Exploring historic changes in musical communication: Deconstructing emotional cues in preludes by Bach and Chopin

A growing body of research analyzing musical scores suggests mode’s relationship with other expressive cues has changed over time. However, to the best of our knowledge, the perceptual implications of these changes have not been formally assessed. Here, we explore how compositional choices of 17th- and 19th-century composers (J. S. Bach and F. Chopin, respectively) differentially affect emotional communication. This novel exploration builds on our team’s previous techniques using commonality analysis to decompose intercorrelated cues in unaltered excerpts of influential compositions. In doing so, we offer an important naturalistic complement to traditional experimental work—often involving tightly controlled stimuli constructed to avoid the intercorrelations inherent to naturalistic music. Our data indicate intriguing changes in cues’ effects between Bach and Chopin, consistent with score-based research suggesting mode’s “meaning” changed across historical eras. For example, mode’s unique effect accounts for the most variance in valence ratings of Chopin’s preludes, whereas its shared use with attack rate plays a more prominent role in Bach’s. We discuss the implications of these findings as part of our field’s ongoing effort to understand the complexity of musical communication—addressing issues only visible when moving beyond stimuli created for scientific, rather than artistic, goals.

What Makes Babies Musical? Conceptions of Musicality in Infants and Toddlers

Despite major advances in research on musical ability in infants, relatively little attention has been paid to individual differences in general musicality in infants. A fundamental problem has been the lack of a clear definition of what constitutes “general musicality” or “musical ability” in infants and toddlers, resulting in a wide range of test procedures that rely on different models of musicality. However, musicality can be seen as a social construct that can take on different meanings across cultures, sub-groups, and individuals, and may be subject to change over time. Therefore, one way to get a clearer picture of infant musicality is to assess conceptions of musicality in the general population. Using this approach, we surveyed 174 German adults, asking about their view and conceptions regarding behaviors that characterize a musical child under 3 years. Based on previous studies on adult and child musicality, we designed a survey containing 41 statements describing musical behaviors in children. Participants were asked to rate how indicative these behaviors were of musicality in infants and toddlers. PCA analysis revealed 4 components of musical abilities and behaviors in under-3-year-olds: Musical Communication, Enthusiasm and Motivation, Adaptive Expressiveness, and Musical Abilities as traditionally defined. Professional background and musical expertise of the respondents did not significantly influence participants’ conceptions. Our results suggest that, in order to capture musicality in young children, a wider range of skills and observable behaviors should be taken into account than those assessed by traditional musical ability tests for young children.

Improvising Inside a House of Cards: New performance and music-making through a collective networked instrument

This article presents experiences and reflections related to performing improvised, live processed electroacoustic music within a context of networked music performance. The musical interaction is performed through a new collective networked instrument, and we report how the ensemble ‘Magnify the Sound’, consisting of two of the authors of this article, meets the instrument in different networked performance situations, and how this is related to the affordance of the instrument. In our performances the network is inherent to our artistic practice, and we experience a phenomenological and somatic transformation in our roles as musicians, from individual instrumentality to shared instrumentality. The instrument invites new forms of music-making and contributes in fundamental ways to the ensemble’s musical communication and artistic expression. In the present article we outline our methods of working artistically with the networked instrument, and we point at some artistic results. We then discuss how the collective instrument has facilitated new performance and musical practice within the network.

Expressing and Interpreting

Proclamations of the great emotional power of music are etched deep into artistic culture. During great performances, the emotions seem to flow directly from the hearts of musicians. Listeners are not, of course, privy to the hours of work and shaping that performers can devote in preparation. Research has shown that expressive musicians craft the details of sound parameters—timing, loudness, timbre, pitch—to make their music sound alive and human. This chapter shares insights afforded by psychological research on musical expression that can directly assist performing musicians. It explains that the expressive features applied by performers originate from several basic sources related to the structural characteristics of the music they are performing and to their own humanness. The artistic enterprise of interpretation is explained as the selection and combination of expressive ideas applied across an entire piece of music. Musical communication is successfully accomplished when performers—usually through explicit planning and artistic decision-making—stimulate listeners to experience emotions or feelings that match the musicians’ intentions.

Gestures in ensemble performance

Gestures, defined as meaning-bearing bodily actions, play important and varied roles in ensemble performance. This chapter discusses how the term “gesture” differs from physical “motion” and perceived “action.” The functional differences between sound-producing, sound-facilitating, sound-accompanying, and communicative actions are presented, alongside how these can be performed and/or perceived as meaning-bearing gestures. The role of gestures in ensemble performance is examined from four perspectives: (1) ensemble size and setup; (2) the musical degrees of freedom of the ensemble; (3) the musical leadership; and (4) the role of machines in the musicianship. It is argued that the use of gestures varies between different types of ensembles and musical genres. The common denominator is the need for meaning-bearing bodily communication between performers, with such gestures also playing an important part in the musical communication with the audience.

Makna Balaganjur Dalam Aktivitas Sosial Masyarakat Bali

Balaganjur is a form of performance arts and audio- visually it might be an independent art. Balaganjur is a musical communication that instigates sensation and emotional response between the composer, players and viewers. It might influence the fan who are familier with the background of Balinese social life. This article is meant to see and analyze how Balinese people value the function of Balaganjur, especially in the context of festive social activity. The performance of Balaganjur is always conected to a religious life, traditional lore, and aspect of artistic life in response to the development of the cultural millie. Generally, Balaganjur complements the implementation of religious ritual. However, when Balaganjur is secularly composed and performed as an aesthetic presentation, Balaganjur develops its function toward profan values.

New Dimensions of Musicology of the 21st Century: the Experience in Modelling the Interpretative Theory of Musical Communication

Relevance of the study. The relevance of the topic is associated with the formulation of the basic principles of the theory of musical interpretation in its interpretative dimension. Novelty. The novelty of the research lies in the understanding of musical communication as an interpretative phenomenon. The purpose of the research is to propose a model of the interpretative theory of musical communication for the development of the existing concepts. Methodology. Based on the research in modern humanities (M. Bakhtin, J. Habermas, H. Gumbrecht, S. Zizek, M. McLuhan, E. Levinas, J. Austin, D. Sperber, U. Eco), the theory of musical communication (E. Turner, A. Yakupov, V. Medushevsky, B. Syuta) and the theory of musical interpretation (Jean-Jacques Nathiez, T. Adorno, J. Brele, H. Danuzer, E. Gurenko, N. Korikhalova, V. Medushevsky, V. Moskalenko, L. Shapovalova, A. Samoilenko) a new look at the artistic processes of the 20th and early 21st centuries has been proposed. The main is the modeling method. Results and conclusions. For the development of the classical and relevant theories of communication (the main difference of the first is the recognition as the central element of the system the composition as a code, the essence of the second — the existence as the central element of a “musical-communicative event” and attention to the intentions of the communicants, the context of events, which determines their adequate understanding), the model of the interpretative theory of musical communication, in which both approaches are combined, has been introduced. We have introduced into the conceptual apparatus of musical science the type of Homo Interpretatus, which is the creator of a new modern musical reality and can be designated as a summary image of a person who, in the process of musical activity, manifests the dominance of interpreting thinking (in the unity and variety of the functions “composer — performer — listener — researcher”). The concept of “communication strategy” has been proposed, which is understood as the conscious action of the communicant (the intention directed at the Other in the process of creative communication). The typology of communication strategies has been presented: taking into account the type of creative activity (composing, performing, researching, listening) and based on their different forms of working with the material / text, as well as the focus on perception (in particular, idioethnic, modelling, actualizing, integrating, the strategy of style divergence / convergence, active, passive, total randomness, etc.). Significance. The significance of the results lies in the systematic presentation of the positions of the interpretive theory of musical communication, which opens up prospects for further research on the interpretive processes of the 21st century.

Horror vacui como principio interpretativo del fenómeno contemporáneo de saturación con música de fondo

We are experiencing a generalization of music in all contexts, including the commercial, social and labor, to the point that sound has invaded the public space. Music has a great communication capacity and effectiveness in generating emotions and attitudes. Thus, music has been used as a persuasion tool in advertising and as a formula to produce positive responses in individuals. However, its excessive presence suggests there is a current tendency or need to fill the entire space with sounds, with no space for silence. In this work, we present this phenomenon as a manifestation in modern societies of the "horror vacui", a Latin expression that means "fear of empty space", whose origin is in the philosophical paradigm that denied the emptiness in nature and was later applied in art history to describe ornate works, without gaps, like those of the Baroque. We propose this parallelism as a research method in musical communication.