Musical Communication

The symbolism around flying is deeply rooted in the Basque culture. The main example of this is the song “Txoria txori”, but there are many other popular songs in the Basque Country that use words related to the wings or the birds in the lyrics to communicate. Based on the accessed lists of the radio Gaztea, this article focuses on the importance of those symbols in the current Basque popular music. It analyzes the songs whose titles include bird-related terms that have sounded on the radio from 2015 to 2020 (N=15). This shows that a tradition that comes from the New Basque Song in the 60s is still part of the Basque imaginary. The analysis of the sample suggests that the use musicians make currently about those symbols responds more to an individual perspective rather than to a collective one.

This paper recounts and analyzes a performance of John Zorn's Cobra––a 'game' piece for improvisers––from a first person perspective. I examine the process of rehearsal and performance making reference to relevant literature in music psychology; and I offer some tentative possibilities for how we might understand musical communication in the context of free improvisation. To conclude I consider the pedagogical applications of the piece. While the account offered here is largely anecdotal, it is my hope that this paper may offer some useful insights into the nature of musical improvisation and perhaps inspire more sustained and rigorous inquiries into this fascinating and under-researched area of musical practice.

The capacity for music to function as a therapeutic force for bio-cognitive organization is considered in clinical and everyday contexts. Given the deeply embodied nature of such responses, it is argued that cognitivist approaches may be insufficient to fully explain music’s affective power. Following this, an embodied approach is considered––where the emotional-affective response to music is discussed in terms of primary bodily systems and the innate cross-modal perceptive capacities of the embodied human mind. It is suggested that such an approach may extend the largely cognitivist view taken by much of contemporary music psychology and philosophy of music by pointing the way towards a conception of musical meaning that begins with our most primordial interactions with the world.

The  notions  of  musical  meaning  and  musical
communication  in popular music were studied using a
qualitative methodology. Two songs  from a Funk-rock
band  and  2  songs  from  a  Jazz  band  were  used  as
stimuli. Six members from the bands and a group of 14
participants listened to the songs individually and were
asked  to  indicate  those  moments  that  called  their
attention,  and  to  explain  what  the  meaning  of  each
song  was.  The  main  findings  were  that:  a)  while
listening  to  the  songs  the musicians  and  the  listeners
did not experience the music as expressive of ideas or
emotions most of  the  time, b)  the meanings assigned
to  the pieces depended on objective characteristics of
the  musical  objects  that  were  linked  with  semantic
referents  by  the  respondents;  c)  those  semantic
referents  were  often  provided  by  the  lyrics  of  the
songs.  These  findings  were  interpreted  as  evidence
that musical meaning  is  not  fixed  but  contingent  and
that the communication of intentions, ideas or emotions
from musicians  to  listeners  is  not  assured,  but  it  can
succeed if several conditions are present.

Music and interaction were the focus of interest of this PhD-study. Early music education experiences were examined in three groups in the empirical study by comparing mother-child interaction. The study is within the field of early childhood music education. Multiple strategies study, including qualitative and quantitative methods and various ways of collecting and analyzing data, are employed in the study, which utilizes theoretically a combination of three main music-related theories: interaction-development (Hinde 1997), music-language (Brown 2000) and music-emotions (Juslin 2001). The study draws on philosophical, practical and didactic/pedagogical ideas evident in early childhood music education. Musical and holistic development is described seen as starting prenatally. The philosophical background is phenomenological, while the three-part empirical study is an adaptation of an action study conducted in 2006 with systematic video observation as a main method of data collection and analysis. The analysis was conducted on the basis of several theories, using three software programs: Annotation, HyperResearch and Praat. Pregnant mothers, the empirical group E (n=7), attended the prenatal musical sessions; E (7+7) and the control, C1 (n=7+7), the postnatal sessions, and all the three groups of mothers (n=7+7+7) and babies (n=8+7+7), E, C1 and C2, participated in all the study procedures. The last questionnaire was conducted with 12 to 19-month-old children (mean 16.2 months). Connections between music and interaction were observed in the musical and communicational behaviour of mother and baby, and in the infant’s musical/holistic development. Music education was found to have strong connections with early interaction due to the emotions and behaviour manifested during that interaction. A very clear mother-child bond was created as a result of the shared prenatal musical experiences. Early interaction can be musically supported.

The study of music cognition has been dominated by a largely disembodied conception of the mind. This so-called ‘cognitivist’ perspective treats mental activity in terms of abstract information-processing––where the world is represented in the mind via the computation of ‘sub-personal’ symbols; and where the mind-brain relationship is explained in terms of a collection of cognitive modules shaped by natural selection. Recent decades have seen an ecological-embodied paradigm emerge in cognitive science, as well as more plastic and interactive conceptions of the mind-brain and organism-environment relationships. These new perspectives offer a much broader understanding of meaning-making and the mind and are becoming increasingly influential in music cognition studies.

The orthodox approach to the mind and its origins is examined; and its influence on music cognition research is discussed. Alternative embodied, developmental, ecological and bio-cultural perspectives on cognition and the musical mind are considered. The ‘enactive’ approach to embodied cognition is then offered as a theoretical framework that better accommodates these broader and more nuanced ways of understanding musical meaning. To conclude, the relevance of the enactive approach is considered for music education, performance and practice.

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.

Musical virtuosity is often studied with an emphasis on the outstanding skills of the performer and their sensory and emotional effects on the listener. However, Franz Liszt, one of the main virtuosos in music history, was convinced that what matters in virtuosity is its specific function within the semantic and communicative processing of music. This article proposes a theoretical framework to further investigate Liszt’s intuitions in light of contemporary research on musical meaning and communication. First, we analyze philological data concerning Liszt’s creative process in the Mazeppa works, a set of works including both his virtuoso and program music. Second, we compare our results with recent research on music semantics based on inferential processes about the composer/performer’s intentions (Antović, Stamenković, & Figar, 2016; Schlenker, 2017). We criticize the associationist hypothesis (the idea that the composer’s intention is that the listener infers an association between the music and a real or fictional state of the world) and we defend a causalist hypothesis (the idea that the composer’s intention is that the listener recognizes the music as being an intentional “rewriting” of the states of the world, mental or physical, that are the causes of the music itself). Third, we suggest that what distinguishes Liszt’s virtuoso and program music rewritings are the visual and gestural components of two listening experiences: the virtuoso music “rewrites” its episodic causes (memories, personal experiences) whereas the program music “rewrites” its genetic causes (the work’s creative path and intertextual relations).

The article focuses on the tour of Darius Milhaud to the Soviet Union. Been one of the famous personalities in music culture of the 1920-s he became the first French musician who visited our country when the Soviet Union was founded. The most important part of his tour was his communication with young soviet colleagues. The article also studies the affinity of creative process of Soviet composers and correspondence between D. Milhaud and Leningrad composer and pianist V. Deshevov.

The term "hate speech" is widely used in discussions regarding the legal limits to freedom of expression. In this chapter, I argue however that the reductionism inherent in turning a phrase such as "advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence" into the pithy "hate speech" both reflects but also constructs a debate which, in common with much scholarly discussion, takes spoken language as a communicative norm, and tries to interpret other types of communication against this norm. Moreover, this privileging of verbal language is reflected in other aspects of the debate on "hate speech", such as the tendency, perpetuated by many leading human rights advocates, of distinguishing between the "reasonable" and the "emotional", a pair of concepts that are problematic in the extreme in the context of this discussion.
I investigate this issue from the perspective of musical communication, and in particular draw on recent research into the link between music and human sociality, and also into the uses of music in connection with violence. I use these perspectives to argue that we need to take a much broader view of how communication works to establish in-groups and out-groups and, in many cases, to facilitate violence by one group against another.

Il saggio vuole ricercare, prendere in considerazione ed evidenziare i fattori strategici e comunicativi che hanno favorito e creato la credibilità, la reputazione e la fama del musicista italiano Niccolò Paganini. Una fama che ha reso Paganini un’icona. L’analisi non entra nel merito delle questioni musicali, ma prende in considerazione fattori di marketing, comunicazione e reputation management.

Communication is omnipresent and semiotic in nature. Within communication, a message is typically sent through a channel by means of a system of symbols, which is verbal and/or nonverbal in nature. Music is a communication channel, which can, unlike spoken language, communicate across language barriers. During the communicating of the message, the musical symbols within the music score function as a unit. For various reasons, publishers make modifications to music scores. This study aimed to investigate the impact that modifications have on the communicated message. Additionally, a more holistic understanding of communication phenomena within the context of music was obtained and the importance of selecting the appropriate edition demonstrated. This is achieved by analysing four nocturnes by the Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin to investigate meaning modifications within different editions of the same piano compositions. To achieve this, quantitative analyses were conducted to identify any modifications within the sample. This was followed by a qualitative semiotic analysis of each composition.
There is shown in this study that the most frequent modifications are made to phrase markings, dynamic symbols, articulation symbols, and pedal markings. In addition, it was found that changes were made to some of the notes and/or rests used within certain compositions. These changes have an impact on the communicated message of each composition in the sense of changing the emotion and atmosphere, and hence the communicated message. The findings of this study highlight the importance of considering the implications of making changes to an original score and choosing the most appropriate edition for a performance.

A growing number of psychological and philosophical musicologists are becoming dissatisfied with the limitations of standard approaches to music cognition, which are often based on disembodied and de-contextualized appraisal processes. The activities and phenomena associated with the word ‘music’ span an incredibly wide range of human experience and as a result, many researchers are turning to embodied approaches in order to develop more nuanced ways of accounting for musical meaning and communication as it emerges at the intersection of biology, culture and lived experience. The practical implications of ‘embodied cognition’ are beginning to be developed across a range of areas, including music education. However, while the notion of ‘embodied ways of knowing’ is increasingly embraced by music and arts educators, the philosophical and scientific grounding for 'embodied music cognition' often receives less attention than it deserves. With this in mind, this paper examines embodied music cognition in the context of musical communication and meaning making; and it introduces related literature in human development, philosophy, and neuroscience. To conclude, the relevance of embodied music cognition is considered in the context of music education and practice.

Increasing history consumption in today's society creates, in different social formations, a common expectation of what historical music is, can and should be. In this chapter, we draw on music education and Baradian agential realism perspectives to offer what we perceive as a promising procedure for studying early music performance from a less anthropocentric stand. We ask: How does early music performance intra-act with YouTube as medium, and how does this intra-action enable informal learning? We first address the significance and prevailing interpretation of rhetoric in this context, and what a move from a single-case rhetoric to an ecological one offers. Subsequently, we introduce agential realism as an approach to studying early music performance, particularly through the lense of Barad (2007). Here, we offer a discursive practice that can contribute to future studies, which we follow up with an exemplary case study. The case is later discussed and analysed, and in conclusion we draw attention to the online media's role both in sustaining historical culture for new generations, and in cumulatively reinventing itself as a pedagogical process both within and outside educational settings.

Marjanen, Kaarina The Belly-Button Chord. Connections of pre-and postnatal music education with early mother-child interaction. Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2009, 189 p. (Jyvaskyla Studies in Humanities ISSN 1459-4331; 130) ISBN 978-951-39-3769-0 (PDF), 978-951-39-3760-7 (nid.) Finnish summary Diss. Music and interaction were the focus of interest of this PhD-study. Early music education experiences were examined in three groups in the empirical study by comparing mother-child interaction. The study is within the field of early childhood music education. Multiple strategies study, including qualitative and quantitative methods and various ways of collecting and analyzing data, are employed in the study, which utilizes theoretically a combination of three main music-related theories: interaction-development (Hinde 1997), music-language (Brown 2000) and music-emotions (Juslin 2001). The study draws on philosophical, practical and didactic/pedagogical ideas evident in early chil...

Konser merupakan istilah untuk pertunjukan musik yang disajikan di depan penggemarnya. Selain berfungsi sebagai sarana interaksi antara musisi dan penikmat musik, konser juga dapat menjadi alat politik tertentu. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan teori komunikasi musikal dan politik. Tujuannya untuk mengidentifikasi makna dibalik pesan-pesan politik dan musikal pada penyelenggaraan konser Musik untuk Republik (MUR) yang diadakan 18-20 oktober 2019 yang lalu. Fitur-fitur dalam aplikasi NVIVO12 digunakan untuk mengidentifikasi kata kunci yang banyak dibicarakan, sentimen, hubungan dan makna dibalik respon masyarakat terhadap MUR, dan mempertajam temuan dan konsep. Sebanyak 14 situs berjenis halaman web dan kanal YouTube diakses untuk mengumpulkan informasi tentang konser MUR dan tanggapan-tanggapannya. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa terdapat komunikasi politik yang ingin disampaikan oleh musisi kepada pemerintah. Pertemuan antara musisi dengan Presiden Jokowi dianalisa sebagai upaya membangun akses ke pemerintahan, membangun kedekatan (proximity), dan kaderisasi musisi di parlemen. Pesan-pesan persatuan juga disampaikan oleh Presiden kepada masyarakat melalui konser MUR. Konser musik MUR juga digunakan sebagai medium untuk memberikan informasi publik. Kata Kunci: komunikasi musikal; komunikasi politik; konser musik.

Background:
Studies on the audio-visual presentation of musical performance have investigated its impact on perceived expressiveness (Davidson, 2005) and musical appreciation/evaluation (Platz & Kopiez, 2012). Little is known about whether a precise timbral intention by a pianist can be communicated to listeners. An interview study (Li & Timmers, 2017) on the conceptualization of piano timbre revealed pianists’ extensive utilization of timbral intentions in piano performance; the findings also suggested that the timbre concept of a pianist is enriched by embodied experience such as bodily preparations, indicating the relevance of visual cues.

Aims:
A listening experiment was conducted to examine the accuracy of communication of timbral intentions to listeners and its dependence on visual and aural component of musical performance.

Lange Zeit war Digitalisierung für den Konzertbetrieb ein Nebenschauplatz - und dann kam Corona! Für gut ein Jahr hat sich das Kulturleben weitgehend ins Netz verlagert, denn digitale Formate waren der einzige Weg, sichtbar zu bleiben und ein Publikum zu erreichen. Dies ist Anlass, über das Verhältnis von Digitalisierung und Musikvermittllung und damit einhergehende Potenziale und Herausforderungen nachzudenken.

L’article présente une étude exploratoire menée sur des échantillons de parole adressée d’une seule et même institutrice, et destinée à objectiver des différences perçues en écoute non-outillée, d'une part entre le ton qu’elle emploie avec des adultes et celui pris avec les enfants, d' autre part entre les tons employés avec les mêmes enfants dans trois types d’activité différents. L’hypothèse est celle de l'usage par l’institutrice de phonogenres différents dans une même journée. L'analyse, macro-prosodique, porte sur quatre séquences interactives spontanées et indique une correspondance partielle entre le ton de l’institutrice et le phénomène de l’infant-directed-speech, et des variations légères de certains paramètres prosodiques selon le type d’activité menée. L’existence de phonogenres différenciés (selon l’interlocuteur, selon l'activité) n’est donc pas écartée mais devra être confirmée par une étude approfondie d’échantillons de parole plus longs, la durée moyenne de parole articulée pour chaque séquence n’offrant pas une représentativité suffisante pour généraliser les résultats.