Hans Kayser

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Hans Kayser (born April 1, 1891 in Buchau , Württemberg ; † April 14, 1964 in Bern ) was a German art and music theorist and founder of modern harmonic basic research in the 20th century.

Life

Hans Kayser was born as the second child of the pharmacist Gustav Kayser in Bad Buchau am Federsee . In 1892 the family moved to the farm pharmacy in Sigmaringen , where he attended elementary school and high school. In addition to school, he took painting and music lessons (cello). In Sigmaringen he was a student of music director Richard Hoff (1873-1940). From 1911 he studied music and mathematics in Berlin . He was a student of Engelbert Humperdinck and from 1913 also Arnold Schönberg . Many chamber music compositions, orchestral pieces and songs have survived from this time up to 1950. [see Haase, A life for the harmony of the world, pages 134-136]. Kayser changed studies and received his doctorate in 1917 from the art historian Hans Preuss at the University of Erlangen . His dissertation on Fra Angelico was only advertised in 1925 and, as he himself said, “thankfully not printed”.

In 1913 he married the Jewish singing student Clara Ruda . Their first daughter Eva was born in 1914, Ruth in 1916 , and their son Tobias in 1918 , who drowned in 1920.

After the end of the war, he moved with his family to Herrsching am Ammersee . In 1919, at his own request, Anton Kippenberg commissioned him to publish the series Der Dom on German mysticism at Insel Verlag . He wrote the writings on Jakob Böhme, 1920 and 1924, and Theophrastus Paracelsus, 1921 and 1924. Back in Berlin, he bought a small print shop where he printed bibliophile works . For lack of money he had to sell it again after a few years. From 1928 to 1932 he worked as a cellist / saxophonist with a cinema orchestra, then until 1933 as a feature editor for the Tälichen Rundschau .

As early as 1931 Kayser was considering emigrating, for example to Helsinki , where his friend, philosopher Hermann Friedmann, taught. Then he found in Bern (1889-1948), owner of the prestigious men's clothing business on Marktgasse in Bern, in 1933 enabled him to move to Switzerland and (initially for two years) free work the patron and philosopher Gustav Fueter. Close contact developed with Paul Klee , who also returned to Switzerland in 1933 as a degenerate artist . His meeting with Paul Hindemith (first in 1935 in Olten ) was also significant .

In 1940, Kayser was expatriated by the National Socialists and now lived as a stateless private scholar in Ostermundigen until he was granted citizenship in his community in 1948. In 1953 he moved into his newly built house in Bolligen . In 1961 he received the Upper Swabian Art Prize . After visiting an exhibition on Charles Sealsfield in March 1964, he fell seriously ill; he died four weeks later of complications from a heart attack in Bern's Tiefenauspital.

Harmony

To put the acoustic-musical laws in a more comprehensive, universal overall context with an emphasis on a possible relationship of these laws to the planets and spheres , was a popular undertaking beginning with Pythagoras of Samos in ancient and medieval times (see spherical harmony ), which in modern times was lost in attractiveness but not completely disappeared. Scholars who worked in this direction or who accepted them were e.g. B. Pythagoras of Samos, the Pythagoreans , Archytas of Taranto , Plato , Kleanthes , Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Cicero , Boëthius ( musica mundana ), Johannes Scottus Eriugena , James of Lüttich , Gioseffo Zarlino , Johannes Kepler , Robert Fludd , Athanasius Kircher , and Albert of Thimus .

From 1920 Kayser worked on the reformulation of Pythagorean thought and tried to revive the knowledge of Johannes Kepler ( Harmonice mundi ) and Albert von Thimus about a harmonical order of the world on the basis of metaphysical speculations.

The focus of the harmonic worldview is on acoustic laws that can be explained based on the monochord .

The main concern of harmony is to identify small whole-number proportions - tone numbers - as cosmic - sounding - norms and the harmonic knowledge or approaches from various areas such as musicology , number symbolism , astrology , astronomy , neo-Platonism , crystallography , architecture , plant and animal science and To merge quantum physics into a new science. It contains a holistic teaching that aims to synthesize a wide variety of scientific, philosophical and theological teachings and directions across historical and cultural boundaries. Kayser wrote about this in 1968:

"First and foremost, harmony is a holistic doctrine. That means it tries to grasp the world and humanity from a holistic point of view and hearing. The scientific means for this is the original phenomenon of the tone number for harmony - ..."

For example, Kayser sees Max Planck's quantum theory, with its discontinuously growing, discrete energy levels and the overtone series of music theory, realized similar principles of natural law. He also sees parallels to the harmonic relationships between the tones in the dimensional and numerical proportions of crystalline bodies. In doing so, Kayser refers to the writings of the crystallographers Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt ( About Harmony and Complication ) and Christian Samuel Weiss ( considerations of the dimensional relationships in the main bodies of the Spärohedral system and their opposing bodies in comparison with the harmonic relationships of the tones ), which analogies between their science and the Music theory moved.

In his main work, the textbook of harmony , he tried to explain this doctrine.

Kayser often emphasized that the term “harmonics” should not be confused with the identical term from music theory, which actually means “harmony” (see also: Gertrud Grunow ).

The dualism of overtone and undertone series, which had already been rejected by the common doctrine during Kayser's lifetime , was re-established from a harmonic point of view, especially through the “partial tone coordinate system” of the lambdoma.

Effect and continuation

Paul Hindemith , who wrote an opera about Kepler and his harmonic ideas with The Harmony of the World , discussed with Kayser and, despite criticism, allowed himself to be influenced by his views on detailed questions. The following statement by Hindemith from the introduction to his instruction in composition from 1937 points in a similar, holistic direction as Kayser's views:

“The intervals were testimony to the ancient days of the creation of the world: mysterious as the number, identical in nature to the basic concepts of surface and space. The standard for the audible as well as the visible world: parts of the universe that spread out in the same proportions as the distances between the overtone series, so that measure, music and universe merge into one. "

A possible influence of Kayser's writings on Hermann Hesse's novel Das Glasperlenspiel , which draws diverse connections from harmonious laws of music to those of other sciences and areas of life, is being discussed in the circle of the Hans Kayser Institute. The assumptions relate specifically to the following sentence in the Glass Bead Game :

“A Swiss music scholar, at the same time a fanatical lover of mathematics, gave the game a new twist and thus the opportunity for maximum development. The real name of this great man can no longer be determined, his time no longer knew the cult of the person in the spiritual realms, in history he lives on as a Lusor (also: Joculator) Basiliensis. "

Hans Kayser inspired Julius Schwabe to research symbols. The literary scholar Nanna Hucke shows the influence of Kayser on the literary work of the Hamburg writer and organ builder Hans Henny Jahnn in her study The Order of the Underworld . Furthermore, the author herself develops and represents - referring to Kayser's reform efforts with regard to mathematical and spoken language - a harmonically shaped, musical conception of language, which enables a form and structure analysis of academic texts from an aesthetic point of view.

Six lectures for Radio Basel from January and February 1962 exist on record: Harmonice mundi - the harmony of the world. a) The problems of harmony, b) Of sound in matter, c) The history of harmony, d) Johannes Kepler and his world harmony [from Rudolf Haase, A life for the harmonics of the world, page 137].

In Bern, Walter Ammann (1914–2008) has led Hans Kayser's circle of friends since 1974 , edited a large number of publications and organized symposia.

Harmonics as a university course was only established at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna . From the “Institute for Harmonic Basic Research” founded in 1967 by Rudolf Haase (1920–2013), the International Center for Harmonics (IHZ) emerged in 2002; it was headed by Werner Schulze (* 1952); it was dissolved in 2014.

The Harmonik Zentrum Deutschland in Nuremberg continues to promote the dissemination of Hans Kayser's ideas.

His works are also translated into English.

Fonts

A chronological bibliography of all books, articles, lectures and compositions by Hans Kayser is given in Haase (1968), pp. 130-138.

  • Literary parallels between Fra Angelico's depictions of the Last Judgment and the writings of Antoninus Florentinus . Diss. Erlangen 1925 (published late, unprinted)
  • Orpheus. Morphological fragments of a general harmony , delivery I. Berlin 1926
  • Archetypes of nature . Berlin 1927 (lost)
  • The hearing person. Elements of an acoustic worldview . Lambert Schneider, Berlin 1932
    • New edition (with a foreword by Dieter Kolk): Engel & Co., Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-927118-05-2
  • From the sound of the world . Niehans, Zurich and Leipzig 1937
  • Treatises on the ectypics of harmonic forms of value . Niehans, Zurich and Leipzig 1938
  • Outline of a system of harmonic forms of value . Niehans, Zurich and Leipzig 1938
  • Harmonia Plantarum . Schwabe & Co., Basel 1943
  • Akróasis. The doctrine of the harmony of the world . Schwabe & Co., Basel 1946
  • A harmonic division canon . Occident (Harmonic Studies 1), Zurich 1946
  • The shape of the violin. Interpreted from the law of tones . Occident (Harmonic Studies 2), Zurich 1947
  • Textbook of Harmonics . Occident, Zurich 1950
  • Before the angels sang. A harmonic anthology , selected by Hans Kayser. Schwabe & Co., Basel 1953
  • Paestum. The nomoi of the three ancient Greek temples at Paestum . Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1958
  • Binntal diary . Ed. V. Rudolf Haase. Lafite, Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-85151-024-0
  • Orphicon. A harmonious symbolism . From the handwritten estate of ed. v. Julius Schwabe. Schwabe & Co., Basel / Stuttgart 1973
  • Articles from the estate . Lafite, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-85151-021-6
  • Science and philosophy . Writings on Harmonics No. 5, Bern 1981
  • Out of my life . Ed. V. Walter Ammann. Writings on Harmonics No. 26, Bern 2000, ISBN 3-906643-20-4

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sigmaringen State Archives: Dep. 1 T 6-7: Sigmaringen City Archives: Franz Keller estate no. 52 ; Dep. 1 T 6-7, No. 212 Musicians and Music Care in Sigmaringen.
  2. ^ A b Carl Dahlhaus and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht: Brockhaus - Riemann Musiklexikon in two volumes, Volume I, FA Brockhaus, B. Schott's Sons, Wiesbaden, Mainz, 1978, p. 633
  3. ↑ Cicero: De re publica 6.17f. and De natura deorum 2.7.19; 2.46.119; 3.11.27
  4. ↑ Prof. Ludwig Holtmeier: Hans Kayser and the Harmonics , from MGG, Music History from the Beginnings to the Present, page 5 (PDF file; 1.92 MB)
  5. ↑ Hans Kayser: The History of Harmonics , lecture in The Harmony of the World - Contributions to Basic Harmonic Research - Volume 1 , Hans Kayser Institute for Basic Harmonic Research at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Vienna, 1968, p. 17
  6. ↑ Hans Kayser: Vom Klang in der Materie , lecture in The Harmony of the World - Contributions to Basic Harmonic Research - Volume 1 , Hans Kayser Institute for Basic Harmonic Research at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Vienna, 1968, p. 10 ff.
  7. ↑ Hans Kayser: Results and prospects of harmony , lecture in The Harmony of the World - Contributions to Basic Harmonic Research - Book 1 , Hans Kayser Institute for Basic Harmonic Research at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Vienna, 1968, p. 32
  8. ↑ Rudolf Haase: Paul Hindemiths harmonic sources. His correspondence with Hans Kayser. Contributions to harmonic basic research V , Vienna 1973
  9. ^ Paul Hindemith: Instruction in Tonsatz , Schott, Mainz 1937, p. 27
  10. ^ Peter Neubäcker: Harmonics and Glass Bead Game . In: Contributions 93, Munich 1994, p. 11, here online (PDF file; 318 kB)
  11. ↑ Nanna Hucke: The order of the underworld. On the relationship between author, text and reader using the example of Hans Henny Jahnn's “Fluss ohne Ufer” and the interpretations of his Deuter , Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-86582-943-6 , also online
  12. ↑ See also: http://www.werner-schulze.at/

literature

  • Rudolf Haase:  Kayser, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 383 ( digitized version ).
  • Rudolf Haase: Hans Kayser. A life for the harmony of the world . Schwabe & Co., Basel 1968
  • Rudolf Haase: 20 years of the Hans Kayser Institute for basic harmonic research . Writings on Harmonics No. 17, Bern 1988, ISBN 3-906643-02-6
  • Albert Freiherr von Thimus: The harmonic symbolism of antiquity . Reprint of the Cologne edition 1868/76. Olms, Hildesheim 1988, ISBN 3-487-04210-X
  • André M. Studer: Hear the song of the universe in you! Introduction to harmony . Writings on Harmonics No. 18, Bern 1990, ISBN 3-906643-13-1
  • Walter Ammann (ed.): Hans Kayser on his 100th birthday. Biographical fragments . Writings on Harmonics No. 21, Bern 1991
  • Dieter Kolk: Number and quality. Treatises on Hans Kayser's harmony . Writings on Harmonics No. 19, Bern 1995, ISBN 3-906643-15-8
  • Johannes Kepler: World Harmonics . Translated by Max Caspar. Oldenbourg, Munich 7. A. 2006, ISBN 3-486-58046-9

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kayser, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician, mathematician and founder of modern harmony
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Buchau
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1964
Place of death Bern