"Music as an (inter)religious experience - resonances of the sacred"

A symposium from October 3-5, 2025 at the Protestant Academy Tutzing

“Without music, society would have collapsed long ago!” is a quote from the author and sociologist Harmut Rosa and is more appropriate than ever for our current society. This is also the guiding principle of the symposium "Music as an (inter)religious experience - resonance of the sacred" organized by the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, which is hosting the event for the first time together with Musica Sacra International in Marktoberdorf and the Research Center for Religious Diversity at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. For MODfestival e.V., the symposium is the kick-off event for the upcoming Musica Sacra International festival, which will take place in Marktoberdorf, the Allgäu and Munich from May 22 to 26, 2026.

What is sacred is what concerns us unconditionally and gives life its ultimate direction. The sacred calls to us and triggers resonances: also through sounds and rhythms. They permeate body and soul and become a medium of faith and religiosity. Religions have not least a sound form. Resonances of the sacred are moments and experiences in which the profane and the sacred, man and God, touch each other. How this happens, how religious traditions differ and yet can meet in interreligious dialog, is the topic of this multifaceted conference.
Musicians will bring their compositions, representatives of different religious communities will share their musical practice, and theorists from religious studies, theology and cultural studies will help to classify the phenomena. In impulses and lectures, experimentally in workshops, in small concert contributions, readings and in joint discussions.

Among others, Prof. Dr. Peter Bubmann and Bettina Strübel, the Scientific-Theological and Artistic Director of Musica Sacra International, will be present. Also represented are renowned musicians such as Magnus Dauner, lecturer at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, KMD Prof. Dr. Stefan Klöckner, musicologist and member of “Vox Verdensis”, as well as Prof. Dr. Jascha Nemtsov, pianist, musicologist and member of the advisory board of Musica Sacra International. The keynote speaker on the topic will be Prof. Dr. Enjott Schneider, composer of ten operas, sacred choral and organ music and film scores, including for “Schlafes Bruder”; President of the German Composers' Association until 2020.

"We want to listen to each other and respond: strike notes and rhythms that sound familiar to some and unfamiliar to others. We want to make music and sing and let the soundscapes flow into us, talk about them and enter into an exchange," says Dr. Hendrik Meyer-Magister, Deputy Director and Director of Studies at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing. The public symposium will take place from October 3-5, 2025 at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing. Further information and registration at www.ev-akademie-tutzing.de.

Caption:
Magnus Dauner (left) was a participant in Musica Sacra International 2024 with the Karnataka College of Percussion from India and is one of the speakers at the symposium “Music as (inter)religious experience - resonance of the sacred” at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing.

Photo: Bertram Maria Keller