Music as the most beautiful minor matter in the world

SMM - The symposium, which will be held this year at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB), will cover a wide range of health aspects. Even music lovers who are able to devote themselves to their hobby regardless of financial pressure face a variety of physical and psychological challenges: Even without aspiring to professional excellence, they are required to train their technique and expression wisely or to keep their body and mind fit for the sonorous art as they get older. However, amateurs often lack the time and energy that professionals are able to invest due to other professional pressures.

Andreas Cincera, Head of Continuing Education in Music at the HKB, wonders whether it makes a difference in good quality music lessons whether children, young people or adults are learning. What technical, physical, emotional and other challenges are more common among adults? How can these be mastered in an enjoyable and health-promoting way? And the Bremen psychologist and musician coach Andreas Burzik shows how practising in the flow as a practice method can combine the impartiality of the amateur with the extreme precision of the professional and thus meet the neurobiological requirements of an ideal learning environment.

FMH ORL specialist Salome Zwicky from the SingStimmZentrum Zurich discusses the factors that determine the quality of a voice - with the insight that voice disorders are not always the result of intensive use, nor do they always have to be caused by poor technique. Neurologist Jürg Kesselring, on the other hand, questions whether the distinction between professionals and amateurs is really sharp. He points out that, on the one hand, there are fully trained professional musicians who cannot make a living from their profession and therefore pursue other livelihoods, and on the other hand, there are amateurs who are not trained or only trained part-time and who earn their living through music. According to Kesselring, in music, as in many artistic professions, the educational requirements are not the only decisive factor for success and certainly not for the joy that arises from practicing music.

In three workshops at the symposium, Andreas Burzik, breathing, speech and voice teacher Nicole Martin Rieder and physiotherapists Marjan Steenbeek and Sibylle Meier Kronawitter will focus on breathing, practising in flow and correct posture when making music. Rieder will shed light on the systems and control loops through which breathing affects the voice, posture and the autonomic nervous system and will make the connections tangible with practical exercises on her own body. As part of a teaching demonstration, Burzik shows the four principles of practicing in flow: a special contact with the instrument, the development of a special sense of sound, the feeling of effortlessness in the body and the playful handling of the study material. Finally, Steenbeek and Meier Kronawitter discuss the anatomy of the different parts of the body and show how movements can be used to train their perception.