“If acceleration is the problem, then perhaps resonance is the solution,” writes the sociologist Hartmut Rosa in the preface to Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. He contrasts the alienated, relentlessly optimization-driven mode of modern life – and its tendency toward collective burnout – with the idea of resonance. By this, he means a deeply affecting relationship with the world based on reciprocity. It shapes the individual’s relationship not only to other people, but also to things and activities, to nature, to art – in short, to everything that constitutes our world.
The focus here is not on physical resonance in the sense of an echo returning a signal to its source. Quite the opposite: different yet complementary vibrations transform one another, giving rise to new structures and relationships.
In music, this could mean a mode of listening that does more than simply receive and interpret sequences of sound. Instead, listening actively participates in shaping what the music becomes and what it means. How does the world respond when we truly listen? What happens when we immerse ourselves in Morton Feldman’s four-hour trio For Philip Guston, or encounter Chiyoko Szlavnics’ expansive orchestral textures within the acoustic space of a church? How is our perception of the world transformed as we experience the deepest vibrations in Low Frequencies, an extended evening dedicated to the bass voice and low-register instruments? And what do we learn — and unlearn — through listening to and engaging with music about concrete subjects and themes such as the periodic table or the phenomena of sleep and dreaming?
Perhaps this kind of resonance also offers a response to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the “worldlessness” of modern humanity. In an individualized world governed by availability and control, we risk losing our connection to a shared reality and to one another. A resonant openness in listening welcomes what is unfamiliar without suppressing one’s own voice or identity. It initiates a process of understanding that dissolves the divide between intellect and intuition, revealing the inner logic and emotional force of compositional structures as an invitation to reconnect with the world.
Whether in concerts by and with children and young people, around a shared lunch table, in performances, or at one of this year’s twenty world premieres, Klangwerkstatt Berlin once again creates numerous spaces of resonance – spaces that invite us to discover the many different ways in which the world can be experienced. In listening together, we may find ourselves – perhaps unexpectedly – vibrating in sympathy: connected with the music and with one another.
Stefan Streich, Nina Ermlich, Paul Hübner
