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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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27/02/201608/06/2020

Veröffentlichung von “Raum für Ideen? Zeit zum Spiel! Zum Sinn eines unbefangeneren Umgangs mit der ‘klassischen’ Musik Indiens”

Der Vortrag mit dem Titel “Raum für Ideen? Zeit zum Spiel! Zum Sinn eines unbefangeneren Umgangs mit der ‘klassischen’ Musik Indiens” von Ludwig Pesch wurde in Über Europa hinaus – Indiens Kultur und Philosophie: Disputationes 2015 veröffentlicht. ISBN: 978-3-7065-5522-7
Umfang: 152 Seiten (kartoniert, durchgehend vierfarbig mit zahlreichen Fotos) und ist beim Studienverlag Innsbruck erhältlich.

Mit Beiträgen von Bettina Bäumer, Heidrun Brückner, Erhard Busek, Veena Kade-Luthra, Karl-Josef Kuschel, Ludwig Pesch, Helga Rabl-Stadler, Claudia Schmidt-Hahn, Walter Slaje, Alarmél Valli, Michael von Brück und Annette Wilke.

Informationen über diese Veröffentlichung und alle hier genannten Autoren finden Sie auch auf Worldcat.org >>

Angaben aus der Verlagsmeldung:

MYTHOS INDIEN
Künstler, Religionswissenschaftler und Indologen begeben sich auf die Suche nach der indischen Spiritualität und ihrer Ausprägungen in Kunst und Kultur, erklären Kunstformen und Rituale und gehen der Frage nach, warum die Vielfalt der indischen Mystik und Ästhetik den Westen seit jeher fasziniert.

Der Bogen spannt sich von der wissenschaftlichen Abhandlung bis hin zum persönlichen Erfahrungsbericht der indischen Tänzerin Alarmél Valli, die ihren Körper als “tanzenden Tempel” versteht. Neben Erläuterungen zur Gestensprache hinduistischer Epen wird die spannungsvolle Wechselbeziehung von Musik, Religion und Lebensphilosophien beleuchtet und ermöglicht einen facettenreichen Einblick in Indiens Kultur und Philosophie. Literarisch wird die Annäherung an den Mythos Indien durch Texte von Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, aber auch von Nietzsche und Beethoven, gewagt, die alle den Mythos Indien mit seiner spirituellen Vielfalt zum Inhalt haben.

Dieser Sammelband umfasst die Vorträge, die während der Disputationes im Rahmen der Ouverture spirituelle der Salzburger Festspiele 2015 gehalten wurden. Diese Disputationes wurden vom Herbert-Batliner-Europainstitut in Kooperation mit den Salzburger Festspielen ins Leben gerufen, um den spirituellen Prolog der Salzburger Festspiele mit Diskussionen und wissenschaftlichen Erörterungen zu bereichern und zur Reflektion über interkulturelle und interreligiöse Themen anzuregen.

Zugriff: 27-2-16

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

Lecture recital: Flutes and tambura – Netherlands

Private lecture-recital at Zoetermeer, 21 June 2014
performed by

Usha Ramesh & Ludwig Pesch – bamboo flutes
Mieke Beumer – tambura

About the musicians

Usha Ramesh and Ludwig Pesch were fellow pupils of Ramachandra Shastry (1906-92) during their student days at Kalakshetra College of Fine Arts in Chennai.

Ramachandra Shastry teaching at Kalakshetra >>

Having studied both music and painting – under renowned artist K. Sreenivasulu (1923-94) – Usha further developed her art after moving to Zoetermeer. She has followed courses at the Vrije Akademie and took private graphic lessons from Marjolein van der Velde. As flautist she worked with classical Indian dance ensembles performing at prestigious venues such as Korzo Theater (The Hague), Tropentheater (Amsterdam) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam). She also gives presentations for school children.
Homepage: www.usha.mimemo.net

Ludwig accompanied his teacher on many occasions. He taught in several German universities incl. Göttingen, Lüneburg (E-learning courses) and Würzburg. For Bern University of the Arts (Switzerland), he conducted research on Kerala’s performing arts (Sam, Reflection, Gathering Together!). For Oxford University Press he wrote the The Oxford Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music. He also enjoys introducing Indian music to school children, those with special needs, festival goers and museum visitors (e.g. Salzburger Festspiele, Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, Museum Rietberg Zuerich).

Mieke Beumer worked as art historian at the Amsterdam University Library. Her research brought her in contact with the cultures of South Asia. It is in this context that she came to immerse herself in Indian music and dance.

The tambura (tanpura) played by Mieke looks quite different from any typical Indian-made instrument. Hers is a modern version made from bamboo, redeveloped by a team of instrument makers in Berlin. Yet its simple shape also indicates what the ‘original’ tambura might have looked and felt like; and indeed, little more is needed than a few strings strung across a plain, well crafted resonator. Besides its rich sound, this tambura has yet another property that counts in Holland: it is easy to transport, even by bicycle!

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