HSEM2047H: All About Music: Its Meaning, Reality, Communication, and Embodiment

The great philosopher of life Friedrich Nietzsche rightly claims that "without music, life would be a mistake." This does not mean that life is automatically perfect with music. This seminar deals with exactly this problem: What is music doing to us? Why do we listen to it? And how that? What is its meaning in our lives, why does it matter, which realities does it touch, how can it be communicated? In what way is it distributed between intellect and emotions? And why do we go to concerts, since electronic media and the internet provide such an easy access? The answers will be approached via intensive listening to all kinds of music from different cultures and epochs as well as through critical, very open discussions with the students. The instructor being highly sensitive to non-authoritarian music cultures, he may provide a thoroughly dynamic and flexible access to music.

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