Overture : German catastrophe and the rebirth of musical biography -- Thomas Mann : dissonance as a mode of documentation -- Interlude I. Siegfried : atonality and decentralized narrative -- Gèunter Grass : rhythms of a fictitious testimony -- Interlude II. Clown : ironic tune between memory and oblivion -- Ingeborg Bachmann : the resonance of trauma -- Interlude III. Pianist : Austria from a musician's perspective -- Thomas Bernhard : writing, playing, and the compulsion to repeat -- Interlude IV. Composer : sound transfiguration after reunification -- Coda : the end of musical biography?
Summary
"Musical Biographies examines that which bypasses verbal signification and is therefore absent from collective memory. More specifically, it looks at German and Austrian writers, who turned to music in order to develop appropriate modes to respond to the catastrophe of World War II. The book contributes to a new understanding of this past and demonstrates the complexities inherent in any attempt to understand traumatic experience."-- Provided by publisher
