Listening to Beethoven: The Musicosophia Seminar at the Beethoven Center, February 1993
Heidi Melas · The Beethoven newsletter · 1993
THE FIRST MUSICOSOPHIA SEMINAR HELD AT THE BEETHOVEN CENTER on the weekend of February 13-14 was wellreceived by the thirty-two recipients who had come from all over the United States. The members of the seminar were varied in age and background, but were united by their love of music, and had come to learn the Art of Conscious Listening as applied to Beethoven's music. The seminar focussed on the introduction to the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, the Adagio of the Fifth Fortepiano Concerto, and the Lento of Beethoven's last String Quartet, Opus 135. The seminar was sponsored by the American chapter of Musicosophia. Dr. George Balan, a Roumanianbom, Moscow-trained musicologist, conducted the seminar, in conjunction with Uwe Fricke, director of the School for Conscious Listening, and Gebhard von Gultingen, who assisted skillfully at the CD player. They came from St. Peter in Germany's Black Forest region, where the International Musicosophia Center is located. Seminars on the Art of Conscious Listening are offered in thirteen European countries; in two of these permanent schools have been established. After giving three more seminars in California, the trio continued on a similar mission in Mexico City and Caracas, Venezuela. Since music is taught by many methods and on many levels all over the world, the question of how the Musicosophia approach is different presents itself immediately. The most important distinction lies in the fact that Musicosophia primarily addresses the technically untrained listener, constituting the vast majority of music enthusiasts. Balan has developed a very effective step-by-step method of repeated listening to teach a deep understanding of music without having to study music theory. During the first step, Dr. Balan asked the participants to listen to the entire selected piece (usually a slow movement of a symphony, concerto, or quartet), paying close attention to the music itself and not to their own emotional response to the music. At first this seemed an impossible task to master because we are so used to losing ourselves in our thoughts and emotions as the music carries us along. We quickly realized how difficult this task is, and the purpose of Musicosophia's method became obvious. In order to help us keep attention on the music, Balan showed us how to discover the underlying structure of the composition. The first practical exercise was learning to find the melodic line which guides us like a thread through the labyrinth of the music. By listening as many times as necessary to the same section, we learned to recognize where one part ends and a new one begins, and how each part is further divided into smaller units. Using a conventional letter designation to outline the structure, Balan or Fricke gave the audience a summary. Humming or whistling along with the melodies turned out to be an extremely helpful tool with the added advantage of keeping the attention focussed on the music. This first step we could therefore call the humming step. Proceeding a bit further, we learned what Balan calls counting. He asked the listeners to recognize the repetition of motives, the recurrence of themes and entire sections, along how many times a melodic unit is repeated, or a theme varied. This kind of analysis gave us first of all a clear insight into the intricacies and depth of the the music - Balan said number is the intellect of music and profundity lies in its details - and it helped us again to concentrate and keep our minds on the music. During the second counting stage, Balan prepared for the third stage by drawing the simply outlined melodic patterns on the board. Rendering the interplay of melodies clearly visible turned out to be a tremendous help in following the musical patterns and at the same time created the visual aid for the third step called Melorhythmy. This art of movement, which tries to recreate in slow and simple hand gestures the melodic lines, is the most unique and for many people the most enjoyable part of the Musicosophia work. …