ABSTRACT
Music is the most emotional and direct of all arts. It goes straight into our gut and into our heart. When imprisoned Paulina hears Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ string quartet, it seems to promise transcendence, but this is a deception, for music’s healing capacity has been weaponized as torture. Western music – particularly music without words – has often been conceptualized as universal and transcendental, while its emotional elements, and the essence and function of music in relation to aesthetics and ideology, have been subject to extensive debate. But the falsity of the phrase – false in that music’s healing capacity had been weaponized as torture – is re-enacted as the moment of music in darkness turns to silence and the confession heads towards an acknowledgement of the doctor’s atrocities. Moreover, healing is not a purge or exorcism – it is a process, one that does not erase but rather sees the haunting presence of past in present.
