Sound and Affect - by Judith Lochhead (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Studies of affect and emotions have blossomed in recent decades across the humanities, neurosciences, and social sciences. In music scholarship, they have often built on the discipline's attention to what music theorists since the Renaissance have described as music's unique ability to arouse passions in listeners. In this timely volume, the editors seek to combine this 'affective turn' with the 'sound turn' in the humanities, which has profitably shifted attention from the visual to the aural, as well as a more recent 'philosophical turn' in music studies. Accordingly, the volume maps out a new territory for research at the intersection of music, philosophy, and sound studies. The essays in Sound and Affect look at objects and experiences in which correlations of sound and affect reside, in music and beyond: the voice as it speaks, stutters, cries, or sings; music, whether vocal, instrumental, or electronic; our sonic environments, whether natural or man-made, and our responses to them. As argued here, far from being stable, correlations of sound and affect are influenced by factors as diverse as race, class, gender, and social and political experience. Examining these factors is key to the project, which gathers contributions from a cross-disciplinary roster of scholars including both established as well as a wealth of new voices. The essays are grouped thematically into sections that move from politics and ethics, to reflections on pre-and post-human "musicking," to the notions of affective listening and music temporalities, to are examination of historical understandings of music and affect. This agenda-setting collection will prove indispensable to anyone interested in innovative approaches to the study of sound and its many intersection with affect and emotions"--

Book Synopsis

There is no place on earth that does not echo with the near or distant sounds of human activity. More than half of humanity lives in cities, meaning the daily soundtrack of our lives is filled with sound-whether it be sonorous, harmonious, melodic, syncopated, discordant, cacophonous, or even screeching. This new anthology aims to explore how humans are placed in certain affective attitudes and dispositions by the music, sounds, and noises that envelop us.

​Sound and Affect maps a new territory for inquiry at the intersection of music, philosophy, affect theory, and sound studies. The essays in this volume consider objects and experiences marked by the correlation of sound and affect, in music and beyond: the voice, as it speaks, stutters, cries, or sings; music, whether vocal, instrumental, or machine-made; and our sonic environments, whether natural or artificial, and how they provoke responses in us. Far from being stable, correlations of sound and affect are influenced and even determined by factors as diverse as race, class, gender, and social and political experience. Examining these factors is key to the project, which gathers contributions from a cross-disciplinary roster of scholars, including both established and new voices. This agenda-setting collection will prove indispensable to anyone interested in innovative approaches to the study of sound and its many intersections with affect and the emotions.

Review Quotes

"'Soundscape' has become a common term, but most actual soundscapes remain unheard with any degree of specificity. This affecting collection helps remedy that state. It offers multiple entry points into what it regards as 'sonic affective regimes, ' vibratory fields that impact broad swaths of eco-social life. Sound and Affect covers an astonishing range of topics, figures, and periods. One finds Plato and Ludacris, Proust and Phil Collins, Monk, Deleuze, and the Jesuit Marin Mersenne, and topics swing from desire to labor to the accented voice. Multidisciplinary in the richest sense, the book is a boon for sound studies, the philosophy of music, and musicology, and a primer for those who want to listen better and think more trenchantly about what they hear."-- "John Lysaker, Emory University"

"Lochhead, Mendieta, and Smith have assembled a powerful compendium of theoretical and historical essays on sound and affect. This volume represents a synthesis of three rapidly growing areas of new research: affect theory, sound studies, and philosophically inflected music studies. Sound and Affect will make a significant and lasting impact in many fields. It is the type of publication that will challenge current assumptions about method and stimulate the growth of new forms of inquiry."-- "Roger Mathew Grant, Wesleyan University"

About the Author

Judith Lochhead is professor of music history and theory at Stony Brook University. She is the author of Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music: New Tools in Music Theory and Analysis and coeditor of Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies. Eduardo Mendieta is professor of philosophy and affiliate professor in the School of International Affairs at Pennsylvania State University. He is the coeditor of The Cambridge Habermas Lexicon. Stephen Decatur Smith is associate professor of music history and theory at Stony Brook University. His articles have appeared in Popular Music, the Journal of Music Theory, Contemporary Music Review, and Opera Quarterly.