Thomas Mann und Beethoven. Eine Spurensuche im Doktor Faustus

Contributors

Program

As part of the lecture series "Thomas Mann. Stations of his work" in the summer semester 2025, the event series "musik + wissen" of the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center for Music(FZM) will take place for the first time in cooperation with the Studium Generale of the University campus Freiburg.

We cordially invite you to attend the discussion concert on July 17, 2025 with Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dieter Borchmeyer (University of Heidelberg) and Amadeus Wiesensee, piano (Munich) at the College of Music Freiburg!

Here is the event poster (pdf) (this file is not barrier-free)

In the fall of 1947, Thomas Mann's most controversial and probably most interpreted novel "Doctor Faustus" was published in the Stockholm Complete Edition of his works. "Doctor Faustus", about which well over a thousand books and essays have since been written, is today more relevant than ever as the musical novel par excellence. One of his leading musical figures, however, is Beethoven. Just as "Dr. Fausti Weheklag", the last work by Adrian Leverkühn, the novel's protagonist, is an examination of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wendell Kretzschmar's Beethoven lectures at the "Gemeinnützige Tätigkeit" in Adrian Leverkühn's home town of Kaisersaschern are one of the most important stages in his musical education. The highlight of these lectures is the one on the Piano Sonata op. 111 with the musical and verbal tracing of the second movement: the Arietta and its variations. It will also be heard in this discussion concert, accompanied by excerpts and explanations from and about "Doktor Faustus".

Dieter Borchmeyer, born in Essen in 1941, is professor emeritus at the University of Heidelberg, president of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, honorary professor at the University of Graz and continues to teach at the University of Heidelberg as part of the "Heidelberger Vorträge zur Kulturtheorie" foundation lectureship. Borchmeyer's main field of work is German literature from the 18th to the 20th century and music theater with monographs on Goethe, Schiller, Mozart, Wagner, Nietzsche and Thomas Mann. His most recent publication is the comprehensive biography: Thomas Mann. Werk und Zeit, Berlin: Insel Verlag, 2022.

Amadeus Wiesensee, born in 1993, made his debut with the Munich Radio Orchestra at the age of twelve. He was a junior student of Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum Salzburg and continued his studies with Prof. Antti Siirala at the College of Music and Theater Munich, graduating with master's degrees in piano and contemporary music. In 2021, he was awarded the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts' Arts Promotion Prize in the music category and was the first artist-in-residence at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn. In 2022, he was also honored at the International Competition for Lied Art of the Hugo Wolf Academy. In 2024/25, Wiesensee will make his debut at the Schubertiade Hohenems and return to the Mendelssohn-Haus Leipzig, the Beethovenfest Bonn and the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. His second great interest is philosophy. He also pursued this in a parallel course of study, which he completed at the Munich School of Philosophy in July 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts.