Performing and listening to music occurs in specific situations, requiring specific media. Empirical research on music listening and appreciation, however, tends to overlook the effects these situations and media may have on the listening experience. This article uses the sociological concept of the frame to develop a theory of an aesthetic experience with music as the result of encountering sound/music in the context of a specific situation. By presenting a transdisciplinary sub-field of empirical studies, we unfold (...) this theory for one such frame: the classical concert. After sketching out the underlying theoretical framework, a selective literature review is conducted to look for evidence on the general plausibility of the single elements of this emerging theory and to identify desiderata. We refer to common criticisms of the standard classical concert, and how new concert formats try to overcome alleged shortcomings and detrimental effects. Finally, an empirical research program is proposed, in which frames and frame components are experimentally manipulated and compared to establish their respective affordances and effects on the musical experience. Such a research program will provide empirical evidence to tackle a question that is still open to debate, i.e., whether the diversified world of modern-day music listening formats also holds a place for the classical concert – and if so, for what kind of classical concert. (shrink)

It is a wonderful, often beautiful book."--Brian Hyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison "This is an important book that many in music will profit from confronting. It is a performative work, embodying and recreating what it wishes to argue.

Music is the carrier through which human beings express their emotions. It can clean up their hearts and seek emotional resonance. The combination of music and artificial intelligence, when music meets artificial intelligence, the mathematical logic part of data and algorithm replaces the image thinking, resulting in automatic music production. The basic principle of music creation is to use artificial intelligence technology to conduct in-depth training on a large number of songs, and then build a (...) database. Then, within a certain period of time, extract a segment from several songs, and then decompose it to form a new melody. The automatic music production is the collision of music and technology. With the flying of code and notes, it creates a different kind of beauty. Music culture is a new field of music application. With its refreshing audio-visual effect, it has made people have a new understanding of music and has become a hot topic in current mass cultural activities. The sound quality characteristics of music culture programs determine the characteristics of simple, fast and efficient design. However, the current audio and video design still stays in the traditional audio and video form design, with low design efficiency, long cycle, high cost and high requirements for designers. In view of the fact that the traditional audio and video design mode in China's music and cultural programs cannot meet the needs of performance programs at present, this paper proposes a design scheme of audio and visual effects of music and cultural programs with intelligent devices as the core, and develops a complete set of audio and visual effects aided design system on this basis. (shrink)

This article argues that the long-standing tension in Jeffrey Alexander’s work between theoretical multidimensionality and socio-cultural idealism has intensified in his recent writings, to problematical effect. Whilst Alexander has shifted of late towards a more substantive and normative style of thinking, his new emphases continue to be grounded in arguments pitched at the general theoretical level. One of these involves a particular reading of the nature of post-positivist meta-theory today, and the other, within this, is a determined effort to distinguish (...) a project of ‘cultural sociology’ from ‘sociology of culture’ approaches. I take issue with both of these theoretical moves, showing that they are rhetorically and conceptually flawed, and of a strongly idealist cast. They also run counter to those aspects of Alexander’s outlook that do seem more robustly multidimensional and sociologically promising. (shrink)

In the novel Die Automate (Hoffmann, 1957 ed.), the German writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) describes different kinds of musical automatons which play music with expression and musicality. The whole novel is based on the effect of the automatic performances on the feelings of the two personages and on the appearance of musical automatons which simulate, with their musical skill and expressiveness, the structures of the knowledge and feelings of human beings.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy in the School Music ProgramBennett ReimerWho is philosophy of music education for? Several groups of people immediately spring to mind. First, it is for those of us in music education who produce it and consume it as a major or important responsibility in our work—people like members of our Special Research Interest Group at MENC. Second, teachers of music education courses at the undergraduate (...) and graduate levels who deal with it either in a full course or series of courses or seminars devoted to philosophy, or as one part of courses devoted to other topics (as I believe is most often the case.) Third, school music teachers, many of whom have taken or are taking such courses (and many who have not) who are expected to have some level of acquaintance, however rudimentary, with philosophical issues so as to be able to cope with them, as when writing curriculum guides, or explaining to other teachers, administrators, school boards, and parents why music education is valuable and deserves support. If we stretch it, we might include among those who need to be involved with philosophy of music and music education all educational professionals, since all, in one way or another, exert some sort of influence on the fortunes of music education. But that begins to strain a bit at the edges.No doubt there are other constituencies that can be identified. But one that has not been conceived as requiring substantive encounters with philosophical issues of music is that of students in schools, K-12. We all assume that philosophy can and should play a major role in determining what is most valuable for students to learn in their study of music. But seldom has it been argued, to my [End Page 132] knowledge, that philosophical issues should be addressed in all programs of music education intended to produce people who are, in any convincing sense, musically educated.My premise is that philosophical reflection relating to music and to the teaching and learning of music should be foundational in school music programs. Further, philosophy needs to be present in our programs in three distinctive ways, reflecting common practices of education in America and all over the world. That is, as integral in the general music education of all students, as a component of all elective offerings, and as one particular, focused offering among the electives available to all students.My position is that what we call "general music" (which, as we know, goes by a variety of names around the world including just "music") is not complete; in fact is invalid, if it does not provide philosophical challenges of the same level of complexity, and the same degree of authenticity, as everything else we believe all students should know and be able to do in music. What we call the "music elective program," or the "music specialization program," is incomplete, in fact is invalid, if philosophical matters are not addressed as they relate to the particularities of each elective offered. And, in addition, philosophy needs to be a standard elective offering, taught with the same level of expertise by specialist teachers as we now routinely make available in performance and in the meager smattering of other electives we manage to offer.What? Philosophical thinking for all children, even in the primary grades, and as electives starting perhaps at the middle school or high school level? Electives taught by music educators whose specialization is the teaching of philosophy of music to youngsters? Am I serious? After all, even those of us who are devoted to it as a major aspect of our professionalism are constantly at the edges of our competence given the deep challenges philosophy presents to our intellect. And I expect children—all children—to be able to deal with it authentically?Well, we could ask precisely the same questions about, say, mathematics, and science, and history, and social studies, all the ways of thinking which constitute the basic learnings in all grades of our schools. As educators we know better than to conceive the nature of those subjects as only apparent at the level of professional work in them. We recognize the obvious: while at... (shrink)

Creativity is an essential factor in ensuring the sustainable development of a society. Improving students’ creativity has gained much attention in education, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics education. In a quasi-experimental design, this study examines the effectiveness of a project-based STEAM program on the development of creativity in Chinese elementary school science education. We selected two fourth-graders classes. One received a project-based STEAM program, and the other received a conventional science teaching over 6 weeks. Students’ (...) creativity was assessed before and after the intervention using a multi-method approach, including a test of divergent thinking, a story completion through the Consensus Assessment Technique, a creative self-efficacy measure, and a group-based creative project. Moreover, all students received a test of their science knowledge after the intervention. The results showed that compared with the control group, the creativity of the experimental group students improved significantly for 6 weeks at both individual and group level, even though their knowledge in science were comparable. This result confirmed the effectiveness of a project-based STEAM educational program improving elementary school students’ creativity. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy in the School Music ProgramBennett ReimerWho is philosophy of music education for? Several groups of people immediately spring to mind. First, it is for those of us in music education who produce it and consume it as a major or important responsibility in our work—people like members of our Special Research Interest Group at MENC. Second, teachers of music education courses at the undergraduate (...) and graduate levels who deal with it either in a full course or series of courses or seminars devoted to philosophy, or as one part of courses devoted to other topics (as I believe is most often the case.) Third, school music teachers, many of whom have taken or are taking such courses (and many who have not) who are expected to have some level of acquaintance, however rudimentary, with philosophical issues so as to be able to cope with them, as when writing curriculum guides, or explaining to other teachers, administrators, school boards, and parents why music education is valuable and deserves support. If we stretch it, we might include among those who need to be involved with philosophy of music and music education all educational professionals, since all, in one way or another, exert some sort of influence on the fortunes of music education. But that begins to strain a bit at the edges.No doubt there are other constituencies that can be identified. But one that has not been conceived as requiring substantive encounters with philosophical issues of music is that of students in schools, K-12. We all assume that philosophy can and should play a major role in determining what is most valuable for students to learn in their study of music. But seldom has it been argued, to my [End Page 132] knowledge, that philosophical issues should be addressed in all programs of music education intended to produce people who are, in any convincing sense, musically educated.My premise is that philosophical reflection relating to music and to the teaching and learning of music should be foundational in school music programs. Further, philosophy needs to be present in our programs in three distinctive ways, reflecting common practices of education in America and all over the world. That is, as integral in the general music education of all students, as a component of all elective offerings, and as one particular, focused offering among the electives available to all students.My position is that what we call "general music" (which, as we know, goes by a variety of names around the world including just "music") is not complete; in fact is invalid, if it does not provide philosophical challenges of the same level of complexity, and the same degree of authenticity, as everything else we believe all students should know and be able to do in music. What we call the "music elective program," or the "music specialization program," is incomplete, in fact is invalid, if philosophical matters are not addressed as they relate to the particularities of each elective offered. And, in addition, philosophy needs to be a standard elective offering, taught with the same level of expertise by specialist teachers as we now routinely make available in performance and in the meager smattering of other electives we manage to offer.What? Philosophical thinking for all children, even in the primary grades, and as electives starting perhaps at the middle school or high school level? Electives taught by music educators whose specialization is the teaching of philosophy of music to youngsters? Am I serious? After all, even those of us who are devoted to it as a major aspect of our professionalism are constantly at the edges of our competence given the deep challenges philosophy presents to our intellect. And I expect children—all children—to be able to deal with it authentically?Well, we could ask precisely the same questions about, say, mathematics, and science, and history, and social studies, all the ways of thinking which constitute the basic learnings in all grades of our schools. As educators we know better than to conceive the nature of those subjects as only apparent at the level of professional work in them. We recognize the obvious: while at... (shrink)

Given emerging evidence that learning to play a musical instrument may lead to a number of cognitive benefits for older adults, it is important to clarify how these training programs can be delivered optimally and meaningfully. The effective acquisition of musical and domain-general skills by later-life learners may be influenced by social, cultural and individual factors within the learning environment. The current study examines the effects of a 10-week piano training program on healthy older adult novices’ cognitive and motor (...) skills, in comparison to an inactive waitlisted control group. Fifteen participants completed piano training led by a music facilitator in small groups (max n = 4 per lesson class; two experimental, two waitlisted control groups). Data was collected using an explanatory sequential design: quantitative data from a battery of cognitive and motor tests was collected pre/post-test on all participants, with further post-test data from the waitlisted control group (n = 7). Qualitative data included weekly facilitator observations, participant practice diaries, and an individual, semi-structured, post-experiment interview. Bayesian modelling demonstrated moderate evidence of a strong positive impact of training on part A of the Trail Making test (TMT), indicating improved visuo-motor skills. Moderate evidence for negative impacts of training on part B of the Trail Making Test (and difference score delta) was also found, suggesting no benefit of cognitive... (shrink)

Positive Psychology has turned its attention to the study of emotions in a scientific and rigorous way. Particularly, to how emotions influence people’s health, performance, or their overall life satisfaction. Within this trend, Flow theory has established a theoretical framework that helps to promote the Flow experience. Flow state, or optimal experience, is a mental state of high concentration and enjoyment that, due to its characteristics, has been considered desirable for the development of the performing activity of performing musicians. Musicians (...) are a population prone to health problems, both psychological and physical, owing to different stressors of their training and professional activity. One of the most common problems is Musical Performance Anxiety. In this investigation, an electronic intervention program was carried out for the development of psychological self-regulation skills whose main objective was to trigger the Flow response in performing musicians and the coping mechanism for Musical Performance Anxiety. A quasi-experimental design was used with a control group in which pre- and post-measures of Flow State, Musical Performance Anxiety and, also, Social Skills were taken. Sixty-two performing musicians from different music colleges in Spain participated in the program. Results indicated that the intervention significantly improved Flow State, and Sense of Control, and decreased Music Performance Anxiety, and self-consciousness of the participants in the EG but not CG. The changes in the EG after the program showed the inverse relationship between Flow and Anxiety. Two important theoretical factors of both variables, such as worry and the feeling of lack of control, could be involved. The results are under discussion and future lines of research are proposed. (shrink)

People with disabilities face inequalities in mental wellbeing, for which social exclusion is a contributing factor. Musical activities offer a promising but complex intervention, making impacts on a population with highly varied characteristics and needs challenging to capture. This paper reports on a mixed methods, person-centered study investigating a community music intervention for such a population. Three groups of adult service users with varied disabilities, took part in weekly music workshops in different locations. Music staff, housing and (...) resource center staff, as well as participants and members of their families, took part in semi-structured interviews. A quantitative measure administered by service staff was used to rate service users’ social development. Two lay researchers, both individuals with a disability contributed to all aspects of the study. Interviews were analyzed through thematic analysis. Improvements in individuals’ self-expression, confidence, mood, and social skills were consistent with previous findings. Differences in effect between centers included: Group 1, some of whom had previous experience of workshops, showed an improvement in musical skills; Group 2 showed a mixed response, some participated with enthusiasm but others chose art activities over music workshops; Group 3 had lasting positive impact, this group had very limited opportunities for music due to their rural location. Quantitative analysis showed significant increase over all groups in communication, interaction with others, and joint attention. The intervention was beneficial for participants in separate locations in similar ways, but also highlighted that context and prior experience mediated effects in distinct ways. The lay researchers enhanced the qualitative analysis by emphasizing the importance of recognizing participants’ self-expression in non-verbal modes of communication and the importance of having music staff with a disability to provide a positive role model. This paper proposes that mixed methods person-centered research is the most suitable approach to capture and understand the multiple and varied effects of this complex intervention for a diverse group of participants. (shrink)

Articulates an imaginationist solution to the question of how purely instrumental music can be perceived by a listener as having emotional content. Both musicians and laypersons can perceive purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or program as expressing emotions such as happiness and sadness. But how? In this book, Saam Trivedi discusses and critiques the leading philosophical approaches to this question, including formalism, metaphorism, expression theories, arousalism, resemblance theories, and persona theories. Finding these to (...) be inadequate, he advocates an “imaginationist” solution, by which absolute music is not really or literally sad but is only imagined to be so in a variety of ways. In particular, he argues that we as listeners animate the music ourselves, imaginatively projecting life and mental states onto it. Bolstering his argument with empirical data from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science, Trivedi also addresses and explores larger philosophical questions such as the nature of emotions, metaphors, and imagination. Saam Trivedi is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. (shrink)

Pendragon Press is proud to offer this new, revised, and expanded edition of Formalized Music, Iannis Xenakis's landmark book of 1971. In addition to three totally new chapters examining recent breakthroughs in music theory, two original computer programs illustrating the actual realization of newly proposed methods of composition, and an appendix of the very latest developments of stochastic synthesis as an invitation to future exploration, Xenakis offers a very critical self-examination of his theoretical propositions and artistic output of (...) the past thirty-five years. This edition of Formalized Music is an essential tool for understanding the man and the thought processes of one of this century's most important and revolutionary musical figures. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe coronavirus pandemic affects all areas of life. Performing arts and music studies have also experienced considerable changes, with university closures and a fluctuating return to normal and more limited operations. Prior studies detail the impact of the pandemic on college students, but we do not yet know what specific consequences it has for music students. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on music students’ health, practicing behavior, and everyday (...) life.MethodsIn July 2020, we conducted an online survey of 80 students enrolled in performance and music education programs at a German music university and compared these data with data from a survey of 75 students at the same music university carried out in summer 2019.ResultsThe survey revealed that the coronavirus pandemic led to a decrease in practicing hours and an increase of stressful thoughts and feelings. Students were mostly satisfied with Corona-measures taken by the university. Of analyzed determinants, only general fear of health problems was identified as a significant predictor of mental health status. Mental health status did not significantly differ between students surveyed in 2019 and 2020.ConclusionKnowledge about the specific challenges the pandemic poses for music students can help conservatories to better respond to the needs of their students. Specifically, this study will inform future measures supporting music students in coping with difficult situations like a pandemic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Music, Mind, and Morality:Arousing the Body PoliticPhilip Alperson (bio) and Noël Carroll (bio)I. IntroductionIf like Aristotle one agrees that the responsibility of philosophy is to offer as comprehensive a picture of phenomena as possible, then one must admit that sometimes the methods and goals of analytic philosophy stand in the way of getting the job done properly; they may even distort one's findings. This is not said in (...) order to eschew analytic philosophy. It is simply a reminder that sometimes we need to stand back and check to reassure ourselves that the tail is not wagging the dog.One example of where this danger looms is in the philosophy of art. In the eighteenth century the Modern System of the Arts was born.1 It included the practices that we think nowadays are the appropriate inhabitants of art schools and art centers and the legitimate beneficiaries of programs like the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States. These arts included poetry, painting, sculpture, music, dance, and sometimes gardening. These are what we might call the arts with a "capital A."This is a different way of understanding the notion of the arts and the nomenclature from which they derive in Latin and Greek. For Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, arts were simply any skilled practice. Poetry, for Aristotle at least, was an art, but so were navigation, medicine, and statecraft. And there were, of course, the martial arts. What happens with the emergence of the Modern System of the Arts—otherwise known as the Fine Arts, or the Beaux Arts, or, for us, the Arts with a capital A—is that a subset of the arts in the Greco-Roman sense were selected out and christened as a class unto itself, [End Page 1] different from the other "small a" arts. Whereas once upon a time chemists and painters might have been grouped together in the same guild in virtue of the fact that both types of workers ground substances, such as pigment; with the advent of the Modern System of the Arts, chemists and painters became first and foremost categorically different.However, the consolidation of the class of Arts with a capital A demanded a theoretical answer to the question of what criterion an art form had to meet in order to gain membership in the Modern System of the Arts. The first suggestion was that a candidate practice had to possess the capacity to imitate the beautiful in nature. This was not a definition that had legs. For when absolute or pure instrumental music—or, as Peter Kivy calls it, music alone2 —took center stage as the most important form of music as well as the Art with a capital A to which all the other arts putatively aspired, the criteria for entry into the Modern System of the Arts had to be reconceived. Since music alone could not creditably be described as the imitation of the beautiful in nature (or, for that matter, the imitation of anything else), a new license for practicing Art with a capital A had to be found. And this has become one of the animating tasks of the analytic philosophy of art.But the analytic philosophy of art comes with a certain bias toward discharging this task. It is committed to finding an essentialist answer to resolving the question of what warrants citizenship in the republic of Art (with a capital A). That is, what makes something an Artistic practice or, for that matter, a work of Art such that it is different from other things? What separates the Arts and the artworks from everything else?Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most popular and recurring proposals here is that the Arts are what are primarily intended to promote aesthetic experience where that has formerly been characterized as disinterested pleasure but, more recently, as experience valued for its own sake. Experience valued for its own sake, of course, is virtually by definition conceptually independent from any other end, whereas the practices that do not belong to the Modern System of the Arts are primarily devoted to securing other ends—useful or utilitarian ends, knowledge... (shrink)

In claiming that metadata possess the power to put historical awareness into the act of listening, this article examines digital music use as an aesthetic situation driven by potentialities of becoming. Working from a theoretical foundation amalgamating digital music archives and metadata as environments the article discusses Georgina Born’s notion of musical assemblages alongside the concept of virtuality, and by letting these meet the article argues for a musical assemblage built from sensibilities of becoming rather than layers of (...) mediation. The inner workings of digital music use constitute an ecology in which recorded music history moves and reconnects, and this makes the historicity of recorded music be fluid, thus turning listening into a historicised action. In exemplifying this, the article discusses some of the strategic programming of metadata on the digital music platform Diskoteket, and through an analysis of sampled music, the prospects of recorded music’s historicity are shown as affective capacities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 73-84 [Access article in PDF] Music-Picture:One Form of Synthetic Art Education"Music-picture (a picture drawn through musical perception)" has been widely accepted by art educators in Japan. The purpose of this essay is to propose the making of music-pictures as art education and to put it on afirm theoretical base. I first investigate three gestalt rules: adjacency, continuance, and resemblance, (...) all of which are applicable to the senses of both seeing and hearing. Next I present research on color hearing as one version ofsynaesthesia, which is the comprehensive faculty that binds the five senses in various ways. The well-organized music-picture program by Kaoru Sasaki 1 is introduced as an example. 2 The synthetic art-educational value of music-picture will become clearer through these examinations. The Interrelations between Visual Arts and Music It is exciting that the visual arts meet music in an art class, even if these subjects are entirely different in regard to media, expressive form, the category of perception, and mastery of techniques. Put simply, Picasso's works are visible, whereas Stravinsky's pieces are invisible. Nevertheless, both powerfully convey imaginative and often narrative messages. Relying on intuition alone, I firmly believe both are interchangeable.My research on common methods of organizing both recorded music and painting was my first observation of the mutual relationship between music and visual arts. 3 But what I considered then would not be applied to art class directly because the research was based on my practical experience. It did not have any educational goals. Now I recognize that instructive approaches are necessary to lay the foundation for art classes dealing with interaction between two distinct modalities.In Japan, the Ministry of Education and Science provides the government curriculum guidelines nearly every ten years. It contains descriptions on two subjects: The visual arts and music taught in these classes are at an elementary school level and a junior high school level, both located within a compulsory education system. The new version has been in force since April 2002 (the new school term starts in April in Japan). Objectives in the two educational fields are similar and ideas of what art and music education ought to be are almost the same. The aim common to both in the government curriculum guidelines: "Through expression and appreciation, we [End Page 73] cultivate students' sentiments" invites the linking of music and the visual arts across the curriculum.Many art educators in Japan are interested in this sort of idea and have actually put it into practice. 4 They are engaged in interrelating or even unifying music and the visual arts. Additionally I know other teachers who have designed and proposed many ideas toward this crossover. Listed below are general ideas that seek to combine visual arts with music in an art class.1) Music-picture: to make a pictorial description of impressions received from music.2) Sound map: to make a map of sounds heard at a given location. Each sound is visualized by simple marks like - - -, <<<, ~~~, ooo, and xxx.3) Graphic notation: to write a score which directs the details, whole form, and progression of music by graphics instead of staff notation. Using onomatopoeias or instructions by words are common. It can be improvised, based on intuitively translating visual impacts into sounds.4) Sound toy: to make an original musical instrument of familiar easil obtained materials. For instance, a corrugated cardboard ukulele whose strings are rubber bands, a pair of maracas made of empty cans and soybeans, and so forth.5) Sound sculpture: to make sculpture producing interesting sounds (sometimes noises like creak or clatter). Extensive genres: wood sculpture, metal construction, assemblage (junk arts), kinetic arts, and so on.6) Sound installation: to make a place where participants experience sounds generated by objects or equipment.7) Multimedia: in the broad sense, to mix visuals with music; noises like jingle, tap, and bang! in daily life, or natural environmental sounds like a pit-a-pat of falling rain, a whisper of leaves, or... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 73-84 [Access article in PDF] Music-Picture:One Form of Synthetic Art Education"Music-picture (a picture drawn through musical perception)" has been widely accepted by art educators in Japan. The purpose of this essay is to propose the making of music-pictures as art education and to put it on afirm theoretical base. I first investigate three gestalt rules: adjacency, continuance, and resemblance, (...) all of which are applicable to the senses of both seeing and hearing. Next I present research on color hearing as one version ofsynaesthesia, which is the comprehensive faculty that binds the five senses in various ways. The well-organized music-picture program by Kaoru Sasaki 1 is introduced as an example. 2 The synthetic art-educational value of music-picture will become clearer through these examinations. The Interrelations between Visual Arts and Music It is exciting that the visual arts meet music in an art class, even if these subjects are entirely different in regard to media, expressive form, the category of perception, and mastery of techniques. Put simply, Picasso's works are visible, whereas Stravinsky's pieces are invisible. Nevertheless, both powerfully convey imaginative and often narrative messages. Relying on intuition alone, I firmly believe both are interchangeable.My research on common methods of organizing both recorded music and painting was my first observation of the mutual relationship between music and visual arts. 3 But what I considered then would not be applied to art class directly because the research was based on my practical experience. It did not have any educational goals. Now I recognize that instructive approaches are necessary to lay the foundation for art classes dealing with interaction between two distinct modalities.In Japan, the Ministry of Education and Science provides the government curriculum guidelines nearly every ten years. It contains descriptions on two subjects: The visual arts and music taught in these classes are at an elementary school level and a junior high school level, both located within a compulsory education system. The new version has been in force since April 2002 (the new school term starts in April in Japan). Objectives in the two educational fields are similar and ideas of what art and music education ought to be are almost the same. The aim common to both in the government curriculum guidelines: "Through expression and appreciation, we [End Page 73] cultivate students' sentiments" invites the linking of music and the visual arts across the curriculum.Many art educators in Japan are interested in this sort of idea and have actually put it into practice. 4 They are engaged in interrelating or even unifying music and the visual arts. Additionally I know other teachers who have designed and proposed many ideas toward this crossover. Listed below are general ideas that seek to combine visual arts with music in an art class.1) Music-picture: to make a pictorial description of impressions received from music.2) Sound map: to make a map of sounds heard at a given location. Each sound is visualized by simple marks like - - -, <<<, ~~~, ooo, and xxx.3) Graphic notation: to write a score which directs the details, whole form, and progression of music by graphics instead of staff notation. Using onomatopoeias or instructions by words are common. It can be improvised, based on intuitively translating visual impacts into sounds.4) Sound toy: to make an original musical instrument of familiar easil obtained materials. For instance, a corrugated cardboard ukulele whose strings are rubber bands, a pair of maracas made of empty cans and soybeans, and so forth.5) Sound sculpture: to make sculpture producing interesting sounds (sometimes noises like creak or clatter). Extensive genres: wood sculpture, metal construction, assemblage (junk arts), kinetic arts, and so on.6) Sound installation: to make a place where participants experience sounds generated by objects or equipment.7) Multimedia: in the broad sense, to mix visuals with music; noises like jingle, tap, and bang! in daily life, or natural environmental sounds like a pit-a-pat of falling rain, a whisper of leaves, or... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 15.2 (2007) 177-179MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reviewed byLise Vaugeois University of TorontoHildegard C. Froehlich, Sociology for Music Teachers:Perspectives for Practice (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007)Hildegard Froehlich's book, Sociology for Music Teachers, provides an important and much needed resource for undergraduate and advanced music education programs. Music students tend to see their interests and goals within a (...) narrow framework, one that is reinforced by the intensely personal nature of music-making as well as the material and psychological separation that inheres from our location in physically detached faculties of music. Froehlich's book provides a resource that directly addresses this tendency towards narrowness by inviting students to engage with sociological questions as they affect us personally, professionally, and in the context of questions much larger than ourselves.The book is organized into eight chapters, each of which explores a particular set of questions and introduces related studies and resources. She recommends that students actively engage with the material and provides suggestions for group discussion throughout the book. Each chapter introduces a comprehensive survey of related questions and the body of literature that investigates these questions. Thus, it can be used as the basis to structure an undergraduate course as well as a literature guide for graduate students.Undergraduate students are often resistant to exploring ideas beyond their [End Page 177] immediate conceptions of themselves as musicians and Froehlich addresses this resistance by discussing concepts about identity formation in the first chapter. Students are thus asked to consider a series of questions they can easily recognize as relevant to their own lives. She begins with the personal and the familiar and then brings in ideas that broaden the range of inquiry, gradually introducing concepts that challenge many of our assumptions about the meaning of music in different people's lives; the range of meanings possible within sounds and musical practices; the role of public education and various ways that music education functions within this larger system, and important questions about how we might conceive of ourselves as transmitters of extant cultural values or transformers of values and social relations.The chapter headings give an indication of the range of material introduced in her text: "The Performer and Teacher in You: A Matter of Identity"; "Teaching as Work: What Educational Sociologists Tell Us"; "Music Learning and Teaching as Socially Situated Acts"; "Music and Social Context: Macro, Micro, and Interactive Perspectives in Selected Texts on the Sociology of Music"; "Musical Meaning and Social Context: Thoughts by Selected Ethnomusicologists and Cultural Theorists"; "Sociology of Education: Major Theories and Their Connection to School Practice"; "Application of Sociological Constructs in Education to Music Schooling"; "Conclusion: You and the Big Picture." Each chapter gives a historical survey of the literature pertaining to the area of inquiry plus an introduction to contemporary writing. Competing discourses are introduced throughout.Froehlich's survey of disciplines that intersect with sociology is quite comprehensive. Amongst other disciplines, she includes foundational literature from musicology, philosophy of music education, sociology of education, and social psychology. The book is thus valuable as a resource for its bibliography alone. She also includes a glossary of terms, another feature that makes the book particularly helpful to undergraduate students. One writer I was surprised not to see included is Jacques Attali. His theoretical arguments on the relations of musical culture to economy provide a significant lens for considering the influence of music on social development and would have been an appropriate addition to the chapter on "Music and Social Context." I also missed work by musicologists and human geographers who have explored the role of race in music and music education.Related to these missing discourses, I have a major concern that is less a critique of Froehlich than an acknowledgement that this position has not yet been given sufficient consideration in our field, and to which Deborah Bradley refers as the "normative centering of whiteness."1 Froehlich bases her work on the assumption that her audience consists of a... (shrink)

This study introduces a music therapy project for young offenders through community collaboration and its efficacy through a mixed method. The project called Young & Great Music is carried out via collaboration among three parties, which are the educational institution, the district prosecutor’s office, and corporate sponsor, forming a tripartite networking system. In this paper, we present an efficacy evaluation of the project’s implementation with 178 adolescents involved with the juvenile justice system: 115 youth was on suspension of (...) indictment and 63 youth was under supervised probation. Quantitative and qualitative measures were collected and analyzed to examine the efficacy of the project. The music therapy program was developed for 15 sessions based on the use of music to prompt positive resources through music making and song writing. The efficacy was examined using three scales; self-concept, resilience, and stress coping skills. The paired t-test showed that there were significant improvement in all three scales respectively. In order to examine the group difference between suspended indictment and supervised probation groups, Welch–Aspin t-test was conducted due to unequal variance of the group. Results showed there was a significant group difference in self-concept and resilience. The study further examined participant’s experience of music and perceived benefits. Twenty participants had in-depth interviews about their music therapy experience which were recorded, transcribed and analyzed. Of the 109 statements derived from a qualitative content analysis of the interview transcripts, music making and song writing was repeatedly reported as helpful in gaining “new perspectives,” “courage to challenge and pursuit,” “perseverance,” and “self-acknowledgment.” The positive result of the study showed that the collaborative networking of regional and social resource to support for adolescents at-risk was successful. The results of this project are promising and suggest that other arts-based rehabilitation services and programs should be developed and implemented in juvenile justice system. For this, strategies for program sustainability for long-term facilitation are needed. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to redefine the role of a music teacher as being more than a director. To begin, I quote Michael Mark, who writes about how the legendary band director William Revelli was remembered in the small town of Hobart, Indiana, where he started the first band program in that town: [E]ach student was at least as motivated by a fear that the band might lose. The band had established a reputation—Hobart was expected to win, (...) and winning became a tradition which had to be upheld at each subsequent contest. . . . After 1930, any other rating would have been considered a failure—a personal failure for every band member, a failure to maintain the tradition of the Hobart band.1 Revelli .. (shrink)

On September 9, 2009, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that officials from Everett School District #2 in Mill Creek, Washington did not violate student Kathryn Nurre’s constitutional rights to free speech by denying the Jackson High School Wind Ensemble the opportunity to perform an instrumental version of Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria at the district’s graduation ceremony. This philosophical study addresses implications of this legal case regarding religious music and free speech in public school music programs (...) within the United States. Two questions are investigated: the issue of defining religious music and its relationship to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and the issue of whether students have a right to musical expression protected by the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. Conclusions suggest that some music in the Western classical tradition cannot be easily categorized as exclusively sacred or secular, and that performances of such music can be supported on both philosophical grounds and through the precedent of traditional performance practice and usage. Further, when students are allowed a choice of repertoire, schools should foster good citizenship by respecting the free expression of students as long as choices are not unduly influenced by the teacher and such performances occur within the context of a respectful and neutral environment that does not overtly demand a religious response from audience members. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 126-138 [Access article in PDF] Music Education for the Twenty-First Century A Philosophical View of the General Education Core Anthony J. Palmer Boston University We are all one species with one brain and neural system, yet consciousness about our existence is highly contextual. Any culturally transcendent view will still be limited to one's personal experience, analytical capabilities, and cultural shaping. (...) Nevertheless, looking beyond our narrow perspectives is essential if we are to find commonality and compatibility with all humankind.Therefore, I find it incumbent that we, as college/university professors, examine our present culture-national and global-to ascertain current conditions and what positive roles each citizen may be able to play on the larger stage of world affairs. Musician-teachers, who are the products of the curriculum, should not be exempt from the responsibilities of contributing solutions. Rather, they should produce a program that is sensitive to the larger context in which we all reside. To be sure, we have no direct control over global events. We do, however, exercise at least a modicum of control over the kind of person emerging from our courses of study.In light of the foregoing, this paper will examine (1) the present global conditions with which we are confronted, (2) responsibilities of the college/university [End Page 126] faculties toward developing students with greater awareness, (3) examination of the general education that all baccalaureate students must satisfy for the degree, (4) the education within the general education courses with a focus on the music education student, and (5) a proposal on general education. The Present Context Today we are at a juncture where no one can predict the future with any assurance of accuracy. The world in the twenty-first century has taken an unexpected turn toward greater chaos and has the potential to end life as we have known it in previous centuries. Although earlier generations experienced many changes and watershed moments, the conditions were never potentially as cataclysmic as they are today because of the explosive power of our so-called defensive weapons. In addition, fed by technology, the pace of change is extremely rapid and multiplies exponentially. Robert Wright states in this regard, Neither biological evolution nor human history is a smooth, steady process. Both pass through thresholds.... To some people, the current era has the aura of a threshold; it has that unsettling, out-of-control feeling that can portend a major shift. Technological, geopolitical, and economic change seem ominously fast, and the fabric of society seems somehow tenuous.1He goes on to say, World currency markets are rocked by the turbulent force of electronically lubricated financial speculation. Weapons of mass destruction are cultivated by rogue regimes and New Age cults. Nations seem less cohesive than before, afflicted by ethnic or religious or cultural friction. Health officials seriously discuss the prospect of a worldwide plague-the unspeakably gruesome Ebola virus, perhaps, or some microbe we don't yet know about, spread around the world by jet-propelled travelers. Even tropical storms seem to have grown more intense in recent decades, arguably a result of global warming.2The foregoing was written in 2000, well before the devastating events of September 11 and subsequent human-initiated disasters, yet it still rings true. Where are we heading? What is our future with a world torn by terror, the continual development of more destructive weapons, and a seeming lack of desire to ameliorate our differences in a peaceful manner? Add to these the inexorable advance of technology that seems to know no end. It is most likely that the world in 2050-perhaps even as early as 2025-will not be recognized by our present population, assuming that we do survive as a civilized world.Of course, the outlook is not exclusively bleak and the continued development of technology is not all on the debit side of the ledger. Advances made in [End Page 127] medicine portend the re-growing of brain cells, repair... (shrink)

In this paper, I present the beginnings of a resemblance theory of representation. I start by surveying the contemporary philosophical debate surrounding musical representation and reveal that its main interlocutors share a conception of artistic representation as a mode of meaningful communication. I then show how conceiving of artistic representation in this way severely limits music’s possibilities as a medium for representation. Next, I propose an alternative conception of representation that, despite its widespread acceptance outside of the philosophy of (...) art, has been largely denigrated within it: namely, that representation fundamentally depends on structural resemblance. Finally, I demonstrate how conceiving of artistic representation as grounded upon structural resemblances, rather than as a mode of meaningful communication, provides us with a more accurate picture of both (a) how music represents and (b) how we perceive and appreciate musical representations. (shrink)

The music of Christoph Willibald von Gluck was a revolution for Paris operagoers when his work premiered there in 1774. In a setting known for its restive and often rowdy spectators, Alceste, Iphigénie en Aulide, and Orpheé et Eurydice seized audiences with unprecedented force. They shed silent tears or sobbed openly, and some cried out in sympathy with the sufferers onstage. “Oh Mama! This is too painful!” three girls called out as Charon led Alcestis to the underworld, and a (...) boy pleaded with his father to take him home. A woman who watched the same performance described falling on her knees in her opera-box as the march of the priests of Apollo began, staying in this position “suppliant and with my hands clasped until the end of the piece.”Gluck's streamlined musical language was one reason for these emotional responses. He and his librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi simplified the conventions by eliminating extraneous subplots, abandoning the repetitive da capo form, and replacing trills and runs with simpler melodies meant to convey passion. Another reason was the widespread culture of sentimentalism, which equated virtue with sincerity and judged tears to be the natural sign of an open heart. Painters depicted tender and tumultuous family scenes, and friends pledged trembling vows of fidelity. Listeners were also readers, and many described similar tearful responses when they read the century's bestseller, Rousseau's novel Julie; or, The New Heloise.Everist, a musicologist, takes up the story of Gluck in France in the nineteenth century, when the German composer remained a presence in repertoires. No longer prone to tears, the public was often indifferent and sometimes hostile to his works. Conductors and composers nevertheless persisted in promoting Gluck's music. Between 1828 and 1870, operatic excerpts appeared roughly twice a year in performances of the prestigious Société des Concerts, and the charismatic conductor Jules Pasdeloup regularly programmed his music. Many listeners remained unconvinced. A writer in 1861 described the “sepulchral boredom that reigned the length of all five acts” of Alceste. The periodical Monde dramatique used the same language to characterize Gluck's music: it was “profoundly boring.” After a high point of performances in the middle of Napoleon III's reign, Gluck disappeared from the Paris opera and concert stage for some thirty years.Everist's aim in this slim book is to isolate the “agents” involved in the French reception of Gluck. Traditional reception histories might begin with Gluck and his aims, identifying musical features, particular responses of audiences, critics’ accounts, and perhaps the more elusive temper of the times. Everist focuses instead on less conspicuous networks of impresarios, theater directors, and publishers. In his telling, such agents also include journalists and writers of fiction. The avowed effort is to decenter the artist and his art to emphasize the limited role that composers and librettists play in the performance of an opera. A quoted passage in the book reminds us that without parking attendants, stagehands, and ticket sellers the show could not go on. True enough. Genealogies of Music and Memory therefore provides tables listing Gluck arias in anthologies, particular singers’ performances, works by composers other than Gluck who also drew themes from classical antiquity, and works by other foreign-born composers. A section on “material culture” lists paintings and sculptures of Gluck in Paris theaters and museums.As a “genealogy,” the book is a salutary reminder of the web of amateurs and professionals who discuss, promote, and perform works that others have created. Writers such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Mme de Staël, and Hippolyte Taine held up Gluck as the embodiment of German music. Hector Berlioz wrote frequently and enthusiastically about Gluck, although he was less keen to program his music. The singers François Delsarte and Pauline Viardot aroused temporary interest in Gluck by regularly including his arias in their recitals. Musical anthologies for the bourgeois household included piano arrangements of his best-known arias. Some nineteenth-century adaptations of his works were scored for the military band.Genealogies of Music and Memory is musicology with very little music. Everist's reliance on networks of actors, agents, publishers, pedagogical practices, and archival environments leads him to assert that “multiple agency is endemic in the story told here.” Unfortunately, it is often unclear just what the story is. Carelessness in writing and editing throughout—including a subject-verb clash in the book's final sentence—has rendered key passages obscure. Everist describes Delsarte's voice as feeble, broken, veiled, and ready to be extinguished twice in the same paragraph, first as a paraphrase and again in a quotation (with a misplaced comma).Decentering artists and their work to elevate others responsible for its reception brings attention to the unseen and often unsung. In the absence of particular performance histories, musical analyses and description, or sustained accounts of shared tastes or critical responses, however, conclusions remain piecemeal. Everist claims to have revealed a “Geertzian web of culture” in his study. A more modest account would describe it as an enumeration of references, revivals, editions, excerpts, and arrangements. (shrink)

TWEEN POP examines the creation of the "tween" in the early 2000s as a gendered and raced consumer audience. The tween, aged nine to twelve, and usually thought of as a white girl, occupies a temporality between childhood and adolescence: she has aged out of children's products but is too young to fully engage in marketing directed at teenagers. But, as Tyler Bickford argues, this seemingly narrow market grew to broadly include four to fifteen year olds, with producers and marketers (...) pulling upwards and downwards by creating material that would attract younger viewers and teenagers, thereby creating a demographic that expanded, rather than limited, the traditional reach of child and teenage markets. According to Bickford, the key to this expansion was pop music, as it provided an intensity of experience that mirrored childhood in its investments in emotional authenticity, cultural value, and relational intimacies. In other words, pop music needed to be both intimate and public--a tension that Bickford argues defined the tween's positionality as well--and tween pop did so by pairing the mainstream pop of adulthood with images and lyrics suitable for younger audiences. Throughout the book, Bickford reveals how childhood's status as a private domestic position outside of politics was not a hindrance to the cultivation of children as a mass audience but rather was the very foundation of that project. By creating an intimate public of tween pop, the tween music industry was able to position tweens as still within the private domestic sphere of family life, but connected in a broader public of other tween-pop-listening tweens. Chapter 1 looks at Kidz Bop music videos to argue that the tween music industry framed childhood domesticity as complementary to participation in a public culture. Chapter 2 focuses on Disney Channel's popular music programs' efforts to engage older children, particularly older girls, in their marketing tactics. Chapter 3 analyzes the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana and its foregrounding of tensions between girlhood, public culture, and family. Chapter 4 attends to how whiteness served as central to the tween construction of innocence and childhood. Bickford concludes the book by periodizing the tween moment as the decade from 2001 to 2011, and then outlines the developments in popular culture for children since that time. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnomusicology, feminism and gender studies, and cultural studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 126-138 [Access article in PDF] Music Education for the Twenty-First Century A Philosophical View of the General Education Core Anthony J. Palmer Boston University We are all one species with one brain and neural system, yet consciousness about our existence is highly contextual. Any culturally transcendent view will still be limited to one's personal experience, analytical capabilities, and cultural shaping. (...) Nevertheless, looking beyond our narrow perspectives is essential if we are to find commonality and compatibility with all humankind.Therefore, I find it incumbent that we, as college/university professors, examine our present culture-national and global-to ascertain current conditions and what positive roles each citizen may be able to play on the larger stage of world affairs. Musician-teachers, who are the products of the curriculum, should not be exempt from the responsibilities of contributing solutions. Rather, they should produce a program that is sensitive to the larger context in which we all reside. To be sure, we have no direct control over global events. We do, however, exercise at least a modicum of control over the kind of person emerging from our courses of study.In light of the foregoing, this paper will examine (1) the present global conditions with which we are confronted, (2) responsibilities of the college/university [End Page 126] faculties toward developing students with greater awareness, (3) examination of the general education that all baccalaureate students must satisfy for the degree, (4) the education within the general education courses with a focus on the music education student, and (5) a proposal on general education. The Present Context Today we are at a juncture where no one can predict the future with any assurance of accuracy. The world in the twenty-first century has taken an unexpected turn toward greater chaos and has the potential to end life as we have known it in previous centuries. Although earlier generations experienced many changes and watershed moments, the conditions were never potentially as cataclysmic as they are today because of the explosive power of our so-called defensive weapons. In addition, fed by technology, the pace of change is extremely rapid and multiplies exponentially. Robert Wright states in this regard, Neither biological evolution nor human history is a smooth, steady process. Both pass through thresholds.... To some people, the current era has the aura of a threshold; it has that unsettling, out-of-control feeling that can portend a major shift. Technological, geopolitical, and economic change seem ominously fast, and the fabric of society seems somehow tenuous.1He goes on to say, World currency markets are rocked by the turbulent force of electronically lubricated financial speculation. Weapons of mass destruction are cultivated by rogue regimes and New Age cults. Nations seem less cohesive than before, afflicted by ethnic or religious or cultural friction. Health officials seriously discuss the prospect of a worldwide plague-the unspeakably gruesome Ebola virus, perhaps, or some microbe we don't yet know about, spread around the world by jet-propelled travelers. Even tropical storms seem to have grown more intense in recent decades, arguably a result of global warming.2The foregoing was written in 2000, well before the devastating events of September 11 and subsequent human-initiated disasters, yet it still rings true. Where are we heading? What is our future with a world torn by terror, the continual development of more destructive weapons, and a seeming lack of desire to ameliorate our differences in a peaceful manner? Add to these the inexorable advance of technology that seems to know no end. It is most likely that the world in 2050-perhaps even as early as 2025-will not be recognized by our present population, assuming that we do survive as a civilized world.Of course, the outlook is not exclusively bleak and the continued development of technology is not all on the debit side of the ledger. Advances made in [End Page 127] medicine portend the re-growing of brain cells, repair... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 15.2 (2007) 177-179MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reviewed byLise Vaugeois University of TorontoHildegard C. Froehlich, Sociology for Music Teachers:Perspectives for Practice (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007)Hildegard Froehlich's book, Sociology for Music Teachers, provides an important and much needed resource for undergraduate and advanced music education programs. Music students tend to see their interests and goals within a (...) narrow framework, one that is reinforced by the intensely personal nature of music-making as well as the material and psychological separation that inheres from our location in physically detached faculties of music. Froehlich's book provides a resource that directly addresses this tendency towards narrowness by inviting students to engage with sociological questions as they affect us personally, professionally, and in the context of questions much larger than ourselves.The book is organized into eight chapters, each of which explores a particular set of questions and introduces related studies and resources. She recommends that students actively engage with the material and provides suggestions for group discussion throughout the book. Each chapter introduces a comprehensive survey of related questions and the body of literature that investigates these questions. Thus, it can be used as the basis to structure an undergraduate course as well as a literature guide for graduate students.Undergraduate students are often resistant to exploring ideas beyond their [End Page 177] immediate conceptions of themselves as musicians and Froehlich addresses this resistance by discussing concepts about identity formation in the first chapter. Students are thus asked to consider a series of questions they can easily recognize as relevant to their own lives. She begins with the personal and the familiar and then brings in ideas that broaden the range of inquiry, gradually introducing concepts that challenge many of our assumptions about the meaning of music in different people's lives; the range of meanings possible within sounds and musical practices; the role of public education and various ways that music education functions within this larger system, and important questions about how we might conceive of ourselves as transmitters of extant cultural values or transformers of values and social relations.The chapter headings give an indication of the range of material introduced in her text: "The Performer and Teacher in You: A Matter of Identity"; "Teaching as Work: What Educational Sociologists Tell Us"; "Music Learning and Teaching as Socially Situated Acts"; "Music and Social Context: Macro, Micro, and Interactive Perspectives in Selected Texts on the Sociology of Music"; "Musical Meaning and Social Context: Thoughts by Selected Ethnomusicologists and Cultural Theorists"; "Sociology of Education: Major Theories and Their Connection to School Practice"; "Application of Sociological Constructs in Education to Music Schooling"; "Conclusion: You and the Big Picture." Each chapter gives a historical survey of the literature pertaining to the area of inquiry plus an introduction to contemporary writing. Competing discourses are introduced throughout.Froehlich's survey of disciplines that intersect with sociology is quite comprehensive. Amongst other disciplines, she includes foundational literature from musicology, philosophy of music education, sociology of education, and social psychology. The book is thus valuable as a resource for its bibliography alone. She also includes a glossary of terms, another feature that makes the book particularly helpful to undergraduate students. One writer I was surprised not to see included is Jacques Attali. His theoretical arguments on the relations of musical culture to economy provide a significant lens for considering the influence of music on social development and would have been an appropriate addition to the chapter on "Music and Social Context." I also missed work by musicologists and human geographers who have explored the role of race in music and music education.Related to these missing discourses, I have a major concern that is less a critique of Froehlich than an acknowledgement that this position has not yet been given sufficient consideration in our field, and to which Deborah Bradley refers as the "normative centering of whiteness."1 Froehlich bases her work on the assumption that her audience consists of a... (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on temporal experience offers generic models that are often assumed to apply to all sensory modalities. I show that the models serve as broad frameworks in which different aspects of cognitive science can be slotted and, thus, are beneficial to furthering research programs in embodied music cognition. Here I discuss a particular feature of temporal experience that plays a key role in such philosophical work: a distinction between the experience of succession and the mere succession of (...) experiences. I question the presupposition that there is such an evident, clear distinction and suggest that, instead, how the distinction is drawn is context-dependent. After suggesting a way to modify the philosophical models of temporal experience to accommodate this contextdependency, I illustrate that these models can fruitfully incorporate features of research projects in embodied musical cognition. To do so I supplement a modified retentionalist model with aspects of recent work that links bodily movement with musical perception (Godøy, 2006; 2010a; Jensenius, Wanderley, Godøy, and Leman, 2010). The resulting model is shown to facilitate novel hypotheses, refine the notion of context-dependency and point towards means of extending the philosophical model and an existent research program. (shrink)

The purpose of the present mixed method study was to investigate personal benefits, perceptions, and the effect of a 15-week sport psychological skills training program adapted for musicians. The program was individually tailored for six music performance students with the objective of facilitating the participants' instrumental practice and performance. The participants learnt techniques such as goal setting, attentional focus, arousal regulation, imagery, and acceptance training / self-talk. Zimmerman's ( 1989 ) cyclical model of self-regulated learning was applied (...) as a theoretical frame for the intervention. The present study's mixed-method approach (i.e., quan+ QUAL) included effect size, semi-structured interviews, a research log, and practice diaries of the participants (Creswell, 2009 ). Thematic analysis revealed that participants had little or no experience concerning planning and goal setting in regard to instrumental practice. Concentration, volition, and physical pain were additional issues that the participants struggled with at the time of pre-intervention. The study found that psychological skills training (with special emphasis on planning and goal setting) facilitated cyclical self-regulated learning patterns in the participants. In essence, the intervention was found to facilitate the participants' concentration, self-observation, self-efficacy, and coping in the face of failure. The appliance of practice journals facilitated the participants‘ self-observation, self-evaluation, and awareness of instrumental practice. Finally, the psychological skills intervention reduced participants' worry and anxiety in performance situations. An 8-month follow up interview revealed that the participants were still actively applying psychological skills. (shrink)

Taking regular walks when living with Parkinson’s disease has beneficial effects on movement and quality of life. Yet, patients usually show reduced physical activity compared to healthy older adults. Using auditory stimulation such as music can facilitate walking but patients vary significantly in their response. An individualized approach adapting musical tempo to patients’ gait cadence, and capitalizing on these individual differences, is likely to provide a rewarding experience, increasing motivation for walk-in PD. We aim to evaluate the observance, safety, (...) tolerance, usability, and enjoyment of a new smartphone application. It was coupled with wearable sensors and delivered individualized musical stimulation for gait auto-rehabilitation at home. Forty-five patients with PD underwent a 1-month, outdoor, uncontrolled gait rehabilitation program, using the BeatWalk application. The music tempo was being aligned in real-time to patients’ gait cadence in a way that could foster an increase up to +10% of their spontaneous cadence. Open-label evaluation was based on BeatWalk use measures, questionnaires, and a six-minute walk test. Patients used the application 78.8% of the prescribed duration and enjoyed it throughout the program. The application was considered “easy to use” by 75% of the patients. Pain, fatigue, and falls did not increase. Fear of falling decreased and quality of life improved. After the program, patients improved their gait parameters in the six-minute walk test without musical stimulation. BeatWalk is an easy to use, safe, and enjoyable musical application for individualized gait rehabilitation in PD. It increases “walk for exercise” duration thanks to high observance.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02647242. (shrink)

Showcasing American music and music making during the Great Depression, Hard Luck Blues presents more than two hundred photographs created by the New Deal's Farm Security Administration photography program. With an appreciation for the amateur and the local, FSA photographers depicted a range of musicians sharing the regular music of everyday life, from informal songs in migrant work camps, farmers' homes, barn dances, and on street corners to organized performances at church revivals, dance halls, and community (...) festivals. Captured across the nation from the northeast to the southwest, the images document the last generation of musicians who learned to play without the influence of recorded sound, as well as some of the pioneers of Chicago's R & B scene and the first years of amplified instruments. The best visual representation of American roots music performance during the Depression era, Hard Luck Blues features photographs by Jack Delano, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Marion Post Wolcott, and others. Photographer and image researcher Rich Remsberg breathes life into the images by providing contextual details about the persons and events captured, in some cases drawing on interviews with the photographers' subjects. Also included are a foreword by author Nicholas Dawidoff and an afterword by music historian Henry Sapoznik. Published in association with the Library of Congress. (shrink)

Push: Software Design and the Cultural Politics of Music Production shows how changes in the design of music software in the first decades of the twenty-first century shaped the production techniques and performance practices of artists working across media, from hip-hop and electronic dance music to video games and mobile apps. Emerging alongside developments in digital music distribution such as peer-to-peer file sharing and the MP3 format, digital audio workstations like FL Studio and Ableton Live introduced (...) design affordances that encouraged rapid music creation workflows through flashy, "user-friendly" interfaces. Meanwhile, software such as Avid's Pro Tools attempted to protect its status as the "industry standard," "professional" DAW of choice by incorporating design elements from pre-digital music technologies. Other software, like Cycling 74's Max, asserted its alterity to "commercial" DAWs by presenting users with nothing but a blank screen. These are more than just aesthetic design choices. Push examines the social, cultural, and political values designed into music software, and how those values become embodied by musical communities through production and performance. It reveals ties between the maximalist design of FL Studio, skeuomorphic design in Pro Tools, and gender inequity in the music products industry. It connects the computational thinking required by Max, as well as iZotope's innovations in artificial intelligence, with the cultural politics of Silicon Valley's "design thinking." Finally, it thinks through what happens when software becomes hardware, and users externalize their screens through the use of MIDI controllers, mobile media, and video game controllers. Amidst the perpetual upgrade culture of music technology, Push provides a model for understanding software as a microcosm for the increasing convergence of globalization, neoliberal capitalism, and techno-utopianism that has come to define our digital lives. (shrink)

This article seeks to understand the social and cultural factors that led to the introduction of music and art education in public schools, a process that began in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Based on archival material, including institutional catalogues, school board reports, magazine articles, and tracts, I demonstrate that music and art held varied meanings in this period, one of the most important of which was denominational competition. One major element in a nationwide promotion of (...) the arts in the mid-nineteenth century was the revitalized Protestant contest for religious adherents in the wake of Catholic immigration. A second important, and often overlooked, aspect of music and art education was its vocational implications. Although some historians have relegated women's study of music and art to the reproduction of elite status, a significant aspect of these studies was vocational. In a world in which limited occupations were open to women, skill in music and art expanded women's options and, for some, made financial independence possible. In addition, although many of the factors involved in the rise of music and art education?such as nationalism, refinement, and health?were nongendered and applied to both women and men, the repercussions of these programs were quite gendered and may add to our understanding of the process by which the teaching force was feminized. (shrink)