Music and Consciousness 2: Worlds, Practices, Modalities

Consciousness has been described as one of the most mysterious things in the universe. Scientists, philosophers, and commentators from a whole range of disciplines can’t seem to agree on what it is, generating a sizeable field of contemporary research known as consciousness studies.

Following its forebear Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives (OUP, 2011), this volume argues that music can provide a valuable route to understanding consciousness, and also that consciousness opens up new perspectives for the study of music. It argues that consciousness extends beyond the brain, and is fundamentally related to selves engaged in the world, culture, and society.

The book brings together an interdisciplinary line up of authors covering topics as wide ranging as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, philosophy and phenomenology, aesthetics, sociology, ethnography, and performance studies and musical styles from classic to rock, trance to Daoism, jazz to tabla, and deep listening to free improvisation. Music and Consciousness 2 will be fasinating reading for those studying or working in the field of musicology, those researching consciousness as well as cultural theorists, psychologists, and philosophers.

Ruth Herbert is a Lecturer in Music and Head of Performance at the University of Kent. She is a music psychologist and performer with a wide-ranging track record of publications in the fields of music in everyday life, music, health and wellbeing, music and consciousness (including ASC and Trance), sonic studies, evolutionary psychology and music education. Ruth is the author of Everyday Music Listening: Absorption, Dissociation and Trancing (London & New York: Routledge, 2016[2011]). As a professional pianist, Ruth has performed nationally and internationally with various ensembles, notably recording soundtracks commissioned by the British Film Institute (BFI) for silent films. She is an editorial board member for the Journal of Sonic Studies.

David Clarke is Professor of Music at Newcastle University. He is a music theorist with wide a range of research interests, encompassing analytical, philosophical, cultural and critical approaches to music. He is currently engaged in research on consciousness and phenomenology in relation to music, and with Eric Clarke he is co-editor of and contributor to Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives (OUP, 2011). David has published widely on the composer Michael Tippett, including a monograph, The Music and Thought of Michael Tippett (CUP, 2001). He has also written on Arvo Part, Eminem and John Cage, and on issues of modernism, postmodernism and cultural pluralism, most notably in articles on ’Elvis and Darmstadt’ and Radio 3’s Late Junction. A further current research interest is North Indian classical music, in both theory and practice. David is an associate editor on the editorial board of the journal Twentieth-Century Music.

Eric Clarke is Heather Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Fellow of Wadham College. He has published on topics in the psychology of music, musical meaning, music and consciousness, musical creativity, and the analysis of pop music. Recent projects include work on music, empathy and cultural understanding; and empirical approaches to nineteenth-century orchestral and chamber music. He is co-editor of Empirical Musicology (2004, with Nicholas Cook), The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (2009, with Nicholas Cook, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and John Rink), Music and Consciousness (2011, with David Clarke), and Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music (2017, with Mark Doffman); and is the author of Ways of Listening (2005), and Music and Mind in Everyday Life (2010, with Nicola Dibben and Stephanie Pitts). Eric is a member of Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the British Academy.