Accounts of Music Knowledge Mobilization

Abstract

Repertoire preparation is often challenging for students since they must deal with cognitive, emotional, behavioral, motivational and socio-cultural factors that may positively or negatively contribute to the accumulated experience in their musical practice. There is a consensus in the literature that instrumental practice depends on the nature and context of the task, as well as the interests and engagement of the musician. The present chapter proposes a model to describe how undergraduate piano students prepare their repertoire in terms of musical knowledge mobilization within the Western classical music tradition. The concept of knowledge mobilization is based on Charlot’s principles of internal and dynamic movements towards a personal meaning with the aim of achieving a given goal–a kind of self-interaction in search of music knowledge mobilization. The piano repertoire preparation of three undergraduate students (one each in their first, fifth and eighth semesters) was examined during one academic semester from a phenomenological perspective. In the three studied cases, four complementary research techniques were employed: a semi-structured interview, an observation (on video) of the performance of the musical repertoire pieces, a non-structured interview about the repertoire under preparation and a recall-stimulated interview in which the student reflected on his/her own performance. The mobilization of musical knowledge seems to start from the horizon of personal interest, which reveals each individual’s way of being and knowing in terms of experiential dispositions, which are internal movements that propel ideas and questions for support strategies (either as learned procedural actions or creative activities). The preparation of the piano repertoire for the three investigated cases developed in cyclical ways in terms of survey and self-regulation experiential dispositions. Survey dispositions include personal creative approaches, revealing one’s possibilities of thinking and knowing within the Western classical music tradition. Creative activities chosen during repertoire preparation seem to trigger and accelerate the process of self-regulation dispositions (organization, management and supervision), which may act continually and allow qualitative advancement during repertoire preparation for the final production. In the three studied cases, each cycle of personal production in the repertoire preparation was conducted several times to achieve the final production based on a deadline restriction.