A Matter of Wife and Death: Reflections on Music and Violence

Abstract

Many authors have explored the connection between creativity and destructiveness, and from a psychodynamic perspective both creative and destructive acts carry a psychic significance. Forensic psychotherapy, notably in the work of Estela Welldon, has shown the importance of understanding the unconscious meaning of the violent act, which can be seen as a form of communication. Similarly to violence, the execution of a piece of music involves a synergy of physical, mental and affective functions, and an interaction of conscious and unconscious forces. Reflecting on her experience of working in prison, the author explores the relationship between music and violence. Describing her work with an inmate who had committed a violent offence, the author illustrates how the structured and formal language of music provided a rigorous yet flexible space where the prisoner's internal world and unconscious phantasies could begin to be confronted. In particular, the author discusses how split off aspects connected with the index offence emerged in the ambiguous language of music. Finally, the author illustrates how the progressive acquisition of music technique can be understood as the beginning of a process of symbolization and integration.

Music, Resilience and ‘Soundscaping’: Some Reflections on the War in Ukraine

“…If the above examples, which are intentionally diverse, illuminate, in part, the significance of context in shaping ‘what music can do and enable’ (Roy and Dowd, 2010: 184), they also evidence a more fundamental nexus between music and the performativity of violence (which in some cases can also be linked to the performativity of hypermasculinity; see Herrera, 2018: 491). This dialectic transcends cultural and contextual differences, and indeed there are many ‘everyday’ connections between music and violence (see, e.g., Chung, 2021; Mundici, 2022). Relatedly, the cases discussed in this section, which both reflect and exhibit important power relations and asymmetries, lend support to DeNora’s (2004: 219) argument that ‘we have moved away from a sociology “of” music to a consideration of music as a dynamic medium of social ordering’.…”