Ensembles for wellbeing

The value of ensemble music-making for wellbeing is addressed in this chapter, with an emphasis on amateur musicians. Previous research on musical development over the lifespan suggests that long-term engagement might be motivated by individual wellbeing benefits. Although negative health implications are also noted, amateur musicians report fewer adverse health effects associated with musical participation compared with their professional counterparts. However, the research literature on amateur musicians has tended to focus on choir members, raising questions as to whether the predominantly positive implications of choral singing also apply to instrumental ensemble performance. Recent studies have begun to fill this research gap, but there is still uncertainty with respect to the specific factors contributing to wellbeing and health in amateur ensembles. In conclusion, tentative models to foster hypothesis-driven research are needed as well as a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms that connect long-term musical engagement and wellbeing.

Hatsune Miku, Virtual Idols, and Transforming the Popular Music Experience

This essay aims to discuss the various ways that virtual idols have transformed music production, consumption, and performance in our digital society. Vocal synthesisers like Vocaloid have given amateur musicians accessibility into the industry, pushing the limits of vocal capability and preservation, and resulting in a worldwide fandom which utilises Vocaloid characters in diverse ways. Virtual idols bear resemblance to real-life Japanese idols, yet they manage to circumvent the often-strict lifestyles idols face while also playing into tropes surrounding otaku culture. It concludes by discussing how the experience and liveness of music concerts changes with virtual performers, and how virtual concerts have continued live music performance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Making Music and a New Life

This chapter reviews Esther Lederberg’s life in music. Researchers who study multiple intelligences have observed an overlap between musical and linguistic intelligence. Esther Lederberg’s mastery of foreign languages would have given her confidence to independently master the recorder. Her enthusiasm for music resonated with her French colleagues, Jacob and Monod, at the Institut Pasteur. Probably the most famous musician/scientist of the twentieth century was Albert Einstein, who admitted that if he hadn’t become a physicist, he would have become a musician. In the 1960s, Early Music—of the Renaissance and Baroque eras—enjoyed an international revival. In 1962, Esther Lederberg and some like-minded amateur musicians founded the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra (MPRO). She performed with the MPRO for over forty years. This shift in her social circle marked a new phase of personal growth toward music and the arts. Drawn together by a shared passion for music, Matthew Simon and Esther Lederberg married in 1993.

Embodiment, Relationality and Epistemics: Observations from Alexander Technique Training in Music Master Classes

Following Shilling’s arguments on body pedagogics in sociology, we show how the negotiation of epistemic concerns is central to our understanding of practices of embodied interaction. Using conversation analytic methods, we examine audio and visual data from recordings of tuition in the Alexander Technique to accomplished amateur musicians. Our analysis builds on previous research on the body in pedagogic contexts, and focuses on embodied and discourse practices through which imperceptible changes to the body are warranted, the management of recruitment and agreement to embodied change, and the use of embodied mimicry. We position our approach as a rapprochement between the concerns of the sociology of the body and interactional studies of embodied action.

Assessing Music Expertise

We introduce the Berlin Gehoerbildung Scale (BGS), a multidimensional assessment of music expertise in amateur musicians and music professionals. The BGS is informed by music theory and uses a variety of testing methods in the ear-training tradition, with items covering four different dimensions of music expertise: (1) intervals and scales, (2) dictation, (3) chords and cadences, and (4) complex listening. We validated the test in a sample of amateur musicians, aspiring professional musicians, and students attending a highly competitive music conservatory (n = 59). Using structural equation modeling, we compared two factor models: a unidimensional model postulating a single factor of music expertise; and a hierarchical model, according to which four first-order subscale factors load on a second-order factor of general music expertise. The hierarchical model showed better fit to the data than the unidimensional model, indicating that the four subscales capture reliable variance above and beyond the general factor of music expertise. There were reliable group differences on both the second-order general factor and the four subscales, with music students outperforming aspiring professionals and amateur musicians. We conclude that the BGS is an adequate measurement instrument for assessing individual differences in music expertise, especially at high levels of expertise.

Introduction

Locating women’s musical practices in the performance of gentility provides one path forward in reconciling archival evidence (binder’s volumes and other aspects of material culture that are often labeled ephemera) with existing music histories because gentility, unlike social status, belonged to no single group of people. Gentility crossed class boundaries and allowed black and white women to define or redefine their status during a time of great social change. The Introduction clarifies the use of the term gentility in this book and contextualizes its role in the performance of culture by amateur musicians in the parlor.

Effects of Amateur Musical Experience on Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones by Native Chinese Adults: An ERP Study

Music impacting on speech processing is vividly evidenced in most reports involving professional musicians, while the question of whether the facilitative effects of music are limited to experts or may extend to amateurs remains to be resolved. Previous research has suggested that analogous to language experience, musicianship also modulates lexical tone perception but the influence of amateur musical experience in adulthood is poorly understood. Furthermore, little is known about how acoustic information and phonological information of lexical tones are processed by amateur musicians. This study aimed to provide neural evidence of cortical plasticity by examining categorical perception of lexical tones in Chinese adults with amateur musical experience relative to the non-musician counterparts. Fifteen adult Chinese amateur musicians and an equal number of non-musicians participated in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. Their mismatch negativities (MMNs) to lexical tones from Mandarin Tone 2–Tone 4 continuum and non-speech tone analogs were measured. It was hypothesized that amateur musicians would exhibit different MMNs to their non-musician counterparts in processing two aspects of information in lexical tones. Results showed that the MMN mean amplitude evoked by within-category deviants was significantly larger for amateur musicians than non-musicians regardless of speech or non-speech condition. This implies the strengthened processing of acoustic information by adult amateur musicians without the need of focused attention, as the detection of subtle acoustic nuances of pitch was measurably improved. In addition, the MMN peak latency elicited by across-category deviants was significantly shorter than that by within-category deviants for both groups, indicative of the earlier processing of phonological information than acoustic information of lexical tones at the pre-attentive stage. The results mentioned above suggest that cortical plasticity can still be induced in adulthood, hence non-musicians should be defined more strictly than before. Besides, the current study enlarges the population demonstrating the beneficial effects of musical experience on perceptual and cognitive functions, namely, the effects of enhanced speech processing from music are not confined to a small group of experts but extend to a large population of amateurs.

Advertising the English Glee to Women, 1750–1800

This chapter situates publications of English glees marketed to women within broader changes in publishing activities in both England and mainland Europe during the long eighteenth century. The glee was originally composed and performed by all-male vocal clubs, but after mixed-gender ensembles began singing glees in public, it came to be heavily marketed to female amateur musicians. Sheet music publications often referred to professional female singers such as Faustina Bordoni, Marianne Müller, Sophie Arnould, and Elizabeth Billington to increase sales. Music was often marketed to women in the form of monthly periodicals, including The Piano-Forte Magazine, and The Lady’s Musical Magazine; or, Monthly Polite Repository of New Vocal Musick by the Principal Composers in Europe. These periodicals were intended to generate steady income while simultaneously representing the newest, most fashionable music. As a novelty, music was occasionally printed on folding fans and playing cards, objects associated with female pastimes. These shifts speak to the gendering of musical media and performance practices in early English capitalism.