1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910815328103321

Autore

Ben-Horin Michal

Titolo

Musical biographies : the music of memory in post-1945 German literature / / Michal Ben-Horin

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berlin, [Germany] ; ; Boston, [Massachusetts] : , : De Gruyter, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

3-11-046046-7

3-11-046093-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (182 p.)

Collana

Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies ; ; Volume 10

Disciplina

830.9/3578

Soggetti

Music and literature - Germany - History - 20th century

Music and literature - Austria - History - 20th century

German fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Memory in literature

Music in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Overture. German Catastrophe and the Rebirth of Musical Biography -- 1. Thomas Mann: Dissonance as a Mode of Documentation -- Interlude I. Siegfried: Atonality and Decentralized Narrative -- 2. Günter Grass: Rhythms of a Fictitious Testimony -- Interlude II. Clown: Ironic Tune between Memory and Oblivion -- 3. Ingeborg Bachmann: The Resonance of Trauma -- Interlude III. Pianist: Austria from a Musician's Perspective -- 4. Thomas Bernhard: Writing, Playing, and the Compulsion to Repeat -- Interlude IV. Composer: Sound Transfiguration after Reunification -- Coda. The End of Musical Biography? -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Since the second half of the twentieth century various routes, including history and literature, are offered in dealing with the catastrophe of World War II and the Holocaust. Historiographies and novels are of course written with words; how can they bear witness to and reverberate with traumatic experience that escapes or resists language? In search for an alternative mode of expression and representation, this volume focuses on postwar German and Austrian writers who made use



of music in their exploration of the National Socialist past. Their works invoke, however, new questions: What happens when we cross the line between narration and documentation, and between memory and a musical piece? How does identification and fascination affect our reading of the text? What kind of ethical issues do these testimonies raise? As this volume shows, reading these musical biographies is both troubling and compelling since they 'fail' to come to terms with the past. In playing the haunting music that does not let us put the matter to rest, they call into question not only the exclusion of personal stories by official narratives, but also challenge writers' and readers' most intimate perspectives on an unmasterable past.