Music and Sound Studies Colloquium: Rachel Mundy, Style Criticism and the Song of the Humpback Whale

The scientific discovery of humpback whale song in 1971 has striking similarities to a mode of music analysis fostered at Cornell University in the 1950s under musicologist Donald Jay Grout. This talk turns to Grout and one of his students, Katy Payne, to explore the musical passion that made it possible to hear beyond human musicality. By telling this story, Mundy is describing the origins of a history that has not yet come to pass: the reinvention of modern ethics in the aftermath of Western humanism.

Mundy's work is concerned with the way animal musicality has defined modern notions of life and rights for a generation of listeners shaped by ecological crisis. Using cases that connect human rights to animal voices, Mundy brings musical science into conversation with Western beliefs about race, gender, nation, and other forms of difference.