“As the earth grows more populous and our way of life becomes more mechanical, the more indispensable music will be. There will come a time when it is our only means of escape from the strait-jacket of functional living, and ensuring that music remains a powerful, unspoilt reserve for freedom should be the most important goal of intellectual life in the future. Music is the true living history of humanity.”

Elias Canetti, Die Provinz des Menschen. Aufzeichnungen 1942-1972

The ancient Greeks coined the term ‘museum’ (museion) to define the shrine of the Muses, the nine goddesses of thought who were born from the union between Zeus and Mnemosyne. It was conceived as a physical place, nourished by an ideal: that of venerating and preserving the arts, song and poetry.

But that was all long ago, and the Muses no longer dwell among us. But we do have their most precious legacy: the ‘music’ to which they bequeathed their name. In Musikeon we have created a company that is dedicated to cultivating and studying the art of sound in all its forms.

Musikeon is a meeting-point between music and musicology, between scholars and professionals from the world of performance. The name we have chosen is designed to recall the age in which musiké was a fusion of word and sound, and wehave opted for the ‘eon’ ending because of its multiple resonances, thus emphasizing that there is room for all kinds of music, without any kind of hierarchy.

Music and words come together in Musikeon: words which enable us to learn, to teach and to understand.