Mysticism’s Musical Modalities: Philosophies of Audition in Medieval Persian Sufism

2019 ◽  
pp. 103-125
Author(s):  
Reinhard Strohm
Keyword(s):  
Musical Experience ◽  
Internal Sense

For many Persian poets, Sufis in particular, the ethereal modes through which music communicates with its listeners embodied the somatic ‘taste’ (ẕauq) of the suprasomatic divine realities. Through a dialectic of revelation and concealment—or in the Qur’anic terms often employed by the Sufis, ẓāhir and bạ̄tin, exoteric and esoteric—proper musical experience (samāᶜ) becomes both a means of accessing the transcendent harmonies of the cosmos and conduit to the very transcendence of music itself. Proper hearing is not delimited by the audible range of the material ear, for this external sense (ḥiss-i ẓāhir) must yield to an internal sense (ḥiss-i bāṭin), signified by the gūsh-i jān and gūsh-i dil, the ‘ear of the soul’ and ‘ear of the heart’. These auricular metaphors express a deeply Pythagorean but specifically Persianate philosophy of audition, one not (only) grounded in the rationality of mathematical ratios, but (also) modelled upon Pythagoras’ cosmic auditory powers, bestowed through ritual purity.

Musical Experience Shapes Neural Processing

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-86
Author(s):  
Wido Nager ◽  
Tilla Franke ◽  
Tobias Wagner-Altendorf ◽  
Eckart Altenmüller ◽  
Thomas F. Münte
Keyword(s):  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Pure Tone ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Neural Adaptations

Abstract. Playing a musical instrument professionally has been shown to lead to structural and functional neural adaptations, making musicians valuable subjects for neuroplasticity research. Here, we follow the hypothesis that specific musical demands further shape neural processing. To test this assumption, we subjected groups of professional drummers, professional woodwind players, and nonmusicians to pure tone sequences and drum sequences in which infrequent anticipations of tones or drum beats had been inserted. Passively listening to these sequences elicited a mismatch negativity to the temporally deviant stimuli which was greater in the musicians for tone series and particularly large for drummers for drum sequences. In active listening conditions drummers more accurately and more quickly detected temporally deviant stimuli.

Cognition of stability in atonal music in teenagers with no musical experience.

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
José María Esteve-Faubel ◽  
Benjamín Francés-Luna ◽  
Jonathan P. Stephens ◽  
Lee Bartel
Keyword(s):  
Musical Experience

Expressive Microstructure in Music: A Preliminary Perceptual Assessment of Four Composers' "Pulses"

1989 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno H. Repp
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Random Order ◽  
Preliminary Test ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
General Music ◽  
Cyclic Patterns ◽  
Computer Controlled ◽  
Perceptual Assessment ◽  
Essential Prerequisite

According to a provocative theory set forth by Manfred Clynes, there are composer-specific cyclic patterns of (unnotated) musical microstructure that, when discovered and realized by a performer, help to give the music its characteristic expressive quality. Clynes, relying mainly on his own judgment as an experienced musician, has derived such personal "pulses" for several famous composers by imposing time and amplitude perturbations on computer-controlled performances of classical music and modifying them until they converged on some optimal expression. To conduct a preliminary test of the general music lover's appreciation of such "pulsed" performances, two sets of piano pieces by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert, one in quadruple and the other in triple meter, were selected for this study. Each piece was synthesized with each composer's pulse and also without any pulse. These different versions were presented in random order to listeners of varying musical sophistication for preference judgments relative to the unpulsed version. There were reliable changes in listeners' pulse preferences across different composers' pieces, which affirms one essential prerequisite of Clynes' theory. Moreover, in several instances the "correct" pulse was preferred most, which suggests not only that these pulse patterns indeed capture composer- specific qualities, but also that listeners without extensive musical experience can appreciate them. In other cases, however, listeners' preferences were not as expected, and possible causes for these deviations are discussed.

scholarly journals The Dynamics of Musical Participation

2021 ◽  
pp. 102986492098831
Author(s):  
Andrea Schiavio ◽  
Pieter-Jan Maes ◽  
Dylan van der Schyff
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical System ◽  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Dynamical Systems Theory ◽  
Coordination Dynamics ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
The Core ◽  
Interactive Dynamics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Core Features

In this paper we argue that our comprehension of musical participation—the complex network of interactive dynamics involved in collaborative musical experience—can benefit from an analysis inspired by the existing frameworks of dynamical systems theory and coordination dynamics. These approaches can offer novel theoretical tools to help music researchers describe a number of central aspects of joint musical experience in greater detail, such as prediction, adaptivity, social cohesion, reciprocity, and reward. While most musicians involved in collective forms of musicking already have some familiarity with these terms and their associated experiences, we currently lack an analytical vocabulary to approach them in a more targeted way. To fill this gap, we adopt insights from these frameworks to suggest that musical participation may be advantageously characterized as an open, non-equilibrium, dynamical system. In particular, we suggest that research informed by dynamical systems theory might stimulate new interdisciplinary scholarship at the crossroads of musicology, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive (neuro)science, pointing toward new understandings of the core features of musical participation.

Musical training improves memory for instrumental music, but not vocal music or words

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-159
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. P. Wilbiks ◽  
Sean Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Verbal Material ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Facilitative Effect ◽  
Musical Excerpts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Brain

In previous research, there exists some debate about the effects of musical training on memory for verbal material. The current research examines this relationship, while also considering musical training effects on memory for musical excerpts. Twenty individuals with musical training were tested and their results were compared to 20 age-matched individuals with no musical experience. Musically trained individuals demonstrated a higher level of memory for classical musical excerpts, with no significant differences for popular musical excerpts or for words. These findings are in support of previous research showing that while music and words overlap in terms of their processing in the brain, there is not necessarily a facilitative effect between training in one domain and performance in the other.

Interval Identification Predicts Success in Melodic Dictation

2021 ◽  
pp. 002242942110119
Author(s):  
Bryan E. Nichols ◽  
D. Gregory Springer
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Hierarchical Regression ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Hierarchical Regression Analysis ◽  
Melodic Dictation ◽  
Identification Test ◽  
Predictive Relationships

The purpose of this study was to investigate possible predictive relationships between interval identification and melodic dictation performance on tasks where students identify short pitch spans after a brief tonicization. College musicians ( N = 35) completed an interval identification test and a series of melodic dictation tasks. Results indicated that interval identification and melodic dictation tests reflected a battery of items ranging from very easy to very difficult with acceptable Cronbach’s α levels. We conducted a two-stage hierarchical regression analysis to examine the extent to which interval identification served as a predictor of melodic dictation accuracy while controlling for selected music and demographic variables. Results indicated that interval identification served as a significant predictor of melodic dictation scores, contributing 28.9% of the variance in melodic dictation scores while controlling for musical experience variables. The analysis indicated a dictation task by interval ability interaction based on grouping by lower, mid-, and upper performing groups on the interval identification test. Issues in measurement of melodic dictation accuracy and strategies that affect the development of melodic dictation skills are discussed.

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