Psyche & Imagination - Online Abstract
Academic Presentations

Victoria Adamenko

Jung and Twentieth-Century Music

Jungian studies aid in the hermeneutical analysis of several stylistically and chronologically diverse paths in the field of twentieth-century music. This paper will examine four such paths.

First, in Jungian theory, the reawakening of the collective memory of humankind occurs in the individual psyche as dreams or artistic creations. A musical reawakening is exemplified in Scriabins Mysterium and its Predvaritelnoe deistvo (the Preliminary Action) of 1914-15, which was intended to be a collective act and a memory. Although independent from Jung, Scriabin also proclaimed the importance of collective memory of mankind in its mythic function of reliving the primal integration, almost synchronously with the former. The composers work paralleled the early stage of Jungs research in particular, the publication in 1912 of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.

Second, Stravinskys works of the 1913-1930s also chronologically paralleled Jungs theory, and it has been speculated that Stravinsky believed in the powers of the subconscious as a reliable guide (Charles Joseph, 2001). Indeed, Freuds theory of subconscious was widely spread in artistic intellectual circles of that time, and Stravinsky implied unconscious influences in his comment on the process of composing. In a series of ritualistic compositions starting with Le Sacre through Les Noces, Oedipus Rex, and the Symphony of Psalms, Stravinsky created an image of a collective sacred action. The composers fascination with the notion of the collective man is clear. Stravinsky attempts to re-create, through a ritual, wholeness as an ideal and primary state, the mythic concept reconstructed in Jungs writings.

Third, the turn to the pre-reflective psychology is aimed at achieving wholeness, or the healing of the fragmented personality, in Jungian terms. Wholeness can be attained through ritual and its symbolic forms. Ritualism, this distinct feature of twentieth-century music, often finds its representation through the archetypal figure of a circle. According to Jung, the structure of self is also circularly shaped. The sheer number of circularly notated scores, from Crumb to Ekimovsky, indicates that the archetype of the circle flourished in twentieth-century music. Yet little research has been done on the link between circular notation and Jungian archetypes.

Fourth, Jung offers a perspective on the formation of artistic images in some twentieth-century musical compositional processes. In the process of creating a work of art, the unconscious part of the psyche first produces an initial conception or impulse, with which the artist becomes consciously preoccupied. This process is exemplified by the works of the American composer Pauline Oliveros, who first turned to mandalas unconsciously and then further reflected and recreated them in her compositions. The composer describes her first engagement with the mandalas as occurring early in her childhood, when she was playing with mandalic drawings. At that time, she says, she did not know they were mandalas. Later, she preoccupied herself consciously with meditative and ritualistic forms, incorporating them into her compositions and studied Jungian archetypes as a Guggenheim scholar.

Victoria Adamenko holds Ph.D. in Musicology from Rutgers University , USA . Her book, Neo-Mythologism in Twentieth-Century Music, will be published by Pendragon Press in autumn of 2006. She published articles in Journal of Musicological Research, American Music, and European Journal for Semiotic Studies.