1st Edition
Bad Vibrations The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease
By James Kennaway
Copyright 2012
226 Pages
by
Routledge
226 Pages
by
Routledge
226 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
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... Read more
Contents: Introduction: musical orders and disorders; From sensibility to pathology: nervous music, 1700-1850; Modern music and nervous modernity: Wagnerism as a disease of civilization, 1850-1914; Pathological music, politics and race: Germany and the United States, 1900-45; Music as mind control, music as weapon: pathological music since 1945; Bibliography; Index.
Biography
James Kennaway is a historian of medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Medicine and Health at Durham University. He specializes in the relationship between music, aesthetics and the body, with broad research interests in the history of physical and mental illness.
'What an interesting find! From the pen of James Kennaway, a historian of medicine at Durham University with an interest in popular culture, this detailed account of the shifting representation of the nature, hidden dangers and even strategic uses of music now arrives... Bad Vibrations is a perfectly unusual and very informative study.' Jive Talk blog '[Kennaway’s] volume, a musicological and literary analysis, offers a compelling cultural history of the nerves and the invention of pathogenic music... [His] approach is refreshingly broadminded.' Social History of Medicine 'Bad Vibrations is a very exciting, well written and intelligent survey with a focus on the dark side of music.' Torture 'This is a pioneering work which provides a strong argument for conceptualizing music as a powerful technology that has shaped, and has been shaped by, Western understandings of disease and health in social as well as individual bodies. It suggests that medical professionals and also the lay public have been as interested in music’s degenerative effects as in its healing powers, and paves the way for future research that looks at the complex relationship between these conflicting ideas.' British Journal for the History of Science 'With its ominous title of Bad Vibrations, readers might approach this truly remarkable work of energetic erudition and brilliant scholarly insight with trepidation, but author James Kennaway has produced a thought-provoking opus on the history of music from the perspective of a disciplined medical historian with sufficient scientific knowledge to address the human impact of music and indeed of sounds in general... this is a work destined to become a classic of medical history.' Lawrence Kruger in the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences '... raises a vital discussion in that it seeks to include aesthetic experience, particularly the involuntary and content-free aspects of musical experience, in the history of medicine... the book's
