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Dogmas of Understanding in Western Art Music Performance

Resource type
Date created
2015-07-22
Authors/Contributors
Abstract
This paper presents an exploration of the ontological shift from musical materials (i.e. melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, timbre, register) to activities in music performance analysis. The “dogmas” extend Herbert H. Clark’s conceptual framework for the study of joint activity in language use to explore music performance in the WAM tradition. A systematic analysis of London Symphony Orchestra masterclasses examines the basic mechanisms of music making in four main areas: representation, audience, interaction and tacit knowledge. This exploration leads to a broader account of cognition and creativity in music performance, one that bridges inner and outer processes of awareness around domains of coordination in joint activities. In this view, material conceptualizations are viewed as targets of focal awareness rather than the basis for cognition in music making. This account, grounded in a rich third-person phenomenological analysis of instructional materials, paves the way for a “meaningful analytics” of musical practice.
Description
This paper presents a rhetorical exploration of the deeper (and some might say, striking) implications of the ontological shift from materials to activity in music performance analysis.Comments and questions can be sent to the author at: lkaastra@sfu.ca.
Published as
Kaastra, Linda. "Dogmas of Understanding in Western Art Music Performance". Poster to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, July 22-25, 2015, Pasadena, California.
Publication details
Document title
Dogmas of Understanding in Western Art Music Performance
Date
2015
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author(s).
Permissions
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this work under the following conditions: You must give attribution to the work (but not in any way that suggests that the author endorses you or your use of the work); You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Scholarly level
Peer reviewed?
No
Language
English
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