Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Social Sciences
First Advisor
Vesperi, Maria
Area of Concentration
Sound Studies
Abstract
Music has the ability to evoke complex and ambiguous feelings in listeners. Many of these feelings are facilitated by the mirror neuron system, with which individuals process and internally mirror musical movements and gestures via neural motor pathways to simulate empathy. As a result, music has been used by countless organizations to influence social behavior, ranging from the construction of identity through musical propaganda to resistance music against state-enforced definitions of national identity. Focusing primarily on Wagner’s use of operatic scores to spread anti-Semitism, this thesis explores music’s role in promoting social conformity alongside its potential for expanding or manipulating an individual’s empathetic tendencies from the perspectives of phenomenology regarding embodied cognition and co-subjectivity, psychoacoustics, and structural anthropology alongside ritual theory.
Recommended Citation
Weiss, Elijah, "MUSIC, EMBODIED COGNITION, AND ANTI-SEMITISM IN WAGNER’S RING CYCLE: AN ANALYSIS OF MUSICAL GESTURES AND THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES THEY REINFORCE" (2019). Theses & ETDs. 5837.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/5837