Gisela Köpp, born and grown up in Germany; received her Diploma as teacher for breathing, speaking and singing at the Schlaffhorst-Andersen School in Lieme and studied Philosophy and Psychology at the Maximilian University of Munich. She lived from 1970 –1996 in McLean,Virginia. There she set up her private Studio for the Cultivation of the Singing and Speaking Voice and wrote a comprehensive book about the art of breathing and voice, based on the research and method of Clara Schlafforst and Hedwig Andersen, who lived in the 1920s in Germany, (Leben mit Stimme – Stimme mit Leben, Bärenreiter, 1995). She taught at various schools and Universities, gave many workshops and lectured internationally. She founded the Bethel St-Elizabeth Foundation of America, Inc., to support disabled persons. Together with her husband, Dr. Eberhard Köpp, she received the German-American Friendship Award in Wahington D.C. She wrote music reviews for the Washington Journal, and published short stories, essays and poetry. She is a member of the Teachers Association Schlaffhorst-Andersen, the German Association of Singing Teachers, The International Women`s Writing Guild, New York, and United Poets Laureate International (LWL 2007).
Please also look for Gisela Kopp in Poetry in English.
Eine Wolke aus Licht
dazu ein Gedicht
die Stimme des Menschen
kennt dann keine Grenzen
steigt auf als Spirale
zum wievielten Male
in die Luft – wird Licht –
du vergißt das nicht
Translation: A cloud of light
in addition a poem
the voice of a human being
knows then no bounderies
ascends as a spiral
how many times
in the air – turns into light –
you never forget this
Meteora
Suspended in the air
floating like hair
like leafes in the wind
it smells like mint
sailing through mist
living as gift
from the air
do care
for natures surprise
mountains in disguise
Dedicated to United Poets Laureate International and its 22nd World Congress of Poets in Larissa, Greece.
Allow me to honor the ancient Greeks. Their culture became the cradle of Western culture and science. It is a privilege to be here. My theme will be
The Rhythm of Life
When I was a student in Munich, Thrasybulos Georgiades, the musicologist, drew my attention to his Greek culture 500 years before Christ. I was trying to understand what it meant to speak or sing not for musical or communicative purposes but for experiencing life as a whole, as rhythmical complexity. I wanted to know why teaching, speaking and singing has such an impact on the whole person.
I understood very soon that what I was trying in the 1950s in reciting poems or singing Lieder was based on the wisdom of the ancient Greeks. One important term for my way of teaching had its roots in the Greek language: rhythm – rhythmos – Rhythmus. In the course of centuries this term has undergone quite some changes. Going back to the roots helps to create a new basis of understanding.
In my studies also the term nature played an important part. The human voice was seen as an instrument in the context of human nature. All inner organs in their rhythmical movements (lungs, diagphram etc.) had to be perceived and accepted as human nature and we had to study their laws and their functioning. We searched for the unity of body, soul and mind, essential for preserving and building up human potentials. The goal was to hear the unity of body, soul and mind, not only to talk about it. Any interlectual discussion was seen as a disturbance on the way to reach the oneness of all these three aspects. We had to practice how it is possible to balance body, soul and mind all by obeying the breathing rhythm and by accepting that voice movements and articulation are also structured movements. We had to bring the music of the language alive not only the meaning of the language. Especially in poetry rhythmical movements connected all these aspects.
The ancient Greeks presented to us essential ways of looking at this goal. This is what I discovered in the ancient history of Greece. Nobody can go back in life, but one should look at certain developments in cultural traditions for our present life to-day. The ancient Greeks show that we can try to develop something else than just collecting more knowledge or money. We have to become creative in a new way and discover the human rhythm of life, which is with us as long as there is life on earth.
I had to experiment in my mother tongue, in German. I learnt how this language connected me with the rhythm of life. This became the focus of my teaching, not to look at letters in phonetical terms but to experience the connection of a person with the rhythm of his or her life. With creative ambitions, we were able to present poems or prose with the rhythmical flow of breathing and voice as a natural process. This went beyond analysing a poem only intellectually. The goal was to perceive the person as a whole in a very objective way while presenting a poem, while speaking, while creating language. The rhythmical flow was asked for, which is life as breathing experience.
Breathing and voice are carried along by a rhythm which in the 1920s in Germany was stressed as rhythm of life. The whole person had to be thrown into practicing, to experience a rhythm we forgot to take care of. We had to become aware of the unity of body, soul and mind. When we watch a baby enter life with the first breath and the first cry, we understand that unity; later on, unfortunately, it is only taken care of or practiced for musical purposes.
Let us include in education from childhood on the caring for this rhythm of life while we develop the language. We have become aware that living means changing rhythmically. Only in this way we will experience life and art as one. Not only writing and reading but learning to speak aloud what we write or read will help us to become creative. To create poems, to study poetry in any school would be an essential goal for growing up peacefully. ( Children like that.) Goethe said : Laß den Anfang mit dem Ende sich in eins zusammenziehn, schneller als die Gegenstände selber dich vorüberfliehn. Danke, daß die Gunst der Musen unvergängliches verheißt: Den Gehalt in deinem Busen und die Form in deinem Geist. (Trans. Nigel Cooper: Let beginning join with ending, into oneness let it draw, quicker than mere objects, sending these behind you evermore! Thanks be that the muses` favour promises immortal things: In your heart the meaning savour, in your soul (mind!) let form take wings.)
The rhythm of life is certainly guiding us to a more holistic approach even in music or poetry (and I do not want to start analysing what life in the year 2011 means). But I want to quote what I found in Gorgiades book Music and Rhythm as seen by the Greeks. In a fragment written by Archilochos (67a) in ancient Greek we can read the term rhythmos for the first time. We will hear it in Greek and in German as quoted by Georgiades in the translation by Werner Jaeger: „Weder sollst du als Sieger vor aller Welt dich brüsten, noch sollst du als Besiegter zu Hause dich hinwerfen und jammern, sondern freue dich über das, was freuenswert ist, gib dem Unglück nicht zu sehr nach und erkenne, welcher R H Y T H M U S die Menschen in seinen Banden hält.“ ( Trans: My soul, my soul, all disturbed by sorrows inconsolable, bear up, hold out, meet front-on the many foes that rush on you now from this side and now from that, enduring all such strife up close, never wavering; and should you win, don`t openly exult, nor, defeated, throw yourself lamenting in a heap at home, but delight in things that are delightful and, in hard times, grieve not too much – appriceate the R H Y T M that controls men`s life. )
One of my teachers, Anita Grauding, in the 1950s sent a picture of the Parthenon Fries to me after I had sent her this text. And she wrote: „Seeing the Parthenon Fries I knew what rhythm is. Never was I more deeply touched by something to understand rhythm.“ It took me a long time to understand rhythm like it is still shown at the Parthenon.
But then I understood her reciting and teaching poetry in the context of the whole person, based on the rhythm of life as breathing rhythm. Air, breath and voice was the material we had to structure, to put into form ( articulation ), the voice had to be developped musically, individually and last but not least rythmically as shown by the ancient Greeks. This is where we came from. Within the language of the ancient Greeks the oneness of rhythm, music, verse and dance came to life.
What Archilochos meant by rhythm is certainly very far from what we understand by rhythm today. But the term rhythm of life will guide us in a direction where we all will be able to come closer to ancient wisdom. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe`s philosophical poem Dauer im Wechsel ( Permanence in Change ) makes clear that Dauer im Wechsel means to think of a rhythmical process. The rhythmical changes of werden-sein-vergehen ( becoming-being-passing away) or Spannung-Abspannung-Lockerheit (tension-distension-relaxation), Zusammenziehung-Streckung-Lockerheit ( contraction-expansion-relaxation) or Einatmung-Ausatmung-Ruhepause (inhaling-exhaling-resting), are all rhythmical changes. We should study and support them for being able to live fully as human beings in all the different languages, traditions and cultures, to find unity in dignity. In poetry we can express what we want to say with all senses and therefore come closer to perceive that language can radiate.
Five years ago in China I walked along the Yangtse River in Shanghai and I heard a voice reciting one of Goethe’s poems in my mother tongue „Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur. . .“ (How beautifully nature radiates. . . or: How marvellously does nature shine for me!). A Chinese man turned toward me and I started to sing Beethoven’s melody to this poem. . . he had heard us talking German and stopped for a moment. It was more than music for my ear conveyed by the language of a verse. I dare say that this was something reminding me of the ancient Greeks and their interaction in language. All we do today is to describe different, separated entities: the spoken word, a verse and music in a dancing rhythm. At this very moment I absorbed the existence of what the ancient Greeks probably once called musike. All was one. We should start to create a new way of cross-cultural understanding to realise that we are all one even if we grew up with different languages, in different cultures. Peace be with us through poetry in any language on this earth.
