Curso extraordinario de Posgrado
Music in interdisciplinary dialogue with the other arts
(27 de febrero al 2 de marzo 2012)
Impartido por Prof. Dr. Siglind Bruhn
(University of Michigan)
This course will be held in English.
Program:
1. Monday 27:
Music and the Other Arts: Intentionality, Mediation, and Comprehension
This session serves as an introduction into issues of comparative arts.
2. Tuesday 28:
An interdisciplinary approach to Hindemith’s opera «Mathis der Maler»
This opera will allow us to make an approach to a wonderfully interdisciplinary work involving a dramatic text as well as a complex work of visual art in addition to music.
3. Wednesday 29:
Hermeneutical approach to Messiaen’s «Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus»
We will discuss some excerpts from this piano cycle for three reasons:
• It includes relatively short pieces, which one can then discuss in depth, something that is hardly ever possible with his larger compositions.
• For those who do read music, a piano score is much easier to grasp than an orchestral score; and for those not used to musical details, listening to a single instrument playing is less distracting than having to absorb a full orchestra.
• The musical components Messiaen chooses in this cycle to point at theological aspects are both distinct and comprehensive, thus allowing a good overview of what musical hermeneutics can potentially achieve. Specific comments will focus on nos. I-V and on the first page of no. XX.
4. Thursday 1:
Michelangelo’s ‘Il Penseroso,’ from Stone to Tone:
Intermedial Responses between Illustration and Ekphrasis
This session will serve as a transition to the discussion of musical ekphrasis.
5. Friday 2:
Musical ekphrasis
In this one case students should read or re-read the chapter “”Reflexiones sobre ecfrasis musical” of the book edited by Susana González Aktories and Irene Arigas Albarelli, Entre artes/entre actos: ecfrasis e intermedialidad, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM/Artigas-Bonilla Editores, México, 2011.
This text could be the basis of a methodological discussion in the final session.
We ask students to consider before the beginning of this course whether they know of an example from Mexican music. If so, we encourage them to bring any relevant material they can to the session – score, recording, any background material, as well as some personal interpretation – to discuss it there.
Requirements:
Except for the article of session 5, students will not be given additional material to read before each session. Each topic will be presented in such a way that listeners are inspired to discuss both the topic and related questions as well as potential issues of methodology in a workshop-like atmosphere.
No particular musicological background is required for this course, which will put an accent on the interdisciplinary field around music.
Siglind Bruhn is a music analyst/musicologist, concert pianist, and interdisciplinary scholar presently working at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities as a full-time researcher in the fields of “Music and Literature” and “Music in Interdisciplinary Dialogue.” In addition she was, from 2000 to 2010, a Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Christianity and the Arts and, for the period 2004-2009, a chercheur invité at the Sorbonne’s Institut d’esthétique des arts contemporains. In 2001 she was elected to the European Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 2008 she received an honorary doctorate from Linnaeus University, Sweden.
Before coming to the United States, she has taught at the University of Hong Kong (1987-1993), and at the Pianisten-Akademie in Ansbach (1984-1987) and has been active in several international music centers and societies. She has been a visiting artist/visiting lecturer in most West European countries as well as in China, Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Ecuador, and on various American campuses. Since 1994, Siglind has been devoting herself fully to research and writing, and she is an active member on research teams such as the Équipe scientifique d’herméneutique musicale (based at the University of Strasbourg, France), the Nordic Society for Interarts Studies (based at the University of Lund, Sweden), and the Musical Signification Project (based at the University of Helsinki, Finland). Besides contributing numerous articles to scholarly journals and chapters to anthologies in both Europe and the United States, she has authored over twenty books. co-authored five volumes of scholarly essays and three issues of a scholarly journal. She also serves as co-editor of the book series INTERPLAY: Music in Interdisciplinary Dialogue, published by Pendragon Press, and has translated one music-theoretical book from English into German.
As a concert pianist, she has given solo and chamber music recitals in twenty-three countries on all five continents. She has recorded extensively with classical radio stations in several countries and can be heard on two LPs and four CDs.