Jill Purce

Background

In a BBC documentary about Purce, More Ways than One: The Mystic Spiral, she described how through contemplating the patterns in water she noticed that when flow encounters resistance, first it rotates, then these rotary patterns become individual eddies which separate out as independent forms. This observation of the form creating principal of flow, resistance, and rotation, became the basis of her research from 1968 to 1974 on the form of the spiral and the theme of the labyrinth in nature, science, art, psychology and sacred traditions.

Purce was born in Staffordshire, England. Educated at Headington School, Oxford, she graduated with a BA in Fine Art from University of Reading (1970), and a Masters from Chelsea College of Art, London (1970–71), and King's College London.

She was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship at King's College London Biophysics Department, to explore the spiral as a universal structure. Here she initiated a dialogue between science and spirituality with Maurice Wilkins (Nobel Laureate with Watson and Crick for the discovery of DNA), and lectured to the BSSRS (British Society for Social Responsibility in Science). Between 1974 and 1976 she lectured at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and Chelsea College of Art and Design and was a visiting lecturer at numerous universities and art schools, on art and sacred traditions; form and the spiral; and the tradition of music, sound and the voice as a contemplative practice in diverse cultures.

Her work with the voice was a major impetus behind widespread research into the possible healing effects of sound from the 1970s onwards.

Cymatics

Purce discovered the effect of sound on matter in the late 1960s through the work of Hans Jenny (cymatics) who used fine powders, liquids and pastes, to show how formless matter takes on diverse forms and complex patterns through sound vibration. Purce also investigated the effect of sound vibrations on fine particles and on water inspired by the early experiments of Ernst Chladni in 1785 and Margaret Watts Hughes between 1885–1904.

Purce and Stockhausen

Between June 1971 and 1974 she moved to Kürten in Germany to live and work with the eminent German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen had just introduced a simple form of overtone chanting using vowels to the West for the first time with the premiere of Stimmung in December 1968. During the autumn of 1971 Purce toured with Stockhausen and the performances of Stimmung throughout the Eastern United States and Canada. She provided him with many ideas about sounds and their effects on matter, which he used to create Alphabet für Liège, a piece demonstrating those effects (1972). She took part in performances of his music at various music festivals (Liège, Rencontres Internationales d'Art Contemporain—La Rochelle, and Sainte-Baume—1972, 1973, 1974).

Working with the voice

Researching the possible beneficial properties of the voice since 1968, and having spent time with the Gyutö monks (see Gyuto Order) before going to Germany in 1971, she later continued her studies in the Himalayas with the chantmaster of the Gyutö Tibetan Monastery, Tenpa Gyaltsen, and with the Mongolian Khöömii master, Yavgaan in order to explore the Tibetan and Mongolian methods of overtone chanting (see Mongolia and Tibet sections in Overtone singing).

Purce's researches, and her lectures and workshops throughout the world have attempted to demonstrate how the human voice might be used to bring about positive psychological, emotional, and physical changes through acting as a link between body and mind, as described in Buddhist and other Eastern traditions.

Purce has also been invited by several hospitals and schools to explore how these voice techniques might be of positive help to women in childbirth; at the Maudsley Hospital in London, with people suffering from Alzheimer's; at the Royal Free Hospital, London, with people suffering from mental disabilities; at Hawthorn School, with children suffering from physical disabilities; and with people suffering from ME.

In June 1993 Purce gave a lecture and seminar for ENO (English National Opera) The Healing Power of Opera as part of the Covent Garden Music Festival, London. She later led the audience in a chanting meditation before the first performance of Jonathan Harvey's opera: Inquest of Love for ENO.

In 2003, Purce was invited to work with nuns and monks in a number of enclosed Christian Monastic Communities who sing Gregorian chant, particularly Burnham Abbey and Fairacres, Oxford, to teach overtone chanting and other methods to explore ways to re-invigorate and rediscover the contemplative aspects of chant in Christian traditions.

Family constellations

In 1999, as part of the international conference on family constellations and the work of family therapist Bert Hellinger in Wiesloch, Germany, she was invited by Hellinger to give an extended workshop to demonstrate her work, to his students and conference delegates. Influenced by her time in Japan in the early 1980s where there is a strong tradition of honouring the ancestors, Purce developed a process for doing this in her own work, using ceremony and chant to acknowledge excluded family members, both living and dead.

Personal life

Jill Purce is married to the author and former biochemist Rupert Sheldrake. They have two sons, the biologist Merlin Sheldrake and the musician Cosmo Sheldrake.

Selected works