Jessica Gienow-Hecht has won a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to pursue a project titled “The Quest for Harmony: Classical Music, Emotion, and the Discourse of Human Rights in the United States since World War Two.”

How do human rights and classical music relate to one another? What does it mean that since World War Two, hundreds of artists have cited the “universalism” of music to lobby for justice, freedom and human rights? Specifically, which role has the U.S. classical music scene played in this scenario? Jessica Gienow-Hecht has won a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to pursue a project titled “The Quest for Harmony: Classical Music, Emotion, and the Discourse of Human Rights in the United States since World War Two.” It will investigate the relationship between classical music and human rights in the post-World War II period. Combining a variety fields including law, emotions, classical art-music, cultural diplomacy and the history of U.S. foreign relations, the project seeks to make sense of the increasing engagement of U.S. symphony orchestras and international artists for the sake of human rights. The project began in 2018, include one doctoral student, Anna Rauscher, as well as one student assistant, Alon Ravid, and will run for three years.

Jessica Gienow-Hecht delivered a keynote speech at the "Colloque musique et sorties de guerres (XiXe et XXe siècles)” at the Université de Montréal on October 19, 2018. Please find information on the conference program here. 

For further information regarding the project, please refer to the following link.

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Picture: The New York Philharmonic in North Korea; 2008.