Introduction

Last year the ''Podium Junger Musiker Foundation'' and the ''Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland'' entered into a cooperation to jointly support the training of highly talented young musicians. But what contribution could the study of Arab music during a ten day workshop make to this? We considered this question under several aspects and aimed to find suitable answers during the '' 1 st Weikersheim Encounter: Orient - Occident".

The musical aspect promised to be exciting, because traditional Arab music and western music were not only to be compared but also interwoven with each other. To do this our Arab musicians enjoyed a twofold advantage over their French and German counterparts: firstly, because their colleges of music have, as a rule, a deportment of traditional Arab music as well as one for western music and secondly, because improvisation - which was a central theme of the workshop - understandably enjoys a different status in traditional Arab music.

The human aspect of young people from six nations living together in the idyllic environs of Weikersheim castle was that personal experiences would be exchanged about their life of music in their own countries, that they would get to know each other's way of life and that this would increase the knowledge and understanding about and for each other. Furthermore, the participation of young musicians from Palestine offered an opportunity to get to know something about the prevailing unhappy situation in Palestine from those who were themselves directly affected.

The politico-cultural aspect took into account that, up to the 11th of September, the intercultural dialogue with islam and the Orient had clearly not contributed sufficiently to avoiding the distorted pictures of one another. Furthermore, neither politics nor economics could form the basis for a true dialogue as long as culturally hostile pictures continued to rule the day. Such pictures could be best
drawn afresh by young people living together. The medium of music - with its  roots in the Orient - would be fire ideal support for this.

The forty musicians who took part in the project from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, France and Germany provided very gratifying answers: musically, by holding an exciting closing concert and, from the human point of view, by the enthusiasm they showed in being together. Some impressions of this are given in this documentation and in a CD.

The opportunity given to young students of music to study a different musical culture and meet with its representatives presupposes they will gain insight into their various ways of life and get acquainted with the wider areas of culture. Such on experience, too, forms a part of their training in the sense that it must create a broader understanding of foreign cultures and that the individual personalities will surely gain from this. The accompanying lectures and discussions served this aim. Prominent representatives from science and politics dealt with topics about Islam and investigated the questions as to how ArabGerman dialogue might be improved.

The organisational experience gained during this project together with the suggestions made by the attendees and the echoes from the press and radio all serve to support the hope that the 1 st Weikersheim Encounter has been the first of what will be a very successful series of such projects.

Dr. Willy Rellecke
Chairman, Podium Junger Musiker Foundation

Prof. Martin Christoph Redel
Chairman, Jeunesses Musicales Germany