Siglind Bruhn's Home Page

Siglind Bruhn, born 11 October 1951 in Hamburg, Germany, is a music analyst/musicologist, concert pianist, and interdisciplinary scholar presently working at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities as a full-time researcher in the fields of “Music and Literature” and “Music in Interdisciplinary Dialogue.” She is also a Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Christianity and the Arts and, for the period 2004-2009, a chercheur invité at the Sorbonne’s Institut d’esthétique des arts contemporains. In 2001 she was elected to the European Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 2008 she received an honorary doctorate from Växjö University, Sweden.

Before coming to the United States, Siglind taught at the University of Hong Kong, where she was the Director of Studies for the Program in Piano Performance Pedagogy (1987-1993), and at the Pianisten-Akademie in Ansbach, whose founding director she was (1984-1987). Globally, she is or has been active on the Executive Board of the Danish National Research Foundation’s International Postdoctoral Center, on the Executive Board of the International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry, as Vice President of the International Association for Word and Music Studies, and as Commission Chair in the International Society for Music Education. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Central Conservatory in Beijing and a visiting artist/visiting lecturer in most West European countries as well as in China, Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Ecuador, and on various American campuses.

Since 1994, Siglind has been devoting herself fully to research and writing. In 1997, she was honored by being named the youngest and first female Life Research Associate at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities. Internationally, she is an active member on research teams such as the Équipe scientifique d’herméneutique musicale (based at the University of Strasbourg, France), the Nordic Society for Interarts Studies (based at the University of Lund, Sweden), and the Musical Signification Project (based at the University of Helsinki, Finland). Besides contributing numerous articles to scholarly journals and chapters to anthologies in both Europe and the United States, she has authored over twenty books. One of her books, Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and Painting, has inspired dissertations in several countries. As a co-author, she has edited five volumes of scholarly essays and three issues of a scholarly journal. She also serves as co-editor of the book series INTERPLAY: Music in Interdisciplinary Dialogue, published by Pendragon Press, and has translated one music-theoretical book from English into German.

Her most recent research project was a trilogy of studies on the music of Olivier Messiaen: “Messiaen’s Contemplations on Covenant and Incarnation,” a hermeneutic analysis of the composer’s two theological piano cycles, Visions de l’Amen and Vingt Regard sur l’Enfant-Jésus, has come out in November 2007; “Messiaen’s Explorations of Love and Death,” a study of the Tristan trilogy and three related song cycles,” was published in May 2008; and “Messiaen’s Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity,” which traces the echoes of medieval theology in his oratorio, organ meditations, and opera, has completed the trilogy a few weeks before the composer’s 100th birthday.

As a concert pianist, she has given solo and chamber music recitals in twenty-two countries on all five continents. She has recorded extensively with classical radio stations in several countries and can be heard on two LPs and four CDs.

Siglind holds three post-graduate degrees: a Master-of-Music equivalent in piano performance, piano pedagogy, and music theory from the Musikhochschule Stuttgart [Staatsexamen mit künstlerischem Hauptfach Klavier]; a Master of Arts in Romance literatures and philosophy from the University of Munich, and a Ph.D. [Dr.phil., summa cum laude] in music analysis, musicology, and psychology from the University of Vienna, earned with a dissertation on questions of musical hermeneutics in Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck.