Understanding Of Music Research Articles

Uma visão sobre a interpretação das canções amazônicas de Waldemar Henrique

ESTE TEXTO foi extraído de dissertação homônica. Apresenta análise do texto musical e literário de sete obras para canto e piano do compositor paraense Waldemar Henrique, seguida de reflexão sobre as principais características identificadas. O objetivo é oferecer bases para a prática interpretativa fundamentada na composição musical contextualizada dessas obras.

Re-presenting Dalit Feminist Politics through Dialogical Musical Ethnography

Conducting fieldwork among subaltern populations in South India, I have come to define ethnomusicological fieldwork as an experience of dialogical exchange of music and its values. When feminist and Dalit (formerly so-called untouchable) politics are the central practice of the music culture studied, critical dialogue leading to social change by all actors, including the fieldworker, is expected and must be taken into account in the ethnographic process.1 Jeff Titon defines ethnomusicological fieldwork as playing music with other individuals and the "field" as that shared experience.2 This paper explores the negotiation of political ideas and the critique of musical practice as an inherent part of sharing music and creating an intersubjective musical understanding with my Indian collaborators in my study of Dalit liberation theology in Tamil folk music. I define fieldwork as a means to the creation of social change and the field as those relationships that reveal or negotiate the shared values that contributed to that change. Sharing with my Indian colleagues my feminist analysis of the performance practice of their music was an essential step toward gaining their trust in me as an activist, not just a scholar. The [End Page 1] resulting rapport enabled my colleagues to relate to me their understandings of Indian caste and gender politics and thus the meaning of their music's relation to it. In the process of sharing my feminist analysis of women's roles in performance at the seminary where I conducted my ethnography I affected the practice of the music. This brought me face-to-face with the question, Should fieldwork and ethnography be a means to social and musical change? If so, how does the ethnographer theorize this process? I argue that while ethical dilemmas will undoubtedly present themselves through this method of engagement, I have balanced them by a focus in my writing on the agency expressed by my colleagues in this negotiation. I found that those with whom I had a political affinity engaged with the analysis and then consciously chose to change their teaching practice as a result. Those with whom I lacked this affinity chose not to engage with the criticism and continued to practice as before. Since 1993 my ethnomusicological fieldwork in South India has focused on the indigenization of Tamil Christian music.3 Tamils are the primary ethnic and language group of Tamil Nadu, the southeasternmost state of India. Christians make up 6 percent of this population (almost 3 million people), with the first Tamils converting to Protestant Christianity at the turn of the eighteenth century. My original study of Tamil Protestant Christians is an ethnography of the production and transmission of Christian music at the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary (TTS) in Madurai. While I focus on the transmission of liberation theology in folk music, the study also includes a survey of the history and range of indigenous musical styles, including karnatak (classical), film, and folk, used by the community. At TTS I participated in daily chapel worship, seminars, music classes, recording sessions, and political events while doing intensive interviews about the production and transmission of Christian music. My participation as a student of music and theology engaged me in the politics of liberation theology, caste, feminism, and various social movements that are at the heart of the mission of this seminary and its recent musical productions. Through experiencing the musical theology of the Reverend James Theophilus Appavoo (b. 1940) at TTS I encountered a language, musical style, content, performance, and transmission practice alternative to that used in mainstream liturgies of the Church of South India (CSI). Appavoo is a middle-class Dalit (politicized outcaste) who grew up in an urban area and only turned away from classical music to folk music as a possible means of transmitting liberation theology when he, as a priest, observed firsthand the oppression of rural Dalits. Appavoo's dynamic character as a culture...

Embodiment in musical knowing: how body movement facilitates learning within Dalcroze Eurhythmics

This paper examines how body movement within the frames of Dalcroze Eurhythmics can facilitate musical knowing. Merleau-Ponty's philosophical ideas seem to correspond with the specific empirical findings of Jaques-Dalcroze. Hence, our viewpoint is based on Merleau-Ponty's notions of ‘knowing the world through the body’ as well as of gesture, habit and reversibility. We argue, along with Merleau-Ponty, that the body is our primary mode of knowing. Furthermore, we suggest that body movement represents pre-reflective knowing and can be understood as physical metaphor in the process of musical understanding from the concrete doing/musicing to the abstract and (or) conceptual.

Wittgenstein and the Understanding of Music

Wittgenstein's contribution to musical aesthetics is not often discussed, which is surprising, given his rare musicality and musical connections. His distinctive achievement is to have focused on the question of musical understanding, and to have connected this with two other philosophical problems: the nature of the first-person case, and the understanding of facial expressions. Wittgenstein's third-person approach to philosophical psychology leads him to emphasize the role of performance in the understanding of music, and also to introduce an 'intransitive' concept of expression. At times Wittgenstein seems to be arguing for an entirely non-relational account of musical meaning; however, a proper analysis of the first-person case shows that his theory of musical understanding might allow that, at some level, you understand a piece of music only if you imaginatively grasp the state of mind expressed by it.

Meme Engineers: children as producers of musical culture

This paper examines the ways in which young children construct and negotiate musical meaning as song-makers in a post-modern consumerist musical world. A critical analysis of the presentation of music in two popular Australian children's television programmes (Play School and Hi-5) and the ways in which such media impact upon children's constructions of music and musical understanding is presented. This analysis provides a context for the examination of tensions that exist between a modernist account of what constitutes musical understanding in the young child, and an account that is cognisant of post-modern aesthetics. The implications of this concerning views of children's musical development and curriculum decision making are discussed and a view of the child as an active agent in the construction of her musical worlds is illustrated through an examination of the musical narratives of a 4-year-old child.

'The Trustworthy Agency of the Eyes': Reading Images of Music and Madness in Historical Context

peutic remedy within psychiatric institutions appear in the popular British and American press and also in Australia and New Zealand from the 1850s until the 1940s, and what they actually represent regarding cultural beliefs concerning madness and music as medicine over time. I look at how the press understood and represented music as therapeutic to the community, and examine how historians of psychiatry have read these images in recent historiography. I also consider why there has been a resurgence of the use of these images most recently by professional groups in commissioned commemorative histories about the asylum. These Australian and New Zealand images need to be understood within their Western context, and I investigate how these images reflect medical, musical, moral, and cultural understandings of music as medicine. Nothing has been written on how long-standing cultural beliefs about music as medicinal underpin the representations of the asylum ball in the press. Images of music-making and madness reinforce popular community beliefs that music has the power not only to 'soothe the savage breast' but also to trigger aggression and violence. This belief, which appears in nineteenthand twentieth-century medical tracts about the ideal treatment and care of the mentally ill within institutions, has not been explored in Western historiographical debates. Furthermore, the recognition, development, and professionalisation of, what were initially combined but later separate, therapeutic treatments including occupational, art and music therapies during the twentieth century point to a real belief in the potential therapeutic benefit of music within

Pitch jnd and the tritone paradox: The linguistic nexus

Previous research has shown a connection between absolute pitch (the ability to name a specific pitch in the absence of any reference) and native competence in a tone language (Deutsch, 1990). In tone languages, tone is one of the features which determines the lexical meaning of a word. This study investigates the relationship between native competence in a tone language and the just noticeable difference of pitch. Furthermore, the tritone paradox studies have shown that subjects hear two tritones (with bell-shaped spectral envelopes) as either ascending or descending depending on their linguistic backgrounds (Deutsch, 1987). It is hypothesized that the native speakers of tone languages have a higher JND for pitch, and hear the two tones of the tritone paradox as ascending, whereas, native speakers of nontone languages hear them as descending. This study will indicate the importance of early musical training for the development of acute tone sensitivity. It will also underline the importance of language and culture in the way it shapes our musical understanding. The significance of this study will be in the areas of music education and pedagogy.

New essays on musical understanding

I SOME HISTORY (AND ITS AFTERMATH) II MUSIC AND THE EMOTIONS (YET AGAIN) III MORE ABOUT MUSIC

Approaches to Music Notation: The printed score as a mediator of meaning in Western tonal tradition

In this exploratory, qualitative study, selected young musicians' ways of taking musical meaning from notation were investigated. A socio-cultural theoretical perspective was applied, which means that relations between traditions and individuals were especially accounted for. From the results of the study, conclusions on functions of the printed score as a mediator of musical meaning were drawn, and a theory of instrumental training was developed. Two main approaches to music notation were found: a REPRODUCTIVE and an EXPLORATIVE APPROACH. In the REPRODUCTIVE APPROACH, the function of the printed score is that of an explicitly normative document, which prescribes how to play, and through which the performance is to be assessed. In the EXPLORATIVE APPROACH, the function is that of an invitation to seek out implicit meaning according to the musicians' individual judgement, within a frame of agreed understanding in Western tonal music that they share with the composer. The conclusion was drawn, that strategies for coping with music notation, used in early levels of instrumental education, might strongly influence musicians in the long term, however skilled and experienced they may be. Teaching methods based on a REPRODUCTIVE APPROACH to the printed score may even prevent professional musicians from applying musical understanding developed later. Based on these results, a theory of instrumental teaching was developed, meaning that teacher's attitudes towards students, as well as towards music notation, might either support or obstruct students' development.

Music scene description: Toward audio-based real-time music understanding

Music understanding is an important component of audio-based interactive music systems. A real-time music scene description system for the computational modeling of music understanding is proposed. This research is based on the assumption that a listener understands music without deriving musical scores or even fully segregating signals. In keeping with this assumption, our music scene description system produces intuitive descriptions of music, such as the beat structure and the melody and bass lines. Two real-time subsystems have been developed, a beat-tracking subsystem and a melody-and-bass detection subsystem, which can deal with real-world monaural audio signals sampled from popular-music CDs. The beat-tracking subsystem recognizes a hierarchical beat structure comprising the quarter-note, half-note, and measure levels by using three kinds of musical knowledge: of onset times, of chord changes, and of drum patterns. The melody-and-bass detection subsystem estimates the F0 (fundamental frequency) of melody and bass lines by using a predominant-F0 estimation method called PreFEst, which does not rely on the F0’s unreliable frequency component and obtains the most predominant F0 supported by harmonics within an intentionally limited frequency range. Several applications of music understanding are described, including a beat-driven, real-time computer graphics and lighting controller.

'Musical understanding' in the 15th century

'Musical understanding' in the 15th century

'Musical understanding' in the 15th century

'Musical understanding' in the 15th century

The Rise and Fall of Philosophies of Music Education: Looking backwards in order to see ahead

This paper argues for a more profound contextual analysis of the music studied. It is argued that the impact of some newer ideas from the second half of the 20th century, often labelled post-modern, have not been sufficiently assimilated in music education philosophy. What is in reality a call for greater depth in contextual analysis has too often been trivialised into a superficial notion of a social context incorrectly focussed more on the contemporary than the historical. The shift to social constructivism should not demolish the concept of cultural truth or the historical usefulness of the idea of immanence or metaphysical presence, as some commentators would argue. Instead, the new heuristic methodologies, particularly those of such writers as Jacques Derrida, Paul-Michel Foucault and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, provide powerful tools for developing a truer understanding of the importance of the situatedness of all music. How this might be exposed is demonstrated from the traditions of western culture. The way forward for a philosophy of music education is to accept the blurring of genres (or disciplines) over the last few decades, and go further than simply accentuating the social situatedness of today's student. Indeed the idea of an education should enable the student to rise above her own social situation. Music works as a cultural system in itself, but one which refers to and reflects the larger culture in which it was situated and which gave it form and meaning within its own systems of thought and action. Musical understanding is explained as being derived from a study of performance practice within these important contextual factors.

Digging Dalcroze, or, Dissolving the Mind‐Body Dualism: Philosophical and practical remarks on the musical body in action

David J. Elliott ( Music Matters. A New Philosophy of Music Education , Oxford University Press, 1995) has recently posed the view that musical understanding is to be equated with musicianship. This epistemological turn to musical 'know-how' in the philosophy of music education has faced opposition as well as acceptance. Our paper examines this question of the body in relation to music and movement., which has been raised by Elliott and which was also Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's major pedagogical concern. The general aim of the paper is to show the relevance of the philosophical question of the body in practical music education. The paper discusses attempts to avoid a kind of dualism in which music is either a mental-spiritual experience which transcends the bodily pleasure, or a somatic experience of 'flesh and blood'. The ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and Elliott are examined in relation to recent philosophical discussion on the question of the 'body-mind' with particular reference to the views presented by pragmatists emanating from John Dewey's philosophy. We argue that the body can be taken as a conscious object of transformation within a framework of 'holistic duality' rather than dualism, and that this idea should be more consciously considered and applied to research and practice in music education.

Musical Development Theories Revisited

Work on musical development continues in a variety of ways. Associated with this is a range of theories and assumptions, though these are not always explicit. In this paper some of the major contributions are reviewed. These include theories of separate developmental channels for different musical activities, theories of musical concepts and symbol systems, and the generic theory of Swanwick and Tillman, a theory of musical understanding. Relationships between these theories are suggested along with implications for teaching and learning.

Constructing a View of Children's Meaning-Making as Notators: A Case-Study of a Five-Year-Old's Descriptions and Explanations of Invented Notations

Investigations of the processes and products of children's invented notational activity have generated a growing body of research that reflects some of the interests and concerns of the study of children's symbolic activity in general. However, whilst the emerging picture of children's use of invented notation in music has suggested some commonalities in the processes and products of children engaged in notational activity, a number of anomalies are also evident. This article provides a brief summary of research in children's invented notation in music in order to identify tensions that exist in the findings of such research. Through the description and analysis of a five-year-old boy's invented notations and his verbal accounts of such notations, it explores the ways in which our understanding of children's notational activity and musical understanding may be enhanced through attentive listening and substantive responding to children's meaning-making as composer/notators.

Children's Mental Musical Organisations as Highlighted by Their Singing Errors

This research presents a new way of looking at children's musical understanding. Children in the study were asked to independently learn an unfamiliar Zulu song that had been recorded on audiotape. A total of 36 children, aged 6, 9 and 12 years, participated in the study. In each age-group, half of the children were learning to play a musical instrument. Their learning session included singing, making notations and playing a xylophone and drum. They were videotaped and their singing was transcribed and analysed. On the basis of the analysis an in-action mental model was identified, composed of learning strategies and mental musical organisations. Only the latter are presented in this paper. Many of the inaccuracies in the children's singing were found to be embedded in common patterns of musical organisation. Mistakes of this nature occurred in all groups, suggesting that they were not related to age or learning to play an instrument. Examples of children's singing errors are described here to illustrate how the mental musical organisations were identified.

The Value of Performing from Memory

Performances of the Preludes from Cello Suites I, II and III by J. S. Bach were recorded on video-tape across five separate conditions, differing with respect to menmorisation and the presence of a music stand. Fifty "musicians" and thirtysix "non-musicians" were asked to watch and rate one video-taped performance of each Prelude on four performance aspects: overall quality, musical understanding, technical proficiency and communicative ability. Ratings indicated that (1) performing from memory was superior to playing from the score, (2) visibility of the performer influenced audiences' ratings of performances in a favourable direction, (3) the extra time spent preparing for the memorised performances was beneficial and (4) musicians seemed biased in favour of performances without a music stand. Results are discussed in relation to possible implications for musical performance and pedagogy.

Composing, performing and audience-listening as indicators of musical understanding

Although it is often suggested that there are important connections between composing, performing and audience-listening, there is little evidence as to the nature of this relationship. In this paper we report research into the extent that musical understanding is symmetrically revealed and developed across the three activities. Our theory of musical understanding is based on the work of Swanwick, and assessment criteria derived from the work of Swanwick and Tillman (1986) made it possible to compare levels of musical cognition whatever the specific activity. A study of the musical work of twenty children in a music school in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, suggests that performance usually elicits lower levels of musical understanding, significantly different from either composing or audience-listening. It seems that performance can be problematic within the music curriculum unless students are able to work at a technical level where they are able to exercise interpretative judgement and make musical decisions. The findings support the claims for an integrated music curriculum comprising all three activities.

Techniques of variation and concepts of musical understanding in Northern Ghana

This article examines one piece of music, Nϵporo, performed by women from the town of Lambussie in the Upper West region of Ghana The piece, I was told, is “always the same”. This article attempts to define what is meant by this statement through an examination of the techniques and apparent principles of performance. It is based on the detailed observation of a number of performances which were recorded over a period of about 30 months.