Musical expression from conception to reception

Author(s):  
Darla Crispin ◽  
Stefan Östersjö

The word ‘expression’, when applied to music, has a comfortably familiar ring to it. However, on careful scrutiny it turns out to be more elusive than one might think. Intrinsic to musical expression is the idea that within music there is something to be expressed, and that this might be reinforced (or undermined) by the performance strategies adopted. The issue becomes more complicated when one asks whether the ‘something’ in question equates to inchoate feeling, to apprehensible meaning or to both in variable proportions. This chapter reviews historical approaches to musical expression and argues that the concept of Werktreue still shapes much of our thinking and teaching in this area. This leads to a consideration of the respective roles of composer, performer and audience, generating a diagrammatic matrix which is progressively modified throughout the chapter. In its final, most dynamic version, the matrix proposes a ‘field of musical expression’ in which the roles of composer, performer and listener interact. The authors suggest that the time is ripe for more interdisciplinary research on musical expression, where a fusion of approaches—from music psychology and computing to performance studies and artistic research—may be the key to a deeper understanding.

Author(s):  
William P. Seeley

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in these often odd and abstract objects and events that we call artworks? My proposal is that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. My suggestion is that there is a lot that we can learn about art from interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. These kinds of studies can reveal how we recognize artworks, how we differentiate them from other, more quotidian artifacts. In doing so they reveal how artworks function as a unique source of value. Our interactions with artworks draw on a broad base of shared artistic and cultural constitutive of different categories of art. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention, and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. Teasing out how this works can contribute valuable information to our philosophical understanding of art. Attentional Engines explores this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and the neuroscience attention and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts, including questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201
Author(s):  
Emily Carlson ◽  
Ian Cross

Although the fields of music psychology and music therapy share many common interests, research collaboration between the two fields is still somewhat rare. Previous work has identified that disciplinary identities and attitudes towards those in other disciplines are challenges to effective interdisciplinary research. The current study explores such attitudes in music therapy and music psychology. A sample of 123 music therapists and music psychologists answered an online survey regarding their attitudes towards potential interdisciplinary work between the two fields. Analysis of results suggested that participants’ judgements of the attitudes of members of the other discipline were not always accurate. Music therapists indicated a high degree of interest in interdisciplinary research, although in free text answers, both music psychologists and music therapists frequently characterized music therapists as disinterested in science. Music therapists reported seeing significantly greater relevance of music psychology to their own work than did music psychologists of music therapists. Participants’ attitudes were modestly related to their reported personality traits and held values. Results overall indicated interest in, and positive expectations of, interdisciplinary attitudes in both groups, and should be explored in future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-142
Author(s):  
Annette Arlander

Is there a way for the anthropocentric and anthropomorphic art form par excellence, the theatre, or performance art for that matter, to expand beyond their human and humanist bias? Is the term Anthropocene in any way useful for theatre and performance studies or performance-as-research? In the anthology Anthropocene Feminism (Grusin 2017) Rosi Braidotti proposes four theses for a posthumanist feminism: 1) feminism is not a humanism, 2) anthropos is off-center, 3) zoe is the ruling principle, 4) sexuality is a force beyond gender. These assertions can undoubtedly be put on stage, but do they have relevance for developing or understanding performance practices off-stage and off-center, such as those trying to explore alternative ways and sites of performing, like performing with plants? In this text, I examine Braidotti’s affirmative theses and explore their usefulness with regard to performance analysis, use some of my experiments in the artistic research project “Performing with plants” as examples, and consider what the implications and possible uses of these theses are for our understanding of performances with other-than-human entities, which we share our planet with.


2021 ◽  
pp. 257-282
Author(s):  
Ulrike Kranefeld

The German JeKi programme (An instrument for every child) aims at offering primary school children the opportunity to learn an instrument in school. For this, primary schools cooperate with music schools. In order to scientifically evaluate processes and effects of this programme, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) has funded JeKi research for a total of seven years. This article outlines interdisciplinary research questions und key results of studies ranging from music education, music psychology, neurosciences to educational sciences. Central points of interest are aspects of effects, cooperation, quality and participation.


2020 ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
Anshu Surve

Recognising, analysing, and theorising the convergence and collapse of clearly demarcated realities, hierarchies, and categories is at the heart of postmodernism: this premise is at the core of this article when mediating two distinctive theories of criticism. The paper is drawn on the dualitatem of the critical theories of Performativity and Rasa with the objective of initiating deliberations and debates on Indian Aesthetics. Performance studies as an interdisciplinary discourse uses performance as a lens to engage with social, political, religious questions. The Rasa Theory in Indian dramaturgy and aesthetics have been critically analysed and applied on quite a few western and Indian literary works but seldom has a literary work been critically studied through the dual critical lenses of performativity in relation to the Rasa experience. Rasa is a manifestation of emotions translated to the audience in the form of shared experience. The proposed research is a humble attempt to engage with the questions: How performance of a drama and its affective experience can be attributed to the Rasa experience? This interdisciplinary research is contextualised in modern drama where in the complex matrix of performance, its affect becomes a shared Rasa experience that resonates in the form of a narrative with binaries of universality and subjectivity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Bondan Aji Manggala

ABSTRACT This article is part of a report on the results of artistic research (works of music) in the field of music. Briefly expresses experience and some knowledge findings related to the process of creating musical works of art. "Durma" is an editorial for this artwork, which contains three works of music with a popular music creation approach. Inspired by the anxiety of observing the infertility of creativity in the area of popular music in Indonesia, through "Durma" the thought was made to model the creativity of popular music by paying attention to the clash of lyric texts with musical expressions to produce messages and impressions of songs that are not public. In the habits of popular music, the elements of lyric text and musical expression are linear and mutually reinforcing relationships. It has never been imagined before that when a popular musical creation thinks a little freely and tries to clash ideas with an established knowledge of popular music creation, it will instead create ambiguity and the complexity of a refreshing taste. The outputs of the "Durma" artistic research include (1) art work products in the form of audio recordings of three songs entitled (a) Candles, (b) Girls, and (c) Good Night, (2) research reports, and (3) scientific publications articles that unravel the knowledge behind this work process.Keywords : Music creation, popular, clash of musical expressions and lyric texts ABSTRAK Artikel ini adalah bagian dari laporan hasil penelitian artistik (karya musik) di bidang musik. Secara singkat, ini mengungkapkan pengalaman dan beberapa temuan pengetahuan terkait dengan proses penciptaan karya seni musik. "Durma" adalah editorial untuk karya seni ini, yang berisi tiga karya musik dengan pendekatan penciptaan musik populer. Terinspirasi oleh kecemasan mengamati ketidaksuburan kreativitas di bidang musik populer di Indonesia, melalui "Durma" pemikiran dibuat untuk memodelkan kreativitas musik populer dengan memperhatikan benturan teks lirik dengan ekspresi musik untuk menghasilkan pesan dan tayangan lagu yang tidak umum. Dalam kebiasaan musik populer, unsur-unsur teks lirik dan ekspresi musik adalah hubungan linier dan saling menguatkan. Belum pernah terbayangkan sebelumnya bahwa ketika sebuah ciptaan musik populer berpikir sedikit dengan bebas dan mencoba untuk bertabrakan dengan pengetahuan mapan tentang ciptaan musik populer, ia malah akan menciptakan ambiguitas dan kompleksitas rasa yang menyegarkan. Output dari penelitian artistik "Durma" meliputi (1) produk karya seni dalam bentuk rekaman audio dari tiga lagu berjudul (a) Lilin, (b) Gadis, dan (c) Selamat Malam, (2) laporan penelitian, dan (3) artikel publikasi ilmiah yang mengungkap pengetahuan di balik proses kerja ini. Kata kunci: Penciptaan musik, populer, benturan ekspresi musik dan teks lirik


2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Dodson

After a brief introduction to the field of empirical performance studies and its goals and methods, recordings of the titular work by pianists Harold Bauer, Glenn Gould, and Angela Hewitt are discussed. It is suggested that these recordings demonstrate three distinct performance strategies for the piece: Bauer highlights the boundaries of each phrase and projects a teleological design within each phrase and at the level of the entire piece; Gould conveys an arch-shaped design tied to harmonic tension; and Hewitt draws attention not only to the three structural cadences (mm. 7, 15, and 22) but also to a subsidiary V-I motion at m. 11, thereby hinting that it might have structural importance. Parallels between these performance strategies and analyses by Howard Cinnamon, Steve Larson, and Roy Travis are briefly considered. The emphasis on multiplicity in this study distinguishes it from most earlier scholarship on structure and performance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
Birgitte Bauer-Nielsen

Abstract In 2016, I published a book in Danish ‘Koreografens blik – En performativ koreografisk metode til skabelse af en interkulturel forestilling’. This article is a short presentation of this book. The book qualifies the choreographer’s view, that is, it examines and articulates the choreographic process from idea to product. Because of my dual role as choreographer and scholar, my analysis takes practice-based research and artistic research as its points of departure. On the basis of courtship dances, I have created an intercultural dance performance entitled ‘Sommerfuglen’ (‘The Butterfly’). The performers are dancers and musicians from Tanzania, Vietnam and Denmark. Courtship dances have a ritual status in all three cultures. I analyse the translocal process of the development of an intercultural dance performance in which local Tanzanian courtship dance features are analysed. The focal point of the translocal analysis are artistic and social practices that support the dance performance. What changes occur from translocal practice and/or dialogue? How can they be used in a global dialogue? The theories and methods used to analyse performative choreographic practice have their origins in performative anthropology, performance studies and theories of performativity.


1975 ◽  
Vol 15 (05) ◽  
pp. 385-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.J. Clossman

Abstract A model has been developed for describing aquifer influx in a fissured reservoir. This model includes petrophysical properties of good and poor rock, as petrophysical properties of good and poor rock, as well as fissure parameters. For the applications considered thus far, it has been found that flow in the fissures dominates the aquifer performance and that rock properties and spacing between fissures are of lesser importance. For a given aquifer, the fissure permeability and fissure volume fraction appear to be important parameters, as are rock permeability and porosity in cases of a high permeability and porosity in cases of a high percentage of poor rock. percentage of poor rock Introduction The use of material balance has been well established in analysis of reservoir performance. For water drive reservoirs, it is usually desirable to have a functional description of aquifer behavior. Such a description is provided by the functions obtained by van Everdingen and Hurst for homogeneous and isotropic reservoirs. This method uses one set of values of permeability, porosity, and compressibility, and usually requires some history matching or curve fitting for determining the best values. Functions analogous to those of van Everdingen and Hurst also would be useful in reservoir performance studies of fissured reservoirs. Any performance studies of fissured reservoirs. Any attempt to formulate a realistic model for such systems, however, will usually confront the problem of insufficient knowledge of aquifer properties. There usually will be a comparatively large number of degrees of freedom corresponding to parameters introduced into the theory. Nevertheless, such a model should provide insight into the relative importance of certain variables. It may also serve as a framework in which more accurate information, if eventually obtained, could be used. Pressure behavior was used to study fissured reservoir properties by Pollard, who characterized the pressure buildup by three exponentials. These exponentials corresponded to a skin near the well, transient behavior in the fracture system, and transient flow of fluid from matrix to fissures. A characteristics feature of fissured reservoir systems and the reservoir fast fluid pressure response of the fissure system compared with response in the porous matrix. A model that treats this aspect porous matrix. A model that treats this aspect appropriately as proposed by Warren and Root, who assumed that flow of fluid from matrix to fissures could be treated as quasi-steady state. The problem of transient pressure distribution within an actual block of the reservoir was thereby circumvented. This model was further studied by Odeh. Kazemi replaced the network of fractures with an equivalent set of horizontal fractures and solved numerically for pressure distribution in fissures and matrix. Because the dimensionless time scale based on fracture properties and well radius was long, Warren and Root and Odeh were able to use the long-time solution for the constant terminal rate case of pressure behavior in an oil reservoir. In the present instance, the inner aquifer radius may be quite large, so that we must consider smaller dimensionless times, and will require a general solution. The actual times of interest, however, will not be so small as to invalidate the model. This model is being considered for use in fissured carbonate reservoirs where two basic rock types, defined in terms of porosity, are sometimes specified. In such cases, the rock permeabilities usually are very much smaller than the fissure permeability, The matrix can be considered as permeability, The matrix can be considered as being made up of good and poor rock. Wide variations in rock type are often encountered in carbonate reservoirs. The designations of good and "poor" are largely arbitrary. A typical example would be: good porosity greater than 12 percent, and poor-porosity 2 to 12 percent, with the remainder poor-porosity 2 to 12 percent, with the remainder of the rock nonproductive. In some cases, however, it may be sufficient to specify only one rock type. In studying the constant terminal pressure case it is desirable to reformulate the fissured reservoir model to include the additional features of change, boundary conditions and two basic rock types. SPEJ P. 385


Author(s):  
Odell T. Minick ◽  
Hidejiro Yokoo

Mitochondrial alterations were studied in 25 liver biopsies from patients with alcoholic liver disease. Of special interest were the morphologic resemblance of certain fine structural variations in mitochondria and crystalloid inclusions. Four types of alterations within mitochondria were found that seemed to relate to cytoplasmic crystalloids.Type 1 alteration consisted of localized groups of cristae, usually oriented in the long direction of the organelle (Fig. 1A). In this plane they appeared serrated at the periphery with blind endings in the matrix. Other sections revealed a system of equally-spaced diagonal lines lengthwise in the mitochondrion with cristae protruding from both ends (Fig. 1B). Profiles of this inclusion were not unlike tangential cuts of a crystalloid structure frequently seen in enlarged mitochondria described below.


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