Myth and Music: description
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Prof. Michael von Brueck, Department of Evangelic Theology, LMU
Myth and Mythologies have been rediscoverd in 19th century not only for the study of religion in giving access to sources of religious traditions beyond the theological controversies of the age of confessional strivings, but also as source for and access to the deeper layers of the human psyche. This led to the study of myth in context of cultural anthropology and depth psychology. However, mythology also became a source for fine arts and the music drama which staged new emotional clusters and behavioural patterns in new ways. Both in Italian opera and expecially in Richard Wagners art religion myth got transformed into a new source of human self-understanding and mental as well as social formation. It needs to be asked in which way the modern music drama is linked structurally with the older rediscovery of mythology in Renaissance arts, and how the 19th century explores new ways into an adaptation of mythology which is linked to the 1st globalization in the wake of the 1st industrial revolution on the one hand and with the discovery of the human uncounscious by psychology, arts and philosophy on the other hand. Richard Strauss (Salome, Elektra, Ariadne) may be compared with Wagners themes (Ring, Parsifal). If time permits we will also explore the shift taking place in the 20th century, where mythology is being taken in a broader sense as background for reacting to political developments in view of totalitarianism versus democracy (Hans Werner Henze).
