Music in nature

Since 23 April Christian Ginat has been playing his viola in the Goetheanum Park at 6.30 on Thursday evenings.

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Sebastian Jüngel What do you experience when you play in nature?

Christian Ginat It started when I was looking for an uncomplicated way of playing music, because I have time for practising (!), and I want to offer some degree of resistance, however small, to the enforced banishment to isolation of all things cultural. Inspired by the work of Hans-Christian Zehnter and Dirk Kruse I have developed an interest in a dialogue between culture and nature, between music and landscape.

Open to the spirit

Jüngel Sound travels well in nature, and seems almost clearer from a distance of 20 or 30 meters than from only five meters. Your viola could even be heard from behind the Felsli hill. Why is that?

Ginat When a place like this – shaped to an equal extent by buildings and roads and by plants and trees – offers such a special acoustic, it is as if the tone is enlivened, or redeemed. Sound always arises in the conversation between space and instrument, and in the mood of this acoustic dialogue we can sense the weaving of (nature’s) spirituality. This explains what you have observed as the resonating environment.

Jüngel You play Schlesinger Scales and music by Heiner Ruland as well as your own compositions. For me, these kinds of music merged more easily with the natural surroundings than the more strongly formed composition by Johann Sebastian Bach. Even the accidental rustling of the wind in the trees and the humming of a bumblebee nearby became music within me. Is there a type of music that goes better with natural and another that goes better with cultural spaces?

Ginat When one plays classical music one feels strongly affirmed by the tones. This does not have to lead to the selfishness, of which Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, speaks, because one can make it available to the composition. But with the more recent music one has the impression that the tone itself is open to the spirit. This can assume all kinds of forms: for years, a composer friend of mine could only ever ‘tolerate’ very soft tones. Others – like myself – love the finer nuances of the intervals that the Schlesinger Scales provide if used undogmatically and the composition is generally less firmly structured.

Welcoming fellow musicians

Jüngel How does your instrument react to the weather conditions?

Ginat I am playing on an ash wood viola from Arthur Bay, with steel strings; they are relatively ‘robust’. Even the rosined bow reacts to every change in humidity …

Jüngel What else have you observed?

Ginat I have called this attempt ‘Culture at the Pond’ and am excited to see what fellow-musicians will join me: I would welcome company very much. I am dreaming of stairwell concerts inside the Goetheanum!

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