Building up
a new music institution in the Middle East is a wonderful chance and a huge
challenge.
Thanks to
Al-Quds University my colleagues and I started the „Al Quds University College
of Music Project” last year.
Our aim is to
connect with the immense cultural richness and musical tradition that has been
a part of Jerusalem and Palestine since so many centuries. We do not only want
to revive history. We want to especially encourage the creation of contemporary
music in the region.
Very often when
we start presenting the project we hear the words „Oh music is so nice!” Or
comments like “My daughter plays Beethoven and it is so nice”.
To be honest,
I do not believe that Beethoven was ever meant to be “nice“. And I wonder if “nice”
is a category that is in any form relevant in a country like Palestine.
I believe
that music can be everything: soft and supporting, strong and powerful, even dangerous, soothing as well as aggressive and of course it can also be entertaining or
simply „nice“. But you can usually discover a story behind a nice piece. And
this story, the context, who wrote the piece for which audience under what
circumstances can be enlightening and help us to find a new and more intense way
to listen and to enjoy.
I have to
admit that the most breathtaking experiences while listening to music will not happen
when we would try to analyze the piece at the same time. But what we should be aware of is how strong
every little piece of music is connected to the world. To our world, the world of
the performer and the world of the composer.
Music is no
accessory. Music is life. If we reduce music to being a sheer element of
entertainment and music education to a simple segment of social status we miss
all opportunites and potentialities that lie in music or in the arts in general. And
beside all this we risk to become a very bored audience.
Coming from
Czech background, every time I listen to Smetana‘s Má vlast ("My homeland") I am deeply
moved. Every time I listen to Schiller’s „Ode to Joy” during Beethoven’s 9th
symphony I have to cry. Music can make us feel home. It can make us feel
united. And if we give it a chance it can help us to understand, to describe
and to move the world. It can have a strong impact on our identity and future.
I look at
music as a human right. The right of free expression in a language that can
reach everyone.
Music needs patience, discipline and
hard work. And it needs true commitment. Music – like some other things in life – seems
best and most unforgettable if it is performed with full passion and without
any compromise. And not with the aim just to be nice...
Petra R. Klose