Musical memory

From the Romantic era onwards music has been seen as the most quintessentially temporal art, possessing a unique capacity to invoke the human experience of time.  Through its play of themes and recurrence of events music has the ability to stylise in multiple ways our temporal relation to the world, with far-reaching implications for modern conceptions of memory, subjectivity, personal and collective identity, and history.  Time, as philosophers, scientists and writers have found throughout history, is notoriously hard to define.  Yet music, seemingly bound up so intimately with the nature of time, might well be understood as disclosing aspects of human temporality unavailable to other modes of inquiry, and accordingly was frequently granted a privileged position in nineteenth-century thought.  For if this age understood time, it was through a melody.
  This book examines the multiple ways in which music may provide insight into the problematics of human time.  Whether in the purported timelessness of Beethoven’s late works or the nostalgic impulses of Schubert’s music, in the use of music by philosophers as a means to explicate the aporias of temporal existence or as medium suggestive of the varying possible structures of time, as a reflection of a particular culture’s sense of historical progress or the expression of the intangible spirit behind the course of human history, each of the book’s chapters explores a specific theme in the philosophy of time as expressed through music.  They chart the development across the course of the nineteenth century of music’s capacity to convey the manifold nuances of time, revealing how music would finally become seen as the ideal instantiation of time and human existence itself.  At once historical, analytical, critical, and ultimately hermeneutic, it provides both fresh insight into many familiar nineteenth-century pieces and a rich theoretical basis for future research.

The concept of the hook is a well-known device that has been incorporated into popular songs and acknowledged as a device that literally gets inside the head of the listener.

Recent studies from psychology have explored the hook as an 'earworm' but musicology has seemed resistant to any sustained exploration of the topic preferring instead to discuss these features as a motif, theme, or riff with little attention paid to the concept of the hook as an essential feature of song writing.

This document analyses the hooks in Taylor Swift's 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' and shows how songwriting has developed to purposefully integrate hooking devices into songs which get stuck in your head.

El objetivo de este trabajo es dar un panorama de los usos que se le pueden dar a la memoria dentro del ámbito musical, principalmente (pero no restrictivamente) para el instrumento piano. Además se pretenden compilar buenas ideas para memorizar y dar a conocer nuevos consejos para memorizar. Es una "tesis" escrita en forma de ensayo.

The phenomenon of musical imagery is a common and daily experience generated both voluntarily and involuntarily. The last one can degenerate into different disorders such as hallucinations. Likewise, a voluntary generation of the imagination could be affected by the musical training modifying cortical and subcortical areas, reaching even permanent changes.
In this research, the topic of musical imagery is approached through a review that summarizes the theoretical development of auditory memory, and through the design and application of a test of auditory evoked potentials of long latency (LLPEAs). This test, through musical stimuli in different rhythmic and melodic configurations, aims to qualitatively and quantitatively identify auditory activity and processing at the cortical level, involved in the musical imagination between subjects, based on their previous musical experience (PME).
From a detailed analysis of the signals, it was possible to infer a link with the cortical processing times, which are associated with the imagination, attention and musical age of subjects. On one hand, the differences in latencies observed in the musician and non-musician at the moment of imagining voluntarily, could be an expression of the implementation of a complex cortico-subcortical network developed during formal training, which would reveal a type of "trainable" imagination. On the other hand, for an involuntary musical imagery, the biological age can have an inverse influence on the latency registers of cognitive potentials without an evident relation with the PME.

Is all art interpretation? A translation into yet another shape, frame or context? Could editing be a contemporary form of interpretation? How does memory filter our listening? Who is the author? The reader "Interpretations" maps the discursive terrain of composition and improvisation, the potential of material and its limitations, ways of performance, memory strategies, notation and authorship. It aims to unfold new perspecitves on how artists are working with sound and music today.

L'article aborde les processus de remémoration musicale et de résistance par le chant et l’humour à travers un travail de création très particulier : Le Verfügbar aux Enfers, «opérette-revue» rédigée en 1944 dans le camp de Ravensbrück par un collectif de prisonnières réuni autour de l’ethnologue française Germaine Tillion. Cette «œuvre» encore peu étudiée du point de vue des sources est un collage multiforme qui combine dialogues parlés, passages déclamés et chansons « sur l’air de… » reprenant et détournant des mélodies et rengaines connues de l’époque, et représente ainsi la vie du camp sous l’angle de l’humour et de la dérision afin d’aider les déportées à résister et à survivre à l’horreur. À partir de ce document unique en son genre, notre démarche
interdisciplinaire vise à croiser étude de la mémoire, historiographie des camps et analyse littéraire et musicale afin de reconstituer la mémoire musicale mobilisée par les déportées de Ravensbrück. Elle cherche en particulier à mettre en évidence l’impact des nouveaux médias de l’époque (radio, disque et cinéma) – qui ont fourni la plupart des sources musicales de l’opérette-revue – sur les processus de remémoration et de création.

La memorización de la partitura ha sido desde hace tiempo objeto de estudio por parte de directores e instrumentistas. A través de diferentes métodos los músicos memorizamos diferentes tipos de música según nuestro instrumento principal con el fin de realizar una buena interpretación.

En este trabajo hacemos un recorrido por los métodos de memorización utilizados por los músicos y por los directores de orquesta, en particular, basándonos en escritos como el de R. Barbacci: "Educación de la memoria musical", Williamon y Hallam "La memoria musical" (Capítulo del libro de John Rink "La interpretación musical"), H. Swarowsky "Defensa de la obra" y H. Scherchen "El arte de dirigir".

Después pasamos a centrar nuestra atención en aquellos tipos de análisis que consideramos necesarios para la memorización de una partitura concreta: el "Preludio a la Ópera de Tristán e Isolda de R. Wagner" y los realizamos.

A través de la grabación audiovisual a dos pianos de la obra y el posterior estudio autoetnográfico de la misma concluimos una serie de acciones a realizar para mejorar la memorización y hacemos una segunda grabación y un nuevo estudio autoetnográfico, con nuevas conclusiones.

La autoetnografía es una forma de investigación en la cual el sujeto de la misma es el mismo investigador en un evento en el cual participa. En este tipo de estudio, no es tan importante la calidad del investigador sino la manera en la que se investiga y la aportación que puede hacer sobre su experiencia.

The purpose of the experiments reported in this article was to determine whether there is a predictable pattern to errors during a musical memorisation task. Based on previous literature, it was hypothesized that errors would not be evenly distributed throughout the piece, but recall would be preserved at structural boundaries. Twenty musicians in Experiment 1 memorised a 36-bar exercise, with nine phrases, then recalled the music on an instrument after a 25-minute retention interval. There was a significant main effect of phrase (1—9) on the number of errors made. The first and last phrases were performed more accurately, as were the two phrases beginning the second major section of the piece. Both serial position and structure influenced accuracy. In Experiment 2, 23 musicians performed a piece they had learned but not deliberately memorised on the piano (incidental memory task). The numbers of errors made in bars marked by the individual performers as structural, difficult, and musically important were calculated. More errors occurred on difficult bars and bars not considered structural. However, fewer errors occurred in difficult bars that occurred at structural boundaries and in bars that were not marked difficult whether or not they included structural boundaries.

This paper aims to explore some of the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease that influence the brain. Three vital biological processes occur in the brain, including the cell body, dendrites and the axon. The cell body consists of the nucleus, the genetic blueprint that regulates its activities. Dendrites extend from the cell body and collect information from other neurons where axons transmit other neurons’ messages. If one of these biological processes is not working, then the whole system breaks down. The function and the survival of these neurons are dependent on the natural methods of communication, metabolism, repair, remodelling and regeneration. Although memory is heavily affected, ​the preservation of musical memory is prominent in patients with advanced Alzheimer's disease despite progressive brain degeneration.

This article presents two experiments investigating the degree to which listeners can detect changes in melodies. In both studies, pairs of melodies were presented to a group of professional musicians and a group of non-musicians. In Experiment 1, musical structure and musical expertise were explored with stylistic, non-stylistic, and random melodies. Experiment 2 utilized a full-factorial design to examine tonality, musical interval, metrical position, note duration, and musical expertise. Significant effects were found for several variables, but tonality had a particularly large effect on
performance. Under some conditions, large changes between the melodies went undetected even by professional musicians. These results suggest that listeners form a memory representation for schematically consistent tones, which we refer to as the "musical gist". These results also suggest a
comparison with change blindness, in which viewers can fail to notice salient changes in a visual scene, raising the question of whether similar processing operates in both modalities.

Dans les années 1970, Simha Arom a élaboré de nouveaux outils conceptuels et méthodologiques permettant l’analyse des polyphonies et polyrythmies de tradition orale en Centrafrique, qui ont abouti à la publication de son ouvrage de référence (Arom 1985). Depuis, il n’a cessé de préciser et de développer cet outillage en collaboration avec d’autres chercheurs, comme Vincent Dehoux, Susanne Fürniss, Olivier Tourny, Nathalie Fernando, Emmanuelle Olivier, Sylvie Le Bomin (etc.), qui ont enrichi et adapté ces outils à leurs terrains respectifs. L’apport de ces recherches n’est pas seulement méthodologique. Leurs travaux contribuent à la vaste question des modèles en ethnomusicologie cognitive. Le problème qui se pose pourrait se résumer comme suit : quelles références mentales guident les musiciens de l’oralité en cours de performance ? Jouent-ils au hasard ou se laissent-ils guider par un modèle cognitif, sorte de "partition intérieure" ?

Les chercheurs mentionnés plus haut ont révélé que la plupart des musiques contrapuntiques que l’on rencontre en Centrafrique, au Cameroun, au Gabon et en Tanzanie sont fondées sur une conception commune. Toutes cycliques, ces pièces sont composées d’au moins deux parties constitutives, chacune d’elles étant sous-tendue par un schéma mélodique épuré, qui sert de référence mentale à tous les musiciens lors de la performance. Les musiciens ont alors recours à plusieurs procédés de variation pour générer les multiples réalisations de la pièce à partir des motifs mélodiques qui sous-tendent chacune de ses parties constitutives. Quant à la pièce, elle est sous-tendue par un modèle contrapuntique, qui résulte de l’imbrication de ses différentes parties mélodiques.

Les recherches que je mène, depuis 2001, sur les pièces polyphoniques maale du sud-ouest éthiopien m’ont amené à me demander si ces pièces sont fondées sur le même principe. Mes travaux tendent à montrer que la conception maale du contrepoint n’est pas seulement différente de celle que l’on rencontre dans ces régions, mais que d’un certain point de vue elle en est diamétralement opposée. Cet article démontre que le modèle de type épure, découvert par Simha Arom (1985) en Centrafrique, n’est pas opérationnel chez les Maale. Je soulève alors l’hypothèse que les musiciens se réfèrent à un modèle plurivocal qui contient en son sein la totalité des variantes potentielles de la partie qu’ils exécutent. L’utilisation d’un protocole d’expérimentation interactive permet de confirmer la validité de cette hypothèse sur le terrain. Pour finir, je propose une typologie des modèles musicaux utilisés dans différentes régions d’Afrique. Ce texte, qui fait écho à un récent article de Victor Grauer (2009), alimente la thèse de Susanne Fürniss et Emmanuelle Olivier (1997) selon laquelle il existe différentes conceptions africaines du contrepoint.

This chapter was included in Music in Time: Phenomenology, Perception, Performance, edited by Alexander Rehding and Suzannah Clark (Harvard, 2016), and explores the ways human cognitive processes shape the apprehension of musical time. The main musical example is the first movement of Toru Takemitsu's "All in Twilight" for guitar.