Music for children

My paper explores the contested and liminal cultural space of tween music by focusing on one of the genres biggest stars, Miley Cyrus. Tween music inhabits a cultural space between traditional notions of childhood and adolescence and is aggressively marketed to a core demographic of girls aged between 6 and 12. Tween has been accused not only of the up-aging of childhood, but also of the down-aging and infantilisation of adulthood. My paper attempts to explain the media's and increasingly, academia's fascination with Cyrus, and the contrasting responses to her onstage performances, recordings and promotional videos. Commentators have noted how her videos and performances either empower young women and girls by redefining the narrow and stereotypical definitions of young female sexuality policed by the media, or, they merely reinforce hetero-patriarchal constructions of gender expectations, thus reinforcing stereotypes and disempowering young women. An analysis of Cyrus' singing voice begins to explain this fascination. As an ex-child star, she is often perceived to be precociously sexualised, 'too sexy too soon'. Children, especially girls, with adult mannerisms have long aroused the interest of the record-buying and cinema-viewing public. The combination of 'grown-up' gestures with childlike attributes, contextualised by socially prescribed constructions of innocence has led to the eroticisation of child stars such as Shirley Temple, Brenda Lee, and Judy Garland. The frequent conflation of Cyrus' on-screen and on-stage personae also contribute to media responses. The paper draws on Kristeva's ideas of intertextuality to explain the largely-binary representations of Cyrus. To the media, Cyrus and other young female tween stars such as Ariana Grande are either angel or devil, innocent or knowing, virginal or slutty. Social constructions of innocence and its protection inform such responses. I present a taxonomy of vocal attributes that contribute to aural perceptions of aging. The mismatch between Cyrus' low voice and her childlike appearance contributes to the perceptions of premature sexualisation and perceived loss of innocence that are central to mainstream media narratives. Her resonant and aurally 'damaged' voice defies expectations of gender, age and perhaps, sexuality. Through textual and contextual analysis of the pitch and timbre of Cyrus' voice, combined with ideas from McClary, I propose that Cyrus is able to transgress a number of sexual personae, from the street wise young teen in Hannah Montana, to the raunchy young adult of her post-transition career. Cyrus' voice, I argue, subverts normative notions of childhood (especially female childhood) where purity of tone signifies innocence, and its absence spells knowingness, lived experience and an encroachment of adulthood into childhood. I draw on Brackett's discussions of how the person, persona and character combine, and how the voice, and the biography of the vocalist become symbiotically linked. A consideration of musical genre suggests that pop, and the obvious auto-tuning of Cyrus' voice on recordings, confines Cyrus to a particular media narrative which contrasts to other child singers such as 14 year olds Ari Up of

JULIUSEDIMUS , CATÁLOGO COMPLETO DE LA OBRA MUSICAL, 2024
INCLUYE  NUEVA LISTA DE LAS OBRAS, FRAGMENTOS DE PARTITURAS, FOTOGRAFÍAS, BREVE CV, BIBLIOGRAFÍA SELECTA, ETCÉTERA.

JULIUSEDIMUS, CATALOGUE COMPLET DE L'OEUVRE MUSICALE, 2024
COMPRENDS UNE NOUVELLE LISTE DES OEUVRES, FRAGMENTS DE PARTITIONS, PHOTOGRAHPIES, BREF CV, UNE BIBLIOGRHIE SELECTE, ETCÉTÉRA 

A COMPLETE UPDATED CATALOG OF MUSICAL WORKS, 2024
INCLUDES A NEW LISTE OF THE WORKS, TEXTS, SCORE FRAGMENTS, PHOTOGRAPHIES, SHORT CV, A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY , ETCÉTÉRA.

Edukačný softvér by mal otvoriť deťom myseľ, dovoliť im experimentovať a “vstrebávať nové vedomosti”. V rámci výzvy Ministerstva dopravy pôšt a telekomunikácii Slovenskej republiky sa nám podarilo zrealizovať projekt, ktorý sa pokúsil odstrániť nedostatok kvalitného edukačného softvéru pre hudobnú výchovu. Projekt bol realizovaný na Katedre základov a vyučovania informatiky Univerzity Komenského, kde bolo vývíjané prostredie a samotný program. Cieľom projektu bolo tiež zapojenie detí do procesu vývoja. Testovania prebiehali na hodinách hudobnej výchovy na ZŠ Košická v Bratislave. Tento článok sa podrobnejšie zaoberá štruktúrou celého programu a vzájomným prepojením detí so samotným vývojom programu.

Translation: Educational software should open children mind, allow them to experiment and "absorb new knowledge". Within the project of the Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications of the Slovak Republic, we created an application, which attempted to address the lack of quality educational software for music education. The project was implemented at the Department of Informatics Education, Comenius University, where the environment and the program itself were developed. The project also aimed to involve children in the development process. Testing was carried out on music lessons in the primary school Košická in Bratislava. In this paper, the architecture of the entire program is described as well as the interconnection between the software development and children performance.

This paper deals with the role and treatment of folk music by the acclaimed Greek writer, Alexander Papadiamantis (1851-1911). Born in Skiathos island, he moved to Athens where he worked as an author of novels and short stories for newspapers and literary magazines. He was also active in the field of church music, as the son of a pious provincial priest, and chanted in a small church in Athens. So it goes without surprise that he used several musical images and inserted various folk songs and church hymns in his lietrary works. One of the most significant aspects of his treatment of music is their role as carriers of social meanings and messages within the communities. Most of Papadiamantis' stories are set in a provincial albeit undefined coontext, where folk songs bear a special significance on the local people as they actually did in reality in the past. The terms gnosis (knowledge) and epignosis (deeper knowledge) allude to the stages of getting to know things through the use of music, for there things that cannot be easily said but can be demonstarted by other means, such as the arts. In his works, folk songs (by means of inserted couplets and excerpts of folk peotry) is elevated to a higher status enlightening the heroes as well as the readers.

... Guía mágica de un concierto. Información General. Autores: Amparo Porta Navarro; Editores: Generalitat Valenciana; Año de publicación: 1991; País: España; Idioma: Español; ISBN : 84-7890-456-5. Otros catálogos. Bibliotecas Universitarias en las que se encuentra ( REBIUN ...

This MA paper describes a community music workshop project with three to five year old children and their carers, and investigates potential benefits that can be derived from participatory music activities. The research was carried out over six weeks, one hour a week, in Killarney, Co. Kerry, in early 2014. Seven children and their carers took part. Findings were based on facilitator observation and participant feedback – both verbal and written; existing literature and related research are also investigated.  Music used in the project encouraged listening, repetition of words, actions and dancing, and choosing words for parts of songs. Turn taking was an important part of each session. Children were also given time to make their own music without guidance, which involved choosing their own instrument, and exploring the use of instruments that they had not seen before. The carers reported various changes in their children: the learning of new words, clarity of speech, better social participation and turn taking, less attention-seeking behaviour, and increased confidence being the main observations. The possible role of making one’s own choices, and how this may have a role in child development, is also briefly explored in the paper. Although limited, the research implies that focussed group music activities may be worthwhile for small children at this stage when they are nearly ready to attend primary school.

The introductory chapter discusses how childhood is a social construction in which recorded music made for children plays a part. As adult-derived cultural texts with a primary purpose of engaging the child, recorded music for children can communicate complex and often contradictory messages that reveal the naturalised moralities and ingrained ideologies that shape childhood.

Even the most seemingly innocuous music can communicate profound messages and reveal the often-subtle ways that relationships of power become normalised. Recordings of music for children simultaneously divulge adult attitudes and facilitate the child’s response.

The musical, lyrical and sonic representations in the recordings both construct and constrict childhood. The recordings concurrently prompt and script the performance of particular childhoods while providing a forum for the child’s disruptive, improvised and unpredictable reception activity.

Additionally, recordings may attempt to address both the child and the adult. My ‘Music Hall formula’ describes the strategies used by music creators to engage domestic intergenerational groups and promote ‘family values’.

Lastly, I explain how recordings of music for children have the potential to facilitate the fluidity of the child’s subjectivity by being textually open to alternate and ever-evolving interpretations.