Learning and Remembering Musical Works

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-115
Author(s):  
Robert H. Woody

Learning pre-existing pieces of music is a very common learning goal, both among vernacular musicians, who learn from recordings, and among those who are formally educated and work from published sheet music provided by a teacher. Whether learning a piece by ear or from notation, the processes of memory involved are very similar. Because the learning of musical works is often a precursor to additional kinds of music making and performance skills, it is important for musicians to understand how human memory works. This chapter explains the processes involved in learning and remembering pieces of music. It describes the various stages and components of memory from the information processing perspective that is common in cognitive psychology. More specifically, the chapter explains how ear musicianship is foundational to other performance skills, including those that use notation. It also shows that the ability to learn and remember musical works can be improved through experience and deliberate practice.

Author(s):  
Naomi A. Weiss

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.


Author(s):  
A. Drutsé

The modern world popularity of the nai — a traditional Romanian instrument — has identified interest in writing this article. This problematic constitutes the circle of our research interest as a doctoral candidate, but also as a concert performer, a graduate of the Academy of Music, Theater and Fine Arts. One of the most interesting aspects of the study of nai is its technical improvement since 60s of the 20th century, which led to the acquisition of a number of new, innovative skills and performance skills. In this article we have identified some pages of the modern history of the manufacture of this ancient instrument associated with these processes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 20200154
Author(s):  
Ann Wenzel ◽  
Louise Hauge Matzen ◽  
Rubens Spin-Neto ◽  
Lars Schropp

Objectives: To assess dental students’ ability to recognize head positioning errors in panoramic (PAN) images after individual learning via computer-assisted-learning (CAL) and in a simulation clinic (SIM). Both cognitive skills and performance in patient examination were assessed. Methods and materials: 60 students (mean age 23.25 years) participated in lectures on the relation between PAN-image errors and patient’s head position. Immediately after they took a test, based on which they were randomized to three groups: control (CON) group, CAL group, and SIM group (both CAL and training in a simulation clinic with a phantom). 4–5 weeks after intervention/no intervention, all students individually examined a patient with PAN-exposure. A blinded rater, not knowing group allocation, supervised patient exposure and assessed student’s performance (correct/incorrect head position in three planes). 1–2 weeks after, the students scored positioning errors in 40 PAN-images. Differences in cognitive test scores between groups were evaluated by ANOVA and in patient examination by χ2 tests, and within-group differences by sign-tests. Results: No statistically significant difference in cognitive test scores was seen between the SIM and CAL group, while the CON group scored lower (p < 0.003). In all groups, several students positioned the patient incorrectly in the Frankfort horizontal plane. All students performed well in the sagittal plane. Students in SIM group positioned the patient more correctly in the coronal plane. Conclusions: Training with CAL increased students’ cognitive skills compared with a control group. Simulated patient exposure with a phantom increased to some extent their performance skills in examination of patients.


Author(s):  
Olesya V. Arzamastseva ◽  
Larisa A. Tyurina

The urgency of vocational training for pop-jazz musicians is substantiated. The aim of the study is to determine the necessary components in the work on professional sound production in the process of teaching pop-jazz vocal, as well as to demonstrate some ways to increase the effi-ciency of work on sound in the classroom. The issues of the development of a professional singing voice in the process of teaching pop-jazz performance are considered. The research methods in-cluded: study of special literature, analysis and generalization of research and pedagogical expe-rience of the work of leading specialists in the field of music education and performance. The high degree of influence of the level of professional training of performers-vocalists on the national musical culture is proved. Practical recommendations for work on singing sound production in the process of professional training of pop-jazz singers in modern music educational institutions are presented.


Author(s):  
Jane W. Davidson

This article explores the fundamental role of bodily movement in the development of musical knowledge and performance skills; in particular, how the body can be used to understand expressive musical material and to communicate that meaning to coperformers and audience. The relevance to the educator is explored (whether working with a child or adult beginner, or a more advanced learner). The article is divided into six main sections, tracing the role of body movement skill in music production, expressive musical performance, developing learners to play their musical instruments with technical and expressive appropriateness, coperformer coordination, and projection for audience perception. The work builds on a growing interest in the embodied nature of musical experience. The article concludes with case study observations of practical insights and applications for the teacher.


As the art that calls most attention to temporality, music provides us with profound insight into the nature of time, and time equally offers us one of the richest lenses through which to interrogate musical practice and thought. In this volume, musical time, arrayed across a spectrum of genres and performance/compositional contexts is explored from a multiplicity of perspectives. The contributions to the volume all register the centrality of time to our understanding of music and music-making and offer perspectives on time in music, particularly though not exclusively attending to contemporary forms of musical work. In sharing insights drawn from philosophy, music theory, ethnomusicology, psychology of performance and cultural studies, the book articulates a range of understandings on the metrics, politics and socialities woven into musical time.


2021 ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
Mikhail A. Andreev ◽  

The article considers the reasons for foreign tours of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra’s headed by V.B. Dudarova in the 1970s, the specifics of those tours, as well as their results both from the point of view of popularizing symphonic music and from the point of view of popularizing Soviet ideology abroad. Among the most important reasons for the organization of the first foreign tours by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra of V.B. Dudarova in the 1970s, one can mention the active participation of the orchestra in numerous Soviet festivals, competitions for young performers, the preparation and performance of new works by Soviet composers, the expansion of the repertoire of performed musical works, the work with foreign conductors, Also the participation of V.B. Dudarova as a guest conductor in foreign tours with other orchestras, the musical community positive reviews and reports on the work of the orchestra as well as increasing the status and prestige of the orchestra in the general range of symphony orchestras of the USSR. The organization and conduct of foreign tours in the Polish People’s Republic and the GDR included the briefing, the development of a concert program, which provided for concerts in several major cities with a developed musical culture, as well as in the capitals of the countries selected for the foreign tour. In addition to the concerts themselves, the organization of the tour included a meeting of the Orchestra’s direction with the cultural intelligentsia of the People’s Republic of Poland and the GDR after each of the concerts, advertising concerts and the orchestra’s work in the media of the People’s Republic of Poland and the GDR, selling souvenirs and recordings of the orchestra. Thus, the concerts of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra conducted by V.B. Dudarova were only a part, or rather one of the instruments, of the national program of Soviet propaganda and the maintenance of a favorable image of the USSR abroad.


2020 ◽  
pp. 298-308
Author(s):  
Nicholas Baragwanath

The chapter provides a brief survey of alternative solmization systems, which arose largely as a result of Protestant attempts to break free from Roman oversight, followed by an account of the rise of French seven-note solfège and its role in the demise of the great tradition. Owing to its simplicity, this “natural way” to solfège turned out to be ideally suited to the needs of a rapidly expanding amateur market, which demanded readily performable sheet music and the ability to read it rather than onerous craft training. It also provided simplified teaching methods and classroom materials for the new public music schools that emerged from the upheavals of the Napoleonic era. The chapter ends with suggestions as to how the solfeggio tradition might once again find a place within a living culture of music making.


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