Polyphonic Self or Idiomatic Label? Mapping Polish Composers Born Between 1970 and 1980: Marcin Stańczyk, Aleksander Nowak, Jagoda Szmytka (original) (raw)

Musical self and musical identity Drawing on concepts in psychology, philosophy and sociology, the notions of "musical self " and "musical identity" entered the musicological lexicon in the twenty-first century. As Maria Spychiger writes: "The self-aware person is capable of looking at him-or herself from an outside perspective, making him-or herself the object of reflection […]. In doing so, individuals can conceive of ideas about who they are, and perceive a sense of continuity in this: the latter is defined as identity by many theorists." Starting from the new millennium, research on the musical self and identity has been developing intensively, gaining in-depth scope and a multidisciplinary character. Explaining the concept of musical self, Spychiger states: "Musical self-concept summarizes a person's answers to his or her inquiries into 'who-I-am' and 'what-I-can-do' questions with regards to music." 1 Music sociologist Tia DeNora refers to these inquiries as "technology of self ", pointing to the fact that music can be used to nurture memories, regulate mood or reflect on the temporal course of social processes. She sums up her empirical research thus: "In this chapter, music has been portrayed as a temporal structure, as offering semiotic particles, as a medium with attendant conventional or biographical associations-in action as a device for ordering the self as an agent, and as an object known and accountable to oneself and others. Music may be understood as providing a container for feeling and, in this sense, its specific properties contribute to the shape and quality of feeling to the extent that feeling-to be sustained, and made known to oneself and others-must be established on a public or intersubjective plane. Music is a material that actors use to elaborate, to fill out and fill in, to themselves and to others, modes of aesthetic agency and, with it, subjective stances and identities." 2 The author deliberately talks about identities in the plural, and she also emphasises that they are fluid, plastic, hybrid and even tradable and stealable. 3 The editors of the Handbook