Musical Memory Research Articles

Popular Music and Materiality: Memorabilia and Memory Traces

The material objects of popular music have featured significantly in studies of popular music. In particular, there are established literatures on physical playback media (including the re-emergence of vinyl albums) and playback devices, from the Walkman to the iPod. Recently, as popular music scholars have begun to explore the everyday use of music and music technologies by casual listeners, music has increasingly been described as sound and as an ambient presence in our lives. Yet woven through these increasingly digital cultures are concrete manifestations of music listening and fandom. Drawing on the findings of a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project on popular music and cultural memory, this article considers the implications of such manifestations of materiality for the way we understand the significance of popular music, and its linking of the past and the present, in contemporary everyday life. Using fieldwork data collected in cities across Australia, the article considers how various aspects of popular music-related material culture became palpable objects for the writing of personal histories. In some instances, these material objects of participation were less foregrounded but still present. In these cases, materiality was resigned more to the past, but material cultures were actively digitized and distributed. This process was always ongoing and incomplete. This article examines and develops a central theme emerging from our research findings, namely that popular music objects acquire meanings that raise them above their everyday status via cultural means strongly influenced by the contextualizing effects of online technology.

George Sand and Music Ethnography in Nineteenth-Century France

In Les Visions de la nuit dans les campagnes (1851–1853), George Sand responded to the French government’s newly announced project of collecting the ‘popular’ or folk songs of France, with a critique of their methods of collection as perfunctory. Sand was adamant not only about a more rigorous approach to amassing the nation’s folk songs but also about the inclusion of the music with the lyrics, and her concise, insightful critique of archival methods came after nearly two decades of her own occupation with rendering music in her fiction and, more immediately, a decade focused on folk music in many of what are known as her ‘rustic’ novels. In particular, I bring to the fore in this article discussions in Sand’s expansive novel Consuelo; La Comtesse de Rudolstadt (1842–1844) which both insist upon the historical, cultural and personal significance of the preservation of folk music and navigate the tensions of preserving an art form that is fundamentally non-static and ephemeral, in order to articulate the value Sand places on musical sensibility, memory and heritage. I argue that Les Visions de la nuit dans les campagnes stands along with Sand’s fiction as an ardent defense against the loss of the musical heritage of provincial France in the hands of the state’s archivists. This article thus situates George Sand’s investment in the cultural production from the Berry region within the early history of nineteenth-century music ethnography in France, while maintaining Sand’s own understanding of her cultural production as poetic rather than scientific.

Verbal and musical memory: Selectivity of auditory disorders after stroke

Neuropsychological consequences of stroke have important social, professional, and private life impacts. Deficits affecting language processing are well documented unlike musical disorders. Yet, according to Sarkamo et al. (Neuropsychologia, 2009), the incidence of acquired amusia after stroke is 60% after a delay of one week and 42% after 3 months. The goal of this study is to compare verbal and musical auditory memory in patients with stroke history, using a short-term memory paradigm. The goal is to evaluate the interest of testing non-verbal memory in neuropsychological assessment after stroke, as it could guide the choice of reeducation methods. Patients included in the study have been hospitalized in the stroke unit of the neurological hospital in Lyon for a stroke in the MCA (middle cerebral artery) territory. Several months after stroke, they were assessed with a test battery including cognitive evaluation, speech evaluation and audiometry. Acquired amusia was diagnosed with the MBEA (Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia, Peretz et al., Ann N Y Acad Sci, 2003). The auditory musical and verbal short-term memory was tested with a paradigm involving a comparison of short word sequences or tone sequences, separated by a delay of 1000 ms. Performance in the auditory short-term memory task were significantly decreased for the verbal task in patients with left hemisphere lesions, and for the musical task in patients with right hemisphere lesions, in comparison with controls. These results suggest separated cerebral networks for speech and music, for auditory short-term memory, with a preference of the left hemisphere for speech and the right hemisphere for music. To correlate behavioral results and cerebral lesions, analyses of cerebral imaging data will be conducted using voxel based lesion symptom mapping and DTI.

Music evokes vivid autobiographical memories

Music is strongly intertwined with memories—for example, hearing a song from the past can transport you back in time, triggering the sights, sounds, and feelings of a specific event. This association between music and vivid autobiographical memory is intuitively apparent, but the idea that music is intimately tied with memories, seemingly more so than other potent memory cues (e.g., familiar faces), has not been empirically tested. Here, we compared memories evoked by music to those evoked by famous faces, predicting that music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) would be more vivid. Participants listened to 30 songs, viewed 30 faces, and reported on memories that were evoked. Memories were transcribed and coded for vividness as in Levine, B., Svoboda, E., Hay, J. F., Winocur, G., & Moscovitch, M. [2002. Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. Psychology and Aging, 17, 677–689]. In support of our hypothesis, MEAMs were more vivid than autobiographical memories evoked by faces. MEAMs contained a greater proportion of internal details and a greater number of perceptual details, while face-evoked memories contained a greater number of external details. Additionally, we identified sex differences in memory vividness: for both stimulus categories, women retrieved more vivid memories than men. The results show that music not only effectively evokes autobiographical memories, but that these memories are more vivid than those evoked by famous faces.

Historical Records, National Constructions: The Contemporary Popular Music Archive

This article examines the contemporary role of archives in relation to the curation and preservation of popular music artifacts, drawing upon interviews with a range of archival institutions and popular music curators in several countries. It explores the current technological, financial, and aesthetic challenges facing curators and archivists in the era of digital abundance. Previous strategies of “collecting everything” are being revised, with more recent strategies of selective narratives of particular national significance. This in turn presents further challenges for institutions that wish to adopt more playful and innovative uses of their material, particularly as pressures mount from the state to increase user/visitor numbers. The article also explores how “the national” is configured in these forms and presentations of popular music and cultural memory, and where archives are situated between the music industries, the state, and popular music fan communities.

Music, memory and mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease.

This scientific commentary refers to ‘Why musical memory can be preserved in advanced Alzheimer’s disease’, by Jacobsen et al. (doi:10.1093/brain/awv135).

Making a scene: exploring the dimensions of place through Dutch popular music, 1960–2010

This paper applies a multi-layered conceptualisation of place to the analysis of particular music scenes in the Netherlands, 1960–2010. We focus on: the clustering of music-related activities in locations; the delineation of spatially tied music scenes, based on a shared identity, reproduced over time through music practices and memory work; and the scale of interconnections in music practices. Using a variety of data sources (music industry locational data from 2011; pop chart entries, analysed by artist location, music genre, and social network ties; popular music history books; the Canon of Dutch Popular Music, published in 2007), we study the development of music scenes in the country. Our findings reveal that different dimensions of place come together in different combinations in music scenes in the Netherlands, allowing us to highlight three models: the big city; the infrastructure and media model; and the niche model. While we highlight the relative importance of specific locational and economic indicators, we also note the strength of memory work and narratives in legitimising certain local music scenes and supporting their endurance through time.

Body & brain: Alzheimer's spares music memories: Disease may not harm brain areas linked to song familiarity

Science NewsVolume 188, Issue 1 p. 11-11 News Body & brain: Alzheimer's spares music memories: Disease may not harm brain areas linked to song familiarity Laura Sanders, Laura SandersSearch for more papers by this author Laura Sanders, Laura SandersSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 June 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/scin.2015.188001011Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume188, Issue111 July 2015Pages 11-11 RelatedInformation

Right parietal cortex mediates recognition memory for melodies.

Functional brain imaging studies have highlighted the significance of right‐lateralized temporal, frontal and parietal brain areas for memory for melodies. The present study investigated the involvement of bilateral posterior parietal cortices (PPCs) for the recognition memory of melodies using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Participants performed a recognition task before and after tDCS. The task included an encoding phase (12 melodies), a retention period, as well as a recognition phase (24 melodies). Experiment 1 revealed that anodal tDCS over the right PPC led to a deterioration of overall memory performance compared with sham. Experiment 2 confirmed the results of Experiment 1 and further showed that anodal tDCS over the left PPC did not show a modulatory effect on memory task performance, indicating a right lateralization for musical memory. Furthermore, both experiments revealed that the decline in memory for melodies can be traced back to an interference of anodal stimulation on the recollection process (remember judgements) rather than to familiarity judgements. Taken together, this study revealed a causal involvement of the right PPC for memory for melodies and demonstrated a key role for this brain region in the recollection process of the memory task.

Why musical memory can be preserved in advanced Alzheimer's disease.

Musical memory is considered to be partly independent from other memory systems. In Alzheimer's disease and different types of dementia, musical memory is surprisingly robust, and likewise for brain lesions affecting other kinds of memory. However, the mechanisms and neural substrates of musical memory remain poorly understood. In a group of 32 normal young human subjects (16 male and 16 female, mean age of 28.0 ± 2.2 years), we performed a 7 T functional magnetic resonance imaging study of brain responses to music excerpts that were unknown, recently known (heard an hour before scanning), and long-known. We used multivariate pattern classification to identify brain regions that encode long-term musical memory. The results showed a crucial role for the caudal anterior cingulate and the ventral pre-supplementary motor area in the neural encoding of long-known as compared with recently known and unknown music. In the second part of the study, we analysed data of three essential Alzheimer's disease biomarkers in a region of interest derived from our musical memory findings (caudal anterior cingulate cortex and ventral pre-supplementary motor area) in 20 patients with Alzheimer's disease (10 male and 10 female, mean age of 68.9 ± 9.0 years) and 34 healthy control subjects (14 male and 20 female, mean age of 68.1 ± 7.2 years). Interestingly, the regions identified to encode musical memory corresponded to areas that showed substantially minimal cortical atrophy (as measured with magnetic resonance imaging), and minimal disruption of glucose-metabolism (as measured with (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography), as compared to the rest of the brain. However, amyloid-β deposition (as measured with (18)F-flobetapir positron emission tomography) within the currently observed regions of interest was not substantially less than in the rest of the brain, which suggests that the regions of interest were still in a very early stage of the expected course of biomarker development in these regions (amyloid accumulation → hypometabolism → cortical atrophy) and therefore relatively well preserved. Given the observed overlap of musical memory regions with areas that are relatively spared in Alzheimer's disease, the current findings may thus explain the surprising preservation of musical memory in this neurodegenerative disease.

Music and Memory: The Tlatelolco Refrain

Ever since the 1968 student movements and the events surrounding the Tlatelolco massacre, Mexico City rock bands have openly engaged with the intersection of music and memory. Their songs offer audiences a medium through which to come to terms with the events of the past as a means of praising a broken world, to borrow the poet Adam Zagajewski’s phrase. Contemporary songs such as Saúl Hernández’s “Fuerte” are a twenty-first-century voicing of the ceaseless revolutionary spirit that John Gibler has called “Mexico unconquered,” a current of rebellion and social hunger for justice that runs in the veins of Mexican history. They are the latest additions to what we might think about as “the Mexico unconquered songbook”: musical critiques of impunity and state violence that are rooted in the weaponry of memory, refusing to focus solely on the present and instead making connections with the political past. What Octavio Paz described as a “swash of blood” that swept across “the international subculture of the young” during the events in Tlatelolco Plaza on October 2, 1968, now becomes a refrain of musical memory and political consciousness that extends across eras and generations. That famous phrase of Paz’s is a reminder that these most recent Mexican musical interventions, these most recent formations of a Mexican subculture of the young, maintain a historically tested relationship to blood, death, loss, and violence.

SUGGESTOPEDIA AS THE METHOD OF THE MUSIC EXPERIENCE FORMATION OF PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN

The article aims to consider the possibility of suggestopedia methods use that are successfully practiced in foreign language teaching, pedagogy of music education of preschool children, in starting schools; to find out the degree of methods efficiency of suggestopedia in shaping the musical experience of preschool children in various activities at music lessons. Methods . The theoretical foundations of the article are views and concepts of the Bulgarian researcher, teacher and psychologist, G. Lozanov; he had studied out the suggestopedia method for foreign language teaching, and the theory of meta-subject education on the basis of artistic-creative activity and appeal to masterpieces of art. Monitoring and surveillance over non-verbal behavior of children, surveys and discussions were used as practical methods. Results . Musical experience of the child is considered as the process of the development of musical memory. Many suggestopedia techniques developed by Bulgarian and Russian researchers were selected and tested; those that involve the use of involuntary memorization of music when performing creative tasks: free movement or plastic intonation, paint color schemes, music and organizational tasks related to the preparation and conduct music lessons. Three series of diagnostic tasks associated with memory, remembering and recognition of classical pieces of music unknown for preschoolers were worked out to test the effectiveness of these methods and its integration into the process of preschoolers’ music education. The conducted experiment has shown that methods of suggestopedia provide memory activation – children keep in memory classical music. Scientific novelty . The research demonstrates the application reasonability of suggestopedia methods used at foreign language teaching, music education of preschool children and juniors. It has been proved that involuntary memorizing of classical music by children listening to background sounding during the artcreative activities such as free movement and drawing has the greatest degree of efficiency. Practical significance . Results and implementations of the research proposed in the present study are topical subjects to review of the musical content while giving classes to upcoming first grade pupils, and also integration of suggestopedia elements into an organizational component and directly to music educational process and its content (such as free movement, drawing of colourful diagrams and charts of musical compositions, applique work, performance of theatrical etudes, etc.). The research findings and developed diagnostic tasks can become widely used in practical activities of starting schools.

‘Musicking’ children from the Bohemian lands: nurtured and hidden musical practices on both sides of the Iron Curtain

Based on an analysis of musical childhood memories from over 80 Germans from the Bohemian lands and historical evidence, this article investigates processes of social and political integration and assimilation of German children and young adults who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, were either expelled to Germany or remained in their Bohemian homelands. Memories of Germans expelled to West Germany disclose the various ways in which musical repertoire and musical practices are able to mitigate both the loss of the homeland and the distressing overall effects of expulsion, as well as reveal how music facilitates the building of a new sense of belonging in the face of geographic displacement and material dispossession. The study further highlights how the reframing and even silencing of musical practices on the other side of the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia affected processes of social-identity reconstruction until and after the 1989 fall of Communism. Results of this study foreground that individual musical experiences reveal new historical narratives of how German expellees used and still use musical practices to negotiate intercultural power relationships and rebuild a sense of belonging in their respective post-war environment in West Germany or Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic.

Memories of the Material/Vestiges of the Virtual: Exploring the Impact of Material and Immaterial Formats on the Memory of Popular Music

This article explores how material and immaterial formats relate to the production of musical memories in discrete ways. Based on interviews conducted with a sample of 18–30-year-old music fans in the greater Dublin area of Ireland and interpreted through the theoretical lens of soft technological determinism, the results show that, despite the widespread use of immaterial formats such as streams and downloads for convenience, the participants exhibited a preference for material music formats believing them to function as stronger repositories of memory.

Context and meter enhance long-range planning in music performance.

Neural responses demonstrate evidence of resonance, or oscillation, during the production of periodic auditory events. Music contains periodic auditory events that give rise to a sense of beat, which in turn generates a sense of meter on the basis of multiple periodicities. Metrical hierarchies may aid memory for music by facilitating similarity-based associations among sequence events at different periodic distances that unfold in longer contexts. A fundamental question is how metrical associations arising from a musical context influence memory during music performance. Longer contexts may facilitate metrical associations at higher hierarchical levels more than shorter contexts, a prediction of the range model, a formal model of planning processes in music performance (Palmer and Pfordresher, 2003; Pfordresher et al., 2007). Serial ordering errors, in which intended sequence events are produced in incorrect sequence positions, were measured as skilled pianists performed musical pieces that contained excerpts embedded in long or short musical contexts. Pitch errors arose from metrically similar positions and further sequential distances more often when the excerpt was embedded in long contexts compared to short contexts. Musicians’ keystroke intensities and error rates also revealed influences of metrical hierarchies, which differed for performances in long and short contexts. The range model accounted for contextual effects and provided better fits to empirical findings when metrical associations between sequence events were included. Longer sequence contexts may facilitate planning during sequence production by increasing conceptual similarity between hierarchically associated events. These findings are consistent with the notion that neural oscillations at multiple periodicities may strengthen metrical associations across sequence events during planning.

Vivier reenacted: Singing beyond masculine

Vivier: A Night Report is a kind of poetical archive of musical details, protocols, experiences, concepts, memories, fears, desires and sorrows connected to Canadian composer Claude Vivier's (1948-1983) unusual destiny. All characters from Marko Nikodijević's opera originate from Vivier's life and works but they are re-indexed, or reenacted differently. The countertenor voice of Vivier is what primarily makes him different from all the rest of the characters. Even it could be claimed that the rest of the voices are dominated by Vivier's vocal presence on stage. Vivier stands as symbol for minority, queer, vulnerable. During his short life he was trying to get his own voice, voice as the personification of freedom and possibility to be heard. Finally he gets vivid, imaginative opera in which both his physical and personified voices are shining by creativity that his art emanate. He gets his singing voice, and he finally gets heard.

Music and dementia.

There is an increasing incidence of dementia in our aging population, and consequently an urgent need to develop treatments and activities that may alleviate the symptoms of dementia. Accumulating evidence shows that persons with dementia enjoy music, and their ability to respond to music is potentially preserved even in the late or severe stages of dementia when verbal communication may have ceased. Media interest in this topic has contributed to the public perception that music abilities are an "island of preservation" in an otherwise cognitively impaired person with dementia. In this chapter, we review the current literature on music cognition in dementia and show that there has been very scarce rigorous scientific investigation of this issue, and that various types of music memory exist and are differentially impaired in the different types of dementia. Furthermore, we discuss the recent development of music activities as a nonpharmacological treatment for dementia and highlight the methodological limitations of the current literature on this topic. While it has been reported that music activities can improve behavior, (particularly agitation), mood, and cognition in persons with dementia, recent large-scale randomized control studies have questioned the specificity of the effect of music and found that it is no more beneficial than other pleasant activities. Nevertheless, music is unique in its powerful ability to elicit both memories and emotions. This can provide an important link to individual's past and a means of nonverbal communication with carers, which make it an ideal stimulus for persons with dementia.

Música e literatura no circuito África/Brasil/Caribe

This paper aims to discuss musical and literary memories in Africa / Brazil / Caribbean circuit. Sought to identify the aesthetic and political particularities surrounding the artistic output of this circuit, as well as the historical and cultural specificity of the peoples of the South Atlantic represented in musical and literary characters. As a result, we see a multicenter map of cultures and peoples that make up the Africa / Brazil / Caribbean in contemporary circuit, deconstructing the fixed image of the West as the standard historical plot. Praise the South Atlantic allowed to observe others unrelated to Euro-American artistic vanguard cultural modernism

Death Before Disco: The Effectiveness of a Musical Metronome in Layperson Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Training

BackgroundA novel musical memory aid has been proposed for aiding laypersons in complying with the American Heart Association (AHA) cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines of 100 compressions per minute (cpm). ObjectiveThis study tested usefulness of such a memory aid to improve layperson long-term compliance with CPR compression rate guidelines. MethodsA prospective randomized controlled trial was conducted using CPR-untrained laypersons. Subjects received either a standard CPR educational experience (AHA Heartsaver® CPR class) or an experimental CPR educational experience (AHA Heartsaver® CPR class augmented with a musical metronome). Experimental group subjects were taught to perform compressions to the cadence of a pop music song (The Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”; Saturday Night Fever, The Original Movie Soundtrack; Polygram International Music, 1977) with a tempo of 100 beats/min. Compression rates, depth of compressions, and correct compressions were measured initially and upon retesting ≥6 weeks post-training. ResultsControl subjects had a higher mean compression rate both immediately (121 [standard deviation {SD} = 21] vs. 109 [SD = 15] cpm; 95% confidence interval [CI] of mean difference 4−19; p = 0.002) and at follow-up (120 [SD = 20] vs. 111 [SD = 13] cpm; 95% CI of mean difference 2−16; p = 0.014). Compression rates stratified to 100−120 cpm demonstrated no difference between groups initially (39% vs. 48%; p = 0.382), but more experimental subjects maintained these rates at follow-up (43% vs. 74%; p = 0.003). ConclusionsSubjects trained to use a musical metronome more often maintained a compression rate of 100−120 cpm at ≥6-week follow-up, suggesting the memory aid may improve long-term guideline adherence.

Anatomo-functional study of the temporo-parieto-occipital region: dissection, tractographic and brain mapping evidence from a neurosurgical perspective.

The temporo-parieto-occipital (TPO) junction is a complex brain territory heavily involved in several high-level neurological functions, such as language, visuo-spatial recognition, writing, reading, symbol processing, calculation, self-processing, working memory, musical memory, and face and object recognition. Recent studies indicate that this area is covered by a thick network of white matter (WM) connections, which provide efficient and multimodal integration of information between both local and distant cortical nodes. It is important for neurosurgeons to have good knowledge of the three-dimensional subcortical organisation of this highly connected region to minimise post-operative permanent deficits. The aim of this dissection study was to highlight the subcortical functional anatomy from a topographical surgical perspective. Eight human hemispheres (four left, four right) obtained from four human cadavers were dissected according to Klingler's technique. Proceeding latero-medially, the authors describe the anatomical courses of and the relationships between the main pathways crossing the TPO. The results obtained from dissection were first integrated with diffusion tensor imaging reconstructions and subsequently with functional data obtained from three surgical cases, all resection of infiltrating glial tumours using direct electrical mapping in awake patients. The subcortical limits for performing safe lesionectomies within the TPO region are as follows: within the parietal region, the anterior horizontal part of the superior longitudinal fasciculus and, more deeply, the arcuate fasciculus; dorsally, the vertical projective thalamo-cortical fibres. For lesions located within the temporal and occipital lobes, the resection should be tailored according to the orientation of the horizontal associative pathways (the inferior fronto-occipital fascicle, inferior longitudinal fascicle and optic radiation). The relationships between the WM tracts and the ventricle system were also examined. These results indicate that a detailed anatomo-functional awareness of the WM architecture within the TPO area is mandatory when approaching intrinsic brain lesions to optimise surgical results and to minimise post-operative morbidity.