University of Chicago Press Sound and Affect: Voice, Music, World

There is no place on earth that does not echo with the near or distant sounds of human activity. More than half of humanity lives in cities, meaning the daily soundtrack of our lives is filled with sound―whether it be sonorous, harmonious, melodic, syncopated, discordant, cacophonous, or even screeching. This new anthology aims to explore how humans are placed in certain affective attitudes and dispositions by the music, sounds, and noises that envelop us. Sound and Affect maps a new territory for inquiry at the intersection of music, philosophy, affect theory, and sound studies. The essays in this volume consider objects and experiences marked by the correlation of sound and affect, in music and beyond: the voice, as it speaks, stutters, cries, or sings; music, whether vocal, instrumental, or machine-made; and our sonic environments, whether natural or artificial, and how they provoke responses in us. Far from being stable, correlations of sound and affect are influenced and even determined by factors as diverse as race, class, gender, and social and political experience. Examining these factors is key to the project, which gathers contributions from a cross-disciplinary roster of scholars, including both established and new voices. This agenda-setting collection will prove indispensable to anyone interested in innovative approaches to the study of sound and its many intersections with affect and the emotions. Review "'Soundscape' has become a common term, but most actual soundscapes remain unheard with any degree of specificity. This affecting collection helps remedy that state. It offers multiple entry points into what it regards as 'sonic affective regimes, ' vibratory fields that impact broad swaths of eco-social life. Sound and Affect covers an astonishing range of topics, figures, and periods. One finds Plato and Ludacris, Proust and Phil Collins, Monk, Deleuze, and the Jesuit Marin Mersenne, and topics swing from desire to labor to the accented voice. Multidisciplinary in the richest sense, the book is a boon for sound studies, the philosophy of music, and musicology, and a primer for those who want to listen better and think more trenchantly about what they hear."-- "John Lysaker, Emory University" "Lochhead, Mendieta, and Smith have assembled a powerful compendium of theoretical and historical essays on sound and affect. This volume represents a synthesis of three rapidly growing areas of new research: affect theory, sound studies, and philosophically inflected music studies. Sound and Affect will make a significant and lasting impact in many fields. It is the type of publication that will challenge current assumptions about method and stimulate the growth of new forms of inquiry."-- "Roger Mathew Grant, Wesleyan University" About the Author Judith Lochhead is professor of music history and theory at Stony Brook University. She is the author of  Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music: New Tools in Music Theory and Analysis and coeditor of  Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies.  Eduardo Mendieta is professor of philosophy and affiliate professor in the School of International Affairs at Pennsylvania State University. He is the coeditor of  The Cambridge Habermas Lexicon.  Stephen Decatur Smith is associate professor of music history and theory at Stony Brook University. His articles have appeared in  Popular Music, the  Journal of Music Theory, Contemporary Music Review, and  Opera Quarterly.