An Ethnomusicological Perspective on Musical Style, with Reference to Music for Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddles

1993 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan P. J. Stock
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Partial Solution ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
The Body ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Made In

In a major publication of 1983 Bruno Netti identified the explanation of musical style as a central problem in ethnomusicological research. This essay is intended to offer a partial solution of that problem, seeking to define musical style as an abstraction of the matrix of cognitive and physical aspects which constitute human music-making. In the cognitive part of this equation I include the critically important role played by social context, concurring with John Blacking's statement that ‘the creation of a musical style is the result of conscious decisions about the organization of musical symbols in the context of real or imagined social interaction’. However, in this category, I accord equal recognition to the body of musical and music-related knowledge held by a musician or any other member of society, whether this knowledge is implicitly assumed or explicitly acknowledged, historically conditioned or geographically referent, abstractly theoretical or firmly practical. The ‘conscious decisions’ Blacking points to are indeed made in the actual or perceptual domain of social interaction, but they are also considered from the cognitive perspective of acquired musical thought. Physical ingredients which help form the concept of musical style include the limits and possibilities of the human body and its movement patterns and material factors such as the parameters of any musical instrument (size, shape, posture, potential playing techniques, etc.) and performance location.

Processes of Instrumental Learning: The Development of Musical Expertise

2012 ◽  
pp. 657-676
Author(s):  
Susan Hallam ◽  
Alfredo Bautista
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Instrumental Learning ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Recreational Activity ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Require Time ◽  
Music Making ◽  
And Performance

This article explores the processes underlying learning to play an instrument. The processes underpinning the learning of a musical instrument require time, effort, and commitment, although the extent to which these are needed depends on the nature of the music itself and the particular cultural traditions that pertain in relation to its creation and performance. Widening participation in instrumental learning means that most learners will engage with music-making in the longer term as a recreational activity either through amateur music-making or as listeners. What they need to develop as a result of their learning is a love of music and the meta-cognitive skills that will support them throughout their lifetimes in whatever musical activities they choose to pursue. To reflect these changes, music educators need to consider what their curricular priorities should be. Learning is most enjoyable when what is to be learned is challenging (not too easy or too difficult) and there is a sense of achievement when it has been mastered.

Field Theory and the Play of Musical Performance

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-283
Author(s):  
Eleanor Stubley
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Instructional Strategies ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Way

This paper utilizes the vocabulary and methodological concepts of field theory to explore how play can arise in and through performance. Field is defined as a space or potential for action. The action of play is grounded in an open and expanding space which through a dialectic interplay of feelings motivates self-exploration. The action of musical performance is grounded in a reaching out movement through which the performer forges and sustains a musical voice. The field can create a space for play when the music-making re-directs or challenges the focus of the musical voice. The methodological approach recognizes and respects differences in the way music is made in different cultural traditions. It also articulates a need to develop instructional strategies which treat musical style as a ritualistic process and which define the role of the teacher as a musician.1

Disclaimer Footnotes in Ads: Discrepancies between Purpose and Performance

1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen R. Foxman ◽  
Darrel D. Muehling ◽  
Patrick A. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
The Body ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Intended Purpose ◽  
Deceptive Advertising ◽  
Brand Attributes ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Promotional Messages ◽  
Made In

Marketers use disclaimer footnotes in ads to clarify or deflate claims made in the body of the ad. This is done either to avoid possible charges of misleading or deceptive advertising, or because the FTC has required companies to include an affirmative disclosure in their promotional messages. The present study finds that disclaimer footnotes may not achieve their intended purpose of providing consumers with more complete information for decision-making. Though the incorporation of footnoted disclaimers does not affect comprehension of most claims made in the body of the ad, it does positively affect consumers’ comprehension of disclaimer-related claims. However, the type of footnote (informational vs. restrictive) and the method of presentation (small vs. large print) can significantly influence consumer belief formation about certain brand attributes. Some types and formats of disclaimer footnotes, therefore, may fail to fulfill their intended purpose because consumers are less likely to process them correctly.

scholarly journals Musicology, Performance, Slavery: Intellectual Despotism and the Politics of Musical Understanding

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 59-90
Author(s):  
Dillon Parmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Research University ◽  
The Body ◽  
Institutional Identity ◽  
Authoritative Knowledge ◽  
Music Making ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Musical Understanding ◽  
Do So

This essay focuses on the uneasy relationship between scholarship and performance. I argue that this uneasiness stems from a still pervasive hierarchy, one that gives scholarship the power to regulate, even repress, what musicians themselves know and understand of music through the act of performing. This relation has far-reaching consequences that not only underscore basic epistemological formulations concerning the nature of both music and performance, but also govern what constitutes authoritative knowledge about the art. Indeed, in the modern research university, this relationship effectively accords epistemological legitimacy to every institutional identity that has something to say about music except that of the musician herself. If the musician and her activity figure in, they do so in subordinate positions, as objects to be studied, interviewed, prodded, or measured, or as vehicles for the application of disciplinary or research-based understanding. Such a situation enacts a power dynamic disturbingly similar to those operative in political structures founded on class difference, social inequality, and slavery. Indeed, I trace this dynamic back to Aristotle’sPolitics,where his defence of slavery effectively separates the work of thought from that of the body so as to keep thought elevated and pure. The relevance of this separation to musical matters becomes explicit in Boethian music theory, where those who merely think about music become musical authorities, while those who make music (whether as composers or performers) remain largely ignorant of what they are doing. Excerpts from musicological literature past and present show that this division, what might be called “intellectual despotism,” continues to underwrite institutional music discourse in at least four salient ways: (1) by distorting music from a practice into an object to be observed; (2) by privileging listener-spectatorship and the experience of music had therein; (3) by promoting to sole epistemological authority those who speak to music through the mouthpieces of other disciplinary voices; and finally (4) by constructing musicians as benighted subjects who need to be “educated,” “informed,” or “civilized” by scholarship. The article concludes by outlining a program for undermining this politics, one that places musicians, as well as the knowledge embodied in music-making, at the foundation of musical understanding.

scholarly journals Motor Imagery in Perception and Performance of Sound and Music

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Jan Schacher
Keyword(s):  
Motor Imagery ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Sound Perception ◽  
Conventional Instruments ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance

Jan Schacher asks what it is to imagine and initiate an action on a musical instrument. For Schacher, the body is the central element of listening and sound perception, and thus the body, in an embodied and enactive sense, becomes the focus for musicking with both conventional instruments and digital instruments, where, in the latter case, bodily schemata are replaced by metaphors and instrumental representations. This last theme provides a significant topic of enquiry in the chapter, and it is explored from a number of angles, chief among which is a focus (through the lenses of motor imagery and imagination in music) on relations between inner and outer aspects of our ways and means of listening to and performing both music and sound. Ultimately, Schacher identifies a tension underlying digital musical performance brought about by the fracturing of the “action-sound” bond, a bond that is the basis for our sonic perception not only of the natural world but also of the world of culturally defined musical performance.

Collaborative composition and performance in arts and health workshops

2021 ◽  
pp. 261-266
Author(s):  
James Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Social Prescribing ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Ensemble Performance ◽  
Arts And Health ◽  
And Performance

The “Collective Music-Making as Social Interaction” (CMSI) study was conducted at Vic University, Catalonia. The project was a music-based arts and health workshop, featuring as part of the University’s Art as a Tool for Social Transformation program, aimed to explore how music and the design of bespoke notation can be used in groups to support social interaction among participants. Findings identified within the experiences of participants included discovery, expression, perception, recognition, imagination, communication, cohesiveness, confidence, and self-esteem. The project reveals how a creative, collaborative process can demonstrate a group’s capacity to learn new ways of socially interacting and communicating. The study also shows how the collective product (both composition and ensemble performance) is representative of such social interaction. It is suggested that designing musical notation in collective workshops can facilitate healthy engagement between individuals, proposing extensions of the model for use with arts on prescription and social prescribing service users.

scholarly journals The Activity and Artistry of Solo Vocal Performance: Insights from Investigative Observations and Interviews with Western Classical Singers

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 109-140
Author(s):  
Jane W. Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Musical Communication ◽  
Classical Singers

This paper draws on data collected from four professional solo classical singers as they prepared and performed the same piece, each working with the same accompanist. It examines their thoughts and feelings — inner mental states — as recalled and expressed in interview, and their perceptible outer states as observed in their physical behaviours. Data were collected from both talk-aloud reflections on the activities of practice, rehearsal and performance, and observer evaluations of rehearsals and performance as observed in video recordings. The aims of these reflections were to investigate: I) the nature of mental and bodily action for technical and expressive musical communication; ii) the nature of social interaction within the rehearsal and performing contexts; iii) overall, this work is undertaken to broaden knowledge and understanding of how an expert vocal performance is prepared, delivered and perceived. Results suggest that a subtle interplay of social and musical communication is necessary to achieve a “good performance”. These ideas are discussed in terms of a social theory relating to how inner and outer mental states are displayed through the body in musical performance.

‘Man Is Ill Because He Is Badly Constructed’: Artaud, Klossowski and Deleuze in Search for the Earth Inside

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Dolphijn
Keyword(s):  
Performance Art ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Body ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
And Performance

Starting with Antonin Artaud's radio play To Have Done With The Judgement Of God, this article analyses the ways in which Artaud's idea of the body without organs links up with various of his writings on the body and bodily theatre and with Deleuze and Guattari's later development of his ideas. Using Klossowski (or Klossowski's Nietzsche) to explain how the dominance of dialogue equals the dominance of God, I go on to examine how the Son (the facialised body), the Father (Language) and the Holy Spirit (Subjectification), need to be warded off in order to revitalize the body, reuniting it with ‘the earth’ it has been separated from. Artaud's writings on Balinese dancing and the Tarahumaran people pave the way for the new body to appear. Reconstructing the body through bodily practices, through religion and above all through art, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, we are introduced not only to new ways of thinking theatre and performance art, but to life itself.

Music of Tragedy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi A. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Instrumental Accompaniment ◽  
And Performance

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Drawing on the ancient conception of mousikē, in which words, song, dance, and instrumental accompaniment were closely linked, Naomi Weiss emphasizes the interplay of performance and imagination—the connection between the chorus’s own live singing and dancing in the theater and the images of music-making that frequently appear in their songs. Through detailed readings of four plays, she argues that the mousikē referred to and imagined in these plays is central to the progression of the dramatic action and to ancient audiences’ experiences of tragedy itself. She situates Euripides’s experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousikē within a broader cultural context, and in doing so, she shows how he both continues the practices of his tragic predecessors and also departs from them, reinventing traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Goldschmidt ◽  
Barbara Graziosi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Specific Site ◽  
Entire Volume ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Classical Poetry ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Made In

The Introduction sheds light on the reception of classical poetry by focusing on the materiality of the poets’ bodies and their tombs. It outlines four sets of issues, or commonplaces, that govern the organization of the entire volume. The first concerns the opposition between literature and material culture, the life of the mind vs the apprehensions of the body—which fails to acknowledge that poetry emerges from and is attended to by the mortal body. The second concerns the religious significance of the tomb and its location in a mythical landscape which is shaped, in part, by poetry. The third investigates the literary graveyard as a place where poets’ bodies and poetic corpora are collected. Finally, the alleged ‘tomb of Virgil’ provides a specific site where the major claims made in this volume can be most easily be tested.

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