Synthetic Pursuits Around Music

Can you imagine the music and hear the dance?

Why not? Music heightens perception of visual images, stimulates the imagination, and when we watch the dance, we feel the tempo and rhythm, even if the music is not heard.

In ancient times, philosophers developed the idea of the inseparability of music, poetry, and dance. Aristotle claims, “music without a poetic word, outside of plasticity or theatrical action, did not receive public recognition in ancient Greece.” The Greeks already understood the power of audio-visual images that captured the real world.

The process of rethinking the synthesis of arts, from opera and ballet to rock operas and video clips, we discuss in the open course “Synthetic Pursuits Around Music: From Opera to Electric Wave” with professor Vladimir Orlov (St. Petersburg) on December 14-23.

Vladimir Orlov received a Ph. D. in Music Studies at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). In his classes, Vladimir gives the opportunity to hear and see the most striking fragments of classical and contemporary audiovisual art and talks about their history and artistic structure. Listeners can share their impressions of the material. For example, one of the final scenes with the resurrection of the protagonist in Handel's “Acis and Galatea” was compared by listeners with a plot from the Black Mirror series.