Understanding Music Academy

Can music as an art form be directed against people? Can music harm people, can it destroy them?

These are the questions I like to discuss with people who are professionally involved with music or "just" like music.

My answers in the next post, now I would be interested in how you would answer these questions...

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Kann Musik als eine Kunstform gegen Menschen gerichtet sein? Kann Musik Menschen schaden, kann sie zerstören?

Es sind die Fragen, über die ich mich gern mit Menschen, die sich professionell mit Musik beschäftigen oder Musik "nur" mögen, austausche.

Meine Antworten im nächsten Post, jetzt würde mich interessieren, wie Ihr diese Fragen beantworten würdet...

Nature is one of the most beautiful sources of inspiration. For me, a few hours in nature are an essential part of an ideal Sunday.

But I can't imagine a day in my life without music either, which is why I would like to share with you the link to one of my favourite compositions "Le rappel des oiseaux" ("The Bird Call/The Birds' Voices") by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) in one of the best interpretations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZX_rkCJb2U&t=2s

What do you hear in this music? Do you think we can also hear the voices (i.e. feelings, emotions) of people here in a figurative sense?

This Friday in our online club for music students we talked about, among other things, whether music as well as other arts are based on universal human ethical values such as freedom. Can works of art only have positive effects on people or can they also set up harm? Is it naïve to think that arts show us ways to make the world a better place?

What do you think? What is art, including music, for you? Feel free to post in the comments a few words that come to mind when you ask yourself what art is. I would be very interested in your opinion. For my part, I will soon publish a definition of art here on Instagram.

"How many things poets say that have either been said by philosophers, or yet ought to be said!"
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (1-65), "Letters to Lucilius"/("Epistulae morales ad Lucilium")

My students know: I never get tired of reminding them that music, like other art forms, has a lot in common with philosophy. Artists, not only poets, also love wisdom (philosophy after all means "love of wisdom") and share it in their works of art. In art, as in philisophical essays, important questions are asked and answers are given that can help us in our everyday lives and, of course, as professionals on our paths. This is precisely what is not seldom overlooked/overheard/forgotten....

I would like to take today's Philosophy Day as an occasion to keep an eye on the philosophical aspects of music as an art form. When we listen to or play, for example, "Ich ruf' zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ" by Bach (BWV 639), the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata op. 27 no. 2 or Chopin's Etude op. 10 no. 1, we can focus on what questions are asked there about such philosophical categories as space and time, joy and pain or even about the essence of life.

And of course a reading recommendation for Philosophy Day: "Letters to Lucilius" by Seneca are very inspiring and also not difficult to read ;)

Do you like reading philosophical works? Do you have favourite philosophers? Do you enjoy discovering the philosophical aspects of art in general and music in particular?

On Spanish Language Day, as always, I enjoy reading poems by Federico García Lorca, e.g. one of my favourite works of his "La guitarra".

My students know that I think it is very important to read poetry, because poetry helps us to think more precisely, not only as artists or scientists, but also as human beings in general. Poetry helps us to understand music, other arts and life more deeply.

Also, of course, poems, like pieces of music, have their rhythm, their melody, their harmonies.... Lorca's poems (just as one example among many...) sound like music, which is also why I think it is very productive to read or listen to poems in the original, even if you don't understand the language (well).

It's the same with music, even if we don't yet understand it deeply, we can enjoy its melodies, harmonies, rhythms etc. - and joy, interest or even love are, in my view, always the first steps that make it possible for us to understand something: "Where there is no love, there is no understanding" (Oscar Wilde).

Do you like to speak/hear different languages? Do you like reading poetry?

Something personal...

We absolutely need the feeling that musical works we play or write about touch us deeply, that they become 'our own', even if we did not compose them ourselves.

When I wrote my book about music in 1920s Berlin, I imagined myself living there about 100 years ago, writing the music reviews I analysed in my book, for example. I asked myself what ways I would have gone or driven to the Berlin Philharmonic as a music critic? How would I have written my texts? By hand? Or on a typewriter? How would I have sent them to the editorial office?...

Since my first research trip in December 2009, Berlin has become my 'own' city, where I feel very much at home, - and a bit like I've travelled back in time to the Weimar Republic....

That's how I felt last week at the annual conference of the Society for Music Research at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Again, I wondered where we (musicologists) would have met and what topics we would have discussed. Would I have been allowed to chair a scientific panel as a woman? Would I, as a woman, have had the opportunity to do a doctorate and appear at a scientific conference?

Afterwards I went for a walk on Unter den Linden and listened to "Intolleranza 1960" by Luigi Nono at the Komische Oper... Berlin showed me, as always until now, its most beautiful sides...

How do you make the music you play 'your own'? Or do you consider it unimportant/ superfluous?

On World Day of the Sea, I'd like to ask you what the sea sounds like to you. Like "Pirates of the Caribbean?" Debussy's "La Mer"? Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade"? Like Chopin's Etude op. 10 No. 1? Or perhaps after Rachmaninov's Étude-Tableaux op. 39 No. 5?

The sea is an important artistic image, also in music. Sometimes we know right away that a piece is about the sea when we read the title of the composition. Sometimes we can only hear it or see it in the score (as in my last two examples).

Regardless of whether we are dealing with the first or the second case, we should not forget that all artistic images are not superficial (natural) pictures, but aesthetic forms in which certain ideas (feelings, thoughts, states, etc.) are embodied.

What music will you listen to today, on World Day of the Sea? Do you have any favourite works that you associate with the Sea?

I love wholeness in all areas of life: whether it is about our health or learning, for example.

For this reason, I always recommend to my students and pupils that they engage intensively not only with music, but also with other art forms: e.g. by going to museums, reading philosophical essays and poetry, or writing, watching good films and discussing them with friends (also in our online club for music students)...

But a healthy lifestyle is also very important: enough sleep, good nutrition, intensive physical activity every day...

So, we, all human beings, regardless of what our main occupation in life is, need to consistently do something so that our soul (feelings), our spirit (intellect) and our body are in harmony and continue to develop harmoniously.

What do you think? Would you agree? What do you do for your body, mind and soul?

Mir fällt es nicht einfach, über mich zu sprechen. Als Musikwissenschaftlerin höre ich lieber Musik, höre aber auch gern anderen Menschen zu :) Dagegen kann ich über Musik, Kunst und meinen Beruf stundenlang reden...

Bin meinen GesprächspartnerInnen sehr dankbar, bei denen das Gefühl entsteht, wir kennen uns schon sehr lange und können uns frei austauschen. So war es mit Sabine Bertram, der Bildungsfrau aus Leidenschaft, der ich ganz herzlich danke.

Ihr seid herzlich eingeladen, das Ergebnis zu hören - wir freuen uns auf Eure Kommentare, Fragen, Kritik... Link in Bio.

Redet Ihr gern oder hört Ihr lieber zu?

On the 160th anniversary of Claude Debussy, I'd like to share one of my favourite quotes of his: "I'm trying to [create] 'something else' - realities, so to speak - what the fools call 'impressionism'..." ("J’essaie de ‹autre chose› – en quelque sorte, des réalités – ce que les imbéciles appellent ‹impressionnisme›...)

How do you understand this? What do you think of terms like classical, romantic, impressionism, expressionism, minimal music, new music, etc.?

To understand or not to understand music and art - from my point of view this is not a question! (Part II)

A few days ago I was in the so-called "Hamlet Castle", the Kronborg Castle in Helsingør in Denmark, world famous as Elsinore in Shakespeare's "Hamlet". The medieval fortress was extended between 1574 and 1585 and inaugurated in 1582 as the royal residence of Frederick II.

After visiting the castle, which was built in the Nordic Renaissance style, I feel that I have become even closer to tragedy and especially to the scene with actors, which I love to talk about with my students.

By the way, it was easy for me - and for that I thank colleagues who are responsible for the mediation of history and art in this museum! Children, teenagers and adults were supported in their 'journey through time', e.g. by a conversation with Frederick II ( played by an actor), by opportunities to move around freely, to touch a lot of exhibits, to embroider and even to lie down in a huge bed: with the suggestion to imagine that you had come to a ball of the king and had spent the night in this room... All in all, a very wonderful experience that I would like to share here with you, but also with my students in our club for music students (get in touch if you want to be part of it!) or in individual coaching.

What have you experienced in the last few weeks? What was new for you? Surprising? Inspiring?

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)To understand or not to understand music and art - from my point of view this is not a question! (Part II)