Influenced by Helena Blavatsky, Franz Brentano, Wilhelm Dilthey, Fichte, Eduard von Hartmann, Hegel, Goethe, Nietzsche, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Max Stirner
Influenced Owen Barfield, Hugo Bergmann, Josef Beuys, Martin Buber,[1] Alan Chadwick, Wassily Kandinsky, Albert Schweitzer, Richard Tarnas

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner^[2] (25/27 February 1861^[3] – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist.^[4][5] Steiner gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the 20th century, he founded a spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing out of idealist philosophy and with links to Theosophy.

Steiner led this movement through several phases. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and mysticism;^[6] his philosophical work of these years, which he termed spiritual science, sought to provide a connection between the cognitive path of Western philosophy and the inner and spiritual needs of the human being.^[7]:291 In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of a cultural centre to house all the arts, the Goetheanum. After the First World War, Steiner worked with educators, farmers, doctors, and other professionals to develop numerous practical initiatives, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine.^[8]

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which “Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”^[9] A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.^[10]

Biography[link]

Childhood and education[link]

Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (23 June 1829, Geras or Trabenreith, Irnfritz-Messern and lived Geras Abbey, Waldviertel – 1910, Horn), left a position as a gamekeeper^[11] in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northeast Lower Austria to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids, Franziska Blie (8 May 1834, Horn, Waldviertel – 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Kraljevec in the Muraköz region, then part of the Austrian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec, Međimurje region, northernmost Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower Austria.^[8]

Steiner entered the village school; following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869 the family moved to the village of Neudörfl (near Wiener Neustadt), and in 1879 to Inzersdorf. The latter move was to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology, where he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, biology, literature, and philosophy on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883, at the end of which time he withdrew from the university.^{[12]:446[13]:29} In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schröer, suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, chief editor of an important new edition of Goethe's works,^[14] who asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor,^[15] a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications.^[13]:43

The house where Rudolf Steiner was born, in modern Croatia

In 1891, Steiner earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany with a thesis based upon Fichte's concept of the ego,^[7] later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge.^[16]

Early spiritual experiences[link]

At about nine years Steiner experienced seeing the spirit of an aunt who had died in a far-off town asking him to help her; neither he nor his family knew of the woman's death at this time.^[17] At 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, Steiner met a herb gatherer, Felix Kogutzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein...".^[18]:39–40 Kogutzki conveyed to Steiner a knowledge of nature that was non-academic and spiritual; soon thereafter Steiner began to read Goethe's works on natural science. According to Steiner, he also introduced Steiner to a person that Steiner only identified as a “Master”, and who had a great influence on Steiner's subsequent development, in particular directing him to study Fichte's philosophy.^[19]

Writer and philosopher[link]

Rudolf Steiner 1900

In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe's works, Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. Steiner remained with the archive until 1896. As well as the introductions for and commentaries to four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner wrote two books about Goethe's philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)^[20] and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897).^[21] During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and the writer Jean Paul and wrote numerous articles for various journals.

During his time at the archives, Steiner wrote what he considered to be his most important philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom or The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—Steiner's preferred English title) (1894), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a path upon which humans can become spiritually free beings.

In 1896, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche asked Steiner to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. Her brother by that time was non compos mentis. Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom. Steiner later related, "Nietzsche's ideas of the 'eternal recurrence' and of 'Übermensch' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the 19th century....What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's."^[18]

In 1897, Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became part owner, chief editor, and an active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy. Many subscribers were alienated by Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair^[22] and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist John Henry Mackay.^[22] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.

In 1899, Steiner married Anna Eunicke; the couple separated several years later. Anna died in 1911.

The Theosophical Society[link]

Marie Steiner 1903

In 1899, Steiner published an article, “Goethe's Secret Revelation”, discussing the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This article led to an invitation by the Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak to a gathering of Theosophists on the subject of Nietzsche. Steiner continued speaking regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, becoming the head of its newly constituted German section in 1902 without ever formally joining the society.^[7][23] By 1904, Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Theosophical Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria. It was also within this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sivers, who became his second wife in 1914.

The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science. During this period, Steiner maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition. This and other differences, in particular Steiner's vocal rejection of Leadbeater and Besant's claim that Jiddu Krishnamurti was the vehicle of a new Maitreya, or world teacher,^[24] led to a formal split in 1912/13,^[7] when Steiner and the majority of members of the German section of the Theosophical Society broke off to form a new group, the Anthroposophical Society.

The Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities[link]

English sculptor Edith Maryon belonged to the innermost circle of founders of anthroposophy and headed the Section of Fine Arts at the Goetheanum

The Anthroposophical Society grew rapidly. Fueled by a need to find a home for their yearly conferences, which included performances of plays written by Eduard Schuré as well as Steiner himself, the decision was made to build a theater and organizational center. In 1913, construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland. The building, designed by Steiner, was built to a significant part by volunteers who offered craftsmanship or simply a will to learn new skills. Once World War I started in 1914, the Goetheanum volunteers could hear the sound of cannon fire beyond the Swiss border, but despite the war, people from all over Europe worked peaceably side by side on the building's construction.

Beginning in 1919, Steiner was called upon to assist with numerous practical activities (see below), including the first Waldorf school, founded that year in Stuttgart, Germany. His lecture activity expanded enormously. At the same time, the Goetheanum developed as a wide-ranging cultural centre. On New Year's Eve, 1922/1923, the building burned to the ground; contemporary police reports indicate arson as the probable cause.^{[8]:752[25]:796} Steiner immediately began work designing a second Goetheanum building –this time made of concrete instead of wood – which was completed in 1928, three years after his death.

In 1923, Steiner founded a School of Spiritual Science, intended as an "organ of initiative" for research and study and as "the soul of the Anthroposophical Society".^[26] This included a general course of study based on meditative exercises (intended to guide a meditant from «the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe.»)^[27] and research departments focusing on areas such as education, medicine, agriculture, art, natural science, social science, and literature. Steiner spoke of laying the Foundation Stone of the new society in the hearts of his listeners.

Social reform[link]

Steiner became a well-known and controversial public figure during and after World War I. In response to the catastrophic situation in post-war Germany, he proposed extensive social reforms through the establishment of a Threefold Social Order in which the cultural, political and economic realms would be largely independent. Steiner argued that a fusion of the three realms had created the inflexibility that had led to catastrophes such as World War I. In connection with this, he promoted a radical solution in the disputed area of Upper Silesia, claimed by both Poland and Germany; his suggestion that this area be granted at least provisional independence led to his being publicly accused of being a traitor to Germany.^[28]

In 1919, Steiner's chief work on social reform (English title: Toward Social Renewal) was released simultaneously in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and sold some 80,000 copies in the first year.

Attacks, illness, and death[link]

Right-wing groups had been rapidly gaining strength in Germany. In 1919, the political theorist of the National Socialist movement in Germany, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew.^[29] In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner in an article in the right-wing Völkischer Beobachter newspaper that included accusations that Steiner was a tool of the Jews,^[30] and other nationalist extremists in Germany called up a "war against Steiner". In 1922 a lecture in Munich was disrupted when stink bombs were let off and the lights switched out.^[31][32] Unable to guarantee his safety, Steiner's agents cancelled a next lecture tour.^[22]:193[33] The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led Steiner to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup [Hitler and others] came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country;^[34] he also warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.^[29]:8

The loss of the Goetheanum affected Steiner's health seriously. From 1923 on, he showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. He continued to lecture widely, and even to travel; especially towards the end of this time, he was often giving two, three or even four lectures daily for courses taking place concurrently. Many of these were for practical areas of life; simultaneously, however, Steiner began an extensive series of lectures presenting his research on the successive incarnations of various individualities, and on the technique of karma research generally.^[35]

Increasingly ill, his last lecture was held in September 1924. He continued work on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died on 30 March 1925.

Spiritual research[link]

From 1899 until his death in 1925, Steiner articulated an ongoing stream of experiences that he claimed were of the spiritual world – experiences he said had touched him from an early age on.^[22] Steiner aimed to apply his training in mathematics, science, and philosophy to produce rigorous, verifiable presentations of those experiences.^[36]

Steiner believed that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience the spiritual world, including the higher nature of oneself and others.^[22] Steiner believed that such discipline and training would help a person to become a more moral, creative and free individual – free in the sense of being capable of actions motivated solely by love.^[37]

Steiner's philosophical ideas were influenced by Franz Brentano,^[22] with whom he had studied, and Wilhelm Dilthey, both founders of the phenomenological movement in European philosophy, as well as Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling. Steiner was also strongly influenced by Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.^[22][38][39]

Steiner led the following esoteric schools:

• His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1904. This school continued after the break with Theosophy but was disbanded at the start of World War I.
• A lodge called Mystica Aeterna within the Masonic Order of Memphis and Mizraim, which Steiner led from 1906 until around 1914. Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references.^[40] The figure of Christian Rosenkreutz also plays an important role in several of his later lectures.
• The School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1923 as a further development of his earlier Esoteric School. The School of Spiritual Science was intended to have three “classes”, but only the first of these was developed in Steiner's lifetime. All the texts relating to the “School of Spiritual Science” have been published in the full edition of Steiner's works.

Breadth of activity[link]

After the First World War, Steiner became active in a wide variety of cultural contexts. He founded a number of schools, the first of which was known as the Waldorf school,^[41] and which later evolved into a worldwide school network. He also founded a system of organic agriculture, now known as Biodynamic agriculture, which was one of the very first forms of, and has contributed significantly to the development of, modern organic farming.^[42] His work in medicine led to the development of a broad range of complementary medications and supportive artistic and biographic therapies.^[43] Homes for children and adults with developmental disabilities based on his work (including those of the Camphill movement) are widespread.^[44] His paintings and drawings influenced Joseph Beuys and other modern artists. His two Goetheanum buildings are generally accepted to be masterpieces of modern architecture,^[45][46] and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of buildings to the modern scene. One of the first institutions to practice ethical banking was an anthroposophical bank working out of Steiner's ideas.

Steiner's literary estate is correspondingly broad. Steiner's writings, published in about forty volumes, include books, essays, four plays ('mystery dramas'), mantric verse, and an autobiography. His collected lectures, making up another approximately 300 volumes, discuss an extremely wide range of themes. Steiner's drawings, chiefly illustrations done on blackboards during his lectures, are collected in a separate series of 28 volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and sculptural work.

Education[link]

The Waldorf school in Verrières-le-Buisson (France)

As a young man, Steiner already supported the independence of educational institutions from governmental control. In 1907, he wrote an essay on "Education in the Light of Spiritual Science", in which he described the major phases of child development that were later to form the foundation of his approach to education.

In 1919, Emil Molt invited him to lecture to his workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Out of these lectures came a new school, the Waldorf school. In 1922, Steiner brought these ideas to Oxford at the invitation of Professor Millicent Mackenzie and the Oxford Conference led to the founding of Waldorf schools in Britain.^[47] During Steiner's lifetime, schools based on his educational principles were also founded in Hamburg, Essen, The Hague and London; there are now more than 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide.

Social activism[link]

For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active as a lecturer on social reform. A petition expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was very widely circulated.

His chief book on social reform, Toward Social Renewal, sold tens of thousands of copies in his lifetime. In this, Steiner suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society need to work together as consciously cooperating yet independent entities. Each of these three realms has a particular task: political institutions should establish political equality and protect human rights; cultural institutions should cultivate the free and unhindered development of such realms as science, art, education and religion; and economic institutions should encourage producers, distributors and consumers to cooperate to provide for society's needs.^[48] He saw the establishment of what he called Threefold Social Order as a vital response to what he saw as an already visible trend toward the mutual independence of these three realms. Steiner saw theocracy, conventional shareholder capitalism, and state socialism as attempts by, respectively, cultural, economic, and governmental institutions to dominate the others. In the present day, he suggested, such attempts by any one of these spheres to manipulate another would be contrary to society's interests; such negative mutual influences would include e.g. corporate pressure on governments, state attempts to interfere with science, education, or religion, or religious influences on governmental entities.

• The cultural realm (science, art, religion, education, and the press) requires and fosters freedom;
• The political realm requires and fosters equality;
• The economic realm requires and fosters cooperation and solidarity.

Steiner also gave suggestions for many specific social reforms.

Architecture and visual arts[link]

First Goetheanum

Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums. These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house significant theater spaces as well as a School for Spiritual Science. Three of Steiner's buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.^[49]

His primary sculptural work is The Representative of Humanity (1922), a nine-meter high wood sculpture executed as a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon and now on permanent display at the Goetheanum.

Steiner's blackboard drawings were unique at the time and almost certainly not originally intended as art works. Josef Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.^[50]

Performing arts[link]

Together with Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Rudolf Steiner developed the art of eurythmy, sometimes referred to as "visible speech and visible song". According to the principles of eurythmy, there are archetypal movements or gestures that correspond to every aspect of speech – the sounds (or phonemes), the rhythms, and the grammatical function – to every "soul quality" – joy, despair, tenderness, etc. – and to every aspect of music – tones, intervals, rhythms, and harmonies.

As a playwright, Steiner wrote four "Mystery Dramas" between 1909 and 1913, including The Portal of Initiation and The Soul's Awakening. They are still performed today by Anthroposophical groups.^[51]

Steiner also founded a new approach to artistic speech, or "speech formation", and drama. Michael Chekhov took up and extended Steiner's approach in what is now known as the Chekhov method of acting.^[52]

Anthroposophical medicine[link]

From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In 1921, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda which now distributes natural medical products worldwide. At around the same time, Dr. Ita Wegman founded a first anthroposophic medical clinic (now the Ita Wegman Clinic) in Arlesheim.

Biodynamic farming and gardening[link]

In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help. Steiner responded with a lecture series on an ecological and sustainable approach to agriculture that increased soil fertility without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.^[53] Steiner's agricultural ideas promptly spread and were put to the test internationally^[54] and Biodynamic agriculture is now practiced widely in Europe,^[55] North America, Asia^[55] and Australasia.^[56][57][58]

A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a largely self-sustaining system, producing its own manure and animal feed. Plant or animal disease is seen a symptom of problems in the whole organism. Steiner also suggested timing agricultural activities such as sowing, weeding, and harvesting to utilize the influences on plant growth of the moon and planets; and the application of natural materials prepared in specific ways to the soil, compost, and crops, with the intention of engaging non-physical beings and elemental forces. He encouraged his listeners to verify his suggestions empirically, as he had not yet done.^[56]

Philosophical development[link]

Goethean science[link]

In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially phenomenological in nature, rather than theory- or model-based. He developed this conception further in several books, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where imagination was required to find the biological archetypes (Urpflanze), and postulated that Goethe had sought but been unable to fully find the further transformation in scientific thinking necessary to properly interpret and understand the animal kingdom.^[59]

Steiner defended Goethe's qualitative description of color as arising synthetically from the polarity of light and darkness, in contrast to Newton's particle-based and analytic conception. He emphasized the role of evolutionary thinking in Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in human beings; Goethe expected human anatomy to be an evolutionary transformation of animal anatomy.^[59]

Knowledge and freedom[link]

Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge and freedom in two stages. The first was his dissertation, published in expanded form in 1892 as Truth and Knowledge. Here Steiner suggests that there is an inconsistency between Kant's philosophy, which posits that knowledge is representation and that the essential verity of the world is inaccessible to human consciousness, and modern science, which assumes that all influences can be found in what Steiner termed the “sinnlichen und geistlichen” (sensory and mental/spiritual) world to which we have access. Steiner terms Kant's “Jenseits-Philosophie” (philosophy of an inaccessible beyond) a stumbling block in achieving a satisfying philosophical viewpoint.^[60]

Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our consciousness divides it into the sense-perceptible appearance, on the one hand, and the formal nature accessible to our thinking, on the other. He sees in thinking itself an element that can be strengthened and deepened sufficiently to penetrate all that our senses do not reveal to us. Steiner thus explicitly denies all justification to a division between faith and knowledge; otherwise expressed, between the spiritual and natural worlds. Their apparent duality is conditioned by the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking, but these two faculties give us two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world. In thinking about perception (the path of natural science) and perceiving the process of thinking (the path of spiritual training), it is possible to discover a hidden inner unity between the two poles of our experience.^{[37]:Chapter 4}

Truth, for Steiner, is paradoxically both an objective discovery and yet "a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality."^[61]

A new stage of Steiner's philosophical development is expressed in his Philosophy of Freedom. Here, he further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached asymptotically and with the aid of the "creative activity" of thinking. Thinking can be a free deed; in addition, it can liberate our will from its subservience to our instincts and drives. Free deeds, he suggests, are those for which we are fully conscious of the motive for our action; freedom is the spiritual activity of penetrating with consciousness our own nature and that of the world,^[62] and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.^[37]:133–4 This includes overcoming influences of both heredity and environment: "To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts – not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality."^[7]

Steiner affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extends this beyond its materialistic consequences; he sees human consciousness, indeed, all human culture, as a product of natural evolution that transcends itself. For Steiner, nature becomes self-conscious in the human being. Steiner's description of the nature of human consciousness thus closely parallels that of Solovyov:^[63]

In human beings, the absolute subject-object appears as such, i.e. as pure spiritual activity, containing all of its own objectivity, the whole process of its natural manifestation, but containing it totally ideally – in consciousness....The subject knows here only its own activity as an objective activity (sub specie object). Thus, the original identity of subject and object is restored in philosophical knowledge.^[64]

Spiritual science[link]

In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.^[22] From 1900 on, he began lecturing about concrete details of the spiritual world(s), culminating in the publication in 1904 of the first of several systematic presentations, his Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, followed by How to Know Higher Worlds (1904/5), Cosmic Memory (a collection of articles written between 1904 and 1908), and An Outline of Esoteric Science (1910). Important themes include:

• the human being as body, soul and spirit;
• the path of spiritual development;
• spiritual influences on world-evolution and history; and
• reincarnation and karma.

Steiner emphasized that there is an objective natural and spiritual world that can be known, and that perceptions of the spiritual world and incorporeal beings are, under conditions of training comparable to that required for the natural sciences, including self-discipline, replicable by multiple observers. It is on this basis that spiritual science is possible, with radically different epistemological foundations than those of natural science.

For Steiner, the cosmos is permeated and continually transformed by the creative activity of non-physical processes and spiritual beings. For the human being to become conscious of the objective reality of these processes and beings, it is necessary to creatively enact and reenact, within, their creative activity. Thus objective spiritual knowledge always entails creative inner activity.^[22] Steiner articulated three stages of any creative deed:^{[37]:Pt II, Chapter 1}

• Moral intuition: the ability to discover or, preferably, develop valid ethical principles;
• Moral imagination: the imaginative transformation of such principles into a concrete intention applicable to the particular situation (situational ethics); and
• Moral technique: the realization of the intended transformation, depending on a mastery of practical skills.

Steiner termed his work from this period on Anthroposophy. He emphasized that the spiritual path he articulated builds upon and supports individual freedom and independent judgment; for the results of spiritual research to be appropriately presented in a modern context they must be in a form accessible to logical understanding, so that those who do not have access to the spiritual experiences underlying anthroposophical research can make independent evaluations of the latter's results.^[37] Spiritual training is to support what Steiner considered the overall purpose of human evolution, the development of the mutually interdependent qualities of love and freedom.^[7]

Steiner and Christianity[link]

In 1899 Steiner experienced what he described as a life-transforming inner encounter with the being of Christ; previously he had little or no relation to Christianity in any form. Then and thereafter, his relationship to Christianity remained entirely founded upon personal experience, and thus both non-denominational and strikingly different from conventional religious forms.^[7] Steiner was then 38, and the experience of meeting the Christ occurred after a tremendous inner struggle. To use Steiner's own words the "experience culminated in my standing in the spiritual presence of the Mystery of Golgotha in a most profound and solemn festival of knowledge."^[65]

Christ and human evolution[link]

Steiner describes Christ's being and mission on earth as having a central place in human evolution:^[66]

The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each.

Every religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.

Historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably in our times in order to meet the on-going evolution of humanity.

Steiner saw this being that unifies all religions – and not a particular religious faith – as the central force in human evolution. He understood Christ's incarnation as a historical reality, and a pivotal point in human history, however. The "Christ Being" is for Steiner not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's "evolutionary" processes and of all human history.^[66] In Steiner's esoteric cosmology, the spiritual development of humanity is interwoven and inseparable from the cosmological development of the universe. Continuing the evolution that led to humanity being born out of the natural world, the Christ being brings the impulse enabling humanity's conscious ascent into the spiritual worlds. ^[67]

To be "Christian" is, for Steiner, a search for balance between polarizing extremes^[66]:102–3 and the ability to manifest love in freedom.^[7]

Divergence from conventional Christian thought[link]

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements.^[59] One of the central points of divergence is found in Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma.

Steiner also posited two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew; the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke.^[48] He references in this regard the fact that the genealogies in these two gospels list twenty-six (Luke) to forty-one (Matthew) completely different ancestors for the generations from David to Jesus. See Genealogy of Jesus for alternative explanations of this radical divergence.

Steiner's view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual. He suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but rather, meant that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, in the "etheric realm" – i.e. visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life – for increasing numbers of people, beginning around the year 1933. He emphasized that the future would require humanity to recognize this Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of how this is named. He also warned that the traditional name, "Christ", might be used, yet the true essence of this Being of Love ignored.^[59]

The Christian Community[link]

In the 1920s, Steiner was approached by Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a Lutheran pastor with a congregation in Berlin. Rittelmeyer asked if it was possible to create a more modern form of Christianity. Soon others joined Rittelmeyer – mostly Protestant pastors and theology students, but including several Roman Catholic priests. Steiner offered counsel on renewing the sacraments of their various services, combining Catholicism's emphasis on the rites of a sacred tradition with the emphasis on freedom of thought and a personal relationship to religious life. He dubbed this "modern, Johannine Christianity".^[48]

Steiner made it clear, however, that the resulting movement for the renewal of Christianity, which became known as "The Christian Community", was a personal gesture of help to a movement founded by Rittelmeyer and others independently of the Anthroposophical Society.^[48] The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with Anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality.^[66] For those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.

Reception and controversy[link]

Steiner's work has influenced a broad range of noted personalities. These include the philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Owen Barfield and Richard Tarnas;^[22] the writers Saul Bellow,^[68] Michael Ende,^[69] Selma Lagerlöf,^[70] Andrej Belyj,^[71][72] David Spangler,^{[citation needed]} and William Irwin Thompson;^[22] the artists Josef Beuys,^[73] Wassily Kandinsky,^[74][75] and Murray Griffin;^[76] actor and acting teacher Michael Chekhov;^[77] cinema director Andrei Tarkovsky;^[78] and conductor Bruno Walter.^[79] Olav Hammer, though sharply critical of esoteric movements generally, terms Steiner "arguably the most historically and philosophically sophisticated spokesperson of the Esoteric Tradition."^[80]

Albert Schweitzer wrote that he and Steiner had in common that they had "taken on the life mission of working for the emergence of a true culture enlivened by the ideal of humanity and to encourage people to become truly thinking beings".^[81]

Robert Todd Carroll has said of Steiner that "Some of his ideas on education – such as educating the handicapped in the mainstream – are worth considering, although his overall plan for developing the spirit and the soul rather than the intellect cannot be admired".^[82]

Scientism[link]

Olav Hammer critiques as scientism Steiner's claim to use a scientific methodology to investigate spiritual phenomena based upon his claims of clairvoyant experience.^[80] Steiner regarded the "observations" of spiritual research as more dependable (and above all, consistent) than observations of physical reality yet considered spiritual research as fallible^[12] and, perhaps surprisingly, held the view that anyone capable of thinking logically was in a position to correct errors by spiritual researchers.^[83]

Race and ethnicity[link]

Steiner's work includes both universalist, humanist elements and historically influenced racial assumptions.^[84] Due to the contrast and even contradictions between these elements, "whether a given reader interprets Anthroposophy as racist or not depends upon that reader's concerns."^[85] Steiner considered that every people, by dint of a shared language and culture, has a unique essence, which he called its soul or spirit,^[80] saw race as a physical manifestation of humanity's spiritual evolution and at times discussed race in terms of complex hierarchies largely derived from nineteenth century biology, anthropology, philosophy, and Theosophy, yet he consistently and explicitly subordinated race, ethnicity, gender—indeed, all hereditary factors—to individual factors in development.^[85] For Steiner, human individuality is centered in a person's unique biography, an individuality's experiences and development not bound by a single lifetime, not the qualities of the physical body.^[23] More specifically:

• Steiner occasionally characterized specific races, nations, and ethnicities in ways that have been termed racist by critics^[86] including descriptions of certain races and ethnic groups as flowering, others as backward, destined to disappear, or even degenerate;^[85] and presented explicitly hierarchical views of the spiritual evolution of different races,^[87] including—at times, and inconsistently—portraying the white race, European culture, or Germanic culture as representing the high point of human evolution as of the early 20th century, though describing these as destined to be superseded by future cultures.^[85]

• Throughout his life Steiner consistently emphasized the core spiritual unity of all the world's peoples and sharply criticized racial prejudice. He articulated beliefs that the individual nature of any person stands higher than any racial, ethnic, national or religious affiliation.^[8][48] His belief that race and ethnicity are transient and superficial, not essential aspects of the individual^[85] was partly rooted in his conviction that each individual incarnates in a variety of different peoples and races over successive lives, and that each of us thus bears within him- or herself the heritage of many races and peoples.^[85][88] Toward the end of his life, Steiner predicted that race will rapidly lose any remaining significance for future generations.^[85] In Steiner's view, culture is universal, and explicitly not ethnically based; he saw Goethe and idealist philosophy, in particular, as the source of ideas that could be drawn upon by any culture, and vehemently critiqued imperialism.^[89]

In the context of his ethical individualism, Steiner considered "race, folk, ethnicity and gender" to be general, describable categories into which individuals may choose to fit, but from which free human beings can and will liberate themselves.^[23]

Judaism[link]

During the years when Steiner was best known as a literary critic, he published a series of articles attacking various manifestations of antisemitism^[90] and criticizing some of the most prominent anti-Semites of the time as "barbaric" and "enemies of culture".^[91] On a number of occasions, Steiner suggested that Jewish cultural and social life had lost all contemporary relevance^[92] and promoted full assimilation of the Jewish people into the nations in which they lived. This stance has come under severe criticism in recent years.^[85]

Steiner was a critic of his contemporary Theodor Herzl's goal of a Zionist state, as well as of any other ethnically determined nation, as he considered ethnicity to be an outmoded basis for social life in today's world.

Towards the end of his life and after his death, massive defamatory press attacks against Steiner were undertaken by early National Socialist leaders (including Adolf Hitler) and other right-wing nationalists. These criticized Steiner's thought, and Anthroposophy, as being incompatible with National Socialist racist ideology and charged both that Steiner was influenced by his close connections with Jews and that he was himself Jewish.^[29][91]

2011 Exhibition[link]

The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's birth was marked by the first major retrospective exhibition of his life's work, 'Kosmos', at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, Germany in 2011.^[93] The exhibition presented many facets of Steiner's life and achievements, including his influence on architecture, furniture design, dance (Eurythmy), education, and agriculture (Biodynamic agriculture). The travelling exhibition was organized by Vitra Design Museum, Germany using its own collection as well as items on loan.^[93]

Bibliography[link]

Writings (selection)[link]

Steiner's collected works, making up about 400 volumes, include his writings (about forty volumes), over 6000 of his lectures, and his artistic work.

• Goethean Science (1883–1897)
• Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)
• Truth and Knowledge doctoral thesis, (1892)
• Intuitive thinking as a spiritual path, also published as the Philosophy of Freedom (1894) ISBN 0-88010-385-X
• Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Age (1901/1925)
• Christianity as Mystical Fact (1902)
• Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904)
• Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos (1904) ISBN 0-88010-373-6
• How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation (1904–5) ISBN 0-88010-508-9
• The Education of the Child, (1907) ISBN 0-85440-620-4
• An Outline of Esoteric Science (1910) ISBN 0-88010-409-0
• Four Mystery Dramas (1913)
• The Renewal of the Social Organism (1919)
• Reordering of Society: The Fundamental Social Law (1919) (article)
• Fundamentals of Therapy: An Extension of the Art of Healing Through Spiritual Knowledge (1925)
• The Story of my Life (1924–5) (autobiography)

See also[link]

• Anthroposophy
• Anthroposophical medicine
• Anthroposophic pharmacy
• Anthroposophical Society
• Anthroposophical view of the human being
• Biodynamic agriculture
• Camphill Movement
• The Christian Community
• Eurythmy
• Goetheanum
• Social threefolding
• Waldorf education

References[link]