"There is Music in Every Sound": Thoreau's Modernist Understanding of Music

Authors

  • Jannika Bock

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.85

Abstract

What is music to Thoreau? This question is at the core of the paper at hand. Music in Thoreau's understanding appears to differ immensely from the conventional definition of music during the nineteenth century. This paper will outline Thoreau's concept of music, his idea of its effects on the listener, and the functions music can potentially fulfill.

Author Biography

Jannika Bock

CVSince January 2005 Jannika Bock is enrolled as a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She is writing her dissertation on Henry Thoreau's influence on John Cage. Jannika Bock completed her M.A. in American studies – with minors in musicology and journalism – in October 2003. During her academic career, she studied, worked and researched at several American universities, among them Smith College, Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and Cornell. In the fall of 2006, she will be a Visiting Fellow at Harvard.

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How to Cite

Bock, Jannika. “‘There Is Music in Every Sound’: Thoreau’s Modernist Understanding of Music”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 7, Mar. 2012, doi:10.5283/copas.85.

Issue

Vol. 7 (2006)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.