Prelims

Music and Death: Interdisciplinary Readings and Perspectives

ISBN: 978-1-83867-946-0, eISBN: 978-1-83867-945-3

Publication date: 26 November 2019

Citation

(2019), "Prelims", Bennett, M.J. and Gracon, D. (Ed.) Music and Death: Interdisciplinary Readings and Perspectives (Emerald Interdisciplinary Connexions), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xiii. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83867-945-320191001

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020 Marie Josephine Bennett and David Gracon


Half Title

Music and Death

Series Page

EMERALD INTERDISCIPLINARY CONNEXIONS

Series Editor: Rob Fisher, Director of Progressive Connexions

Editorial Board

Ann-Marie Cook, Principal Policy and Legislation Officer, Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General, Australia

Teresa Cutler-Broyles, Director of Programmes, Progressive Connexions

John Parry, Edward Brunet Professor of Law, Lewis and Clark Law School, USA

Karl Spracklen, Professor of Music, Leisure and Culture, Leeds Beckett University, UK

About the Series

Emerald Interdisciplinary Connexions promotes innovative research and encourages exemplary interdisciplinary practice, thinking and living. Books in the series focus on developing dialogues between disciplines and among disciplines, professions, practices and vocations in which the interaction of chapters and authors is of paramount importance. They bring cognate topics and ideas into orbit with each other whilst simultaneously alerting readers to new questions, issues and problems. The series encourages interdisciplinary interaction and knowledge sharing and, to this end, promotes imaginative collaborative projects which foster inclusive pathways to global understandings.

Title Page

Music and Death: Interdisciplinary Readings and Perspectives

EDITED BY

MARIE JOSEPHINE BENNETT

University of Winchester, UK

&

DAVID GRACON

Gonzaga University, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2020

Copyright © Selection and editorial matter © Marie Josephine Bennett and David Gracon, 2020. Published under exclusive licence. Individual chapters © authors, 2020.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83867-946-0 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83867-945-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83867-947-7 (Epub)

Contents

List of Figures vii
About the Authors ix
About the Editors xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction: Exploring Connections between Music and Death
Marie Josephine Bennett and David Gracon 1
Section One – Music and Mourning
Chapter 1 Funeral Music between Heaven and Earth
Janieke Bruin-Mollenhorst 7
Chapter 2 On the Funeral and Bereavement Rituals Depicted in Folk Songs: ‘The Folk Requiem’ by Adam Strug and Kwadrofonik
Marek Jeziński 19
Chapter 3 The Posthumous Nephew: An Auto-Ethnographic Exploration of Belated Mourning and Fresh Divinations
Gary Levy 33
Section Two – Underground Scenes, Alternative Music and Transformation
Chapter 4 You’re Nothing: Punk and Death
David Gracon 49
Chapter 5 Healing the Mother Wound: Metal Performance and Grief Management
Nachthexe 59
Chapter 6 Bienvenue au Canada: The Nonlanguage of Music and Dreams
Brendan Dabkowski 71
Section Three – Performing Death
Chapter 7 The Vision of Death: Time and Temporality
Sílvia Mendonça 81
Chapter 8 Music and Embodied Movement: Representations of Risk and Death in Contemporary Circus
Jennifer Game 93
Chapter 9 Mercury’s Message to Go On with the Show
Marie Josephine Bennett 107
Index 119

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Claude’s new French horn. Vienna apartment. 1957. 34
Fig. 3.2 The current Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, abbreviated Mdw (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna), formerly known as the Vienna Academy. Author photo. November 2017. 39
Fig. 3.3 The plot where Claude was originally buried in February 1960. Zentralfriedhof, Vienna. The plot remains his, in perpetuity. Author photo. November 2017. 40
Fig. 3.4 Claude the conductor. Professional portrait. Vienna. 1957. 45
Fig. 7.1 Scena 2007–2009 (2.a version) by Tomás Maia e André Maranha. 85
Fig. 7.2 Scena 2007–2009 (2.a version) by Tomás Maia e André Maranha. 86
Fig. 7.3 Scena 2007–2009 (2.a version) by Tomás Maia e André Maranha. 86
Fig. 7.4 A group of three sounds from the beginning of the piece. This idea occurs throughout the whole piece in various forms of presentation. Different instrument registers are explored, as well as dynamic variations. 89
Fig. 7.5 Variation of the initial cell with different speed, intensity and acceleration. 89
Fig. 7.6 The cell with only two notes, varying the other parameters. 89
Fig. 7.7 A new articulation and a different dynamic in ‘Fortissimo’. 89
Fig. 7.8 Insistence of the small cell through repetition and a four note ornamentation. 89

About the Authors

Janieke Bruin-Mollenhorst, MA, is a Ph.D. candidate at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Her research is on music heard during contemporary funeral rituals in the Netherlands. She obtained her master’s degree in Cultural Studies from Tilburg University and holds a degree in music from the ArtEZ Conservatory of Enschede in the Netherlands.

Marek Jeziński, Ph.D., is the Head of the Journalism and Social Communication Department of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. He is an author of six books and over 150 academic papers on popular music, popular culture, contemporary anthropology, political science, political language, sociology, contemporary theatre and performance.

Gary Levy, PhD, performs academic work in the Faculty of Arts & Education at Deakin University, in Melbourne, Australia. His foundational studies are in the Alexander Technique, which he has taught continuously since 1992. As an amateur musician, Gary plays the piano for pleasure and solace. He also sings in choirs for the glory of Music, and the Common Good.

Brendan Dabkowski lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife and son. He is a freelance writer and editor at the University of Chicago Press. He has a B.A. in English and a B.S. in magazine journalism from Syracuse University. He is earning an M.A. in English literature from Northeastern Illinois University.

Sílvia Mendonça obtained her master’s degree in Music Composition and Theory (ESMAE – Porto, Portugal). She is currently participating in a Ph.D. Programme in Music Composition at Universidade de Aveiro (UA – Aveiro, Portugal) under the guidance of Sara Carvalho and co-supervision of Yolanda Espiña, as a fellow of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.

Nachthexe is a Senior Lecturer in Music, UK, and the front woman/guitarist in the black metal band, Denigrata. Her research areas are trauma, extreme metal, feminism, autoethnography and psychoanalysis. Her first monograph, entitled Screaming the Abyss: Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound, will be published in 2020.

Jennifer Game is a composer, performer and scholar with interests in contemporary intercultural composition, improvisation, music education, Australian Indigenous music, music technology and new music for the new circus. She is the Academic Leader at the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA), where she also lectures in music and cultural studies.

About the Editors

Marie Josephine Bennett is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Winchester in the United Kingdom. Her current research focuses on critical readings of queer performance in a number of mainstream post-Production Code Hollywood film musicals released between 1970 and 1985. In addition to film musicals, her academic interests include popular music, particularly of the 1970s and 1980s, celebrity studies, the Eurovision Song Contest and music in film. Marie teaches recorder, clarinet and piano both in schools and privately. She is currently the Events Liaison Officer for the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group, which was established in 2016 with the support of professional bodies throughout the UK and Ireland.

David Gracon is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Digital Production in the Integrated Media department at Gonzaga University located in Spokane, Washington. His research/creative projects and teaching interests include cultural studies, film studies, media literacy, alternative media, punk studies, the political economy of media, documentary and experimental media production. His current written work (formal research and essays) deals with the political economy of the music industry and various essays on the punk subculture. His film and video works have been screened widely at venues such as the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Seattle Underground Film Festival and the Centro Mexicano para la Música y Artes Sonoras (Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Art; CMMAS by its initials in Spanish) and many others. He was also the programmer and host of Hallways Microcinema based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar during the academic year 2017/8, teaching media studies at the Precarpathian National University in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He is a native of Buffalo, NY and has been invested in post-punk, indie, experimental music scenes, zine communities and college radio; as well as activist orientated experimental film, video and documentary communities and collectives since the mid-1990s. David completed his Ph.D. in Communication and Society at the University of Oregon and MA and BA at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) in the Department of Media Study and Sociology.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Rob Fisher for his assistance in setting up this project and Dr. Niall Scott, who was the organising chair of the Music and Death conference that took place in Vienna in December 2017.