Research shows that there are a number of books on the topic of 'grotesque music,' such as Esti Sheinberg's Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich. This book "offers a multidisciplinary approach to music and compares musical devices with the artistic principles and literary analyses of satire, irony, parody and the grotesque." There is also Julie Brown's Bartok and the Grotesque, and the English translation of composer Hector Berlioz's The musical madhouse: Les grotesques de la musique.
However, these books focus upon music in the classical sense. What I notice about contemporary uses of 'grotesque' in music is that they mostly occur in what I'd call (in my ignorance) the heavy metal genre. Marilyn Manson's fifth album was The Golden Age of Grotesque, featuring a song of the same name (lyrics here). There is a Swedish death metal band called Grotesque. The word grotesque also appears in a number of song titles, most enthusiastically vile. A YouTube search should have you retching in the acceptable manner.
This is a fairly representative example, by UK band Benediction:
You know, once you adjust to the hair and the growling, the lyrics are interesting:
Inner deformity, such a foul deceptive rot.
Conceiving the grotesque. Nothing is but what is not.
Screeds of verbiage, never explained. Gazing at the flames.
Inside the dungeon or my skull, only mawkish thoughts remains.
Grotesque addict, forever shadowed,
darkness clouding me. Absurdity now fate.
Bizzarre dreams, an horrendous nightmare,
nothing left but to hallucinate.
Dementia reigns, a predilection. Total order cease.
Rescrudescent, this condition. Coherency decrease.
Humanity is not to shine, in my bloodless face.
Magnified in travesty, I have been displaced.
See with the eye of the mind. That the lie will speak.
Traumatic cracks in my addiction, made the future bleak.
Paralysed to ruminate, embolismic bitter jest.
Ontologically I'm dead, reborn as the grotesque.
THE GROTESQUE!
Here is another example with intriguing lyrics, by German group Ashes to Ember:
I'm on the front line of your misery
I'm falling down, you'll follow me
We fall down
Until we hit the ground
In this place
I shall embrace
My grotesque
My inner plague
And in this place
You won't see my face
My grotesque
My inner curse
Can I please die now?
Let me go away
Cause I don't want you to share
My disease
Please don't look at me
This the curse of former vanity
That's what I deserve,
So please don't pity me
I fall down
Until I hit the ground
The endless fear
To fail
To be so near
But so far away
In this place
I shall embrace
My grotesque
My inner plague
In this place
You won't see my face
My grotesque
My inner curse
Can I please die now?
Let me go away
I don't want you to share
My disease
In just two songs there seems to be a theme emerging. The grotesque, in both, is imagined as an inner state that signifies not only the emotional and physical breakdown of the individual (My grotesque/My inner plague) but its reconstruction in a new image (Ontologically I'm dead/reborn as the grotesque).
Oh, perhaps there's space for one more chapter...
In my experience and preference for the grotesque as an aesthetic principle, music is the single most strikingly poignant medium for this aesthetic due to its already detached and abstracted nature. In fact, there is no more grotesque music than that composed in the early 20th century classical. I truly have yet to find any art that brings forth the necessary Schizotypal and isolating elements of the grotesque more than the works of Bela Bartók, Alban Berg, and Maurice Ravel (although his are a bit more subtle). I highly suggest immersing yourself in "Sonata For Piani" by Alban Berg and reporting on your affective state that was achieved during the piece.
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