Music as post-traumatic discourse: Nikolay Myaskovsky’s Sixth Symphony

Zuk, Patrick

doi:10.1177/1474022216684636

Music as post-traumatic discourse: Nikolay Myaskovsky’s Sixth Symphony

Zuk, Patrick

Authors

Professor Patrick Zuk patrick.zuk@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

This essay explores ways in which musicologists might extend work undertaken by humanities scholars in the interdisciplinary field of trauma studies that has highlighted the centrality of traumatic experience to modernist creativity. It is focussed around a case study of a musical composition that represents the emotional aftermath of a traumatic event, the Sixth Symphony of the Soviet composer Nikolay Myaskovsky (1923). A central concern is to demonstrate how the symphony’s musical symbolism is strikingly evocative of typical features of post-traumatic mentation, such as dissociation and emotional numbing, and the inhibition of the ability to mourn. It closes by considering the potential implications of the findings for understanding work by other modernist composers.

Citation

Zuk, P. (2018). Music as post-traumatic discourse: Nikolay Myaskovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 17(1), 104-118. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022216684636

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Mar 20, 2017
Online Publication Date	Jan 12, 2018
Publication Date	Jan 1, 2018
Deposit Date	Mar 20, 2017
Publicly Available Date	Mar 21, 2017
Journal	Arts and Humanities in Higher Education
Print ISSN	1474-0222
Electronic ISSN	1474-0222
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	17
Issue	1
Pages	104-118
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022216684636

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Copyright Statement
Zuk, Patrick (2018) 'Music as post-traumatic discourse : Nikolay Myaskovsky’s Sixth Symphony.', Arts and humanities in higher education., 17 (1). pp. 104-118. Copyright © 2016 The Author(s). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.