Musical Dimensions Research Articles

ʻEIN ENGEL SPIELTE SANFT AUF BLAUEN TASTENʼ: ELSE LASKER‐SCHÜLERS LYRISCHE MUSIKPOETIK

AbstractThis essay examines the musical dimension in Else Lasker‐Schülerʼs lyrical compositions. In three sections, each headed with a motto from Georg Traklʼs poem ʻAbendlandʼ (which was dedicated to Lasker‐Schüler), this exploration suggests an ʻelective affinityʼ in the two poets’ treatment of poetic language. Central to the argument is a discussion of Lasker‐Schüler's rarely considered poem ʻLeo Kestenbergʼ, in which intrinsic musicality is matched with explicit references to musical themes and motifs. The essay argues, with particular reference to Bachelard and Zwetajewa, that music and poetic spaces are interrelated in Lasker‐Schülerʼs poems. It shows how musically conditioned her treatment of language was: in her poetry, music is the sound‐image of poetic imagination. Rather than apply the over‐used concept of ʻintermedialityʼ to Lasker‐Schüler's poetry, the essay demonstrates what poetic phenomenology entails if or when word and music interact in a generic fashion, forming what could be termed ʻpoetic correlativesʼ. Whilst much of Lasker‐Schüler criticism centres on the pictorial dimension in her work, this essay contributes to redressing the balance.

ECGsound for human identification

Novel biometric systems have emerged in recent years as an alternative or complement to traditional identification systems based on passwords (something you know) or tokens (something you have). In this sense, biopotentials signals such as electrocardiograms (cardiac signal) or electroencephalograms (brain signals) have attracted many researchers’ attention. This work proposes an innovative identification technique based on electrocardiograms (ECGs) and musical features (e.g., dynamics, rhythm or timbre) commonly used to characterise audio files. In a nutshell, after pre-processing ECG recordings, we transform them into audio wave files, split them into segments, extract features into five musical dimensions and finally fed a classifier with these instances. The proposal’s workability is confirmed by experimentation using the MIT-BIH Normal Sinus Rhythm Database with 18 subjects and offering an accuracy of 96.6 and a low error rate with FAR and FRR 0.002 and 0.004, respectively.

The Role of Experimenting with the Human Voice in Film Music in the Representation of the Human/Alien Divide: the Case of Arrival (2016)

Abstract This article focuses on the musical dimension of experimentation in the creative space of science fiction film, concerning its uncanny, new and fantastic places, and otherworldly encounters within fictional, but possible worlds. The aim is to consider the function and potential of the audible – to examine how sound is used in the filmic exploration of the boundaries between the human and the alien (the unknown). More particularly, we are interested in the role that human voice-like and human vocal sounds can play in this divide, as we believe manipulations with such audible qualities contribute greatly to the emotional dimension of cinematic stories of otherworldly encounters. For that purpose, we concentrate on Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) and its soundtrack composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson, who resorts to different singing practices and vocal techniques to accompany a story charting the territories between the human and the alien.

Timbral Heuristics and the Sonorous Presence of Steven Jesse Bernstein

In recent years, music analysts have grappled with the sonic strategies from popular expressions that evade traditional notation. Their approaches often rely on harmonic spectrographs or various textual tools to decode the creative mechanics of these art forms. But for many practices with innate musicality—such as spoken-word poetry—these common techniques make limited explanatory headway. This article proposes an alternate path to fill the gaps: Adopt an analytic perspective, grounded in phenomenology, that listens for the musical subject’s negotiation of embodiment through their calculated treatment of timbre in the voice. Here, the analyst traces their perception of the subject’s bodily resonance through diagrams called timbral maps. And through these maps, two key concepts are discovered that structure the creator’s interior logic: timbral surfaces and timbral moments. Surfaces and moments are built into recognizable patterns, which in turn disclose the methods of these artists as lucid on their own terms. This “surface-moment” model is prototyped using a recorded performance of “This Clouded Heart” by the grunge-era Seattle poet and performance artist Steven Jesse Bernstein. The model reveals several stylistic tactics honed by Bernstein through his play with resonant shifts, but more significantly, argues for recasting timbre in analytic contexts: first, as a sustained and winding musical dimension, able to unfurl like other large-scale organizing principles; and second, as a heuristic capable of engaging listeners in an empathetic web between themselves and the subject through the mimetic connection of their bodies.

The Experience of Poetry: From Homer’s Listeners to Shakespeare’s Readers

The Experience of Poetry: From Homer’s Listeners to Shakespeare’s Readers

Creative activity of Crimean Tatar composers of the XX century: musical and ethnological dimensions

Purpose of Research. The purpose of the research is to analyze the creative activity of Crimean Tatar composers of the XX century: A. Refatov, J. Sherfedinov, I. Bakhshish. Methodology. The research methodology is based on the use of historical and musicological, comparative, chronological, systematic methods, which have allowed to show the creative components of the composers. Scientific Novelty. The scientific novelties are the attempts to comprehensively highlight and study various aspects of the activities of artists as musicians, composers, conductors, teachers, ethnographers, public figures; to supplement, clarify and systematize the biographical data of artists; to study and highlight their significant achievements; to determine the contribution of composers to the development of Crimean Tatar music. Conclusions. The activities of A. Refatov, J. Sherfedinov, I. Bakhshish are the foundations for the formation of Crimean Tatar professional classical music. They worked in various genres such as opera, overture, suite, symphony, music for performances, chamber and instrumental, vocal and choral music, etc. Their activities are based on the national and cultural traditions of the Crimean Tatars. The musicians paid special attention to collecting, studying, processing and publishing folk songs. An important component of the artists' activities were theoretical works on the history and theory of folk music. Creative achievements, teaching activities, active musical and public position contributed to the revival as well as to the dynamic development of the Crimean Tatar musical culture.

Developing Familiarity in a New Duo: Rehearsal Talk and Performance Cues.

Context and Aims: Social and cognitive processes underlying individual classical musicians' and duo performers' preparation for performance have been explored using longitudinal case studies. Social processes can be inferred from rehearsal talk and recent studies have focused on its content and nature. Cognitive processes can be inferred from score annotations representing musicians' thoughts while practicing, rehearsing (rehearsal features), and playing or singing from memory (performance cues). We report three studies conducted by two practitioner-researchers: (1) of rehearsal talk; (2) of rehearsal features and thoughts while performing; and (3) a triangulation (as it were) of the two kinds of data to gauge the potential for rehearsal talk to predict the use of performance cues.Methods: A singer and viola player formed a new duo to prepare two songs, new to them both, for two performances on the same day and a third performance 10 months later. Their practice and rehearsal sessions, over the course of seven days, were recorded and transcribed. The musicians annotated copies of the scores after rehearsing and after each performance. Each musician performed one of the two songs from memory. First, verbal data were coded and analyzed using two frameworks for categorizing socio-emotional interactions and musical dimensions, respectively. Second, their annotations were categorized and compared, and finally the frameworks were combined so that correlations between rehearsal talk and performance cues could be calculated.Results: The musicians' verbal interactions were positive and task-related; significant changes over time were observed only in the extent to which they showed solidarity toward each other. Analysis of their annotations illustrates similarities and differences between their attention to specific features of the music while rehearsing and performing, particularly from memory. Rehearsal talk predicted performance cues in the third performance, but not the first or second.Conclusion: Musicians' talk cannot be assumed to reflect musicians' actions. The study of musicians' verbal interactions may be less useful for determining cognitive than social processes underlying preparation for performance. Nevertheless, the study provides a detailed snapshot of classical musicians' “real world” preparation for performance, highlighting the role of spontaneity in performance, and underlining differences between what happens in the studio and what can happen on stage.

Smelling Sensations: Olfactory Crossmodal Correspondences †

Olfaction is ingrained into the fabric of our daily lives and constitutes an integral part of our perceptual reality. Within this reality, there are crossmodal interactions and sensory expectations; understanding how olfaction interacts with other sensory modalities is crucial for augmenting interactive experiences with more advanced multisensorial capabilities. This knowledge will eventually lead to better designs, more engaging experiences, and enhancing the perceived quality of experience. Toward this end, the authors investigated a range of crossmodal correspondences between ten olfactory stimuli and different modalities (angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, pleasantness, pitch, colors, musical genres, and emotional dimensions) using a sample of 68 observers. Consistent crossmodal correspondences were obtained in all cases, including our novel modality (the smoothness of texture). These associations are most likely mediated by both the knowledge of an odor’s identity and the underlying hedonic ratings: the knowledge of an odor’s identity plays a role when judging the emotional and musical dimensions but not for the angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, perceived pleasantness, or pitch. Overall, hedonics was the most dominant mediator of crossmodal correspondences.

Smelling Sensations: Olfactory Crossmodal Correspondences

Olfaction is ingrained into the fabric of our daily lives and constitutes an integral part of our perceptual reality. Within this reality, there are crossmodal interactions and sensory expectations; understanding how olfaction interacts with other sensory modalities is crucial for augmenting interactive experiences with more advanced multisensorial capabilities. This knowledge will eventually lead to better designs, more engaging experiences, and enhancing the perceived quality of experience. Toward this end, the authors investigated a range of crossmodal correspondences between ten olfactory stimuli and different modalities (angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, pleasantness, pitch, colors, musical genres, and emotional dimensions) using a sample of 68 observers. Consistent crossmodal correspondences were obtained in all cases, including our novel modality (the smoothness of texture). These associations are most likely mediated by both the knowledge of an odor’s identity and the underlying hedonic ratings: the knowledge of an odor’s identity plays a role when judging the emotional and musical dimensions but not for the angularity of shapes, smoothness of texture, perceived pleasantness, or pitch. Overall, hedonics was the most dominant mediator of crossmodal correspondences.

Audio Features for Music Emotion Recognition: A Survey

The design of meaningful audio features is a key need to advance the state-of-the-art in music emotion recognition (MER). This article presents a survey on the existing emotionally-relevant computational audio features, supported by the music psychology literature on the relations between eight musical dimensions (melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, tone color, expressivity, texture and form) and specific emotions. Based on this review, current gaps and needs are identified and strategies for future research on feature engineering for MER are proposed, namely ideas for computational audio features that capture elements of musical form, texture and expressivity that should be further researched. Previous MER surveys offered broad reviews, covering topics such as emotion paradigms, approaches for the collection of ground-truth data, types of MER problems and overviewing different MER systems. On the contrary, our approach is to offer a deep and specific review on one key MER problem: the design of emotionally-relevant audio features.

Psychologiczne uwarunkowania kształcenia instrumentalnego w szkole muzycznej

<p>Muzyczne kształcenie instrumentalne w Polsce to autonomiczny typ kształcenia, ze specyficznymi celami, zadaniami i efektami. Do najbardziej charakterystycznych sytuacji dydaktyczno-wychowawczych należą instrumentalne egzaminy, konkursy i przesłuchania oraz lekcje gry na instrumencie. Przygotowanie do realizacji tych zadań wymaga uwzględnienia dwóch wymiarów: muzycznego i psychologicznego, które tworzą holistyczną perspektywę kształcenia muzycznego. Owo całościowe podejście obejmuje w zakresie wymiaru specyficznie muzycznego takie zagadnienia, jak zdolności muzyczne, sprawności wykonawcze, umiejętności artystyczne i osiągnięcia muzyczne. Natomiast wymiar psychologiczny dotyczy dyspozycji ogólnych (fizycznych, intelektualnych, emocjonalnych i społecznych), postaw, zainteresowań, potrzeb, aspiracji, samooceny itd. Przygotowanie zawodowe nauczyciela szkoły muzycznej obejmuje w obszarze: a) muzycznym – kwalifikacje i kompetencje; b) psychologicznym – samopoznanie, autorefleksję, zasoby osobiste, akceptację siebie w roli pedagoga; c) dydaktycznym – przygotowanie do zajęć, dostosowanie metod pracy do wieku rozwojowego i możliwości ucznia. Wchodzące w skład ostatniego obszaru metodyczne kompetencje psychopedagogiczne nauczyciela w klasie instrumentalnej to wiedza i umiejętności z zakresu relacji i komunikacji z uczniem, umiejętności motywowania, pomocy w opanowaniu tremy i stresu oraz refleksji pedagogicznej.</p>

Scales of sustain and decay: making music in deep time

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between the human time of music making and the temporal layers that pervade the natural resources of musical instruments. It therefore offers case studies on two of popular music's most common instruments, the electric guitar and the synthesiser, and their symbolic and material temporalities: guitar players’ quest for ‘infinite sustain’ from Santana to today's effects manufacturers and the ‘psychogeophysical’ approach by artist and theorist Martin Howse, who developed a synthesiser module using radioactive material in order to determine musical events by nuclear decay. While language uses metaphors of sustain and decay as figurative ways to express both musical and planetary dimensions, practices of music offer alternative ecologies of relating the seemingly unrelatable scales of deep time and musical time. If in the Anthropocene humankind becomes aware of its role as a geophysical force, thinking about making music in the Anthropocene requires an awareness for the temporalities involved in the materials at hand. Besides an ecological perspective, the article looks at various media (magazines, ads, and manuals) and thus positions economical mechanisms of the musical instrument manufacturing market as a small-scale experimental setting for larger-scale industrial processes.

One thousand and one nights of tango: Moving between Argentina, North Africa, and the Middle East

ABSTRACTThe Middle East and North Africa (MENA) rarely appear in any analysis of the global diffusion of Argentine tango. Yet, writers, musicians, singers, and dancers from the MENA region have long contributed to and drawn from tango as a cultural phenomenon in complex and multi-layered ways, as this essay demonstrates through a select taxonomy of historical, literary, musical, and dance encounters that culminates with a cross-cultural dialogue between Borges’ analysis of the One Thousand and One Nights and the theology of Sufism in order to theorise the ineffable experience of the dance and the profundity of its music and lyric dimensions. Through a contrapuntal methodology that draws on my dual experience as a tango dancer and DJ, and as a literary and cultural historian of the MENA region, I explore these encounters and entanglements as opening new embodied pathways for South-South solidarity engendered through transnational “translations” of music and dance.

Singing the Law: The Musicality of Legal Performance

What would the law sound like if it was sung? Whilst scholars have explored the relation between music and law, focus on the acoustic and musical dimensions of legal speech is relatively new. Exploring musical adaptations and remixes of legal transcripts, the paper argues that there is a latent musicality to legal speech. Using as case studies Opera Australia’s production of ‘Lindy’ and Donmar Warehouse’s production of ‘Committee’, where legal speech was adapted verbatim from legal transcripts into musical score, the paper investigates what these composers have to say about their jurisprudential source material. Through advancing this notion of latent musicality within legal speech, this paper suggests that legal speech works best when it appeals to its audience in the way that music appeals to its listener in terms of rhythm, pitch, and tone.

Brain networks mediating the influence of background music on selective attention.

Prevalent across societies and times, music has the ability to enhance attention, a property relevant to clinical applications, but the underlying brain mechanisms remain unknown. It is also unclear whether music produces similar or differential effects with advancing age. Here, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the influence of music exposure evoking four types of emotions on distinct attentional components measured with a modified attention network test, across 19 young (21 ± 2.6) and 33 old participants (72 ± 5.4). We then determined whether music-related effects differed across age groups and whether they were associated with particular acoustic features. Background music during selective attention requiring distractor conflict resolution was associated with faster response times and greater activations of fronto-parietal areas during happy and high-arousing music, whereas sad and low-valence music was associated with slower responses and greater occipital recruitment. Shifting and altering components of attention were unaffected. The influence of music on performance and brain networks was similar between age groups. These behavioral and neuroimaging results demonstrate the importance of affective music dimensions, particularly arousal, in enhancing selective attention processes. This study adds novel support to the benefits of music in the rehabilitation of attention functions.

Soundtrack for love: wedding videography, music and romantic memory

ABSTRACT Professionally produced wedding videos are evocative artefacts. Capturing the ritual of the wedding, the wedding video stands as a postcard that showcases the conspicuous display of emotion that assumes a central place in the memorialization and indeed the very praxis of the modern wedding ritual. The role of music in the wedding video is crucial; representing a key partner to the imagery of the wedding, the musical dimensions emotionally charge the artefact in perpetuity. In this article we argue that the musical soundtrack of wedding videos services manifold functions, including the enabling of narrative continuity, providing a sense of propulsive rhythm, pacing and supporting the successful communication of emotions that sits at the centre of the compressed iconography of the wedding. Although the visual elements play a lead role, we contend that the unseen qualities of the musical materials also play an integral function; undergirding the images of the wedding and mediating the emotional and affective display. The argument presented is based on an analysis of 132 selected publicly available videos, sourced from wedding videographers based in the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

Language of Metaphors as an Element of the Genre Idea of Bagatelles in the Musical Universe of V. Silvestrov

Introduction. Radical reinterpretation of the genre of bagatelles takes place in modern musical culture. Famous Ukrainian composer V. Silvestrov demonstrates such re-examination most consistently. The task of holistic analysis of the genre concept of bagatelles, the unity of philosophical and aesthetic, metaphorical, symbolic, performative dimensions of this phenomenon in its synthetic unity and complementarity is extremely urgent. Literature Review (Theoretical Background). The genre of bagatelles was studied by foreign and Ukrainian scholars (G. Karelova, A. Lunina, N. Ruban, S. Suldina, Y. Furduy, M. Chernyavskaya, E. Antokoletz, M. Eremiášová, F. Sallis et al. As a rule, bagatelles are considered among other small forms (preludes, musical moments, nocturnes and so on), in the context of the creativity of composers (bagatelles of Bartok, Beethoven, Cherepnin, Silvestrov), in connection with certain structural and semantic elements of music. In the framework of this paper special attention is paid to numerous interviews of V. Silvestrov (the book “To Wait for Music” and “ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΟΝ”) and theoretical investigations of the Ukrainian researcher Y. Furduy, devoted to the rhythmological aspects of the evolution of the piano bagatelles. Objectives. The focus of this publication is the language of metaphors as an element of genre ideas in the creativity of a prominent Ukrainian composer. The aim of the studies is to explicate the synthetic unity of the philosophical and aesthetic, metaphorical, musical and structural dimensions of V. Silvestrov’s bagatelles in the context of his musical Universe, to substantiate the fundamentals and principles of synthesis (using the “Cycle of Cycle” as example of the macrocycle of twenty seven bagatelles). Methods. The triad “philosophical concept – author’s metaphor – elements of a musical language” was first used as a tool for describing and analyzing genre ideas bagatelles in the “Cycle of Cycles”in their inextricable synthetic unity. Theoretical and methodological background of the article are philosophical approaches to the analysis of the universal dimension of culture (problems of the “universals of culture”, the symbolic and metaphorical language of culture, the semantic synthetic unity of culture, music, philosophy). Results and Discussions. The first step of the investigation is the analysis of the diversity of definitions and metaphors for bagatelles. It gives opportunity to evaluate the modern transformations of this genre. Particular attention is paid to the own metaphors of V. Silvestrov (“bagatelle is a musical moment…”). It was reviewed the typological features of the genre in his work: structure, textures, musical vocabulary, style techniques, philosophical foundation, the sphere of existence of the genre. These typological features of the genre are supplemented with philosophical and aesthetic concepts and a corpus of author’s metaphors that are essential for understanding and performance of the Cycle of Cycles. The basic metaphor for Silvestrov became the image of the symposium (symposion) with friends, which describes the principle of creating of microcycles of the “epic of bagatelles”. The general intuition in this thematic field is the principle of “great in small.” This principle in the composer’s works is revealed as an integral element of the author’s style and worldview. Bagatelle, according to the composer, is a minimum of music and musical means that represent “music in its entirety”. The author allows for the interpreter to balance between two opposite concepts: “Universe that is expanding” and “Music in own home”. The key positions that are considered in the light of the triad “philosophical concept – author’s metaphor – elements of the musical language”, are Feast (Symposion), Time, Memory, Silence. Conclusions. The result of our investigation is the representation of metaphor as an integral semantic component of the genre idea of bagatelle in the creativity of the V. Silvestrov, which is authentically revealed only in the context of the whole musical and philosophical Universe. The metaphor of the symposion is presented as the most fundamental. It refers to the philosophical concept of the symposium, which can become comprehensive in interpretation of the shape of the macrocycle of bagatelles. Epistemological premises created for introduction of the “ Cycle of Cecles” into the sphere of meta-genre, for explanation of the elements of openness in the structure of V. Silvestrov`s “epic of bagatelles”, for invitation of new “guests”, new music personalities into Universe. Prospects for future research. The results of the analysis of the language of metaphors as an element of the genre idea of bagatelles gives opportunity to explicate the place and role of the “bagatelle epic” in V. Silvestrov’s musical Universe, to understand the significance of this genre in modern Ukrainian music.

‘Feel the Knife Pierce You Intensely’: Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’—Holocaust Representation or Metal Affects?

This article tackles a well-known but little-studied phenomenon: the importance of Holocaust themes to heavy metal. The fascination of metal bands with evil and death has until recently been met outside the scene with such reactions as moral panic, disgust or indifference. In the last ten years, however, scholars in an emerging discourse of Metal Studies have attempted to engage more critically with the social and musical dimensions of metal, in order to contextualise and understand its lyrics and imagery. Although a number of writers have touched upon the recurrence of Holocaust imagery, no one has dealt at any length with extreme metal as a form of Holocaust memory. My article focuses on what might be called the founding text of extreme metal, Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’, which lived up to the sub-genre’s name by pushing both its musical form and its lyrical content beyond previously maintained limits and taboos. It considers the song’s mobilisation of affective intensities as involving problematic politics, but also a challenge to conceptions of Holocaust representation. I consider how affects are evoked by ‘Angel of Death’ through offering readings of the song itself as well as of ways that its reception have been recorded on social media, in concert videos, and reaction videos uploaded to YouTube.

Uncertainty and Surprise Jointly Predict Musical Pleasure and Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Auditory Cortex Activity.

Listening to music often evokes intense emotions [1,2]. Recent research suggests that musical pleasure comes from positive reward prediction errors, which arise when what is heard proves to be better than expected [3]. Central to this view is the engagement of the nucleus accumbens-a brain region that processes reward expectations-to pleasurable music and surprising musical events [4-8]. However, expectancy violations along multiple musical dimensions (e.g., harmony and melody) have failed to implicate the nucleus accumbens [9-11], and it is unknown how music reward value is assigned [12]. Whether changes in musical expectancy elicit pleasure has thus remained elusive [11]. Here, we demonstrate that pleasure varies nonlinearly as a function of the listener's uncertainty when anticipating a musical event, and the surprise it evokes when it deviates from expectations. Taking Western tonal harmony as a model of musical syntax, we used a machine-learning model [13] to mathematically quantify the uncertainty and surprise of 80,000 chords in US Billboard pop songs. Behaviorally, we found that chords elicited high pleasure ratings when they deviated substantially from what thelistener had expected (low uncertainty, high surprise) or, conversely, when they conformed to expectations in an uninformative context (high uncertainty, low surprise). Neurally, we found using fMRI that activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, and auditory cortex reflected this interaction, while the nucleus accumbens only reflected uncertainty. These findings challenge current neurocognitive models of music-evoked pleasure and highlight thesynergistic interplay between prospective and retrospective states of expectation in the musical experience. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Dama de Espadas - trajetória de um Blues Carioca

A canção “Dama de espadas”, de Ilessi e Iara Ferreira, é referência da produção de uma nova geração de compositoras residentes no Rio de Janeiro. Cantautoras intensamente atuantes no cenário artístico contemporâneo, ambas buscam construir novas narrativas na dimensão literária e musical da canção. Buscamos compreender o que as motivou a compor – o contexto de produção, performance e fruição – e observar como se construiu um diálogo com o blues enquanto gênero musical negro surgido nos Estados Unidos, constituindo dois territórios atravessados pelas lutas das mulheres e separados por aproximadamente um século. A análise conta como principais referências os trabalhos de (1) Angela Davis, com o seu panorama sobre a constituição do blues a partir de Bessie Smith e Ma Rainey, e (2) Silvia Federici, com sua abordagem sobre o surgimento do capitalismo e os diversos mecanismos de controle impostos às mulheres para servirem a essa lógica vigente.