Florian Scheding is Research Fellow in Music at the University of
Southampton.
Erik Levi is Reader in Music and Director of Performance at Royal
Holloway, University of London. He writes regular reviews for the
BBC Music Magazine.
Levi (Royal Holloway, Univ. of London, UK) and Scheding (Univ. of
Southampton, UK) present essays that explore issues and questions
brought about by the unwilling, sometimes violent, dislocation of
people or peoples. Music lends itself to such study, perhaps
because of its temporal, ephemeral nature. Ethnomusicology has long
been the domain for studying the Other but primarily as related to
location. Many of the essays in this book turn the tables on that
Otherness, locating it not in a geographical place but instead in
the displaced person or persons, who become that Other in
dislocation. Though the issues the book raises originate in a music
context, they reveal a great deal about migration, dislocation, and
acculturation. The editors include considerations of the effect of
the Nazi stigmatization and exile of Jews, the struggle of
displaced philosopher Theodore Adorno to define German-ness and his
subsequent renunciation of the absolute, the equating of the
mind/body dichotomy with the contrast of music (mental) and dance
(physical), and "displacement" of a musical work through
arrangements for other instruments. This collection raises
timely questions not previously examined, questions relevant to the
study of music and to the study of an increasingly mobile, diverse,
21st-century society. Highly recommended.
*CHOICE*
The book offers a useful investigation of some of the various
techniques by which scholars might consider the significant effects
of displacement in the history of music....The contrasting tales of
displacement and scope of methodological approaches introduced in
Samson’s essay serve appropriately as a suggestive conclusion to a
book that promises to introduce readers to this important and
growing field of musicological inquiry.
*Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association*
Eric Levi and Florian Scheding have delivered a significant
contribution to the burgeoning literature on the relationship of
music to place and displacement, particularly with regard to the
exiled composer. Published in the Europea: Ethnomusicologies and
Modernities series by Scarecrow Press, the book is salutary because
it juxtaposes authors with a broad range of expertise. ... [T]his
book presents timely and insightful topics that need to be
addressed. . . it will no doubt become standard reading for many of
us.
*CAML Review*
[M]any of the themes introduced by this book deserve to be at the
very heart of contemporary musicology.
*Music & Letters*
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