Solemn Resonances: The Incomplete Monument and the Posthumous Soundscape
Initially proposing working definitions of the terms ‘soundscape’ (briefly: the set of possible sounds in a particular place and time) and ‘soundspace’ (a particular, determined slice of a possible set of sounds), the article examines brief excerpts from the writings of François Rabelais and Victor Hugo, as well as a striking 2005 ‘completion’ of the Mozart Requiem by the contemporary Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas (Sieben Klangräume accompanying the unfinished fragments of Mozart's Requiem KV 626). All of the works examined deploy, in their way, the idea of a post-mortem soundscape. The evocation of the sounds of a world beyond our knowing suggests awe at the idea of transcending death but also lays bare some of the ideological pitfalls of memorialization.