GOING VIRAL. Music and Emotions during Pandemics (1679-1919)
A European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant Project
1 September 2022 – 31 August 2027, funded by the European Union
Prof Dr Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild
University Professor of Musicology, mdw – University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Project Description
Within days of Covid-19 reaching Europe in early 2020, music had emerged as one of the most prominent media for emotional engagement with the effects of lockdown, sickness and grief. Its remarkable primacy for expressing, navigating and shaping emotional pandemic experiences was quickly picked up by researchers and journalists who showed an immediate interest in finding evidence both for the role of music in past pandemics and for continuities across time. It quickly transpired, though, that they lacked established categories, shared methodologies and sufficient historical knowledge to describe and to compare the phenomenon adequately.
The study of music in pandemics, and especially of its emotional significance, is both underdeveloped and urgently needed – and has the potential to constitute a major new field of research on music, emotions and pandemics alike.
GOING VIRAL will be the first study to provide a comparative history of the imbrication of music in the emotional experiences of pandemics. Its major research aims are
- to develop an innovative conceptualisation and methodology for studying music and emotions across history, building on the equally well-regarded approaches “musicking as social practice” and “emotions as embodied practices”;
- to generate new and indepth historical knowledge about music’s emotional dimensions in three pandemic setting from late 17th- to early 20th-century Europe, highlighting both differences and continuities;
- to provide a solid conceptual, methodological and historical foundation for comparative studies on music, emotions and pandemics across a vast range of disciplines.
GOING VIRAL’s results will not only be applicable in related historical settings but also enable a meaningful interdisciplinary discourse with the social and natural sciences about music end emotions in pandemics, including Covid-19.
Funded by the European Union (ERC, GOING VIRAL, project number 101040297). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.