Anna Vilenskaya “German Academic Music as a World Meme”Lecture in Russian language
This event is in the past.
Anna Vilenskaya is a musicologist, lecturer and researcher in contemporary music.
This event is in the past.
Anna Vilenskaya is a musicologist, lecturer and researcher in contemporary music.
In films, the music of German composers can most often be heard: Bach in Tarkowski’s films, Wagner in Lars von Trier’s, Beethoven in Kubrick’s. This is because German music often carries many cultural symbols and meanings, some taken from the musical fabric and some from its composers’ biographies.
We want to explore why Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Mendelssohn and Orff are better than other, less famous composers; how to determine whether Beethoven is a classicist or romantic; and why Wagner’s experiments destroyed classical harmony. In this lecture, we will leave biography and history largely aside, instead focussing mainly on the musical material to help us find objective answers to the above questions. No previous musical knowledge is required: the lecture is aimed at people without a musical background.
Anna was already holding lectures while still a student at the conservatory. Her motivation: to change the approach to musical storytelling; to simplify it, make it more visual, emotionally engaging and accessible for the listener. It evidently worked, so from 2018 to 2022, Anna gave lectures first in bars in St Petersburg, then in libraries and finally in theatres and museums in various cities throughout Russia. People loved her lectures and Anna was included in the list of the 30 most influential people in Russia under the age of 30.
When the war broke out, Anna moved to Tbilisi together with her husband, where she now works. She gives lectures in private centres and organisations, works at a school and runs a video course to teach people all over the world how to give talks.