{"id":399322,"date":"2023-03-10T15:31:07","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T14:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/musicological-research-focus\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T14:29:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T12:29:00","slug":"musicological-research-focus","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/musicological-research-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Musicological Research Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Inversions & Palindromes in Music.<\/strong><\/p>

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The focus of my music-analytical investigations lies in inverted structures. I am fascinated by temporal inversions and their challenges on an intellectual and emotional level, based on music-psychological and aesthetic implications. How does music negotiate time within its dimensional network of rhythm, melody, harmony, harmonic rhythm, dynamics, and other parameters? Common terms for describing inverted structures, questions of symmetry and asymmetry, and reflections on a selection of reversible classical sentence models are examined, before discussing currents of thought in music history from Hugo Riemann, the Second Viennese School, the Serial School, possibly the Schillinger System<\/strong>, and the NRT (Neo-Riemannian theory)<\/strong> currently much discussed in musicology, as well as the Negative Harmony<\/strong> terminology often used in jazz arrangements surrounding Jacob <\/strong>Collier<\/strong>.<\/p>


A significant portion is then dedicated to analytical case studies, ranging from Guillaume de Machaut’s Rondeau<\/strong> to Bach’s mirror fugues<\/strong> from the Art of Fugue, free-tonal palindromes in Berg<\/strong>, or dodecaphony in Webern<\/strong>, and further to the compensatory balance of parametric polarities in Beethoven’s late works<\/strong>, up to the film score of TENET<\/strong>, which structures auditory inversions analogously to the visual level. My own work Novum Eleison<\/strong>, awarded a composition scholarship by GEMA in 2021, summarizes many strategies, leading into a final reflection on which psychological effects for perception can be derived from these investigations.<\/p>

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Beethoven’s Late Works<\/strong>The seminar Beethoven \u2013 the Temporal Modulator<\/strong>, which I have offered for 2 years,which covers two semesters of Music Theory 2 at the University of Potsdam, guides students in creating stylistic imitations and furthermore opens their horizons to a music-historical perspective on Beethoven’s late works. Participants are consistently fascinated by the innovative way of thinking and conceptual art that consistently works out the contrast between different parametric polarities while simultaneously establishing a superior balance between them. For example, the centerpiece of String Quartet No. 15, the “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart,” very vividly illustrates the art of how the music-aesthetic pendulum swings organically back and forth between polarities on the levels of rhythm, melody, harmony, dynamics, harmonic rhythm, and the bar structure\/form. The same applies to Beethoven’s poetic fugal technique, such as in the fugue and initial mirror fugue in the final movement of Piano Sonata No. 31, Op. 110 (A-flat major). Speculations in Beethoven research regarding the romantic relationship with Josephine von Brunsvik and its indirect reflection in his work bring the human being Ludwig van Beethoven very close to the students.<\/p>

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Structural Reflections on My Own Compositions<\/strong><\/p>

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In my diploma thesis Ungleiche Gleichzeitigkeiten<\/strong> (Unequal Simultaneities, 2002), I used my work KEINE ZEIT<\/strong> to represent the dichotomy of the title in its various temporal and parametric progressions. Looking back, I see in this my early affinity for polar structures that condition and balance each other. I often found this fundamental music-aesthetic sensation in Beethoven’s late works, among others, and I intend to work it out even more precisely in its phenomenological dimensions in my planned doctorate. For this purpose, the composer’s perspective is certainly useful for “clean” musicological work, while at the same time it must be methodologically well-defined.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Inversions & Palindromes in Music. The focus of my music-analytical investigations lies in inverted structures. I am fascinated by temporal inversions and their challenges on an intellectual and emotional level, based on music-psychological and aesthetic implications. How does music negotiate time within its dimensional network of rhythm, melody, harmony, harmonic rhythm, dynamics, and other parameters? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":399323,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-399322","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/399322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/399322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399325,"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/399322\/revisions\/399325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schmidt-hartmann.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}