Under the title “Sounds of Peace” the internationally renowned peace, conflict and development researcher Prof. em. Dr. Dr. Dieter Senghaas (University of Bremen) worked out a a capital, trend-setting presentation for the PROJEKTINSEL HARTMANN-NONO as part of the “Karl Amadeus Hartmann Year 2013” (2012–2014).

The question will be explored to what extent art as a so-called “soft indicator” can contribute to de-escalation or, as an early warning, draw attention to impending undesirable developments in a society’s mental budget.

Especially composers like Hartmann, who are sensitive to socio-political grievances, who use seismographic antennas to perceive developments that are not yet obvious, to detect their potentially fatal dynamics and to deal with them in their art, are particularly suited to this task. Research speaks of the ability of “early warning”.

Years before 1933, Hartmann had already warned in every possible way of the danger of National Socialism for society, humanity and humanism. In each work he dealt with this in a different way, invoking resistance in alliances between cultures, religions and peoples; he pointed out alternatives, drew a different world view. It is also astonishing that in his last work, the “Gesangsszene” for baritone and orchestra, he once again demonstrated the ability of “early warning”: assimilating texts by Jean Giraudoux, he conveys an apocalyptic vision of the end of a civilization drawn into a spiral of death.

The initial dynamic of progress does not only turn into regression, but into decline, into the “evil of the great empires, the deadly evil”. Downfall of the banking world, social structures, nuclear disaster, war and the most deadly evil: that even the “treasure of souls” is lost. The lecture was held on March 20, 2013 in the Munich Stadtmuseum.

Read the complete lecture under the menu item “Musicological publications” here in the Archival holdings!