As a young man, Hamel studied music, psychology, and sociology in his native Germany. He then spent three extensive periods in Asia, where his studies of Eastern musical traditions (particularly Tibetan and Indian) had a profound effect not only on his compositional style but on his views concerning Western music as a whole. Hamel shared his unconventional insights on music and its place in society in his influential book Through Music to the Self. First published in 1976, the treatise discusses the transformational effects of music through the ages and calls for a more spiritual approach to composition in 20th-century Western music. While many of his concepts fueled the American new-age movement, Hamel's music is a far cry from the good-natured doodling often associated with that genre. Though some of his works are more successful than others, they all exhibit the grace and intelligence of classical music, the spontaneity of jazz, the hypnotic qualities of Far Eastern styles, and (quite often) the relentless drive of American minimalist techniques.
