Fueter's house and life rules
In his "Musical Medicine Chest", Daniel Fueter refers to Robert Schumann's "House and Life Rules" and formulates them for today.
The "Homage to Robert Schumann" on the title page is not a tribute to his music, which could be forgotten, but to the successor audience in concert halls and chamber music rooms today. In fourteen texts - divided into twelve chapters for the months as well as the prelude and coda - the composer, music lecturer and piano accompanist Daniel Fueter bundles his arguments to awaken interest in music among young people born into the digital world with a rethought music education; not only for the so-called "classical", but for everything sounding that calls for more in-depth study. These are mostly speeches that he addressed to a diverse but always music-loving audience between 2008 and 2019.
In ever new attempts he sets himself, from Schumann's Musical house and life rulesn He takes as his starting point the current state of music education, individual and group lessons, improvisation, university reform, living together in general and the shaping of individuality in particular. He often spices up calls closely linked to his own experience as a lecturer in song accompaniment with surprising cross-comparisons to economic thinking and encourages teachers to continue to consider the joy of and with music as a profession and vocation: "It is a privilege to share the enthusiasm for music between four - or even six - eyes, to offer experiences and to maintain contact with younger people, especially in old age." However, with a view to the history of the 20th century, he also reminds us that the cultural elite is not immune to barbarism and warns that education without art and culture only leads to educated people, not educated people. He succeeds time and again in short-circuiting Schumann's medicine chest by also propagating its "rules of life" as valid rules of conduct for living together in today's arguably much more complex world.
Daniel Fueter: Musical medicine chest. Variations on Music and Education - A Homage to Robert Schumann, 258 p., Fr. 34.00, rüffer & rub, Zurich 2021, ISBN 978-3-906304-82-3
