Listening Awry: Music and Alterity in German Culture

In his first book, Listening Subjects, David Schwarz succeeded in fusing post-Lacanian psychoanalytic, musical-theoretical, and musical-historical perspectives. In Listening Awry, he expands his project to 'tell a story of historical modernism writ large' - how German music spanning two centuries refracts changes in society and culture, as well as the impacts of concepts introduced by psychoanalysis.

Schwarz shows how post-Lacanian psychoanalysis can be applied to ideological interpellation that connects psychoanalysis to culture and how music theory can ground these considerations in precise details of musical textuality. He listens awry in several ways: by understanding musical meaning in both objective and socially structured ways, by embracing historical and also aesthetic approaches, by addressing high art as well as popular music, and by listening around conventional forms of musical meaning to reach toward that which evades signification.