The annual conference of the Lyre Association of North America held in southeast Pennsylvania. Twenty-one women met at a Swedenborgian Church retreat center called Temenos, which means "sacred space" in Greek. The music created by the lyre players was blessed by the beauty of the surrounding forested area, by the aesthetics of the building where all accommodations and activities of the conference took place, and by the many other groups who left behind their heartfelt striving for the spiritual. [It should be noted that it was through a personal connection of Jean Anderberg that we were able to use this space.]

The LANA Annual General Meeting was held on Wednesday afternoon, just before the official start of the conference, with most conference attendees present. We elected board members and shared reports about lyre activity across the country. A resolution was agreed on to dedicate all of our efforts during the conference towards sending healing lyre tones to encircle the whole world that is currently undergoing such uncertainty and anxiety because of global economic and political conditions.

I have attended lyre conferences in the U.S. since 1992. This year's conference was the first one I have attended where the conference facilities provided rooms for everyone with private bath plus direct access to the outdoors from the bedroom—a tremendous help in keeping up with the full and demanding schedule.

For me, the best part of the conference was that every time we assembled we had our lyres in hand and only played music! This was a conference entirely devoted to practical work on the lyre. Our ears practiced listening and our limbs learned technique under the thoroughly competent and graceful direction of Anna Prokhovnik Cooper, who had traveled from Northern Ireland to be with us. We were immersed in the actual sounding of the lyre tone, necessitating our having to be fully present for it.

On the last morning I was asked on the spot to jump in and help another lyrist with improvising on the tone of the day for the whole group. All that could be relied on was what immediately spoke inside me.

The extemporaneous quality of the conference extended into the memorial evening for Jean Anderberg on Friday. One by one participants shared stories and memories of Jean who had served for many years on the LANA Board of Directors. Music was interspersed. Though there was a general outline of the program, it had not been rehearsed and grew organically, reaching a crescendo of gratitude and joy and prayer for Jean to remain united with us. A wish was expressed that when Jean goes through her life review that she will feel even in her supposedly most insignificant deeds how far reaching they are. I, for one, owe Jean a huge debt of gratitude because she gave me the name of the lyre maker who made my combined soprano-alto lyre.

Again, in an unscripted way, during the concluding Sunday morning, everyone shared their experience of the conference and performed one last time music each group had worked on throughout the week.

In some ways the conference did not end for me that Sunday, but has continued in the days since. What I brought home from the conference was not a ream of notes that more than likely would not be looked at for a long time. Instead, I have experienced an ongoing revelation of how to play the lyre better. As soon as I returned home, a stranger called asking if I would give an introductory lesson on the lyre. She had heard the lyre in 2006 and the tone stayed with her so much that she wanted to explore learning the lyre herself so she could incorporate it into her counseling profession. Looking for ideas of how to present the lyre to a beginner, I found a publication I had purchased at the 2003 International Lyre Conference. This primer was How to Play the Lyre written by Anna Prokhovnik Cooper. While reading her description of the lyre stroke, it suddenly dawned on me: "My hand position all these years has been flawed! Keep the fingers straight and spread, parallel to the strings! That is how to increase speed, accuracy, full tone!" A heightened level of musicianship was automatically achieved and I felt as though Anna was still showing me the way. The second experience as an outgrowth of the conference was that a participant who had heard my report during the LANA Board meeting called me to ask if I would let her and another music therapy student observe my music practitioner work. They drove from Pennsylvania to spend a day shadowing me in my therapeutic rounds in the Medicine Intensive Care Unit in the UNC Hospital. This was the first time anyone in the lyre movement has seen me at work in a clinical setting with the lyre. Our collegial exchange was the highlight of my development with the lyre and a further benefit from having attended the conference. —Suzanne Mays, Chapel Hill, NC

From an e-mail from Laura Langford-Schnur (Chester, NY) to the LANA board: A Big Thank You to all of you for carrying the many facets of the lyre work. I know how much work it is all year long, yet you appear to work together well and always seem joyous and fulfilled in doing so.

In the conference, it was truly a joy to have such a potent dose of lyre music and singing in an atmosphere of harmony, clarity and freedom.

Thanks for allowing us to give the tuning workshop and presentation.

The organization was superb. The music choices were absolutely delightful. I love the way you each take your turn at announcements and leading, giving buoyancy to the experience. Anna and Sarah were absolutely the right choice for this conference this time.

The second conference focusing on the tuning principles developed by Maria Renold was held at the Christian Community in Spring Valley on May 8-11. The following are abridged versions of two reports.

The principal presenter was Bevis Stevens, a eurythmist living in Switzerland, who gave us two very artistically prepared presentations following the development of consciousness and of tuning over the centuries. Several pianos and a few lyres were tuned differently. Pieces were played in several tunings—Greek, meantone, well-tempered, standard 440 equal-tempered and our 432 Renold II—giving quite a taste of the differences in experiencing music over time as tunings changed. In his presentation on"the Birth of the Third Out of the Mood of the Fifth," he demonstrated, by means of a slide show and live samples of music played on the differently tuned instruments, the parallel developments in sculpture, music and the evolving consciousness of man.

Daniel Hafner took us on an in-depth excursion through all 12 keys in both their major and minor forms, with Graham Jackson at the piano playing through most of the Bach and Chopin Preludes written expressly to experience the color and character of each key and mode. We understood firsthand that, through the Renold II tuning, we can once again enjoy the living and colorful musical experiences that engage the heart, after nearly a century of being locked into the lifeless, lackluster, deadened musical experience of equal temperament.

As most of our conferees were returnees from last year, we had the added confirmation that what we had learned from last conference had not been lost, rather had grown, deepened, taken root and consolidated into a firmer foundation into which the new ones could enter with us.
We joined the Lighting Workshop in the auditorium on Saturday morning and saw that pitch and tuning can even change the quality and gestures done in eurythmy. And in the evening we watched the magnificent performance of "The Eternal Fire of Prometheus" by the Light Eurythmy Ensemble from Dornach, Switzerland, a most rewarding experience to cap off a rewarding weekend tuning conference. —Laura Langford-Schnur

The conference was very successful and an extraordinary experience for me. Having attended the tuning conference last year and having begun to hear the intervals more clearly, I was ripe for the abundant opportunities for listening and tuning with the guidance of others this year. Being able to hear the differently sized thirds, the pulses between tones, the formed fifths and the wider fifths was very encouraging. And to listen to a piece played on three different pianos, each in a different tuning, was also an "ear-opener." All of this experience, rounded out with the concepts brought by Bevis Stevens and Daniel Hafner, was a perfect balance. —Diane Ingraham

This past summer, 21 people—ranging from complete novices to real "old-timers"—came together in Ann Arbor, MI, for one of the Lyre Association's most special conferences, as indicated in the preceding article.

The opening evening featured a performance by the board and guests of Julius Knierem's After 40 Days and inspiring recollections by Channa Seidenberg and Christof-Andreas Lindenberg of the first 25 years of the Lyre Association, to mark the 25th anniversary of its founding. The three full days included a morning "talklet" by Christof-Andreas, group conversation about a reading that had been distributed the previous evening, listening work, improvisation with various instruments, Spacial Dynamics®, and playing the lyre in small groups. Central to the work of the large ensemble was Christof-Andreas's new work "Summer's Call of Thunder" and Colin Tanser's Everyman. On the final morning, Christof-Andreas presented a longer talk on "Melody in the Single Tone" and we shared with friends and family the music that both the small and large ensembles had worked on.
On the afternoon of July 17, we held our Annual General Meeting, in which we re-elected Jean Anderberg and Samantha Embrey two three-years terms on the Board and heard membership, financial, and regional reports.

On May 10-12, 2007, a conference on tuning according to the principles developed by Maria Renold took place at the Christian Community Church in the Spring Valley, NY area. At least 50 people attended the lecture on the opening evening and most stayed for the entire weekend. Participants had a wide range of background (not all lyrists!) and came from as far as California, Texas, Toronto and Virginia.

A trained musician, Maria Renold took a few indications by Rudolf Steiner as a starting point for her own phenomenological research, out of which she devised a system of tuning the intervals of the scale. Now deceased, Mrs. Renold published her pioneering findings in a book, Intervals, Scales, Tones and the Concert Pitch C=128 Hz (Temple Lodge Press, 2004; originally published in German), from the Sunbridge College Bookstore (845-425-0983) as well as www.waldorfbooks.com.

With Mrs. Renold’s method, not only is the tone A tuned to 432 Hz, lower than today’s norm, but most of the fourths and fifths of the scale are tuned either slightly larger or smaller than pure fifths, which differs from today’s standard tuning. Of course, there is much more to it—which is why we needed a conference!

There were three principal presenters. Bevis Stevens, a eurythmist from New Zealand, residing in Switzerland, translated Maria Renold’s book into English, teaches eurythmy at the Goetheanum, works with the Lichteurythmie Ensemble, and gives seminars and demonstrations on this tuning. He guided us through comparisons between pianos and lyres tuned with the Renolds and other tunings. He also gave practical instruction in the tuning. Paul Davis, a string player and former math and physics teacher at a Waldorf school, possesses an uncanny understanding of music, tone and intervals, and was able to reproduce the Renold tuning after hearing it only once, and he eventually came to the conclusion that its intervals were uniquely relevant for our time. His fairly technical presentation included a fascinating explanation and demonstration of the "difference tone." Finally, Daniel Hafner, a Christian Community priest and trained musician, spoke about the special characteristics of each of the major and minor keys, which are enhanced with the Renold's tuning. His talks were interspersed with amultitude of wonderful musical examples, valiantly performed with virtually no preparation by three extremely skilled pianists in our midst, Graham Jackson, Sheila Johns, and Helvi McClelland.

For the third international lyre conference that took place on July 27-August 1, 2006 in Belfast, the organizers in Northern Ireland created a rich program and an especially warm, welcoming atmosphere. The Arion Association, our counter-part in the British Isles, produced a special publication on the gathering, which we republished for our members. Therefore, here we will relate a few aspects of the conferencethat may be of special interest to those in North America. First, we were very well represented. Of the approximately 200 participants, 27 were from the USA and 4 from Canada. Among these, 3 were people with special needs and 6 participated in the youth program.

We also played a large role in the conference. Diane Ingraham Barnes, Veronica Jackson, Sheila Johns, Kerry Lee, Christof-Andreas Lindenberg and Channa Seidenberg led workshops or lyre groups; Joanna Carey helped lead the youth program, and Samantha Embrey was the registrar. Moreover, Sheila and Samantha had contributed a great deal to the planning and organization of the conference, even making trips to Northern Ireland in the fall before the conference.

In addition, we should report that, on July 29, in the midst of a noisy lunch hour in a beautiful Tudor-style dining hall (“Out of Harry Potter,” someone said), we held our Annual General Meeting. Our principal organizational business was to re-elect Debra Barford, Sheila Johns and Catherine Read as members of the board. Joining us at this meeting were friends from Brazil with whom we discussed the possibility of a collaboration among lyrists on our two continents. As a first step, we have given complimentary memberships to Flávia Betti, Ines Nigro Campos, and Meca Vargas, all very accomplished and active musicians in Brazil.

It is also noteworthy that two important new initiatives grew out of this the conference, the formation of an international organization of lyre teachers and a plan to create a fund to support lyre builders.

All in all, this third international gathering of lyrists and lyre builders strengthened the connections among members of the world lyre community and provided lots of inspiration and new ideas to take back home.