Music of Absence - (Resonances) by Christine Dysers & Peter Edwards & Judith Lochhead (Hardcover)

About the Book

Addresses how feelings of absence and loss are woven throughout music practices in the twenty-first century.

Book Synopsis

This collection of essays studies how music of the twenty-first century resonates with sentiments of despondency and loss in the context of the multiple existential crises of the time: climate change, political violence, financial crises, racial inequities and technological acceleration.

Investigating musical expressions of absence across a wide variety of genres and philosophical approaches, the collection aims to stimulate an interdisciplinary conversation about music as an alternative mode of thinking at a time when established frames of reasoning are called into question.

Themed sections engage with the multiplicity of emergent meanings that absence alludes to, opening new lines of inquiry into how music enacts new forms of being in the world and creates pathways to better futures.

Review Quotes

This remarkable volume balances classical philosophical meditations on absence--from Aristotle to Byung-Chul Han--with the living realities of contemporary musical practice. Its essays move fluidly between metaphysics and embodied listening, revealing how sound itself can think through loss, memory, and renewal. I'm deeply honored that one of my own works was included in this dialogue--a rare experience of seeing one's music situated within such a luminous framework of intellect, affect, and presence.--Ken Ueno, UC Berkeley