Virtuosity, Obviously

This chapter employs a phenomenological framework to argue that virtuosity—often understood as individual musical excellence—is an intersubjective phenomenon that centers on skill made apparent and socially meaningful. Rather than locating virtuosity solely in a performer’s body, a piece’s demands, or a listener’s opinions, the author argues that it arises within the dynamic relationships—what Maurice Merleau-Ponty would call the “intentional threads”—that connect audiences, performers, and musical sound. Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s discussions of intersubjectivity, intercorporeality, and apperception, the author utilizes Ravi Shankar’s early reception in the United States as a case study in how audiences come to experience musical performances as virtuosic, despite their lack of background knowledge or musical understanding. A phenomenological approach to virtuosity reframes the issue not as one of objective measure or subjective opinion, but of intersubjective experience and value.

Jazz Resurgent

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, many pundits announced the “death of jazz,” yet recent years have shown the exact opposite trend. Jazz has returned to popular culture, whether one looks to rising stars such as Kamasi Washington and Shabaka Hutchings, or to popular artists (Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar) who draw heavily on jazz influences. At the same time, jazz started showing up in hit movies such as La La Land, Green Book, and Whiplash, where it was mythologized as a touchstone of musical excellence and artistry. All these trends served to reinvigorate a jazz tradition that many had written off as moribund, creating a powerful convergence of historic styles and new commercial styles. This chapter also explores the jazz vocal scene of recent decades, and its contribution to this broadening of the genre’s appeal. Other artists discussed include Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spalding, and Bobby McFerrin. The chapter concludes with an assessment of jazz’s relationship with the emerging technologies of the digital age.

Classical soloists’ life histories and the music conservatoire

This article explores the life histories of virtuoso classical music soloists with particular reference to conservatoire provision. Detailed life-history interviews were conducted with six virtuosi between May 2018 and January 2019. These participants were three singers, two cellists and a concert pianist. Resultant qualitative data were stored in an NVivo software database and understood through a process of analytic induction. Key findings spotlight the significance of Higher Education, a connection between broad creative and cultural interest and musical excellence, and a significant role for conservatoires in diversifying their training and easing transition into the career. The soloists also warned of dangers relating to controlling teachers, loss of autonomy and a need to convey their career realities to students.

The Science of Cathedral Studies: Exploring Demographic Profile, Motivational Intentions, and Perceived Impact among those Attending the Holly Bough Service in Liverpool Cathedral

The Holly Bough service is a unique pre-Christmas event, combining musical excellence and theological depth, crafted by the founding dean of Liverpool Cathedral in the early twentieth century for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Located within the developing science of cathedral studies, this paper analyses the demographic profile, motivational intention (drawing on religious orientation theory) and perceived impact on spiritual wellbeing (drawing on Fisher’s four dimensional model) among 564 participants who completed a detailed survey at the service held in 2019. The data demonstrated a mix of ages, a sense of Anglican commitment to this form of event-belonging by those who return year-on-year and invite friends to join them, and a perceived beneficial impact on all four dimensions of spiritual wellbeing.

Moral Masquerades

Chapter 3 drops in on a variety of “blind” auditions, commonly upheld as a gold standard in appraisals of musical excellence. Using screens and anonymizing apparatus, judges evaluate auditionees on sound alone, thereby doing right by the music they love. But a hidden cost of such auditions, whether for the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the reality show The Voice, is the wholesale severing of musicianship from human identity at large. With auditionees out of sight, the conceits of impartiality and meritocracy enable all parties to avoid talking about issues of discrimination altogether—that is, why anonymity is desirable or necessary to begin with. A short case study ventures outside the United States to consider the illustrious, nearly all-white and all-male Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Tellingly, however, criticisms of this orchestra have come overwhelmingly from the United States, with music lovers exporting American brands of feminism and social justice to protest the ensemble’s discriminatory hiring practices.

Community Music Practice

Many people have become disengaged from music making owing to the commercialization and commodification of music practices. This chapter examines a distinctive response to that disengagement, through the work of community music facilitators, who connect on interpersonal and musical levels to encourage community music practice. Four case studies are used to illustrate the central notions of this approach. Underpinning these four case studies is the concept of musical excellence in community music interventions. This notion of excellence refers to the quality of the social experience—bonds formed, meaning and enjoyment derived, and sense of agency that emerges for individuals and the group—alongside the musical outcomes created through the music making experience. The chapter concludes by considering the ways in which community music opens up new pathways for reflecting on, enacting, and developing approaches that respond to a wide range of social, cultural, health, economic, and political contexts.

Bringing the Outside In

Through the lens of hospitality, we explored the meanings that members constructed about their experiences within a blended formal/informal college music ensemble. The focus in this ensemble was not on competition and musical excellence but on independent musicianship and praxis. The bandleader had his roots in tradition but his heart in socially relevant pedagogy and favored a less autocratic teaching and learning style. The makeup of the ensemble also included students from both formal and informal backgrounds. Conducting gesture was casual, bandstand formation was loose and free, outfits were expressive of the individual, and tone and balance were more a reflection and celebration of individuals and less of a whole or single sound. Much of the music was performed from standard notation but was chosen collectively, often related to popular contexts, and the overall emphasis was not on uniformity but on individuality and student creativity. Musical decisions often were made democratically, and opinions from within the ensemble were affirmed in the process. The ensemble consisted of a group of approximately 13 members whose experience ranged from beginner to over 30 years and who played everything from violin to iPad. Themes that emerged were inclusivity, autonomy, and affirmation.

Charles Burney; or, the Philosophical Misfortune of a Liberal Musician

ABSTRACTThe moral and political propriety of musical pleasure constituted one of Charles Burney's continuous lines of thought from the 1770s to the 1790s. As a public figure, the music historian found himself called upon to state why music matters – in a preface, a dedication or an essay. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Burney read in musical performances symptoms of contemporary society and politics, but, unlike Rousseau, he perceived in modern music signs of civilization's progress. Musical excellence, according to Burney, required both freedom and affluence; thus while Burney rejected absolutist monarchy, he nevertheless praised the achievements of court culture. Indeed, his advocacy of music as an ‘innocent luxury’ reads as an addendum to eighteenth-century disputes on the morality and benefits of luxury. The social implications of this definition of music, however, are problematic: while Burney acknowledged the right of each individual to feel as they please, he also claimed for the music critic the exclusive authority to speak publicly about music. This essay explores these aspects of Burney's political philosophy of music in relation to the works of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Avison, Wollstonecraft and Hume.