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In this chapter, I discuss the artistic representation of the musical illustration of funeral rites and ceremonies in contemporary Poland. The death of a person in many cultures is perceived as an important point in the life of a given community, especially a family; hence, people tend to express feelings stemming from these circumstances through art. Songs sung at funerals and during the mourning period have been used for centuries as a way for the living to express their grief for the person who has died. From an anthropological point of view, the main function of music accompanying funeral rites is to help family and friends of the deceased recover from their loss.

To illustrate my argument, I analyse the recording of folk songs by Adam Strug and Kwadrofonik: ‘Requiem Ludowe’ (‘The Folk Requiem’), released on CD in 2013. The musical motifs and lyrical themes are based on original folk tunes of Eastern Poland (Podlasie and Lubelszczyzna regions) that are still used in the villages during the bereavement period. The songs on the CD, which are: ‘Czemu tak rychło, Panie’ (‘Why is it So Soon, my Lord’); ‘Żegnam cię mój świecie wesoły’ (‘Goodbye my Merry World’); ‘Żegnam was mitry i korony’ (‘Goodbye to you Mithra and Crowns’); ‘Żegnam was wszystkie elementa’ (‘Goodbye to you all the Elements’); ‘Powiem prawdę świecie tobie’ (‘I Shall Tell you the Truth, my World’); ‘Piekło’ (‘The Hell’); ‘Czyściec’ (‘The Purgatory’); ‘Niebo’ (‘The Heaven’); and ‘Wieczność’ (‘The Eternity’) are rooted in Christian funeral traditions and they are supplemented by elements of Slavic folklore.

The lyrics of the mourning songs published on the recording display a specific attitude to the mythology of death and bereavement present in the culture of Polish peasants. The main themes of these folk songs, namely, the praise of the deceased, the grief of the remaining family, the preparation of the dead one for eternal life or the attempts to cross the threshold of life and death, are presented by the artists as the soul’s journey from the Earth to the Underworld, and through Purgatory to Eternal life as a final stage of a person’s destination. They show how the rural people imagine death itself and express their feelings of loss and grief in art to overcome the fear of the unknown.

For centuries, death has proved itself a well-spring of inspiration for artists and musicians. In particular, an artist's own experiences with death and bereavement often overflow into their creative process, giving birth to artworks which channel grief and embodied experience. Morning Heroes by the British composer Sir Arthur Bliss (1891–1975) is a paradigm of such praxis.

Morning Heroes (1930) was written in memory of Bliss's brother, Kennard, who was killed in action during the First World War. Using an anthology of texts, the work aims to enshrine a universal experience of war for both soldier and civilian and maintains its connection with the British War Requiem through its use of musico-funerary rhetoric. Bliss, who converted to Catholicism during the war, wrote several times in his later life about the spiritual nature of music, specifically its ability to heal and bring peace. It is significant, therefore, that Morning Heroes was to act as a catharsis for Bliss, sublimating his recurring nightmares of the war.

Adopting Douglas Davies' (2017) ‘words against death’ idea, this chapter considers Sir Arthur Bliss's Morning Heroes as ‘music against death’ through an examination of Bliss's use of text and music to craft a requiem in sound. It explores Bliss's use of death rhetoric and embodied experience to create a vehicle for grief and situates this process within the context of his own spiritual philosophies.

‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armour-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little, he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes’ (Kafka, The Metamorphosis, 1915, p. 19).

Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915) appears in disability theory to aid explanation for those who experience acquired disability. This allegory offers a visceral picture of what a person can go through; there is a before and an after, a death and a life. I was able-bodied, capable, bursting with energy and then I woke up one morning utterly transformed. I no longer recognise myself; my consciousness mourns my previous existence, and I must come to terms with my reconstituted self.

It is that ‘other’ that I identify with now and, to discover what that means, I began composing a Requiem Mass. I have a long love affair with them; I have sung and conducted them and their ability to pierce the veil between life and death is of particular significance to me. This chapter examines the ways in which my acquired disability, this mystical death, impacts and informs my composition.

This tribute to Stafford Beer is written from the particular situation of a Latin American country. Within this context, we believe that it could be convenient to dissolve the systems movement to assume an ethical‐political position that transforms the relations of dependence in the world‐system from the point of view of economic development. A contribution to this task is the formation of amplifiers of regulatory capacity that has been developed in Colombia. In this paper, we present some preliminary advances of autoethospoiesis and some of its future perspectives of research and action. One of our main objectives is to apply this functor with recurrent, recursive, and incursive operators to the world‐system model.

Attempts to specify and to explicate some of the most important reasons for the failure of communism or state socialism. Analyses the general case of Eastern Europe, then applies the analysis to the specific case of Hungary. Second, deduces a model of market socialism from the theories of Fred M. Taylor and Oskar Lange. Argues that the Taylor‐Lange model of market socialism certainly could be and probably would be a completely valid and viable economic system. Proposes, moreover, that this system of market socialism may prove a better alternative economic system than capitalism for the Eastern European nations that have abandoned communism.

This study aims to explore the engagement between accounting and music in the social and relational construction of accountability. The authors conceive this construction as a dynamic and recursive interplay between the giving of different accounts and the responses that these accounts provoke. The authors investigate the emotional dimension of this interplay, as it is also triggered by music, feeding back into how accountability is constructed and evolves over time.

This study relies upon a historical analysis of archival and secondary sources about the main music concert organized in 1913 by the founder of “Accademia Chigiana”, one of the leading music academies in Italy. The concert celebrated the first centenary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, a worldwide famous Italian music composer, and icon of Italian national sentiment.

This study shows that music and accounting were profoundly intertwined in the social and relational construction of accountability for the 1913 concert. Accountability evolved through different accounts, also linked to music, and the complex emotional reactions these accounts provoked in the audiences, citizens, media and institutions, leading to always further responses and accounts in the ongoing construction of accountability.

This study extends prior literature on the chameleonic nature of accountability, as well as on its relational and emotional dimensions. The study shows that accountability is relationally constructed and evolves over time through the giving of accounts and the emotional reaction they provoke from others, feeding into further responses and accounts of the accountable subject. The authors show how the chameleonic nature of accountability permeates not only the accounts and the relations of accountability but also the subjects giving and demanding the accounts: these subjects change as chameleons through their interactions and emotions, feeding into the dynamic construction of accountability. The authors also show how arts, like music, can participate in the chameleonic nature of accountability and of its subjects, precisely by engaging with their emotional reactions and responses.