Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > Romantic music (c 1830 to c 1900)
|
Buy Now
Bad Vibrations - The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,605
Discovery Miles 16 050
|
|
Bad Vibrations - The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease (Paperback)
Series: The History of Medicine in Context
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
Music has been used as a cure for disease since as far back as King
David's lyre, but the notion that it might be a serious cause of
mental and physical illness was rare until the late eighteenth
century. At that time, physicians started to argue that excessive
music, or the wrong kind of music, could over-stimulate a
vulnerable nervous system, leading to illness, immorality and even
death. Since then there have been successive waves of moral panics
about supposed epidemics of musical nervousness, caused by
everything from Wagner to jazz and rock 'n' roll. It was this
medical and critical debate that provided the psychiatric rhetoric
of "degenerate music" that was the rationale for the persecution of
musicians in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. By the 1950s, the
focus of medical anxiety about music shifted to the idea that
"musical brainwashing" and "subliminal messages" could strain the
nerves and lead to mind control, mental illness and suicide. More
recently, the prevalence of sonic weapons and the use of music in
torture in the so-called War on Terror have both made the subject
of music that is bad for the health worryingly topical. This book
outlines and explains the development of this idea of pathological
music from the Enlightenment until the present day, providing an
original contribution to the history of medicine, music and the
body.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.