ABSTRACT
The three of us arranged to meet as the crisp November [1993] air was tangling the old man’s beard with the first frosts. None of us knew each other. But Maxwell had come to admire the work of Jonathan and Michæl separately, and seeing that they were neighbours both by domicile and profession, he had a hunch they’d have enough in common to merit a meeting. It could have been a civilised academic fencing match, but in the event a genuine enthusiasm Jonathan and Michæl felt towards each other’s work became the spark from which this current issue of Contemporary Music Review was ignited. MS In ‘alternative’ culture the shamanic, the mystical are acknowledged and practised by many people: yet
the academic establishment seems completely closed to these ideas. JH I hear a lot about friends setting up healing groups and all manner of things, and yet at the University
people speak of it all as having happened before, not being of any importance. But is the sacred becoming more necessary to the ordinary person? Are the pressures of ecological catastrophe going to accelerate such a tendency? These things are very important. Without a spiritual or artistic view of life man will just become arid and decline rather dramatically-in health, psychology, crime and social fabric.
