Description

This late work, published in 1975, three years before his death, that Edgar Willems proposes, after years of deepening on the subject introduced in The Psychological Basis of Music Education. In it, he details for the last time the musical-human synthesis that occupied him throughout his life.

An insatiable observer, curious about the reality of the world in all its diversity, Edgar Willems noticed as early as 1950, notably through his contacts with musicians such as Ernest Ansermet, the incipient cultural globalization, contrasting with his highly characterized musical experiences in situ on various continents, including Africa and South America, long before the means of diffusion or retransmission reached them. This development made him very hesitant, not in terms of content but in terms of publication, about certain « risky » schemes, because of their conciseness, since the speed of their reading could lead to caricatured comprehension. In the end, he will assume the publication, in the name of his admiration for the phenomenon of life in its multiple musical reality, observed and often practiced by himself, without preconceived ideas, without value judgement, in total receptivity.

Béatrice Chapuis