The Resonance of Music Across Cultures

Abstract

What predestines music to be able to transgress geo-cultural boundaries? I argue that music’s sensuous, bodily-affective immediacy requires a mode of cross-cultural translation via what I call auditory resonance—the spontaneous attunement of listeners with the sonic presence of music through media-technological transmission despite vestiges of cultural colonialism and other sociopolitical barriers. I trace such resonance effects from German Romanticism through our global present, focusing especially on the conversations between two Japanese cultural figures, the conductor Seiji Ozawa and the novelist Haruki Murakami. These texts show that the category of auditory resonance is more suitable for addressing European music’s global significance than its traditional claims to transcultural universality. Keywords: Music, resonance, immediacy, presence, media technologies, cultural translation, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Walter Benjamin, Seiji Ozawa, Haruki Murakami

Auditory Resonance: A Transdisciplinary Concept?

“…For the analysis of auditory media practices Volmar and Schröter assemble, among others, articles referring to media studies, anthropology, semiotics, sociology, musicology, sound studies, psychoanalysis, and bioacoustics, while mentioning "praxis theories" such as ethnology, actor-network theory, and science and technology studies (Volmar and Schröter 2013, p. 17). 5 In Goebel (2021) an example has been given of such traveling of resonance effects from German Romanticism through our global present, focusing especially on the conversations between the conductor Seiji Ozawa and the novelist Haruki Murakami.…”