The Lyre and the Human Voice

Summer 2013 Lyre Conference

The Lyre Association of North America (LANA) held its Summer Conference, “The Lyre and the Human Voice,” from Saturday, July 20, through Wednesday, July 24, in Chapel Hill, NC.  Guest presenter was Thomas Adam, Werbeck singer and Director of Werbeck Therapeutic Singing trainings in this country, Germany, and Brazil.

The conference was held at the Emerson Waldorf School, a wonderful venue for playing, singing, catching up with colleagues, and meeting new friends.

How do we play the lyre in a singing manner?

The modern lyre came into being out of a search for a music instrument to accompany the new art of tone eurythmy. Tone eurythmy seeks to make musical tone visible through movement. Two young artists, Lothar Gärtner and Edmund Pracht, sculptor and musician respectively, were inspired to create an instrument that could adequately support the etheric movement in this very young art. Thus the modern lyre was born.

As of 1907, Rudolf Steiner gave important indications of renewal for all the arts. In 1912, coinciding with the initial impulse of the art of eurythmy, a collaborative effort between Rudolf Steiner and Valborg Werbeck-Svardstrom began.

In the schooling for Uncovering the Voice, Mrs. Werbeck was searching for apath to develop the voice as a phenomenon of the reality of etheric movement. For the forces of singing to become free, education and training are needed. This is an essential task of voice development, especially in our time!

During our conference ”The Lyre and the Human Voice”, we will address the initial steps in the school for Uncovering the Voice – breath, sound development, and articulation. These same processes will then be applied to the playing of the lyre.

At the center of this activity lives the development of inner listening. The special nature of the lyre stimulates the movement of inner listening as no other musical instrument can.