At the same time, music is also frequently said to have actual suicidal effects. By way of example: in psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Falret\u2019s treatise on suicide (1822), a young woman is reported to have felt suicidal listening to arias from the opera Nina<\/i>; the BBC is said to have refrained from playing the song \u201cGloomy Sunday\u201d (original title: \u201cSzomor\u00fa vas\u00e1rnap\u201d), widely known as the \u201cHungarian Suicide Song\u201d, until 2002; and in the USA, the 1980s witnessed repeated lawsuits by parents against heavy metal musicians whose songs had supposedly inspired their children to commit suicide.<\/p>\n
Although these lawsuits were all unsuccessful, the genre of heavy metal still sits atop the list of \u201cusual suspects\u201d and hardly ever goes unmentioned in studies on the relationship between young people\u2019s psychological health and\/or suicide rates and their musical preferences. This led groups such as the California-based band Suicidal Tendencies, founded in 1982, to react quite pointedly in their songs to the societal symptoms of a \u201cmoral panic\u201d that was virulent at the time and led to such things as the establishment of the Parental Music Resource Center by the so-called Washington Wives, who included Susan Baker and\u2014most prominently\u2014Tipper Gore: \u201cIs it responsible to promote teen suicide […] in the midst of a national epidemic?\u201d Gore\u2019s accusatory question, directed at the music industry and musicians themselves, betrayed a lack of critical reflection on the obvious impermissibility of such simple explanations.<\/p>\n
Bandwagon effects triggered by reporting in the media and fictional depictions of suicide have been termed the \u201cWerther effect\u201d after the character in Goethe\u2019s novel, and the question of whether portrayals of suicide in literature, film, and\/or music actually can cause copycat suicides or even suicide epidemics continues to be controversially discussed. The Netflix series 13 Reasons Why<\/i>, for instance, touched off just such a debate\u2014with the accusation being voiced that the show romanticised the suicide of main character Hannah Baker. This accusation was probably made as loud as it was because the show speaks to a young and hence vulnerable mass audience. Music features prominently in this series, with dark and melancholy ambient music by Eskmo plus a number of suicide-related \u201cteen angst\u201d songs (including Billy Eilish\u2019s \u201cBored\u201d) from all corners of youth music culture making for a commensurately charged emotional atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Another phenomenon, named in a way similar to the aforementioned \u201cWerther effect\u201d, is the \u201cPapageno effect\u201d, which refers to the character of Papageno in Mozart\u2019s Die Zauberfl\u00f6te<\/i> and arises from media reports and other depictions of successfully overcome suicidal crises. In the opera, however, it is the three child-spirits who succeed in stopping Papageno\u2014as they had done before with the lovesick Pamina\u2014from going through with his plans, for which reason one would really have to speak of the \u201cThree Child-Spirits effect\u201d.<\/p>\n
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt begins his book My Life with Mozart <\/i>with the words: \u201cHe was the first to get in touch. One day when I was fifteen, he sent me some music. It changed my life. Or, much rather: it kept me alive. Without it, I would long since be dead.\u201d In the introduction to this collection of letters to Mozart, the Franco-Belgian author portrays impressively how experiencing a rehearsal of Le Nozze di Figaro<\/i> at the Opera of Lyon jolted the book\u2019s deeply hopeless and suicidal young protagonist out of his world-weariness: \u201cMy vital spirits returned. [\u2026] Mozart had rescued me. [\u2026] Healing through beauty\u2026. Without a doubt, practically no psychologist would have ever thought to treat me with such a therapy.\u201d And indeed, the selection of music to which young people listen in order to regulate themselves emotionally may sometimes, at least from the perspective of grown-ups or therapeutic \u201cexperts\u201d, seem rather counterintuitive. As we were able to ascertain via a study we conducted in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, more than a few of the surveyed patients deliberately selected content from the \u201cproblem music\u201d categories alluded to above specifically in order to avoid injuring themselves and\/or to distance themselves from suicidal thoughts (Stegemann et al., 2010).<\/p>\n
A symposium organised by the Department of Musicology and Performance Studies and the Department of Music Therapy, now slated to take place (following two postponements due to COVID-19) on 6 and 7 May 2022 in the Liszt-Saal, will bring together participants from the fields of cultural studies, musicology, medicine, music therapy, psychotherapy, and suicide research in order to examine and discuss this topic from their diverse perspectives. This event will also see music therapy students as well as students from the Music Education for Voice and Instruments (IGP) programme present the outcomes of their seminar on the role of music in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why<\/i>, which was held during the 2021\/22 winter semester. On the evening of its second day (Saturday), the symposium will conclude with a panel discussion plus a concert with music ranging from Claudio Monteverdi\u2019s \u201cLamento d\u2019Arianna\u201d to Georg Danzer\u2019s \u201cHeite drah i mi ham\u201d.<\/p>\n
With contributions by Andy R. Brown, Julia Heimerdinger, Susanne Korn, Thomas Macho, Paul Plener, Hannah Riedl, Dan Rujescu, Claudius Stein, Thomas Stegemann, Benedikt Till, Harm Willms, and students of the mdw. Compilation and rehearsal of the concert programme: Tanya Aspelmeier and Ottokar Prochazka.<\/p>\n