Hearing Peace: Music, Sound and Notes in Peace Education by Dieter Senghass is a new book due to be released by Springer in April 2025.
When social scientists, publicists and teachers approach the problem of peace, they pay special attention to the causes of violence and war. Recently, however, insights into the causes of peace have gained broad resonance. The question is which factors, individually and in their interaction, are sustainably conducive to peace. Aesthetic dimensions of a peace order, however, usually remain underexposed, although the problem of peace can be impressively conveyed through images of peace. The fact that the essays in this book explain that access to various dimensions of peace through musical and compositional contributions can also be illuminating: Which peace-relevant problems have composers addressed in their works? Striking examples are explained. They are all to be found in the offerings of classical, i.e. value-retaining music of the past five centuries.
Dieter Senghaas, professor emeritus of international relations, University of Bremen, was one of most innovative contemporary German social scientists, with major contributions on peace and development research and on music and peace. He was awarded many prizes: the International Peace Research Award (1987), Göttingen Peace Prize (1999), Culture and Peace Prize of the Villa Ichon in Bremen (2006), and the Leopold-Kohr Prize of the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research (2010).
This book is published as part of Springer's Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice series.