Singing and Signification (original) (raw)

Music performance and the perception of key

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1997

The effect of music performance on perceived key movement was examined. Listeners judged key movement in sequences presented without performance expression (mechanical) in Experiment 1 and with performance expression in Experiment 2. Modulation distance varied. Judgments corresponded to predictions based on the cycle of fifths and toroidal models of key relatedness, with the highest correspondence for performed versions with the toroidal model. In Experiment 3, listeners compared mechanical sequences with either performed sequences or modifications of performed sequences. Modifications preserved expressive differences between chords, but not between voices. Predictions from Experiments 1 and 2 held only for performed sequences, suggesting that differences between voices are informative of key movement. Experiment 4 confmned that modifications did not disrupt musicality. Analyses of performances further suggested a link between performance expression and key.

Interpretation, Narrativity, and Musical Performance

Dissertation (University of Virginia), 2011

The foundation of this dissertation is the notion that the variety of ways in which listeners experience the agency of musical performers is analogous to the variety of ways in which readers experience narrators in works of fiction. I find this way of thinking preferable to more common approaches based on perceived similarities between musical performance and the interpretation of literary texts, which I see as a recurrent conceptual glitch in many discursive approaches to performance that often stands in the way of speaking to listeners‘ experiences in meaningful ways. I suggest that narrative studies, itself a busy interdisciplinary project, offers a rich theoretical vocabulary with the potential to help bring the criticism and analysis of recorded musical performances into line with listeners‘ experiences of them. The body of the dissertation consists of three sample analyses of musical performances in various genres, using a theoretical model of musical performer as narrator. The first case study begins with the project of exploring and explaining differences between several performances of an individual piece of instrumental classical music, Franz Schubert‘s Wanderer Fantasy. In the following chapter, I analyze several recordings of jazz pianist Jaki Byard, suggesting that Byard‘s marginal position in mainstream jazz criticism may result from the way his music seems to flout several narrative discourses thought to be fundamental to analytical engagement with jazz performance. The final case study focuses on the music of the Icelandic pop singer Björk, whose distinctive narrative agency I find to be resonant with Mikhail Bakhtin‘s writing on literary narration. In these three case studies, I argue not for any particular "hearing" of these recordings, but rather for an interdisciplinary approach I find to be responsive to a wider variety of listening experiences than many more common theoretical discussions. I hope to open up a space between several preexisting theoretical discourses in which it is possible to craft theoretical solutions specific to individual listeners‘ experiences of individual musical performances and to demonstrate that narrative theory can be a therapeutic and regenerative resource in the continuing project of developing new and useful ways of discussing musical performance.

More to Music Than Meets the Ear

Music and Literacy, 2018

Have you ever heard a song that you loved so much that it gave you goosebumps up and down your arms? Or made you feel any emotion from happiness to sadness? Or loved it so much you had to restart it again once it hit the very end? There are plenty of songs that I have saved that have done all of this and more. From performing in multiple jazz band, concert band, and marching band ensembles over the years, there are emotions I associate with many of the pieces I have played on-stage. Starting in beginning band at Lakeview Middle School, I had not a clue about what drums could make what sound or the true difference in dynamic contract with soft piano sounds and loud forte sounds, but as the weeks and months progressed, my literacy in music was growing at a rapid rate. By the time I had joined the multitude of music ensembles at West Orange High School, I was developing different cognitive perspectives of the music I was reading and even applying this knowledge to other areas of focus in school, such as language arts, mathematics, natural sciences, and history. Music literacy is a great tool for the development of text literacy as well as learning the English language itself. I am interested in performing research that is capable of answering the following question: How does knowledge of music influence people’s personal and professional lives? After conducting my research, I believe I have found the answer to my research question and found even more about the relationship between music knowledge and literacy in the real world than I thought I would find. There are infinitely many ways music can have an influence on people’s personal and professional lives. Depending solely from person to person, music can not only improve test scores and assist the development of a new language, but it may also be responsible for inspiring new ideas and concepts in other areas of knowledge. From some survey responses, music can do as much as enforce better habits through increased communication, work ethic, responsibility, and organization. Responses from my interviews with my former band directors validate these same values. Similar to how music can be applied, the findings of this research have numerous applications to other areas of life and can only be expanded on moving forward as the database of research of this topic increases.

The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition

Routledge eBooks, 2017

The practices of oral and improvised musical traditions impact the psychological demands of the act of performance, for both musicians and audience. This chapter discusses the diversity of performance contexts that exist across musical traditions, and the varying priorities and constraints these impose on cognitive work related to the performance of music. This concerns the acquisition of musical skills and how these are conceptualized; memorization (and of what sort); the prioritization of different aspects of musicianship; and the conventions of performance context that may implicate varying levels of skill from audiences, too, as part of a successful performance.

Exploring the perceptual effects of performers’ interpretations

Journal of Interdiscplinary Music Studies, 2014

Empirical studies of performance attributes such as tempo variations, dynamics (Palmer, 1989; Repp, 1997, 1999) and even visual gestures (Vines et al., 2006) posit that structural emphases can be measured from these aural and visual streams. Recording continuous perceptual responses from audience judges on tasks such as shaping perceived phrasing and tension (Vines et al., 2006) provides insight into the communicative function of performance and allows the exploration of relationships between performance parameters and their “communicative” outcomes. To perform a piece of music is to present and portray the patterns of that piece of music (Walton, 1988). The nature and extent to which performers may actually articulate patterns is unclear. Empirical studies in this field may help clarify questions such as the artistic value of the performer’s contribution in performing a musical work and the comparability of different performances (what Levinson calls “performative results”) of the same piece. This study examines whether a performer’s unique interpretation can be conveyed to the point where it changes how the listener “hears” a piece, extending the work of Spiro (2007). Musically-trained audience judges were presented with three performances each of Chopin’s B Flat Minor Sonata, final movement, and of Chopin’s Prelude in E minor and asked to indicate phrasing continuously using a slider. The effects across participants for the one performer and also across performances are examined, exploring how these relate to measured aural features such as tempo and dynamics. Results across all participants show a range of responses indicating that there is not an ‘agreed’ perceived interpretation for each performance. Collating the phrase boundary responses for each performance, the strength of responses at particular points in the score vary slightly across performances of the same piece, suggesting that performers can control the extent to which a structural boundary is emphasised. These preliminary results show that despite the fact that the act of listening to music can be personal and dependent on a number of a priori factors, different interpretations can have an effect on how we hear phrasing according to the emphasis or de-emphasis of certain structural features. These results imply that performers can have an influence on the audience perception of phrasing even in well-known pieces of repertoire. This may help in considering how audiences respond in comparing performances.

Interpretation of Vocal Staging by Popular Music listeners: A Reception Test (2001)

This article presents the results of a research centered on voice manipulation, or as suggested by the title, the staging of voice in recorded popular music. The main hypothesis in this study is that voice manipulation can give rise to a range of connotations and effects whose emergence in the listener’s mind is not arbitrary, but rather coherent. Arguments used to support such a thesis are taken from the empirical data of a reception test and from information provided by secondary sources. Findings tend to support the hypothesis and point to a new set of musical parameters that should be taken into account in any discussion of popular music: sound staging.

Musical Representation and the Evaluation of Musical Performances

This paper explores the issue of musical performance evaluation, which has received very little attention in contemporary philosophy of music. I first develop a view of performative interpretation of music that builds on recent accounts of musical meaning and representation. As an alternative to the conception of musical performances underlying pluralist views of musical performance evaluation that have been popular lately, I shall offer a view which sees the articulation of understanding of the work performed as an important element of musical performances. Theories of musical meaning and representation I discuss in the article are intended to illuminate what articulating an understanding of a musical piece through a musical performance means, and how musical performances can be evaluated on the basis of the view they afford of the work performed. After discussing an extensive example, I examine the effect of the account of performance evaluation I offer in the article on the question regarding the relevance of the composer's performing intentions for performance evaluation. In the last section, I compare the alternative view sketched in the article with recent pluralistic conceptions of evaluation in more detail. My view is that the two are in no way incompatible. Rather, the view of performance evaluation I develop in the article manages to supplement the pluralist conception of musical performance evaluation in some important respects.