Musical Boundaries Research Articles

Breaking (musical) boundaries by investigating brain dynamics of event segmentation during real-life music-listening

The perception of musical phrase boundaries is a critical aspect of human musical experience: It allows us to organize, understand, derive pleasure from, and remember music. Identifying boundaries is a prerequisite for segmenting music into meaningful chunks, facilitating efficient processing and storage while providing an enjoyable, fulfilling listening experience through the anticipation of upcoming musical events. Expanding on Sridharan et al.'s [Neuron 55, 521-532 (2007)] work on coarse musical boundaries between symphonic movements, we examined finer-grained boundaries. We measured the fMRI responses of 18 musicians and 18 nonmusicians during music listening. Using general linear model, independent component analysis, and Granger causality, we observed heightened auditory integration in anticipation to musical boundaries, and an extensive decrease within the fronto-temporal-parietal network during and immediately following boundaries. Notably, responses were modulated by musicianship. Findings uncover the intricate interplay between musical structure, expertise, and cognitive processing, advancing our knowledge of how the brain makes sense of music.

Балет Р. Штрауса «Легенда об Иосифе». Музыкальное толкование библейского сюжета

The article is dedicated to the musical and choreographic interpretation of the biblical plot in the ballet "The Legend of Joseph" by R. Strauss, with libretto by H. Hofmannsthal and H. Kessler, created in 1914 for the Diaghilev seasons. The events of the Holy Scripture, representing endless possibilities of interpretation, allow to highlight the important cultural problem: the biblical plot and modernity. In this regard, the music and choreography of the ballet attract attention not only with their originality, but also as a vivid example of a work in which different trends of its time are interwoven. From the perspective of musical dramaturgy, this primarily involves the emphasis on the role of the psychological element in character development and revelation of the plot — a significant role in this process is played by Strauss’s leitmotif writing, as well as quotes (including self-quotes) and allusions. From a non-musical context perspective, there is undeniable influence of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory — as evidenced by the interpretation of the heroine’s role, reminiscent of Salome from the eponymous opera (pathological infatuation with Joseph brings her to irrational actions, leading to madness). The article analyzes the influence of Hofmannsthal’s poetry, the obvious connection of the heroine with the female images of Gustav Klimt, as well as the scientific direction "Philosophy of Life". The rich context that has emerged represents an intertext that is not confined within purely musical boundaries, but includes multicultural interactions. The main conclusion is that R. Strauss, long before Thomas Mann’s novel, created a work that defined the characteristic features of the modern era, such as a tendency towards myth, the East, and biblical themes. R. Strauss also deserves credit for creating the genre of choreographic drama, successfully continued by S. Prokofiev.

ELEKTROAKUSTİK MÜZİK VE SESSEL SANATLARDA ÖZGÜRLEŞTİRİCİ BİR FAKTÖR OLARAK TEKNOLOJİ

This research aims to investigate the influence of technology on expanding the sound palette used in the musical context. In order to conclude, this article focuses on how technology has shaped electroacoustic music and sound art trends since the 1950s. The main focus is technology's impact on the relationship between sound and expanded musical boundaries. Considering music history, technology’s involvement in arts, its influence in music occurred in a short time compared to other movements. Technology accessibility strongly influences its role in shaping musical styles, artistic motivation, and sound crafting methods. For instance, recording technology can alter the identity of sound within the musical context. Also, the methods, equipment, and motivation shape technology's impact on artists' creative processes and acoustic output. In order to explain the influence of technology, a historical approach has been used to discuss the active studios’ similarities, differences and influences over each other and further. The influences of technology and approaches to sound were discussed in four parameters under accessibility. Methods influenced by different artistic practices, their uses in musical practices and their reflections in current artistic practices are also explained under the examined parameters. To conclude, the paper briefly explores the cyclical shifts between retrospective and techno-determinism in electroacoustic music and sound art practices. Under the lens of futurism and modernism, the impact of electricity’s involvement in music and the trends it created are discussed thoroughly.

Tension experience induced by tonal and melodic shift at music phrase boundaries

Music tension is a link between music structures and emotions. As music unfolds, developmental patterns induce various emotional experiences, but the relationship between developmental patterns and tension experience remains unclear. The present study compared two developmental patterns of two successive phrases (tonal shift and melodic shift) with repetition condition to investigate the relationship with tension experience. Professional musicians rated on-line felt tension and EEG responses were recorded while listening to music sequences. Behavioral results showed that tension ratings under tonal and melodic shift conditions were higher than those under repetition conditions. ERP results showed larger potentials at early P300 and late positive component (LPC) time windows under tonal shift condition, and early right anterior negativity (ERAN) and LPC under melodic shift condition. ERSP results showed early beta and late gamma power increased under tonal shift condition, theta power decreased and alpha power increased under melodic shift condition. Our findings suggest that developmental patterns play a vital role in tension experiences; tonal shift affects tension by tonal shift detection and integration, while melodic shift affects tension by attentional processing and working memory integration. From the perspective of Event Structure Processing Model, solid evidence was given to specify the time-span segmentation and reduction.

Music for Counting Votes

Music for Counting Votes

Unsupervised Detection of Music Boundaries by Time Series Structure Features

Locating boundaries between coherent and/or repetitive segments of a time series is a challenging problem pervading many scientific domains. In this paper we propose an unsupervised method for boundary detection, combining three basic principles: novelty, homogeneity, and repetition. In particular, the method uses what we call structure features, a representation encapsulating both local and global properties of a time series. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach in detecting music structure boundaries, a task that has received much attention in recent years and for which exist several benchmark datasets and publicly available annotations. We find our method to significantly outperform the best accuracies published so far. Importantly, our boundary approach is generic, thus being applicable to a wide range of time series beyond the music and audio domains.

An investigation of musical “boundary crossers”

With the intent of informing the practice of music teachers navigating “multi-musicality” in their classrooms, this qualitative study, employing case study and narrative research tools, investigates the experiences of three musical “boundary crossers”—professional musicians whose work traverses the popular–classical divide. Three questions guided the inquiry: (a) How do professional musicians describe the experience of boundary crossing from one musical domain to another? (b) What musical skills do these professionals find valuable for their work in various domains, and what skills have they acquired or adapted in crossing musical boundaries? and (c) How does working in one musical domain influence work in another? Each participant navigates the balance between and the integration of their classical and popular musicianship(s) differently. All acknowledge that classical training, although it may afford some advantages, also can be a hindrance for individuals pursuing the creation and performance of music in a popular domain. Findings point to the need for functional piano skills, practical application of ear training, and development of a musical value set that includes “focused simplicity.” The findings have implications for how preservice teachers develop musical versatility, enabling them to respond to students’ varied interests and needs.

Music Boundary Detection using Convolutional Neural Networks: A Comparative Analysis of Combined Input Features

The analysis of the structure of musical pieces is a task that remains a challenge for Artificial Intelligence, especially in the field of Deep Learning. It requires prior identification of structural boundaries of the music pieces. This structural boundary analysis has recently been studied with unsupervised methods and \textit{end-to-end} techniques such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) using Mel-Scaled Log-magnitude Spectograms features (MLS), Self-Similarity Matrices (SSM) or Self-Similarity Lag Matrices (SSLM) as inputs and trained with human annotations. Several studies have been published divided into unsupervised and \textit{end-to-end} methods in which pre-processing is done in different ways, using different distance metrics and audio characteristics, so a generalized pre-processing method to compute model inputs is missing. The objective of this work is to establish a general method of pre-processing these inputs by comparing the inputs calculated from different pooling strategies, distance metrics and audio characteristics, also taking into account the computing time to obtain them. We also establish the most effective combination of inputs to be delivered to the CNN in order to establish the most efficient way to extract the limits of the structure of the music pieces. With an adequate combination of input matrices and pooling strategies we obtain a measurement accuracy $F_1$ of 0.411 that outperforms the current one obtained under the same conditions.

Muzyka bez granic

Music without Borders: Portuguese Fado in a Multicultural Space
 In 2011 fado was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, but much before it started to function as a Portugal’s music trade mark. Fado lovers believe that it is a reflection of the Portuguese soul. The genre can be traced to the 19th century’s poor districts of Lisbon (Alfama, Mouraria), however some ethnomusicologists increasingly emphasize its earlier African‑Brazilian origins. For more than two hundred years of its existence, fado passed through different phases of development, reaching diverse public, first in Portugal and then abroad. In times of the dictatorship Antonio Salazar’s regime tried to influence fado by introducing censorship and specifying rigid rules of performance. The aim of this article is to show the evolution of the Portuguese fado and its modern interpretations, resulting from the fusion of this genre with other forms, such as bossa nova, jazz, folk, pop, or tango. This blurring and softening of the music boundaries is illustrated with the example of surprising connections between fado and Angolan, Capeverdean, Andalusian, Brazilian or Jewish music. The principal argument of the article is the idea that nowadays fado exceeds many borders: the limits of social groups, cultural and ethnic areas, countries and music genres.

A longitudinal study of the development of expressive timing

Tempo arches have often been reported in polished music performances, but their development during the learning of a new piece has not been studied. We examined the development of expressive timing at three levels of musical structure (piece, section, phrase) as an experienced concert soloist (the second author) prepared the Prelude from J. S. Bach’s Suite No. 6 for solo cello for public performance. We used mixed effect models to assess the development of expressive timing and the effects of the performance cues (PCs) that the cellist used as mental landmarks to guide her performance. Tempo arches appeared early in practice at all three levels of musical structure and changed over time in complex ways, first becoming more pronounced and more asymmetrical and then shrinking somewhat in later performances. Arches were also more pronounced in phrases that contained PCs, suggesting that PCs reminded the cellist where to “breathe” between phrases. The early development of tempo arches suggests that they were an automatic product of basic cognitive or motor processes. The complex trajectory of their later development appeared to be the result, at least in part, of a deliberate communicative strategy intended to draw listeners’ attention to some musical boundaries more than others.

Collective Free Music Improvisation as a Sociocommunicative Endeavor: A Literature Review

This article is a review of literature that conceptualizes the practice of collective free music improvisation as a sociocommunicative endeavor, with its appended value and implications to musicians and music learners. Researchers have revealed that this conceptualization breaks down cultural and stylistic music boundaries to establish understanding and empathy among diverse and unique performers—through live music interactions and communication on an egalitarian and evolving platform that is negotiated by all participants. To enable collective free music improvisation pedagogically, researchers have highlighted the importance and ways of approaching it as a form of social interactionism, developing a personal music language to converse fluently and meaningfully, and establishing shared understanding among fellow improvisers as the foundation for music interaction. Together, these pedagogical implications may be synergized to inform ways in which classroom free improvisational practices may nurture expressive and confident improvisers rooted in the reality of the moment, as well as in the music conversations with one’s self and others.

Musical Boundaries: The Making of Traditional Newfoundland Music(ians)

Musical Boundaries: The Making of Traditional Newfoundland Music(ians)

‘Bejazzled’: employing attributes of pre-schoolers’ play to facilitate musical interactions with jazz

ABSTRACTAlthough early childhood caregivers in South African townships integrate singing into their teaching on a daily basis, they are often unaware of how to facilitate other musical interactions through movement, playing instruments or body percussion. The ‘Bejazzled’ action research project was initiated to facilitate these interactions through collaborative teaching between a caregiver and a music educator. The aim of the ‘Bejazzled’ project was to generate a conceptual framework that describes how jazz could successfully be integrated into the educational programme at an informal early childhood development centre by utilizing existing attributes of pre-schoolers’ play (spontaneity, inventiveness, openness and curiosity) to indicate learner responses related to jazz such as spontaneously creating music, discovering new musical experiences, responding to music through movement, and exploring music through play. These learner responses could foster growth in the early years to transcend musical boundaries, strengthen gross motor skills, cultivate listening and language skills, and contribute to social and emotional development.

Ambivalence, indifference, distinction: A comparative netfield analysis of implicit musical boundaries

This study offers a reconceptualization of social and symbolic boundaries around music by specifying combinations of inclusion, exclusion, and ambivalence in musical tastes, producing eight ideal-typical forms of musical boundaries. These forms are investigated using data from a survey of students at the University of Mississippi measuring implicit boundary processes through respondent genre classifications of favorite and least favorite artists. These data are analyzed using comparative netfield analysis, a combination of comparative and relational methods that provides a mixed methods framework for connecting interpretations of individual-level processes to a map of the socio-musical field. The main opposition found in this musical field is between divider and ambivalent boundary forms, i.e., those who draw boundaries between versus within genres. A secondary opposition is defined by those who are indifferent to major genres. Case studies suggest that musical boundaries are often organized around racialized and gendered genre categories. I draw implications for studies of omnivorousness, genre classification, and mixed methods analysis in cultural sociology.

Mingus in the Workshop: Leading the Improvisation From New Orleans to Pentecostal Trance

But within all the varied components of black music and throughout all the changes it underwent, it remained a group-oriented means of communication and expression. --Lawrence Levine (1977, 239) In the mid-1950s Charles Mingus embraced two historical African-derived approaches that emphasized group expression: (1) the collective improvisation of early New Orleans jazz, whose lay in (2) the ecstatic worship and singing rituals of the black Pentecostal church. Mingus's recordings from the mid-1950s to early 1960s musically progressed from short sections of frontline collective interplay and group improvisation reminiscent of early jazz to longer forms of ecstatic ritual. This latter practice--in the form of solos, band, and audience participation--was a direct invocation of the Ghost-filled spiritual communion (Booker 1988, 32), or Holy Spirit possession that Mingus had witnessed in Pentecostal church services as a youth. Many writers have observed Mingus's diverse influences. Eric Porter (2002) writes that Mingus challenged all musical boundaries, invoking his aesthetic of late Romanticism, his anticipations of free jazz, and points between in tributes to Jelly Roll Morton. Brian Priestley (1982) remarked on influences from Mingus's work as a sideman for Louis Armstrong and big-band leaders Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington. Both Porter and Priestly also note influences of the black church, bebop harmonies, and rhythms modeling Charles Parker, Gillespie, and Thelonious as well as Lennie Tristano's modernist jazz sounds. Finally, Todd Jenkins mentions Mingus's jazz-rock and world-music fusions (2006, 4). Relatively little has been written regarding the contexts of these influences, particularly of early New Orleans jazz and the black Pentecostal church, nor have they been explored in close readings of Mingus's works and recordings. In this article, I argue that Mingus's use of New Orleans-style collective improvisation and composition (as in his response to Jelly Roll Morton) and the influence of church music follows a stylistic trajectory. I also explore his use of these influences contextually and through a musical analysis of the recordings. The elements of the two African-derived approaches are most evident in five recordings from the 1950s. The New Orleans style can be heard in the frontline's collectively improvised sections, in recordings as early as Jump Monk (1955), in Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956), Dizzy Moods (1957), and implicated in Moanin (1959), where melodic instrumental interplay--along with group and solo improvisation--create texture and timbre, but also determine a tight structure. Later, such elements evolved into the pivotal idea of growth or expansion, what Mingus referred to as extended form. Here he gives soloists room to enact a spiritual transcendence within this more flexible form; Mingus's reenactments of the communal dynamics of the black church play out most obviously in Better Git Hit in Your Soul (1959) and Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting (1959). Mingus used these two approaches to advance not only musical expression but also political and spiritual ideas. In his music and testimony, after the moldy fig/modernist debate (Gendron 2002, 121-123; one between early jazz and bebop proponents arguing the merits of these subgenres) within the 1940s Dixieland revival, Mingus made New Orleans jazz a part of his larger embrace of group expression in the 1950s. His use went beyond bebop's small group format of head-solo-head (or soloist-versus-rhythm) or big band's similar arrangements. While Mingus's music orbited the same sphere of soul music (influenced by gospel) that Ray Charles and others mined during this era, his inclusion of idioms from African-American church tradition developed in musical form the confined uses of a roots stylistic approach, which can be seen in Charles's contemporary recordings or Nat and Cannonball Adderley's work songs. …

You know when: event-related potentials and theta/beta power indicate boundary prediction in music.

Neuroscientific and musicological approaches to music cognition indicate that listeners familiarized in the Western tonal tradition expect a musical phrase boundary at predictable time intervals. However, phrase boundary prediction processes in music remain untested. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related induced power changes at the onset and offset of a boundary pause. We made comparisons with modified melodies, where the pause was omitted and filled by tones. The offset of the pause elicited a closure positive shift (CPS), indexing phrase boundary detection. The onset of the filling tones elicited significant increases in theta and beta powers. In addition, the P2 component was larger when the filling tones started than when they ended. The responses to boundary omission suggest that listeners expected to hear a boundary pause. Therefore, boundary prediction seems to coexist with boundary detection in music segmentation.

“Nobody Likes Rock and Roll but the Public”: Down Beat, Genre Boundaries and the Dismissal of Rock and Roll by Jazz Critics

Jazz and rock and roll have been historically treated as separate musical traditions, despite sharing many socio-musical characteristics. The roots of the divide between the two genres can be partially traced through the history of music journalism. This article examines how jazz critics writing for Down Beat, the most influential of the American jazz publications, constructed rock and roll in opposition to jazz in the 1950s, providing one of the earliest instances of a discursive tension which survives to the present day. It shows how the commercial decisions music publications need to make can influence the formation of musical genre boundaries.

Younger versus older infants’ use of prosody-like boundaries to locate musical phrases

In spoken language, particularly of the infant-directed variety, clauses are marked with prosodic cues, such as final lengthening and pitch resets at boundaries (e.g., Soderstrom et al., 2008). Though prosody is specific to language, similar acoustic cues mark phrase boundaries in music, and infants are sensitive to the correlation of these cues at musical boundaries (Jusczyk and Krumhansl, 1993). In the present study, we ask whether younger (4-month-old) and older (16-month-old) infants can use prosody-like boundary cues to facilitate recognition of musical phrases. In a musical extension of Soderstrom et al. (2005), infants were familiarized with one of two brief melodies, then were tested using the head-turn preference procedure on their ability to recognize a phrase versus phrase-straddling excerpt from the familiarization melody when it is embedded in a new musical passage. Preliminary results suggest that younger infants show a familiarity preference for the test melody containing a phrase from the familiarized melody, while older infants do not discriminate between the test item types. This suggests that young infants use prosody-like cues to group acoustic stimuli in a domain-general way, whereas older infants may not.

‘History As it Should Have Been’: Haunts of the Historical Sublime in John Corigliano's and William Hoffman'sThe Ghosts of Versailles

AbstractIn John Corigliano's and William Hoffman's operaThe Ghosts of Versailles(1991), generic, musical, and temporal boundaries are dissolved, and historical processes revealed, resulting in a work that performs an operatic rendering of what philosopher Frank Ankersmit has referred to as sublime historical experience. As Marie Antoinette's ghost resolves her trauma by narrativising it in performance, and as music extends and dramatises the experience of the sublime, the audience experiences profoundly the liminal realm that historically-based operas inhabit in their movement between past and present. Indeed, the temporal suspension that is so central to theories of the sublime finds parallels in opera's historical obsession with death, and in music's ability to momentarily blur the boundaries between life and death, and past and present.The Ghosts of Versaillesallows for the audience's relationship to history to be revisited, reconfigured, and in many cases, reconciled, through a haunting of the present in operatic performance.

Investigating Cultural Collision: Educators’ Perceptions of Hip-Hop Culture

AbstractHip-hop music has been embraced worldwide by youth, pummeled in the media for supposedly increasing social misery and hailed as a significant musical breakthrough. Hip-hop culture has transcended musical boundaries and now impacts speech, clothing, mannerisms, movies, websites, television programming, magazines, and energy drinks (