Harmonies of the Mind: Portraits in Psychology and Music

Date: November 24th, 2024
Time: 4:00 – 7:00 PM, admission 4:00 PM, the program starts at 4:30 PM with talk, music, and meal.
Location: Belvedere Verhalenhuis, Rechthuislaan 1, 3072 LB Rotterdam
Tickets: Get your tickets here

About the Event

Join the Ysaÿe Trio and Dr. H. Stam for Harmonies of the Mind, an inspiring exploration of the connections between music and psychology. This unique event combines engaging discussions, live music, and shared dining in the intimate setting of the Belvedere Verhalenhuis.

Performers

• Dr. H. Stam – Speaker

• Rada Ovcharova – Violin

• Emlyn Stam – Viola

• Willem Stam – Cello

Discover how music and the mind intertwine in this thought-provoking and sensory experience.
Reserve your spot now: Harmonies of the Mind Tickets.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) Raggi dov’ e’l mio bene (3’) 

1. While in the Netherlands in 1637, Rene Descartes loved to do philosophy while resting in bed.  In his Discourse on Methodhe proceeds to deconstruct all previous philosophies and doubt everything. But he finally concludes that he cannot doubt his own thought, hence “I think therefore I am.”  And here the philosophy of mind takes a decisive turn.  Anne Conway is among the very first critics of Cartesian thought. And it is not a science, this will have to wait for another scholar to take to bed, the German physicist Gustav Fechner.  In 1839 he injured his eyes while doing research on color and light, he stared at the sun too long through colored glasses.  While recuperating in bed it came to him that there was a way to relate the physical, material world and the mental world or in his words, the body to the soul.  He came up with a formula to relate physical energy to mental sensations in a precise way.  And the first experiments in psychology were born.

Zaid Jabri (b.1975) Lumen (world premiere) (10’)

Kate Moore (b.1979) Incantation (5’)

2. Not long after however Sigmund Freud, a neurologist recently graduated in Vienna found that since he could not become a professor at the University of Vienna, he had better establish his own private practice.  While treating hysterics, women who often lived under oppressive conditions, Freud came to think of their problems as sexual and thus formulated an entirely original conception of mind in 1900 based on repressed desires, childhood fantasies and a conflict between our seething desires and the reality demanded of us by the world.  He was followed by a string of acolytes, imitators and critics.  Sabina Spielrein was among the first women to criticize the project from within before she was shot by the nazis.

Svitlana Azarova (b.1976) I fell into the sky (2’)

Willem Breuker (1944-2010) Fidget (6’)

Interval 

3. Freud and Jung came to American in 1909 but their message was not heeded by the new masters of mind, the psychologists, who by now were building their laboratories with elaborate equipment to test animals, mostly rats.  While satisfying their scientific impulses they were ever further from understanding human minds.  B. F. Skinner was a master story-teller, a failed novelist who went on to become a scientist at Harvard.  But that revolution eventually ran aground on the reality that people just don’t behave the way Skinner thought they should, especially on language as Noam Chomsky so clearly pointed out.

Dai Fujikura (b.1977)  Prelude from Sweet Suite (3’)

Paul Wiancko (b.1983) American Haiku 1. Far Away (3’)

4. After World War II psychology was in the thrall of a new device, the computer.  As a metaphor it tried to change the understanding of mind altogether. We are cognitive information processors, so the story went.  Herbert Simon and Allen Newell were the pioneers who kick-started the cognitive revolution.  It turns out the people are not computers after all.  And Naomi Weisstein, an erstwhile rock musician and stand up comic, was among the first to question just how gendered psychology’s project was.

Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) – Cloud Trio mvmt. 3 (4’)

5. And then we find ourselves wondering if we are our brains.  And is the mind another way of speaking about brains?  Neuroscience has entered psychology by stealth and overtaken the headlines. Brenda Milner (now 106) embodies the history of neuroscience in a brilliant career.  But we can take what neuroscience has to say about the will as propaganda. We end by going back to Utrecht and examining the paradoxical work of Hans Linschoten, who dies in his lab at the age of 38 after blazing a trail for a new understanding of the embodied mind.

Kinan Azmeh (b.1976) how many would it take? (3’)

Willem Van Otterloo (1907-1978) Strijktrio mvmt 3 Fuga (3’)