Performers, Structure, and Ways of Knowing

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Daphne Leong
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Video Frame ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Theme And Variations ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Subjective Agency ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Violin And Piano

This opening chapter presents the book’s overarching project: the illumination of relations between analysis and performance through theorist-performer collaborations on twentieth-century works. The project is set in the context of two distinct though overlapping disciplines: the tradition of relating analysis and performance within the field of music theory, and the field of musical performance studies. Musical structure, on which the book focuses, is broadly defined as relations among parts and whole, emerging through interactions of objective materials and subjective agency. Ways of knowing that arise in the course of relating analysis and performance are encapsulated by wissen (knowing that), können (knowing how), and kennen (knowing, as in knowing a person). The book’s title and form (a theme and variations) are briefly described. Two rehearsal vignettes (from Crumb’s Four Nocturnes for violin and piano and Shende’s Throw Down or Shut Up!), the first accompanied by a performance video, frame the chapter.

scholarly journals AnalysisandPerformance, orwissen, können, kennen

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daphne Leong
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Analysis ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Multiple Ways Of Knowing

To counter the view that types of musical analysis not immediately relevant to performers are irrelevant to “music as performance,” this essay suggests that music exists in various states, and that changes between such states constitute transformations. Score-based analysis of musical structure and study of musical performance contribute to the understanding of music in this broad sense; analysis and performance dialogue productively when their distinctions as well as their correspondences are valued and interrogated. Analysis and performance exhibit multiple ways of knowing:wissen(knowing that),können(knowing how), andkennen(knowing, as in knowing a person). These ways of knowing are shown at play in a rehearsal of Shende’sThrow Down or Shut Up!.

Performers, Structure, and Ways of Knowing

2020 ◽  
pp. 381-386
Author(s):  
Daphne Leong
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Audience Reception ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
The Third ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Creation ◽  
And Performance

This concluding chapter revisits the book’s theme: performers and a theorist, interacting on musical structure, manifesting ways of knowing. The book’s nine variations are seen as windows onto larger issues integral to the relation of analysis and performance. They group into three trios: the first moves from performance to analysis and explores questions of embodiment, the creation of structure, and understanding of notation; the second proceeds from analysis to performance and constructs metaphors of remembering, of contrapuntal motion, and of ritual and drama; and the third presents analysis and performance in tandem, conflicting, fusing, and impacting audience reception. Further dimensions of knowledge are explored and related to wissen (knowing that), können (knowing how), and kennen (knowing, as in knowing a person). Analysis, performance, and the endeavor to relate the two are described as activities, meaningful in their particularity.

(Performance Is) Metaphors as Methodological Tools in Qualitative Inquiry

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Benjamin Myers ◽  
Bryant Keith Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Heterogeneous Ensemble ◽  
Key Questions

In his germinal essay, “Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion” Dwight Conquergood (1995) uses the compelling metaphor of a caravan to describe performance studies; a “commitment to praxis, to multiple ways of knowing that engage embodied experience with critical reflection … a caravan: a heterogeneous ensemble of ideas and methods on the move” (pp. 139–140). This expanded discussion on the relation between performance and metaphor first presented at the 2009 Qualitative Inquiry Congress asked each of the original participants to develop new metaphors for performance that open up an aspect or understanding of performance that is underdeveloped, underutilized or untapped. Key questions were explored in discussion: How are these metaphors provocative and what to they provoke? How do metaphors work in understanding performance in performance studies? What is the critical service these metaphors make in/as qualitative inquiry? How do or can these metaphors be made to work for social justice? Whose interests are served by particular metaphorical constructions? This Special Issue includes a section entitled “New Metaphors for Performance” which included the original metaphors offered by Ronald Pelias, David Hanley-Tejada, W. Benjamin Myers, Season Ellison, Lesa Lockford, Shauna MacDonald, D. Soyini Madison, and Della Pollock. The second section entitled, “Listeners/Respondents” includes generative autobiographical metaphors, from key audience members as their experiences/ responses to and in dialogue with the originating metaphors presented in the panel (Christopher N. Poulos, John T. Warren, Nicole Defenbaugh, Tami Spry, Karin Schlücker, Claudio Moreira, and Hari Stephen Kumar).

We Listen Together

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-97
Author(s):  
Craig Gingrich-Philbrook
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Ways Of Knowing

In this brief essay, the author responds to a performative panel of essays by students of Devika Chawla. He situates his reading of the event betwixt and between typical modes of performance studies research, demonstrating how the panelists reveal narrative's power to reflect on the layering of time, power and privilege, and ways of knowing.

Cultural Labour

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brahma Prakash
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Folk Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship

Folk performances reflect the life-worlds of a vast section of subaltern communities in India. What is the philosophy that drives these performances, the vision that enables as well as enslaves these communities to present what they feel, think, imagine, and want to see? Can such performances challenge social hierarchies and ensure justice in a caste-ridden society? In Cultural Labour, the author studies bhuiyan puja (land worship), bidesia (theatre of migrant labourers), Reshma-Chuharmal (Dalit ballads), dugola (singing duels) from Bihar, and the songs and performances of Gaddar, who was associated with Jana Natya Mandali, Telangana: he examines various ways in which meanings and behaviour are engendered in communities through rituals, theatre, and enactments. Focusing on various motifs of landscape, materiality, and performance, the author looks at the relationship between culture and labour in its immediate contexts. Based on an extensive ethnography and the author’s own life experience as a member of such a community, the book offers a new conceptual framework to understand the politics and aesthetics of folk performance in the light of contemporary theories of theatre and performance studies.

scholarly journals Cultural History, Ritual and Performance: George L. Mosse in Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942094003
Author(s):  
Peter Burke
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Cultural Turn

George L. Mosse took a ‘cultural turn’ in the latter part of his career, but still early enough to make a pioneering contribution to the study of political culture and in particular what he called political ‘liturgy’, including marches, processions, and practices of commemoration. He adapted to the study of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the approach to the history of ritual developed by historians of medieval and early modern Europe, among them his friend Ernst Kantorowicz. More recently, the concept of ritual, whether religious or secular, has been criticized by some cultural historians on the grounds that it implies a fixed ‘script’ in situations that were actually marked by fluidity and improvisation. In this respect cultural historians have been part of a wider trend that includes sociologists and anthropologists as well as theatre scholars and has been institutionalized as Performance Studies. Some recent studies of contemporary nationalism in Tanzania, Venezuela and elsewhere have adopted this perspective, emphasizing that the same performance may have different meanings for different sections of the audience. It is only to be regretted that Mosse did not live long enough to respond to these studies and that their authors seem unaware of his work.

scholarly journals Grand Challenges, Feminist Answers

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 263178772110203
Author(s):  
Yvonne Benschop
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Grand Challenges ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Feminist Organization

Feminist organization theories develop knowledge about how organizations and processes of organizing shape and are shaped by gender, in intersection with race, class and other forms of social inequality. The politics of knowledge within management and organization studies tend to marginalize and silence feminist theorizing on organizations, and so the field misses out on the interdisciplinary, sophisticated conceptualizations and reflexive modes of situated knowledge production provided by feminist work. To highlight the contributions of feminist organization theories, I discuss the feminist answers to three of the grand challenges that contemporary organizations face: inequality, technology and climate change. These answers entail a systematic critique of dominant capitalist and patriarchal forms of organizing that perpetuate complex intersectional inequalities. Importantly, feminist theorizing goes beyond mere critique, offering alternative value systems and unorthodox approaches to organizational change, and providing the radically different ways of knowing that are necessary to tackle the grand challenges. The paper develops an aspirational ideal by sketching the contours of how we can organize for intersectional equality, develop emancipatory technologies and enact a feminist ethics of care for the human and the natural world.

scholarly journals A systematic review of definitions of motor vehicle headways in driver behaviour and performance studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Raaj Kishore Biswas ◽  
Rena Friswell ◽  
Jake Olivier ◽  
Ann Williamson ◽  
Teresa Senserrick
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Motor Vehicle ◽  
Driver Behaviour ◽  
And Performance

Exploring the place of spirituality in Canadian health promotion

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karina Gerhardt-Strachan
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Sampling Frame ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Canadian Health ◽  
Commission Report ◽  
Social Environmental

Abstract The field of health promotion advocates a socioecological approach to health that addresses a variety of physical, social, environmental, political and cultural factors. Encouraging a holistic approach, health promotion examines many aspects of health and wellbeing, including physical, mental, sexual, community, social and ecological health. Despite this holism, there is a noticeable absence of discussion surrounding spirituality and spiritual health. This research study explored how leading scholars in Canadian health promotion understand the place of spirituality in health promotion. Using the fourth edition of Health Promotion in Canada (Rootman et al., 2017) as the sampling frame of recognized leaders in the field, 13 semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with authors from the book. This study is situated within a critical health promotion approach that utilizes methodologies aiming for social justice, equity and ecological sustainability. I argue that by avoiding spirituality within health promotion frameworks and education, the secularism of health promotion and its underlying values of Eurocentric knowledge production and science remain invisible and rarely critiqued. This study intends to open up possibilities for centering spiritual and non-Western epistemologies and ways of knowing that have been marginalized, such as Indigenous understandings of health and wellbeing. Restoring right relations with Indigenous peoples in Canada has taken on new urgency with the calls to action of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission report (NCTR, 2015). This is one important way that health promotion can fulfill its promise of being inclusive, relevant and effective for human and planetary wellbeing.

Recovery from memory failure when recalling a memorized performance: The role of musical structure and performance cues

2021 ◽  
pp. 102986492110254
Author(s):  
Roger Chaffin ◽  
Jane Ginsborg ◽  
James Dixon ◽  
Alexander P. Demos
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Memory Failure ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Written Recall ◽  
Performance Gains ◽  
Over Time

To perform reliably and confidently from memory, musicians must able to recover from mistakes and memory failures. We describe how an experienced singer (the second author) recovered from mistakes and gaps in recall as she periodically recalled the score of a piece of vocal music that she had memorized for public performance, writing out the music six times over a five-year period following the performance. Five years after the performance, the singer was still able to recall two-thirds of the piece. When she made mistakes, she recovered and went on, leaving gaps in her written recall that lengthened over time. We determined where in the piece gaps started ( losses) and ended ( gains), and compared them with the locations of structural beats (starts of sections and phrases) and performance cues ( PCs) that the singer reported using as mental landmarks to keep track of her progress through the piece during the sung, public performance. Gains occurred on structural beats where there was a PC; losses occurred on structural beats without a PC. As the singer’s memory faded over time, she increasingly forgot phrases that did not start with a PC and recovered at the starts of phrases that did. Our study shows how PCs enable musicians to recover from memory failures.

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