quotes – Page 8

06/01/201706/01/2017

No complacency in the search for creativity: Manickam Yogeswaran (The Hindu)

Review by Garimella Subramaniam, The Hindu, January 05, 2017 | Read the full review >>

“The many dimensions of the musical persona of Berlin-based Manickam Yogeswaran of Sri Lankan origin are not easy to fathom just from hearing him sing at one recital. […]

However, a conversation over coffee at Chamiers, days after a performance for Tamil Isai Sangam at Raja Annamalai Mandram, gave a glimpse of the different facets of the disciple of T.V. Gopalakrishnan and his exposure to Hollywood. […]

Yogeswaran’s forays into western classical ensembles, and his key role in global music forums for nearly three decades is a career graph, perhaps, typical of the wider scene in the performing arts these days. At the same time, it is the emotional need to stay anchored to the cultural milieu of one’s roots that probably explains Yogeswaran’s crucial engagement with Carnatic music. […] The challenge now, he says, is to nudge current generation of South Asians from a false sense of security about the future of this traditional art form. The conveniences afforded by technology, in terms of access to the treasure trove of recordings of great masters, ought not to breed complacency in the search for creativity, he argues. The key lies in continued reliance on the rigours of relentless individual ‘sadhana,’ a hallmark of classical music.”

http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/Revelling-in-his-classical-roots/article16992760.ece

13/03/201618/04/2024

“This music was created by people with heart and intellect”: Remembering the Jewish refugee who composed the All India Radio caller tune

Naresh Fernandes · Oct 24, 2014
All India Radio’s caller tune has been heard by hundreds of millions of people since it was composed in 1936. Somewhat improbably, the melody, based on raga Shivaranjini, was composed by the Czech man in the middle of the trio pictured above: Walter Kaufmann. He was the director of music at AIR and was one of the many Jewish refugees who found a haven in India from the Nazis. […]
Detailed accounts of the musician’s life in Mumbai are to be found in film scholar Amrit Gangar’s book The Music That Still Rings at Dawn, Every Dawn, as well as in Agata Schindler’s essay, “Walter Kaufmann: A Forgotten Genius”, in the volume Jewish Exile in India: 1933-1945. The musician’s reason for coming to India was simple: “I could easily get a visa,” Schindler quotes him as saying in one of his letters. […]
“As I knew that this music was created by people with heart and intellect, one could assume that many, in fact millions would be appreciating or in fact loving this music… I concluded that the fault was all mine and the right way would be to undertake a study tour to the place of its origin,” he wrote. […]
His study would be so intense, it would result in books such as The Ragas of North India, The Ragas of South India : A Catalogue of Scalar Material and Musical Notations of the Orient: Notational Systems of Continental, East, South and Central Asia. […]

Source: Remembering the Jewish refugee who composed the All India Radio caller tune
Address: https://scroll.in/article/685009/remembering-the-jewish-refugee-who-composed-the-all-india-radio-caller-tune
Date Visited: Sun Mar 13 2016 18:53:34 GMT+0100 (CET)Tip

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16/02/201616/02/2016

Book tip: “You are the music: how music reveals what it means to be human”

Check a library near you for reading this well researched and highly readable book by worldcat.org >>

Biography

Dr Victoria Williamson BSc, MA, PhD, FHEA

My research interests can be summarised by the term ‘Applied Music Psychology’. This means that I am keen to explore how music impacts on our behaviours, abilities, and brain responses, and to learn how we can best interact with music to support our activities in the real world. | Read more >>

Excerpt from an interview on NPR.org: On why earworms are interesting for researchers

“It’s an interesting everyday phenomenon. It happens to at least 90 percent of people once a week, [they] get a tune stuck in their head. And it’s a very effortless form of memory, so we’re not even trying, and this music comes into our head and repeats. And it’s very often very veridical, meaning it’s a very good representation of the original tune that we’re remembering.

“So my big hope is that that can tell us something about the automaticity of musical memory and its power as a tool for learning. So imagine if we could recall facts that we wanted as easily as we can bring new ones to mind without even trying.”

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/12/148460545/why-that-song-gets-stuck-in-your-head

21/04/201505/04/2020

Rabindranath Tagore on art, music, painting and dance

Rabindranath Tagore sketched by Dutch artist Martin Monnickendam during a lecture tour in September 1920 © Stadsarchief Amsterdam

The creation of art, music, painting and dance elevates man from a mere being to a personal man. The personality of man, according to Tagore, is “conscious of its inexhaustible abundance; it has the paradox in it that it is more than itself; it is more than as it is seen, as it is known, as it is used. And this consciousness of the infinite, in the personal man, ever strives to make its expressions immortal and to make the whole world its own.”

Rabindranath Tagore, Personality, 362.
Personality, in The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, vol. 2, ed. by Sisir Kumar Das (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008).
Source: © 2012 Arup Jyoti Sarma http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_11/sarma_june2012.pdf
Accessed 21 April 2015

Die Bambusquerflöte

Text: Ludwig Pesch | Art: Arun V.C.

Mythen, Abbildungen und eine Abhandlung über das Musiktheater aus der indischen Antike vermitteln einen Eindruck von der Beliebtheit der Flöte. So wissen wir, dass sie schon lange als vollwertiges Musikinstrument eingesetzt wird. Je nach Region wird sie anders bezeichnet, beispielsweise als Kuzhal im tamilischen Süden (“zh” wie englisches “r” in “write”); und als Bānsurī im Norden Indiens. In Gedichten, Liedern, Tänzen und Filmen finden sich auch Bezeichnungen wie Vēnu und Muralī, womit zugleich auf Krishna, den ‘dunkelhäutigen’ Hirten und Flötenspieler, verwiesen wird.

Manche Sanskrit- und Tamil-Dichtungen legen eine Symbiose nahe, die wohl immer wieder aufs Neue entsteht: sie erzählen von Hummeln, die ihre Nester im Bambusdickicht bauen. Der Bergwind bringt später die Halme zum Klingen, einer Äolsharfe gleich, zur Freude himmlischer Wesen. Interessanterweise entsprechen solche Löcher tatsächlich denen heutiger Bambusflöten.

Die fein abgestuften Melodien vieler Vogelarten inspirieren naturverbundene Menschen zum Verfeinern ihres Flötenspiels.

So überrascht es kaum, dass Pannalal Ghosh, der Pionier der hindustanischen Flötenmusik, in seiner Jugend von Musikern des nordöstlichen Santal-Volks beeinflusst wurde.

Bei Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), dessen Santiniketan genannte Schule inmitten von Santal-Dörfern liegt, begegnen wir dem Unendlichen Wesen als Flötenspieler: Die ‘Musik der Schönheit und Liebe’ lockt uns aus der selbstbezogenen Beschränkung heraus.*

Hier stellt sich der Dichter, Pädagoge und einflussreiche Gelehrte in eine lange Tradition, die sprachliche und religiöse Barrieren mit Hilfe der Musik zu überwinden sucht. So lässt er uns die Rolle der Bambusflöte als “demokratischstes” aller Musikinstrumente erahnen.

* Quelle: ‘Meine Erinnerungen an Einstein’ (1931)
in Das Goldene Boot, Winkler Weltliteratur, Blaue Reihe (2005)

Ludwig Pesch spezialisierte sich auf die südindische Bambusquerflöte, als er am Kalakshetra College bei Ramachandra Shastry studierte. Gemeinsam mit ihm konzertierte er bei zahlreichen Anlässen. Für deutsche Universitäten entwickelte er e-Learning Kursangebote für Teilnehmer aus der ganzen Welt.

In Zusammenarbeit mit der Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB) erforschte er den gemeinsamen Nenner, welcher der Lehr-, Aufführungs- und Interpretationspraxis Südindiens zugrunde liegt: Sam, Sammlung, Zusammen! Stimmen und Hände im Umfeld des traditionellen indischen (Tanz-) Theaters.

Er hat ein Handbuch verfasst (The Oxford Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music) und arbeitet an Programmen, die Elemente aus der indischen Musik dem pädagogischen Alltag erschließen.