Está por escribir la historia de la música diabólica, endemoniada, cuyo primer rastro quizá el de las Sirenas de la Odisea y en nuestro tiempo es utilizada como arma militar, instrumento de tortura y destrucción de la conciencia.

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Las dos referencias capitales, como olvidarlo, son siempre el Dr. Faustus de Mann y Das Glasperlenspiel de Hesse. Pistas históricas recientes:

The idea of using music in psychological warfare goes back to at least the Second World War, when Soviet forces under siege in Leningrad defiantly broadcast Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony into no man’s land and the Office of War Information relayed jazz and other democratic sounds into Nazi-occupied Europe. During the occupation of Germany, from 1945 to 1949, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS), took control of German musical culture, discouraging nationalism and encouraging progressive approaches among younger composers.
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Since the beginning of American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, music has routinely been used during interrogations at Guantánamo and elsewhere. The playing of loud music, customarily hip-hop or heavy metal, is part of a standard procedure that the Department of the Army describes as “futility”: “[The] collector convinces the source that resistance to questioning is futile. This engenders a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness on the part of the source.” Suzanne Cusick, a musicologist who teaches a course on Soundscapes of Contemporary War at N.Y.U., has studied accounts of such interrogations and gathered her findings in an article for the Journal of the Society for American Music. When I asked Cusick whether she considered these tactics a new development in the evolution of music as a weapon of war, she answered that there are, in fact, some disturbing historical precedents, not least the forced musical rituals at Nazi concentration camps. [New Yorker, 30 mayo 08. Alex Ross, Futility Music].

● Rostropóvich: el arte nos hará libres.
● Música olímpica, música endemoniada.
● Música en este Infierno.