Forest Muran
Musicology
Office: TC 333
Email: fanthon@uwo.ca
Forest Muran is a doctoral candidate at the University of Western Ontario, studying musicology. Originally from Alberta, Forest moved to London, Ontario to pursue his studies in composition and musicology. His research tends to focus on the relationship between music and various understandings of the transcendent, with his dissertation research exploring the intersection between Romantic “occulture” (spiritual thought outside official religion) and nineteenth-century musical thought, as represented in the works of figures such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder.
More specifically, Forest is interested in how aspects of Romantic occulture, such as theosophical thought, nature-worship, shamanism, drug-induced altered states of consciousness, and speculative exoticism, influenced contemporary writings about music, and how the musicological neglect of these perspectives in scholarship has occasionally led to an incomplete assessment of the contribution of the Romantics.
Generally, Forest’s research often focuses on the intersection of music, politics, and the transcendent, and he has written about topics as diverse as musical censorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the ayahuasca rituals of the Brazilian church of Santo Daime. Forest also releases visionary electronic music under the alias Meznoyume and has collaborated with many other artists as both a pianist and composer.
