Atmospheric relations

Abstract

Scholars concerned with music and sound have long commented on the atmosphere, the all-encompassing mood, that tangibly manifests qua music and sounds. The nineteenth-century music scholar Lina Raman maintained that pianist and composer Franz Liszt, when improvising on the piano, was able to “transform the entire atmosphere in a Salon at a stroke,” even moving some to tears. This chapter deals with a working definition that builds on the vast and intriguing scholarship on atmosphere in phenomenology, aesthetic theory, urban studies, geography and social science. In analogy, atmosphere asks how music and sounds impact on the totality of things rather than on individual listening bodies, but nevertheless impact the individual body through the totality. To claim that atmosphere is an altogether new concept in music and sound research is to ignore the longstanding scholarly preoccupation with affective stirrings, unsayable feelings, collective resonances, embodied perceptions and suggestive motions. The chapter also an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.

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