Like other
distinctive cultures, Western culture has long struggled against its own
particular demons. Especially during the period from the Dark Ages through the
Renaissance, Europeans viewed this struggle literally as a battle with the
Devil and his cohorts for the souls of humanity. By the eighteenth century,
however, many Western thinkers had come to view the dark forces that their
ancestors so feared and struggled against as essentially a product of
destructive beliefs, social institutions, and practices. They disputed
philosophies that promoted absolute rule, a rigid class system, impoverishment
of the vast majority, and extreme judicial inequality; and they disputed the
idea that a rigidly structured human hierarchy was justified as part of a
divinely ordained order. This challenge to traditional authority reached a
culmination during the eighteenth century Enlightenment and helped precipitate
the revolutions that followed. It brought
with it eventual change to societal institutions and, among other things, put a
formal end in the West to one of the world’s great evils: slavery.
Much of what occurred is
well-documented. What has been largely overlooked is the sizable role that
Western music and the affective theories that helped shape it have played in
this history. This book recounts the dark side of that extraordinary and often
surprising influence on Western culture and history.
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