The Musical Order of the World: Kepler, Hesse, Hindemith (Interplay) [Paperback]

Siglind Bruhn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1576471179 | ISBN-13: 978-1576471173 | Publication Date: October 30, 2005

In the disastrous years before and during the Second World War, when confidence in a harmonious future was as difficult as it was crucial for spiritual survival, two German artists in exile wrote what would become their late masterpieces. The composer Paul Hindemith conceived an opera on the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler s mature life and theories, The Harmony of the World; the poet and novelist Hermann Hesse wrote a complex literary collage, The Glass Bead Game. Both works address the topic of universal harmony in the fabric of creation and culture, as well as the urgent problem of how such harmony can heal the spiritual, mental, and emotional developments of individuals and of society at large. The two quests are mirrored into circumstances that are almost equidistant from the mid-20th-century period in which their stories are being told Hindemith s opera centers on an outstanding intellectual in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, while Hesse s work focuses on this intellectual s counterpart projected into a fictional world of the early 23rd century. In both cases, the quest for harmony and truthful proportion manifests at all levels of the stories told and of the works telling them. Siglind Bruhn s thought-provoking interdisciplinary study is organized along the lines of the seven areas in which scholars of the Pythagorean tradition from Plato to Kepler and beyond found universal harmony paradigmatically realized music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy (the quadrivium of the medieval liberal arts) complemented by metaphysics, psychology, and art.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Musical Order of the World is a thoughtful and perfectly attuned blend of advanced music study, ground-breaking scholarship, and metaphysical awareness. --Wisconsin Book Watch, January 2006

About the Author

Siglind Bruhn is a musicologist, concert pianist, and interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on compositions of the 20th century. Prior to coming to the United States, she taught for ten years in Germany and at the University of Hong Kong. Since 1993 she has been a full-time researcher at the University of Michigan s Institute for the Humanities (one of six Life Research Associates ); in the fall of 2004, she was appointed chercheur permanent at the Institut d Esthétique des Arts Contemporains at Université de Paris 1 La Sorbonne. She has been an elected member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2001.

Product Details

• Paperback: 255 pages
• Publisher: Pendragon Pr (October 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576471179
• ISBN-13: 978-1576471173
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,272,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A contemplative discussion of the connections between music study, world cultures, and cosmology, January 6, 2006

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Musical Order of the World: Kepler, Hesse, Hindemith (Interplay) (Paperback)

Musicologist, concert pianist, and interdisciplinary scholar Siglind Bruhn presents The Musical Order Of The World: Kepler, Hesse, Hindemith, a contemplative discussion of the connections between music study, world cultures, and cosmology, particularly as researched by great scientific minds. Covering topics from "Music's Moral Power in Ancient China and Hesse's Castalia" to "The Eternal Realm of Numerical Relations", to an extremely close reading of Kepler's poetry concerning the meaning of death. The Musical Order Of The World is a thoughtful and perfectly attuned blend of advanced music study, ground-breaking scholarship, and metaphysical awareness.