Star Trek Voyager: Music = Being human

Counterpoint – Music as a mirror of the human condition in Star Trek: Voyager

Music has always played a major role in the Star Trek universe. Not only as an accompanying work, background music or cinematic element, but it also has an essential content-related and symbolic component. Already in The Next Generation, music served Data in particular as an essential expression of his attempt to be as human as possible and to express himself. In Star Trek: Voyager, this approach finds its continuation in two characters.

On the one hand in Seven of Nine, who tries to “learn” to be human again after leaving the collective, and on the other hand in the Doctor, who finds a special fulfillment and a possibility of emotional expression in music, which enables him to transcend his programming.

Thus, in both cases, music, and especially singing, always plays an important role in the formation of one’s own personality, but also in the self-definition as a person. This becomes all the more clear when one takes a closer look at the pieces selected for this purpose.

In addition, Voyager dedicates an entire episode, “Counterpoint”, to a moral dilemma associated with a particular piece of music.

The aim of this lecture is to take a closer look at the targeted use of (classical) music under the above-mentioned aspects and to establish a music-historical, but also music-philosophical context.