Insights from the GOING VIRAL Symposium

On 8 November 2024, the European Research Council Project “GOING VIRAL: Music and Emotions during Pandemics (1679–1919)” opened its doors to the public with a symposium entitled “Music – Emotions – Pandemics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives”. This event brought together an array of scholars from fields as diverse as political sociology, hospital architecture, pop music studies, (music) history, music therapy, and vaccinology, all of whom discussed the resonances between music, emotions and pandemics. The relevance of the topic was palpable from the outset, as one speaker had to cancel due to a positive COVID test—a pointed reminder of the pandemic’s lingering shadow. Despite this absence, the symposium’s interdisciplinary spirit fostered a remarkable synergy, with two overarching themes emerging as central: the temporal dimensions of pandemics and the role of technology in mediating pandemic experiences.¹

Time: A Multi-layered Pandemic Experience

In his illuminating paper on pandemic preparedness, public pandemic authority Florian Krammer explored the future: what to expect when and how to prepare effectively. In doing so, he deftly demonstrated how pandemics can end (and begin) at different times for different people. The tripartite framework of pre-COVID, COVID-19, and post-COVID was revealed as being an overly simplistic approach to understanding the temporality of pandemic experiences. Krammer’s insights underscored the need for a more nuanced understanding of pandemic timelines that acknowledges the diversity of individual and collective experiences.

This complexity was mirrored in Scott Edwards’s contribution concerning 17th- and early 18th-century Vienna, where annual commemorations of the Great Plague of 1679 persisted long after said plague had ended. These rituals indicate how that pandemic period was underlined by acts of commemoration and musical expression, serving both as a form of collective healing and as a means of embedding the memory of that crisis into cultural practice.

The presentation of GOING VIRAL’s principal investigator Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild expanded the discussion by her portrayal of the multifaceted role played by bell-ringing during early modern plague outbreaks. The ringing of bells served various functions from structuring time and signalling danger to announcing the dead and communicating with the divine, and it was also part of the medical-spiritual-civic effort to “blow” the plague away by dispersing the poisonous air clouding the city.

Technology: Mediating Pandemic Experiences

The importance of technology in shaping pandemic experiences was another central theme of the symposium. A shared presentation by GOING VIRAL team members Sara Ebrahimi, Emma Schrott, Mark Seow, and Aria Torkanbouri explored various technologies ranging from kitchen utensils to individuals’ own bodies—as seen in hand-clapping—employed during the 2020 lockdown in Britain. Schrott’s paper proposed a fascinating rethinking of the early history of sound recordings, showing how the gramophone shifted listening practices and the experience of “interiority” during the Spanish Flu pandemic in early 20th-century Vienna.

In the most recent pandemic, as well, solitary music listening during lockdowns showed its potential to engender togetherness and community. While Hannah Riedl shared her complex experiences with the mdw’s online music therapy service “My Favourite Song” during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ralf von Appen and Jonas Kastenhuber explored Taylor Swift’s songwriting on her “pandemic albums” Folklore and Evermore. Their analysis of Swift’s complex and unpredictable musical structures showed how these elements captivated fans’ attention and fostered a sense of community through listening to music in isolation.

Conclusion: A Dialogue Across Disciplines

The symposium was a resounding success, fostering fruitful dialogue among scholars and institutions. It reminded us that pandemics are not just medical phenomena but also deeply embedded in social, historical, and emotional landscapes. The resulting interdisciplinary insights promise to enrich our understanding of both historical and contemporary pandemics, and they also offer the field of musicology some fresh perspectives.

As the day concluded with a lively dinner, the conversations continued with unbroken intensity—underscoring the enduring resonance of the themes that had been explored. This symposium hence not only underscored the ongoing impact of pandemics on human experience but also highlighted the power of collective scholarly inquiry to illuminate the complexities of our shared histories.

1. The presentations mentioned in this article represent only part of the programme. For information on all of the papers presented at the symposium, please visit: goingviral.hypotheses.org/our-own-events. This event took place as part of the “GOING VIRAL” project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU research and innovation funding programme “Horizon Europe” (grant agreement no.: 101040297).