Loss and Retrieval in Music

Abstract: According to Freud, striving to retrieve “the happiness that has been lost” (Freud, 1905, p. 222), i.e. the hypothetical first time of need satisfaction, is a primordial motor of psychic activity. It is also an issue in all music since all music is already gone the moment it happens and can never be retrieved in its full actuality. But there is also music that has loss and the impossibility of retrieval as its specific content and develops specific signatures to express this as part of the constitution of the musical subject. This arises in a specific historical moment when the promise of universal happiness for all mankind meets with disillusionment and modern forlornness for the first time finds expression in art.