Two artists and two mélodies

André Caplet (1878-1925) set just two of Baudelaire’s poems: La Cloche fêlée [‘The Cracked Bell’] and La Mort des pauvres [‘The Death of the Poor’]. These mélodies were composed in 1922, just three years before the artist’s death. For a composer with a tendency to shy away from setting poetry of the French giants of literature, the questions of how and why Caplet chose to translate Baudelaire’s poetry into the mélodie are intriguing. This exploration of La Cloche fêlée and La Mort des pauvres considers the ways in which Caplet reflects the poetic imagery of Baudelaire’s texts within musical structures. Caplet’s compositional language is distinctive, and his artistic approach to musically illuminating poetic meaning is perceptive and sensitive. Through viewing the creative intersection of these two artists, this article offers an interpretation that presents a perspective on Caplet’s musical character and reveals insight into his connection to Baudelaire’s poetic language.

Mind the body: Materiality and physicality in a composer’s thinking process

This exploratory case study investigated the grounds of the material and physical aspects of compositional thinking, viewing musical composing as organizing the world of sounds. The data tracks one compositional process, including the full body of the manuscripts and verbal data accounting those manuscripts. The results present a composer, who wishes to create music that has performative power, that is, expressivities that have the capacity to move the mind of the listener. The composer is inspired by the materiality of sound and musical instruments, but on the other hand constrained and challenged by the corporal affordances of performers and their instruments as well as by the (im)practicalities and intelligibility of notational practices. Five different aspects of materiality were identified: (1) visual images and representations, (2) the score as the material object of composition, (3) the material and physical affordances of musical instruments, performers that play them, and sounds that are produced by them, (4) physical reactions entailing embodied intuitive knowledge of the composer, and (5) metaphoric processes, where the composer, when shaping timbres and musical structures, “pushes,” even “forces” sounds to “move” and sound in a way that is meaningful and transpires to the listener as music that moves the mind.

Ensembles in music therapy

Music therapy is a varied landscape, and the ensemble is a diverse aspect of music therapy practice. This chapter brings together an overview of the many approaches, sites, resources, formats, and types of participant that create ensembles within the frame of professionalized music therapy practice. These elements are discussed through an exploration of the musical structures, contexts, research strategies, and theoretical traditions that underpin them. The chapter explores the evidence and scholarship that are harnessed to justify the prevalence of ensembles in health promotion, and suggests opportunities for further development within practice and research.

Alternative Facts in Musicology and Vechnaya Pamyat' in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5

The assertions, refutations, and counter-refutations concerning two core pieces of Richard Taruskin’s studies on Russian music—Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5—provide a starting point for discussion about the possibilities, limits, and obligations of musicological interpretation. Moreover, an important aspect of the discussion is the phenomenon of “alternative facts,” both in publication and in pedagogy, and possibly in music itself. Taruskin argues against the logical fallacies of overly specific or overly simplistic interpretations, but hesitates to fully interpret certain music himself, thereby participating in the web of alternative facts. Taruskin refutes popular myths about biographical meanings in Tchaikovsky’s symphony, but in so doing, also seems to reject a tragic reading of any kind. He explains away various musical structures and extroversive references, but fails to explore why those elements are in fact present. As for Shostakovich’s symphony, Taruskin notes its saturation with musical topics, but ignores their allusive specificity, downplaying their significance altogether for what he calls their transferability. Yet Taruskin himself identifies an allusion to a specific Orthodox hymn, and therefrom draws specific conclusions. His evidence for calling the passage a “literal imitation” is actually flawed, but a truly literal quotation of this very hymn may be present throughout the entire symphony, and may act as a sort of species of alternative fact itself. In any case, something that specific, and its placement in the symphonic structure, deserve notice and demand specificity of interpretation.

Psychological and emotional complex of piano accompanist as a reflection of the PROFESSION EVOLUTION

Background. The article studies the accompanist culture as an artistic phenomenon. The accompanist art development processes at the given stage are distinguished by an intensive search for renewal of the content and means of musical expression, coupled with discoveries in composition practices, which puts forward new performance requirements. Scientific novelty is pre-determined by the tasks of detecting the historical origin of the organization of the “backgroundrelief” type in musical structures, specifying the stages of their development. Tracing back the origins of the art of accompanying allows us to reveal a variety of relationship models between the solo singing and accompanying function, which co-exist in various forms in modern artistic practices, thereby depicting the main professional qualities and skills of a piano accompanist. The purpose of this article is to discover the genesis of the types of accompanist art, their historical development, as well as to determine the components that form the basis of the professional activity of the accompanist and to identify major personal qualities characteristic to this profession. It should be noted that the issue of accompanist art is currently only passing the way of scientific comprehension, and we can distinguish a certain historical dynamics: from methodological developments to comprehending the role of an accompanist as an equal member of the ensemble, teacher and creator of original interpretations of compositions. Results of the research. The phenomenon of accompanist art is considered in the paper in terms of its connection with the general history of music. The history of accompaniment and the work of an accompanist should be recognized and studied, since the nature and role of the accompaniment depend on the era, nationality of music and its style. Concertmastering is one of those professions where the duties and modes of action are not clearly expressed, leaving the professional with the right to choose. A striking distinctive feature is the individual path of improvement and the final “bar” of mastery, determined by the traits of the character and personal aspirations of each accompanist. The article discusses the issue of the specific musical and psychological abilities of a concertmaster, which ensure compliance with professional requirements. Conclusions. The development of a theoretical concept of accompanist art will allow this profession to acquire the necessary completeness of permanent features and will open up new prospects for further study of methodological, practical and artistic aspects.

Animal Signals, Music and Emotional Well-Being

Playing music or natural sounds to animals in human care is thought to have beneficial effects. An analysis of published papers on the use of human-based music with animals demonstrates a variety of different results even within the same species. These mixed results suggest the value of tailoring music to the sensory systems of the species involved and in selecting musical structures that are likely to produce the desired effects. I provide a conceptual framework based on the combined knowledge of the natural communication system of a species coupled with musical structures known to differentially influence emotional states, e.g., calming an agitated animal versus stimulating a lethargic animal. This new concept of animal-based music, which is based on understanding animal communication, will lead to more consistent and specific effects of music. Knowledge and appropriate use of animal-based music are important in future research and applications if we are to improve the well-being of animals that are dependent upon human care for their survival.

Dream weaving and sonic metalepsis in Jan Troell’s Land of Dreams

Jan Troell’s Sagolandet (Land of Dreams) (1988) presents itself as a documentary about 1980s Swedish society, but is also a film about filmmaking, the imagination, memory and autobiography. The film has multiple narrative levels: interviews, home movie footage, autobiographical anecdotes and imaginative sequences. Commentary and guiding themes are drawn from the theories of psychoanalyst Rollo May. These strata and themes have associated musical motifs and/or sound effects, which, as the film progresses, serve as an ontological bridge between the different strata. Land of Dreams is structured as both a multistrand and multiform narrative with the intercutting of multiple stories with multiple protagonists (multistrand) mixed with dream worlds and internal-subjective perspectives of Troell (multiform). The different narrative strata invite metalepsis, a type of narrative ‘transgression’ that occurs across the boundaries of distinct narrative worlds. In Land of Dreams, voice, music and sound effects act as metaleptic agents, transgressing different strata through four interrelated techniques: (1) metaleptic ‘i-voices’; (2) musical structures made up of ironic and disjunctive musical textures; (3) musical motifs transgressing narrative and ontological boundaries and (4) musical metaleptic warps. Musical metalepsis in Land of Dreams functions in a way that is emblematic of how political decisions and public policy infiltrate the private sphere, human consciousness and even dreams of the future.

Structuring subjectivity: Pain of Salvation’s The Perfect Element: Part I (2000)

This article examines how Pain of Salvation’s album The Perfect Element: Part I (2000) develops narrative subjectivity through a range of compositional and performative parameters. We reveal a myriad of ways in which the music contributes to the expression of human subjectivity and offers significant moments of interpretive clarity. Attending to the expressive aspects of music, we focus in particular on how the song structures are articulated through the following elements: formal, harmonic, temporal, thematic and textural/timbral content. Contextualizing the concept album narrative within the genres of progressive rock and heavy metal and offering a framework for analysis derived from narrative theory, we interpret how the musical parameters convey the song lyrics and overall album concept. Pain of Salvation’s narrative of human trauma emerges through musical structures that are channelled to shape storyworld and subjectivity. Presenting analytic snapshots of the twelve album tracks, our aim is to create a sense of analytic ‘immersion’, whereby the reader engages actively with the multifaceted expressive content of words and music.

A Proposal for a Data-Driven Approach to the Influence of Music on Heart Dynamics

Electrocardiographic signals (ECG) and heart rate viability measurements (HRV) provide information in a range of specialist fields, extending to musical perception. The ECG signal records heart electrical activity, while HRV reflects the state or condition of the autonomic nervous system. HRV has been studied as a marker of diverse psychological and physical diseases including coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and stroke. HRV has also been used to observe the effects of medicines, the impact of exercise and the analysis of emotional responses and evaluation of effects of various quantifiable elements of sound and music on the human body. Variations in blood pressure, levels of stress or anxiety, subjective sensations and even changes in emotions constitute multiple aspects that may well-react or respond to musical stimuli. Although both ECG and HRV continue to feature extensively in research in health and perception, methodologies vary substantially. This makes it difficult to compare studies, with researchers making recommendations to improve experiment planning and the analysis and reporting of data. The present work provides a methodological framework to examine the effect of sound on ECG and HRV with the aim of associating musical structures and noise to the signals by means of artificial intelligence (AI); it first presents a way to select experimental study subjects in light of the research aims and then offers possibilities for selecting and producing suitable sound stimuli; once sounds have been selected, a guide is proposed for optimal experimental design. Finally, a framework is introduced for analysis of data and signals, based on both conventional as well as data-driven AI tools. AI is able to study big data at a single stroke, can be applied to different types of data, and is capable of generalisation and so is considered the main tool in the analysis.