Subjective! Lecture series of András Batta
Lecture
Szervezés:
Subjective! Lecture series of András Batta
This programme is held in Hungarian.
Our whole life is surrounded by songs. We hope that every child still falls asleep to a lullaby, then in kindergarten learns songs they will not completely forget even at school. In any case, at graduation the ancient Gaudeamus igitur can still be heard. We sing on holidays, at the beginning and end of life, at parties, on journeys. This is true even for our world entangled in technology, and it has always been so. We forget songs and learn new ones. Unfortunately, the songs of classical music belong to the former category. In the past there were song recitals, even in the largest concert halls. Today classical song recitals are rare; therefore András Batta thought that in the seventh season of Subjective he would revive some works from this repertoire and even look back at bourgeois concert life by leafing through the songbooks of a medieval and a Renaissance master. The first two lectures pay homage to the art of individual song, while the third deals with some genres that embrace the songs of the community.
“This time I am not thinking of hymnals, but of those collections in which songs and poems, or only poems, line up—in the spirit of love. Let us start with the Middle Ages! A Catholic priest, and at the same time the first widely known, highly significant composer in European music history, Guillaume Machaut, sings and versifies his platonic love in a famous volume to which he gave the title True Story (Le voir dit). Two hundred years later, the uncrowned song-poet of the Renaissance, John Dowland, arranged his lute-accompanied songs into several volumes that we can calmly rank among the gems of the pop music of their time. And then there is Heinrich Heine, who at the age of thirty published his first major volume of poetry, The Book of Songs, giving endless possibilities to the song-composers of Romanticism, primarily Schumann and Schubert. In the first lecture of Subjective, we will take these three songbooks down from the imaginary shelf” – András Batta.
Dear Visitor, We kindly inform you that during the event, photographs, audio recordings, and/or video recordings may be taken. By attending the event, you consent to the recording of such materials through your implied conduct.
I have deliberately left the words ‘music history’ out of the title. Although, of course, in my own case it is the basis of everything: my studies and more than 40 years of teaching. For me, however, music history is increasingly becoming a tool to see and, above all, to hear behind all great music and, inspired by the music, to imagine things that may or may not be true, but which enhance the experience of the encounter.
Subjective? Clearly it is: subjective fantasy in moments that only this deep and soaring art can create. I invoke words to accompany music, but the point lies in the gestures and in the experience of listening to music together. My aim is to draw the mysticism of music into an educational ritual. Those who want to learn from it are able to, of course, but the journey itself is more important, the thing that leads to the music and through it to its secrets. Let's slow down time together for a fleeting yet timeless hour.
Language: hungarian
