Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Musikwissenschaft

Gastvorlesungsreihe im Wintersemester 2023/24

Collegium Musicologicum, Am Kupfergraben 5, 10117 Berlin, Raum 501, Beginn der Vorträge: 18 Uhr s.t.
  • Donnerstag, 09. November 2023, 18 Uhr

Kenneth Lampl (School of Music, Australian National University)
The Creative Practice of Film Scoring

How we understand ourselves, our culture and the world we live in is through our stories. Our collective stories are both an expression of and an inquiry into the meaning and purpose of our lives as individuals and as a collective. What tribal storytelling, classic mythology, plays and narrative literature were to cultures for thousands of years up until the present day, movies are to us in the current age. Think of how much of our experience in the world is shaped and influenced through watching video content of film (theatrical or streaming), video games, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or even advertisement which are short narrative films.  
At the heart of this dynamic, multisensory experience is music. Music and storytelling have always gone hand and hand since the dawn of civilization. Music is the magic that has us believe that bikes and brooms fly, that giant space craft can actually cross the galaxy, that honor and love conquer all in the end. Music holds the power that propels a narrative storyline forward and has us believe and invest ourselves in what we are seeing.  
This lecture is the opportunity to take the reader by hand and explore both the creative process of film scoring and its rich history. The lecture will not only cover the evolution of film music, but the theory and creative process of scoring. 

Kenneth Lampl received his D.M.A. in music composition from the Juilliard School of Music and was a student of John Williams. His first international recognition came with the winning of the Prix Ravel in composition at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. Many awards soon followed including the Joseph H. Bearns Prize from Columbia University, nine ASCAP Concert Music Awards, and three New Jersey State Council for the Arts Fellowships. 
As a composer of film music Kenneth Lampl has scored over 100 films including: Pokemon: The First Movie: Mew vs Mew Two, Pokemon Mewtwo Returns,  Frontera (starring Ed Harris and Eva Longoria), 35 & Ticking (starring Kevin Hart and Nicole Ari-Parker), Ninja's Creed (starring Pat Morita and Eric Roberts), Kandisha (starring David Carradine and Hiam Abbas) and Winter of Frozen Dreams (starring Thora Birch and Keith Carradine).  His recent Australian scores include: the Furies, 2067 and Sissy. The 2067 soundtrack was released by Sony/Milan Records and was also listed as "One of the Best Scores of 2021" by the Film Music Institute in LA.
Lampl is also known as an orchestral composer, arranger and conductor.  He has written orchestral arrangement for the American rock band Foreigner’s latest record Foreigner and the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra and Chorus which hit #1 on Billboard Magazine Classical Charts for seven weeks and he conducted the Australian tour.  He also composed orchestral music for the band Evanescence for their Synthesis tour performing with the Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland Symphonies.

 

 

  • Donnerstag, 23. November 2023, 18 Uhr

Burkhard Meischein (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Kompositionsunterricht im frühen 19. Jahrhundert: Richard Wagner als Schüler von Theodor Weinlig

Christian Theodor Weinlig (1780–1842) war eine wichtige Gestalt der Dresdner und Leipziger musikalischen Szene und als Kompositionslehrer überaus gefragt. Weinlig unterrichtete einige der bedeutendsten Musikerpersönlichkeiten des 19. Jahrhunderts; Richard Wagner und Clara Schumann sind darunter die bekanntesten, aber auch Ernst Friedrich Richter gehört dazu, Thomaskantor in den Jahren 1868–1879 und nicht zuletzt der Lehrer Hugo Riemanns.
Weinlig erscheint als Kreuzungspunkt mehrerer wichtiger Schulen und Traditionsstränge: Erstens die von Bach über Homilius und Weinligs Onkel herkommende Dresdner Tradition, zweitens die italienische, primär auf die Oper zielende Tradition des Konservatoriums von Bologna, wo Weinlig neben bedeutenden Mitschülern unterrichtet wurde, und drittens schließlich Weinligs eigene Lehrtradition, die über Richter und Riemann in gewisser Weise noch heute sichtbar ist. Gleichwohl ist sein Unterricht bisher kaum erforscht. Aber wie können Details darüber ermittelt werden? Auf diese Frage können einige bisher kaum beachtete Quellen detailliert Auskunft geben, die noch auf ihre Erschließung warten und in diesem Vortrag vorgestellt werden sollen.

Burkhard Meischein hat in Detmold Kirchenmusik, Schulmusik und Musikwissenschaft studiert, daneben in Bochum Germanistik und Philosophie, schließlich noch Musiktheorie an der Universität der Künste Berlin. Promotion über die Weidener Orgelwerke Max Regers an der TU Berlin und Habilitation an der HU mit einer Arbeit über die Geschichte der Musikgeschichtsschreibung. Burkhard Meischein ist Gastprofessor an der Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin und Privatdozent an der HU.

 

  • Donnerstag, 14. Dezember 2023, 18 Uhr

Mark Berry (Royal Holloway, University of London)
"Berlin Alexanderplatz" or "Das Berliner Requiem"? City, (Counter-)Revolution, and Crocodiles in Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth "Ring"


Richard Wagner formulated Der Ring des Nibelungen in the white heat of revolutionary Dresden, an active participant turned chronicler and critic. He wrote that he intended 'to make clear to the men of the Revolution the meaning of that Revolution, in its noblest sense,' words and ideas inevitably transformed by the decreasing likelihood of another revolutionary outbreak and increasing preoccupation with the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. The (East) German director Frank Castorf’s postdramatic Ring (2013-17) for the Bayreuth Festival travelled in some respects a similar journey. My principal interest here lies with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, with the apparent moment of revolution – Siegfried’s sword shattering Wotan’s spear of law – and its unexpected outcome and consequences. In Castorf’s alternative historical universe, a Marx-Lenin-Stalin-Mao Mount Rushmore revolves to reveal a late-capitalist Alexanderplatz that plays with our observations and expectations, both historical and contemporary. How does the staging complement and conflict with Wagner’s text, here left, unusually for Castorf, completely intact. How were Wagner, Bayreuth, and opera transformed by Castorf, and vice versa?

Mark Berry is Professor of Music and Intellectual History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and this year a visiting scholar at the Humboldt University. He is the author of Treacherous Bonds and Laughing Fire: Politics and Religion in Wagner’s 'Ring', After Wagner: Histories of Modernist Music Drama from ‘Parsifal’ to Nono, and Arnold Schoenberg, and co-editor with Nicholas Vazsonyi of The Cambridge Companion to Wagner's 'Der Ring des Nibelungen'. He regularly reviews opera and concert performances for his blog, ‘Boulezian’, and is currently working on a history of the complete Mozart operas in historical and intellectual context.

 
  • Donnerstag, 21. Dezember 2023, 18 Uhr

Daniela Sammler (Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik, Frankfurt am Main)
How the brain plays music: From musical ideas to joint performance

Der Vortrag findet hybrid statt (vor Ort in Raum 501 und per Zoomanbindung der Referentin). Hier der entsprechende Zoom-Link:

https://hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/j/61869369418

Everywhere in the world people enjoy listening to and making music together. Over the past 30 years, research on the neurocognition of music has gained a lot of insights into how the brain perceives music. Yet, our knowledge about the neural mechanisms of music production remains sparse. How does a musical idea turn into action? And how do musicians coordinate sounds and actions when they perform in groups? The present line of research isolated distinct genre-dependent levels of action planning in solo pianists and identified dynamically balanced mechanisms of interaction in duetting pianists using 3T fMRI and (dual) EEG. The data converge on three main findings: (A) distinct neural networks for abstract harmonic and concrete motor planning converge in left lateral prefrontal cortex that acts as a hub for solo music production, (B) internal models of other-produced musical actions in cortico-cerebellar audio-motor networks coordinate self and other during joint music performance, and (C) interbrain synchrony during joint music making is not merely an epiphenomenon of shared sensorimotor information but is modulated by the alignment of cognitive processes. Altogether, it will become clear that solo and joint music performance relies on general principles of human cognition, tuned to achieve the musical perfection required on stage.

PD Dr. Daniela Sammler is Head of the Neurocognition of Music and Language research group at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. After completing her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig in 2008, she spent post-doctoral residencies in Paris, Glasgow, and Sydney, and used an Otto Hahn Award of the Max Planck Society to establish her own independent research group in 2013. Together with her lab, Dr. Sammler studies how music and language are grounded and linked in the brain using neuroscientific methods such as functional neuroimaging, magneto- and electroencephalography, or transcranial magnetic stimulation. These technologies are paired with behavioural measures and perspectives from linguistics, music theory, and cognitive psychology to systematically deconstruct and compare sensory, cognitive, and expressive stages during music and language perception and production.

 
  • Donnerstag, 25. Januar 2024, 18 Uhr

    ACHTUNG: Der Vortrag von Peter Moormann muss leider ausfallen!


Peter Moormann
(Universität zu Köln)
Sprechen über Musik: Werkbetrachtungen in den Hörfunkwellen der ARD

Die Arbeitsfelder für Musikjournalistinnen sind vielfältig. Ob in Print, Fernsehen, Hörfunk, Online oder Social Media, überall wird professionell über Musik informiert. Dabei spielen die klassischen journalistischen Darstellungsformen eine ebenso zentrale Rolle wie deren medienspezifische Rahmungen. Denn ob etwa eine CD-Rezension für das Feuilleton einer Zeitung verfasst oder aber innerhalb einer Wort-Musik-Sendung im Kulturradio platziert wird, kann erheblichen Einfluss auf die Art des Sprechens über Musik und die Präsentationsform haben. Und wieder anders wird man ein Album im Fernsehen oder in Social-Media-Kanälen besprechen. Im Vortrag wird der Bereich Hörfunk fokussiert. Es soll dabei nicht nur beleuchtet werden, was über Musik gesagt wird, sondern vor allem auch, wie das Gesagte medienspezifisch aufbereitet wird. Dabei gilt es auch, auf die Verbindungen zu Online und Social Media einzugehen, wo das Auditive entsprechend um das Visuelle erweitert wird.

Peter Moormann ist außerplanmäßiger Professor für Musikwissenschaft und Akademischer Oberrat am Department Kunst und Musik der Universität zu Köln. Zu seinen Forschungsschwerpunkten zählen Musik in Film, Fernsehen, Hörfunk, Computerspielen und Internet, Interpretations- und Aufführungsanalyse, Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts sowie populäre digitale Musikkulturen.

 

  • Donnerstag, 01. Februar 2024, 18 Uhr

Max Jack (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin)
Insurgent Fandom: Atmospherics of the Anti-Social at FC Union Berlin

Insurgent Fandom offers a behind-the-scenes look at a transnational subculture known to few called ultra. As the most dedicated soccer fans, ultras support their team through collective singing, jumping, flag-waving, and lighting marine flares in the arena. While some characterize ultras as hooligans, Jack argues that ultras' performative style of support is in part a protest informed by their constant friction with the state, the mainstream media, and the commercial priorities of sports' governing bodies. Ultras coordinate crowd atmosphere in the arena to support their respective clubs on the field while at the same time positioning themselves against the German Football Association and the capitalistic interests that structure professional football at large. Because of this conflict with authority, fandom for ultras takes on a collective social life in which the game on the field often becomes a secondary concern. Focusing in this talk on coordinated travel to and from games as a key feature of hardcore fandom at FC Union Berlin, Jack examines the relationship between ultras' activities in transit to games and their congregation in public spaces, in which quotidian ambience is hijacked and repurposed as an estranged form of public engagement.

Max Jack acquired his PhD in Ethnomusicology from UC Santa Barbara in 2019. Currently residing in Germany, he is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development at the Center for the History of Emotions in Berlin. As an ethnomusicologist of sound, affect and social movements, he researches crowds as dynamic social and political actors in public space and their fraught relationship with liberal democratic governments. Previously funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), he conducted three years of field research in Ireland and Germany on hardcore football fans called ultras and their cultivation of atmosphere in the arena as an estranged form of public address and political commentary. His book on this subject, titled Insurgent Fandom, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.

 

  • Donnerstag, 08. Februar 2024, 18 Uhr

Lars-Christian Koch (Honorarprofessur am einladenden Institut und Direktor der Sammlungen der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin im Humboldt Forum)
Lifestyle and Repertoire - Female Voices in Early Indian Record Industry

The first recordings of Indian Raga-Music at the beginning of the 20th Century were made by a number of female singers with a unique voice, a unique repertoire and a unique lifestyle, which influenced the next generations of female singer in certain genres significantly. It has to be discussed as how far the recordings themselves – concerning a certain voice-training in a recording situation - were at least partly responsible for the shaping of an ideal female voice, how much the repertoire in its cultural value determined female singing styles and last but not least in which way the changing political, social and economical situation after the Indian independence changed the lifestyle of female singers and possibly the music with it.

Lars-Christian Koch is Director of the Ethnological Museum and of the Museum for Asian Art Berlin and Head of Collections at the Humboldt Forum Berlin. He is Professor for Ethnomusicology at the University of Cologne, Honorary Professor for Ethnomusicology at the University of the Arts in Berlin and Honorary Professor for Ethnomusicology at the Humboldt University Berlin.
He has conducted field work in India, as well as in South Korea. His research focuses on the theory and practise of North-Indian Raga-Music, organology with special focus on instrument manufacturing, Buddhist music, popular music and urban culture and historical recordings.

His publications include Sitar – Manufacturing: The Tradition of Kanailal & Bros., Calcutta / Berlin (SMB) 2011 and My Heart Sings – Die Lieder Rabindranath Tagores zwischen Tradition und Moderne / Berlin (LIT) 2011 / Sebastian Klotz, Philip V. Bohlman, Lars-Christian Koch (Eds.) Sounding Cities - Auditory Transformations in Berlin, Chicago, and Kolkata / Berlin (LIT) 2018