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Vertont, vermittelt, verstellt: Der Krieg und die Musik

We live in a society which is not only deeply influenced by war, but in fact formed by it — and this has been the case since the Neolithic. Simply by accepting that war is a possibility we perpetuate this possibility; and war is so much a part of our shared culture that we rarely recognise just how great the influence of war is. Many of the foundational texts of world literature — from the Mahābārata to the Chanson of Roland — are in the first instance tales of war, and warriors. Many of these texts are just a tiny fragment of much wider oral and indeed musical practices; and in these writings themselves we frequently encounter bards singing of war, and trumpets and drums that sound before, during and after combat. Musical communication, it seems, has always given form to war — and continues to do so right up to the present. But how exactly does music do this, why does it do this, and to what ends? This lecture does not pretend to answer this question: rather, the significance and the complexity of the question itself will be explored. In doing so, we will focus particularly on the use of music during combat itself, and how this is reported.