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Jill Purce (born 1947) is a British voice teacher, Family Constellations therapist, and author. In the 1970s, Purce developed a new way of working with the voice, introducing the teaching of group overtone chanting, producing a single note whilst amplifying vocal harmonics.Godwin, J. (1991). The Mystery of the Seven Vowels. Phanes Press, US, see quote on p. 55.Dhingra, D. (1994). "Heavenly Overtones". The Independent (12 May 1994).Jenkins, L. (1993), "A Bubbling Pot", Classical Music (July): p. 25. (The Composer George Benjamin Is Interviewed about His Experience Learning Overtones with Purce). She is a former fellow of King's College London, Biophysics Department. Entry on 'Jill Purce' in Gale Encyclopedia 2001 She produced over 30 books as general editor of the Thames and Hudson Art and Imagination series. Thames & Hudson webpage for Art & Imagination series Between 1971 and 1974, she worked in Germany with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.Stockhausen, K. (translated and selected by Tim Nevill). (1989). Towards a Cosmic Music. pp. 15–18. Since the early 1970s, she has taught diverse forms of contemplative chant, especially Overtone singing. For over 15 years, she has been leading Family Constellations combined with chant.Troughton, M. (2008). "Tried & Tested—Healing the Family Workshop". Psychologies, p. 37.Mackay, N. (2009). The Science of Family: Working with Ancestral Patterns. O Books, ix.
Purce is the author of The Mystic Spiral: Journey of the Soul, a book about the spiral in sacred traditions, art, and psychology.
In a BBC documentary about her, More Ways than One: The Mystic Spiral, Purce 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 principle of flow, resistance, and rotation, became the basis of her research from 1968 until 1974, on the form of the spiral and the theme of the labyrinth in nature, science, art, psychology, and sacred traditions.Cott, J. (1973). Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 175.Barrière, G. (1975). La Spirale Nature et Mysticisme. Connaissance des arts. p. 46 Joan, E. (2008). Entry for 'Labryrinths, Spirals, and Meanders', in Re-Genesis Encyclopedia.Fordham, M. (1978). Jungian Psychotherapy: A Study in Analytical Psychology. John Wiley & Sons. p. 42.
Purce 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 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 supposed healing effects of sound from the 1970s onwards. The International Sound Healing Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, 2008.Shapiro, E. & Shapiro, D. (1998). Voices from the Heart: Inspiration for a Compassionate Future, Random House. pp. 196–202.Metzner, R. (ed.). Re-Vision, Journal of Consciousness and Change, Special Issue: The Resonating Universe, vol. 10, no. 1, Summer 1987...
Purce's research, lectures, and workshops, 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.Polly Samson. "Getting Those Good Vibrations". The Observer. 7 May 1989.Alan Franks. "The Enchantress.} The Times. 14 December 1996.
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 Chronic fatigue syndrome.Lind-Kyle, P. (1992). When Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up: A Woman's Tale of Healing the Immune System and Awakening the Feminine. Portland, Oregon: Swan, Raven & Company. pp. 216–223.Robinson, J. (ed.) (1996). The Alternative & Complementary Health Compendium. Bognor Regis, UK: Millenium Profiles. pp. 183–184.Campbell (ed.), 1991, 'Music Physician: For Times To Come', pp. 240–242.
In June 1993, Purce gave a lecture and seminar for the English National Opera titled 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, she 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 of reinvigorating and rediscovering the contemplative aspects of chant in Christian traditions.
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