Editorial 2015/6: (En)Sounding the Future

Abstract

As we started planning this issue, our initial idea and working title was the untrans- latable German term “Zukunftsmusik.” Quite literally, this means “music of the fu- ture” and little did we know that this term not only existed in colloquial German (in the sense of a utopian vision of something that will only come to pass in the not-so- near future) but, in fact, had a concrete musical history that connects with none other than Richard Wagner.1 Even though originally linked mostly with the music of Franz Liszt, the term quickly became associated with Wagner as he published his es- say “Zukunftsmusik” in 1860/1861. As first used, the term was meant as a slander- ous term for music that went beyond existing traditional contours of what was con- sidered to be acceptable music. This polemical connotation, to some extent, has stuck in the German figurative usage of the term “Zukunftsmusik,” which denotesutopian dreams of things not yet imaginable. While “Zukunftsmusik,” thus, contin- ues to refer to something outrageously futuristic, the general inflection of the term is overly optimistic rather than polemically ridiculing, as the usage was in Wagner’s times. Going beyond this narrow sense of “music of the future,” sounds of the future as used in the title of this special issue does not imply utopian desire but more gen- erally refers to the various ways in which sound is deployed to create a sense of futurity, whether aspirational (involving hope) or anticipatory (involving fear and risk).