Listening with Helmholtz

The interdisciplinary festival project Listening with Helmholtz, which is taking place as part of the 3rd Biennale for New Music 2025 in Heidelberg, combines four concerts with lectures on the work and topicality of the scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, who worked in Heidelberg from 1858 to 1870. His fundamental findings will be thematised in commissioned works by contemporary composers.

Listening with Helmholtz enables the perception of the latest and historical music, but also addresses the processes of hearing as acoustic, cognitive and, in the original sense, aesthetic perception in relation to Hermann von Helmholtz’s original Theory of sound perception (1863). Musical practice and mediated science are mutually related in a project consisting of preliminary rehearsals, (partly public) rehearsals and four concert events as well as a subsequent guest performance in combination with room installations and lectures. The works will be performed by SCHOLA HEIDELBERG and the ensemble aisthesis under the direction of Walter Nußbaum and Ekkehard Windrich as well as in an organ concert. Renowned scientists from various faculties of Heidelberg University, which were historically shaped and founded by Hermann von Helmholtz himself, will be involved in the programme.

Listening with Helmholtz by KlangForum Heidelberg is made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
klangforum-heidelberg.de

Dates

February 4 – 16, 2025
Various locations in Heidelberg and Darmstadt