PRELIMINARIES Hysterical trading in art AT THE PRESENT TIME, when a great amount of music is being both composed and heard, a great deal is also being ...

"This innovative volume argues that any particular kind of music can only be understood in terms of the criteria of the group which makes and appreciates that music. This theme is in sharp contrast to established attitudes to music which utilize 'objectively' conceived aesthetic. These attitudes are revealed in the assumptions underlying most musicology and musical aesthetics including, perhaps paradoxically, the work of a number of cultural radicals such as Lukacs and Adorno. On a more practical level, (...) they manifest themselves both in music education policies and in the policies of arts and broadcasting administrators, who have the power to promote some kinds of music above others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 15.2 (2007) 177-179MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reviewed byLise Vaugeois University of TorontoHildegard C. Froehlich, Sociology for Music Teachers:Perspectives for Practice (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007)Hildegard Froehlich's book, Sociology for Music Teachers, provides an important and much needed resource for undergraduate and advanced music education programs. Music students tend to see their interests and goals (...) within a narrow framework, one that is reinforced by the intensely personal nature of music-making as well as the material and psychological separation that inheres from our location in physically detached faculties of music. Froehlich's book provides a resource that directly addresses this tendency towards narrowness by inviting students to engage with sociological questions as they affect us personally, professionally, and in the context of questions much larger than ourselves.The book is organized into eight chapters, each of which explores a particular set of questions and introduces related studies and resources. She recommends that students actively engage with the material and provides suggestions for group discussion throughout the book. Each chapter introduces a comprehensive survey of related questions and the body of literature that investigates these questions. Thus, it can be used as the basis to structure an undergraduate course as well as a literature guide for graduate students.Undergraduate students are often resistant to exploring ideas beyond their [End Page 177] immediate conceptions of themselves as musicians and Froehlich addresses this resistance by discussing concepts about identity formation in the first chapter. Students are thus asked to consider a series of questions they can easily recognize as relevant to their own lives. She begins with the personal and the familiar and then brings in ideas that broaden the range of inquiry, gradually introducing concepts that challenge many of our assumptions about the meaning of music in different people's lives; the range of meanings possible within sounds and musical practices; the role of public education and various ways that music education functions within this larger system, and important questions about how we might conceive of ourselves as transmitters of extant cultural values or transformers of values and social relations.The chapter headings give an indication of the range of material introduced in her text: "The Performer and Teacher in You: A Matter of Identity"; "Teaching as Work: What Educational Sociologists Tell Us"; "Music Learning and Teaching as Socially Situated Acts"; "Music and Social Context: Macro, Micro, and Interactive Perspectives in Selected Texts on the Sociology of Music"; "Musical Meaning and Social Context: Thoughts by Selected Ethnomusicologists and Cultural Theorists"; "Sociology of Education: Major Theories and Their Connection to School Practice"; "Application of Sociological Constructs in Education to Music Schooling"; "Conclusion: You and the Big Picture." Each chapter gives a historical survey of the literature pertaining to the area of inquiry plus an introduction to contemporary writing. Competing discourses are introduced throughout.Froehlich's survey of disciplines that intersect with sociology is quite comprehensive. Amongst other disciplines, she includes foundational literature from musicology, philosophy of music education, sociology of education, and social psychology. The book is thus valuable as a resource for its bibliography alone. She also includes a glossary of terms, another feature that makes the book particularly helpful to undergraduate students. One writer I was surprised not to see included is Jacques Attali. His theoretical arguments on the relations of musical culture to economy provide a significant lens for considering the influence of music on social development and would have been an appropriate addition to the chapter on "Music and Social Context." I also missed work by musicologists and human geographers who have explored the role of race in music and music education.Related to these missing discourses, I have a major concern that is less a critique of Froehlich than an acknowledgement that this position has not yet been given sufficient consideration in our field, and to which Deborah Bradley refers as the "normative centering of whiteness."1 Froehlich bases her work on the assumption that her audience consists of a... (shrink)

Introduces the sociology of music to those who may not be familiar with it and provides a historical perspective on popular music.

This introduction to the aesthetics and sociology of music of the German philosopher and music theorist T. W. Adorno is the only book to deal comprehensively with this topic and it has quickly established itself as a classic text.

A new consideration of these changes is a practical and cultural necessity. In Conditions of Music, Alan Durant extends Deryck Cooke's Language of Music, placing the insights of Cooke into a much wider sociological and historical framework.

Lasting things : Durkheim as a founding father of the sociology of culture -- Before mediation : social readings of arts -- Sociology and the art object : belief, illusion, artefacts -- The social history of art : reinserting the works into society -- The new history of art : the social in the art work -- The baroque case : musical upheavals -- "What can you hear?" : an ethnographic study of a music lesson -- "Bach (...) today" -- Intermezzo. A sociologist at the Zenith concert hall -- Music lovers : taste as an activity -- Conclusion. The representation of music : in praise of musical artifice -- Epilogue. "Vor deinen Thron". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical ExperienceDavid BakerHarold E. Fiske, Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical Experience. (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008).Building on several earlier publications on music and the mind (1990, 1993, 1996, 2004), Harold Fiske offers Understanding Musical Understanding. This is a well-referenced piece that outlines the thinking of various authors (...) (for example, Crowder, 19931; Huron, 2006;2 Snyder, 20073). Furthermore, as Fiske meticulously constructs his case, it draws in psychologists such as Carl Seashore and philosophers like Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer. All this suggests an author of great expertise and wide appeal.Fiske begins to build his argument by discussing musical cognition in terms of ‘time’ (Chapter 2) and ‘shape’ (Chapter 3) returning to these themes in greater detail in Chapter 6. It may seem axiomatic that music is perceived structurally and through time. Yet, as the author mentions, the capacity for someone to designate musical form is no way in which to illustrate systematically the workings of musical understanding. This happens swiftly and unceasingly in the course of a person’s musical encounter. It is commonplace, too, for musicians and listeners to allude to visual imagery and shape when describing music (for example, ‘high [End Page 204] and low pitches,’ ‘a texture that is dense or thin,’ or ‘an angular melody’). Fiske contributes a plausible explanation of musical shape:... the perceived shape of music can only be the outcome of a construction (not reconstruction or ‘copy’) calculated on the part of the neural network mechanisms… The ‘reality’ of a musical-auditory image is likely a result of imposing a three-dimensioned visual perspective on an inherently unstructured (invisible, tasteless, intangible, and otherwise unknowable) transitory experience. This is the only means the brain has for making sense of a sound event. What it seems to do is: identify relevant cues, piece the cues together into patterns that can be retained (in the echoic memory) long enough for brain mechanisms to examine and create the sense that we can ‘look’ at music by invoking principles borrowed from vision, and then creating the impression of an auditory ‘object.’ The ‘object’ seems complete and multidimensioned but is, however, only remotely related to what we hear during the slit-like limitations of the perceptual ‘now.’(p. 56).Nonetheless, the manner in which we communicate musical perception with terms borrowed from vision does not inconclusively evidence the same mechanisms of human thought on receiving visual or, on the other hand, musical stimuli. Use of such language may only represent an opportune mode of expressing phenomena to which we have no dedicated vocabulary. Fiske argues that musical understanding is part of the human organism’s genetically-inherited capacity to construe (rapidly invent) patterns from sonic stimuli thus making sense of temporal experience. This process, he argues, is part of the brain’s facility to determine quickly the source, kind and meaning of stimuli for the organism’s immediate safety and survival; the mental processes involved are regulated by ‘brain time’ as opposed to ‘clock time.’ Brain time is “... a rapid, micro-temporal, flexible-variable scheme...” (p. 8) in contrast to pre- and externally-determined ‘clock time.’Musical memory is addressed in Chapter 4 in tandem with ‘pattern constructs.’ Pattern constructs, Fiske explains, are ‘chunks’ of learned musical experience encoded in ‘brain time’ as multi-dimensional, unidirectional entities (p. 63). There is evidence of the ‘inner replay’ of learned events such as these.4 Incoming musical information is perceived, though, according to the listener’s cognitive context, and perhaps retroactively linked for ‘best fit’ rather than being ‘measured’ against fixed expectations and pre-established contextual information, say, about genre. The degree of ‘best fit’ either confirms or modifies assumed context. An important point Fiske makes, then, is that “... a misfit... between incoming information and the presumed context” evidences learning (p. 84).5 Since a ‘misfit’ triggers modifications to the cognitive context by which a person discerns music, it enriches his or her musical knowledge and understanding. [End Page 205] Consequently, Fiske sets a challenge for music education: “... how [do we] design teaching... (shrink)

Adorno believed that a circular relationship was established between immediacy and mediation. Should we now say that this model with its clear Hegelian influence is outdated? Or does it need some theoretical integration? This volume addresses these questions by covering the performance of music, its technological reproduction and its modes of communication - in particular, pedagogy and dissemination through the media. The book's four parts each deal with different aspects of the mediation process. The contributing authors outline the problematic (...) moments in Adorno's reasoning but also highlight its potential. In many chapters the pole of immediacy is explicitly brought into play, its different manifestations often proving to be fundamental for the understanding of mediation processes. The prime reference sources are Adorno's Current of Music, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction and Composing for the Films. Critical readings of these texts are supplemented by reflections on performance studies, media theories, sociology of listening, post-structuralism and other contiguous research fields. (shrink)

The Cultural Study of Music is an anthology of new writings that will serve as a basic textbook on music and culture. Increasingly, music is being studied as it relates to specific cultures-not only by ethnomusicologists, but by traditional musicologists as well. Drawing on writers from music, anthropology, sociology, and the related fields, the book both defines the field-i.e., "What is the relation between music and culture?"-and then presents case studies of particular issues in (...) world musics. This book would serve as an introductory textbook for the cultural study of music, an area that is increasingly being taught at the upper-level undergraduate and graduate level. Plus it would appeal to scholars in all areas of music, reflecting the latest and most up to date thinking on the complex issues surrounding how music and culture interrelate. (shrink)

Abstract:The aim of this article is to analyze and discuss the role that sociological theory plays in music education scholarship. Using books published internationally and explicitly on the topic of the sociology of music education during the recent decade as well as abstracts published in the programs from the 2017 and 2019 International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education biennial conferences as entryways into this discussion, the questions asked are: What kinds of sociological theory (...) are put to use in this material? Which sociologists or sociological theoreticians seem to be the main contributors in this regard? Which questions are asked by utilizing the approaches in play? In other words, what is sociological theory used for? In order to create a backdrop for the analysis, the article provides brief overviews of some of the similarities and differences between the field of philosophy and that of sociology in general as well as the state of sociological theory within music sociology and cultural sociology. Compared with the latter two scholarly fields, that of music education sociology comes through as one in considerable lack of theory creation, and as more invested in the logic of practice than subscribing to the rules of the scholastic game. It is also predominantly Western-centric. Following Bourdieu, these features are interpreted as conveying some of music education’s “epistemic unconscious.”. (shrink)

Starting from the metaphor of “playing chamber music at a rock festival” used by Peter L. Berger in 1992 to describe the impact of The Social Construction of Reality on US sociology, this article works out how the book’s somewhat puzzling legacy as a bestseller and a classic with remarkably rare direct follow-ups in the US discourse can indeed be conceived. I argue that one needs to take into account the theoretical-historical context in which Berger and Luckmann developed (...) their ideas, including the specific forms of knowledge production in US sociology at the time, the institutional background of the book’s emergence at the New School for Social Research and the author’s biographical trajectories. On this basis, on can explain why Berger and Luckmann’s reformulation of the sociology of knowledge both perfectly met the 1960s Zeitgeist and at the same time remained theoretically marginal. (shrink)

Beethoven is a classic study of the composer's music, written by one of the most important thinkers of our time. Throughout his life, Adorno wrote extensive notes, essay fragments and aides-memoires on the subject of Beethoven's music. This book brings together all of Beethoven's music in relation to the society in which he lived. Adorno identifies three periods in Beethoven's work, arguing that the thematic unity of the first and second periods begins to break down in the (...) third. Adorno follows this progressive disintegration of organic unity in the classical music of Beethoven and his contemporaries, linking it with the rationality and monopolistic nature of modern society. Beethoven will be welcomed by students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines - philosophy, sociology, music and history - and by anyone interested in the life of the composer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 102-125 [Access article in PDF] Towards an Ecology of Music Education June Boyce-Tillman King Alfred's College, England Western culture has developed a concept of knowledge as divided into discrete categories, which are reflected in the disconnected subjects of our school curricula and the titles of our university faculties. However, music should be intimately bound up with the wider curriculum, (...) particularly in the areas of personal, social, cultural, moral, and spiritual education. From an examination of the values that are implicit in the musical traditions that dominate music education in Western culture, in this paper I will set out some pointers towards a more ecological understanding of music education, drawing on experiences I have had with music and music education in a variety of settings. I will examine how musicology has concentrated only on certain aspects of the musical experience, ignoring areas such as expressive character, value systems, and spirituality, which are the areas that link the musical experience to the fabric of life as lived beyond the confines of the classroom and academe. This paper seeks to re-establish a notion of connectedness both within the musical experience and also beyond it and through it to other areas of knowledge and understanding. For this I have adopted the term "ecology." To explicate this notion of ecology, I have developed a model which incorporates the values that are both usually associated with Western culture and are subjugated by it, drawing on the experience of music itself. [End Page 102] Ways of Knowing The first of these models deals with the social construction of knowledge. Stan Gooch defines two systems of thought embodied in various cultures in the world. He identifies the favored characteristics of one system (Type A) as activity leading to products; objectivity; impersonal logic; thinking and thought; detachment; and discrete categories of knowledge that are based on proof and scientific evidence. The other system (Type B) favors being; subjectivity; personal feeling; emotion; magic; involvement; associative ways of knowing; and belief and non-causal knowledge.1Gooch suggests that the Western world has chosen to value the first of these systems and neglect the other. This is done by a process of devaluation that can be carried out in various ways. In the Western media this devaluation can be manifested as public ridicule or by simply ignoring those events that reflect Type B values. Community-building activities based on associative ways of knowing and acknowledgement of people's feelings and sensibilities are not reported, while a considerable amount of space is given to the essentially dehumanizing practices of warfare and the dissociative practices of violence and crime. For example, reports and articles on holistic, associative approaches to health based on belief systems that defy rational explanation often end with throw-away comments like "If you believe that, then you will believe anything!" Public figures sometimes indulge in similar practices in their pronouncements by initiating policies to outlaw health practices that cannot be supported by scientific methodologies and appealing to the grounds of public safety. People who wish to embrace the values of Type B can easily be pathologized or criminalized as the dominant culture seeks to reinforce the validity of its Type A values. Academic, medical, psychological, and even sociological research concentrates on so-called objective methodologies associated with scientific ways of knowing and the use of numbers in some shape or form. Qualitative methodologies that collect people's stories are often regarded with suspicion because of the alleged subjectivity of the approach.So the values of Type B have become hidden or repressed by Western culture. I have therefore called the ways of knowing that characterize Type B "subjugated ways of knowing,"2 following the work of Michel Foucault and his notion of subjugated knowledges.3 This paper will concentrate on how the ideas of the subjugated ways of knowing can be used to understand where we are in music education, drawing on my experience in the UK. I shall look at ways of bringing the two ways of knowing-Type A and... (shrink)

Upshot: The fact that both “consciousness” and “music” are quite elusive terms makes the attempt to explain the nature (or even the existence of) “musical consciousness” a compelling quest. The papers in this book tackle these problems in an engaging way, ranging from sociology of music to drug altered music cognition. Some also apply enactive and ecological approaches to music cognition, which makes the book an interesting read for constructivists.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Reconception of Performance Study in the Philosophy of Music EducationValerie L. TrollingerThe actual place of performance in music education has been the subject of numerous debates over the years. Most debates have revolved within the paradigm of the performance ability of the teacher and consequently the performance ability of the students. Is the level to be attained that of a winning concert band/marching band/choir? Or, is (...) the level to be attained the level at which the students and teacher feel the most comfortable and pleased? Most of this debate, along with the development of various assessments (including the Watkins-Farnum Test) and various rubrics to score music performance competitions, has emphasized characteristics of performance pertaining to accuracy of notes, precision of rhythm, and attendance to musicianship, style, and interpretation. On the other hand, the aesthetic value of performance has also been questioned in that the value of music in the schools should not be assessed solely by the importance placed on the attainment of performance skills by the students, suggesting that it is only through performance that one may know music. For example, in a recent article in the Music Educator's Journal,1 Bennett Reimer promotes the [End Page 193] position that time spent in either performance studies and active performance in music education (both at the K-12 and college teacher training levels) is not vital to the reconception of the National Standards (USA) for music education and, by extension, the field of music education itself. In the MEJ article, Reimer wrote:there is no reason to believe that highly developed performers make the best general music teachers, just as there is no reason to believe the reverse. We must get over the outdated and unrealistic assumption that performance is the one, singular, royal road to being musical and being an effective music educator.... [T]eachers cannot be expected to do what performance specialists do, and their teacher education curriculum must reflect that fact.2This position has also been recently supported by sociological publications3 and the following statement—echoed by several colleagues of mine—by a music teacher-training specialist,There is one big misconception among many music education students. Many graduates view themselves as musicians who are going into teaching. I attribute my own success to the realization that I am a teacher at heart. My first responsibility is teaching children. The vehicle through which I connect to them is music.4It is likely within the previous paradigm in which these respected authors positioned their arguments for the place of performance in the music curriculum and in that regard these assertions are unquestionably valid. What this particular paradigm concerns is the quantity and quality of performance based on purely musical attributes. The omission is that it does not include the quality of performance in relationship to health-based music education, a growing area of concern in the performing arts medicine field and, by extension, music educators who are concerned about this particular aspect of performance.5 The reason for the concern and hence this paper calling to the philosophical community to re-think the place and quality of performance in music education is that these viewpoints have had a great impact upon the validity of music education, in that they ignore a growing body of research from the performance and medical fields. While it must be made clear for the purposes of this paper that the writers of the above quotes have framed their ideas gracefully within their individual philosophical structures of music education, it must be pointed out that current research and knowledge in performance arts, in its conception as a physical human activity, needs to be incorporated into a revised philosophy of music education and curriculum. Music performance in music education has traditionally been viewed as a cognitive and emotional experience. However, it [End Page 194] is also a psychomotor experience, involving all sorts of soft body tissues, bones, and cartilages, which can enhance or detract from the total musical experience. Many music educators do not get enough instruction in college on how to teach voice or instruments healthfully and this is the reason for the concern... (shrink)

This article argues that the long-standing tension in Jeffrey Alexander’s work between theoretical multidimensionality and socio-cultural idealism has intensified in his recent writings, to problematical effect. Whilst Alexander has shifted of late towards a more substantive and normative style of thinking, his new emphases continue to be grounded in arguments pitched at the general theoretical level. One of these involves a particular reading of the nature of post-positivist meta-theory today, and the other, within this, is a determined effort to distinguish (...) a project of ‘cultural sociology’ from ‘sociology of culture’ approaches. I take issue with both of these theoretical moves, showing that they are rhetorically and conceptually flawed, and of a strongly idealist cast. They also run counter to those aspects of Alexander’s outlook that do seem more robustly multidimensional and sociologically promising. (shrink)

Rhythm is the fundamental pulse that animates poetry, music, and dance across all cultures. And yet the recent explosion of scholarly interest across disciplines in the aural dimensions of aesthetic experience--particularly in sociology, cultural and media theory, and literary studies--has yet to explore this fundamental category. This book furthers the discussion of rhythm beyond the discrete conceptual domains and technical vocabularies of musicology and prosody. With original essays by philosophers, psychologists, musicians, literary theorists, and ethno-musicologists, The Philosophy of (...) Rhythm opens up wider-and plural-perspectives, examining formal affinities between the historically interconnected fields of music, dance, and poetry, while addressing key concepts such as embodiment, movement, pulse, and performance. Volume editors Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison bring together a range of key questions: What is the distinction between rhythm and pulse? What is the relationship between everyday embodied experience, and the specific experience of music, dance, and poetry? Can aesthetics offer an understanding of rhythm that helps inform our responses to visual and other arts, as well as music, dance, and poetry? And, what is the relation between psychological conceptions of entrainment, and the humane concept of rhythm and meter? Overall, The Philosophy of Rhythm appeals across disciplinary boundaries, providing a unique overview of a neglected aspect of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

"Hooray! Professor Lucy Green's classic text is now available, in its second edition, to a new generation. The first edition contributed to the development of a new field, the sociology of music education. But the argument is of wider interest, and has been useful to me in better understanding the mechanics of the professional life as applicable to the working player." Robert Fripp, King Crimson RESPONSES TO THE FIRST EDITION OF MUSIC ON DEAF EARS: "This is a (...) fine book indeed. The clarity of mind shining through the text is apparent, and the concern with music, musical experience and the development of children in our schools is self-evident.. Musicians and educators would do well to reflect upon these ideas and the inherent challenges to our comfortable but essentially problematic ways of thinking about and responding to music." Keith Swanwick, Music and Letters "The argument, necessarily simplified here, is powerfully and cogently made. It not only impinges on educational practice but is one of the best general discussions of musical meaning and ideology I have read." Richard Middleton, Popular Music "This analysis has considerable explanatory power, especially in regard to the response of school pupils to various musical styles.. I recommend this interesting and uncomfortable book not just to music teachers but to all those musicians and music lovers who think at all about the nature of their art." Christopher Small, British Journal of Music Education. (shrink)

The processes taking place in modern science tend to integrate various scientific disciplines in studying any scientific phenomenon. This explains the search of methodology based on the techniques of different sciences involved in formation of the subject of research, which in this article is represented by the digital music art. Interpreted as a branch of music art with digital specificity, digital music art incorporates electronic music presented by specific, algorithmic, and electronic music. A signature characteristic (...) of digital music art consists in its interdisciplinarity, which suggests the combined effect of separate parts of the system and leads to self-organization, which corresponds with the scientific tasks of synergetics. This substantiates the relevance for elaboration of interdisciplinary methodology for studying digital music art in the context of research mechanisms developed within synergetics. The scientific lies in the analysis of digital art through the prism of the qualities inherent to synergetics. The disciplines united by digital art (mathematics, set theory, probability theory, information theory, combinatorics, game theory, cybernetics, computer science, acoustics, sociology, communication, and biology) are interdisciplinary, which means that in ensemble with other disciplines they form a complex interdisciplinary knowledge of structure of digital music art. At the same time, the disciplines that comprise scientific framework of digital music art are attributed to different sciences: humanities, natural sciences, mathematics, social sciences, and technical sciences. In this context, the research of digital music art is simultaneously of interdisciplinary and multiscientific nature. The author established a peculiar impact of interdisciplinarity upon digital art, which generates the qualities inherent to synergetics – nonlinearity, disequilibrium, openness, chaotic nature, entropy, indeterminacy, and dissipation. (shrink)

The Opera of the National Theater in Belgrade was founded in 1920, but it is well known that opera performances were held long before its official opening. Despite the fact that this is the sole opera house in Belgrade, as well as the fact that it did not face any strong audience fluctuation, it is unusual that no one ever tried to investigate and profile its audience. During the last decades we were witnessing the popularization of the opera via various (...) medias, as well as development and extention of the music industry, which surely changed its social status. The aim of the investigation that is going to be presented is to discover if this social life of opera changed its audience and does it still consists of - according to stereotypes - elderly, high educated individuals of certain professions and high material standards, i.e. at which level the opera is present in the private and public sphere of their lives. Opera Narodnog pozorista u Beogradu osnovana je 1920. godine, ali je poznato da su operske predstave izvodjene i pre njenog zvanicnog osnivanja. Iako u radu nije nailazila na vecu fluktuaciju publike, a i dalje predstavlja jedinu opersku kucu u Beogradu, do sada nije bilo pokusaja da se naucno istrazi i profilise njena publika. Poslednjih decenija svedoci smo sve vece popularizacije operske muzike putem razlicitih medija, te razvijanjem i sirenjem muzicke industrije, sto dovodi i do promene njenog socijalnog statusa. Cilj ovog dela istrazivanja jeste da sazna da li je izmenjeni socijalni zivot opere izmenio i njenu publiku, da li nju - prema ustaljenim shvatanjima - i dalje pretezno cine visokoobrazovani, stariji pojedinci odredjenih zanimanja i visokog materijalnog standarda, odnosno koliko je opera zaista prisutna u privatnoj i javnoj sferi njihovih zivota. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to Afro-Caribbean musical rituals as a form of response to exclusion from public sphere. The author claims that there are two key features of black music (in all the diversity of its genres): a) participatory character; b) dualism, manifested in a combination of a cheerful form and tragic content, hidden from an external observer. Starting from this thesis, the author places Notting Hill Carnival as a key chronotope of the (post)migratory situation in the center of (...) his analysis. West Indian immigrants found themselves in this very situation in post-war Britain. The evolution of the Afro-Caribbean immigrants' carnival culture is considered in three stages. Firstly, the article discusses participation of the African slaves' descendants in the Trinidad street carnival. Then it proceeds to the transposition of this tradition into the context of the UK's capital. Further, the use of carnival forms of protest against racism in modern Britain is discussed. On the one hand, the study reveals a trend towards significant expansion of the "black music" adherents circle due to its subversive potential. On the other hand, it discovers the limits of solidarity among those who are prone to social stigmatization due to their ethnocultural otherness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools by Geoffrey BakerKim BoeskovGeoffrey Baker: Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021)If indeed there exists, as Geir Johansen has proposed,1 a self-critical movement within the field of music education, Geoffrey Baker is undoubtedly one (...) of its leading figures. According to Johansen, the self-critical turn is characterized by an increasing number of music educators directing criticism toward music education itself by denouncing overly romantic visions of “the power of music” and scrutinizing how music educational practices are implicated in the propulsion of problematic social forces of inequality, oppression, and injustice. Baker’s widely read book from 2014, El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth,2 thoroughly denounced the globally acclaimed Venezuelan ‘musical miracle’ as a myth. Based on extensive field work in Venezuela, Baker painstakingly dissected El Sistema as an archaic, morally, and pedagogically flawed model of music education veiled in the empty rhetoric of music as a tool of social redemption and documented how such models are ripe with opportunities for abuse, in every sad sense of the word.The continuation of Baker’s critical project is published in the form of a four-hundred-page book, entitled Rethinking Social Action Through Music. Baker presents the text as “a ‘post-El Sistema’ project”3 as it constitutes a departure [End Page 92] from his preoccupation with ‘The System’ toward potential alternatives to the Venezuelan model. He finds such an alternative in the Red (Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín), a network of music schools in the Colombian city of Medellín, which figures as the center of attention in Baker’s institutional ethnography. However, even as the Colombian institution is invoked as a counterexample to its Venezuelan sibling, the Red is not held up for its ability to enact social change or display of innovative pedagogical principles. What Baker finds exemplary and worthy of investigation is the willingness he locates within the administrative layer of the Red to continuously engage in reflective work with regards to the tensions, conflicts, and pitfalls, as well as potentials of musical-social work. Particularly, Baker’s attention is directed to the decision-making processes and discussions among the leaders of the institution; how senior staff members adopt self-critical stances, how needs for institutional change are recognized, the recurring frictions between musical staff and members of the institution’s social team, and tensions between public statements expressing confidence in the program’s efficacy and internal conversations full of ambivalence and doubt.It is with reference to the reflexive processes of the Red that Baker conducts insightful and well-informed discussions of a range of themes relevant to music educators and scholars. Baker situates his analysis within the wider landscape of SATM (Social Action Through Music), which can roughly be understood as the field of musical practice emanating from the large socio-musical orchestral programs conceived in Latin America in the last decades of the 20th century and subsequently spread as ‘Sistema-inspired’ offspring throughout the globe in the beginning of the 21st century. Yet, the discussions found in this book are easily connected to pertinent themes of the philosophy and sociology of music education, such as the notion of artistic citizenship, decolonization, the political nature of music education, ‘the social’ in music education, to name a few. One of the striking qualities of this book is its ability to identify important issues in the local context of Medellín, extract the underlying mechanisms and through empirical examples unfold a much broader discussion of what social justice and social change might mean in the field of music education. Baker, originally educated as an ethnomusicologist, reflects on these topics with depth and nuance, underscoring the relevance of approaching these complex issues through ethnographic work, rather than basing such discussions solely on conceptual exploration.Appearing as a red line throughout the book is Baker’s insistence on foregrounding the ambiguity and ambivalence of musical-social work. In fact, his critical encounter with the field... (shrink)

In our account of artistic identities among electronic music artists, we point to the notion of persona as a key element in a triadic framework for studying the dynamics of identity. Building on pragmatist theory, we further draw on Pizzorno’s concept of mask and Luhmann’s notion of second-order observation to highlight the dual properties of persona: whether like a mask that is put on or like a probe that is put out, persona is a part that stands apart. Persona (...) is an object that alter can recognize and by which ego can be recognized; but what is recognized defies the person’s complete control. We thus conceptualize identity as a multi-sided relationship that involves person, persona, and others. Building on our ethnographic research among electronic music artists in Berlin and New York, we characterize this relationship in terms of attachment between artist and persona, between artist and audience, and between persona and audience. These attachments are variable and independent from one another. The resulting model is an analytic tool to examine identity as the ongoing outcome of the three-way dynamics of such shifting attachments. We are attentive to persona because the creation and curation of online profiles have become a pervasive element in many people’s daily interactions in both social and work situations. (shrink)

In his social theory, Max Weber (1864 – 1920) attempts to identify patterns that have distinguished Western rationality. Music, he argues, is one of the domains that exhibit such structures. As a specific instance, Weber cites counterpoint as developed in 15th century Europe and – so he claims – culminating in Bach’s music. “No other epoch and culture possesses it”, Weber asserts. Counterpoint’s rationality is meant to manifest itself in rules; yet Weber’s approach lacks an analysis of such (...) rules. Remarkably, 18th century music theory brought the social meaning of counterpoint to the fore more sharply than did Weber’s sociology of music. (shrink)

Consciousness has been described as one of the most mysterious things in the universe. Scientists, philosophers, and commentators from a whole range of disciplines can't seem to agree on what it is, generating a sizeable field of contemporary research known as consciousness studies. Following its forebear Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives, this volume argues that music can provide a valuable route to understanding consciousness, and also that consciousness opens up new perspectives for the study of (...) music. It argues that consciousness extends beyond the brain, and is fundamentally related to selves engaged in the world, culture, and society. The book brings together an interdisciplinary line up of authors covering topics as wide ranging as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, philosophy and phenomenology, aesthetics, sociology, ethnography, and performance studies and musical styles from classic to rock, trance to Daoism, jazz to tabla, and deep listening to free improvisation. Music and Consciousness 2 will be fasinating reading for those studying or working in the field of musicology, those researching consciousness as well as cultural theorists, psychologists, and philosophers. (shrink)

In this book Shepherd and Wicke make a bold and original contribution to the understanding of music as a form of human expression. They argue that music is fundamental to social life. Music is not merely a form of leisure or entertainment: it is central to the very formation and reproduction of human societies. The authors pursue this argument through a wide-ranging assessment of some of the major cultural theoretical contributions to understanding music. Theories of culture, (...) linguistic theories, structuralist and post-structuralist theories and psychoanalytic theories of music are carefully explained and critically examined. The authors then develop their own account of music as a non-referential yet material form of human expression which embodies and conveys principles of symbolic structuring. They emphasize the human body as a principal site for the musical mediation of social and symbolic processes. Music and Cultural Theory establishes new links between musicology and cultural studies, showing how each discipline can inform and enrich the other. It will be recommended reading for students and professionals in musicology, media and communication studies, cultural studies and the sociology of culture. (shrink)

Performing and listening to music occurs in specific situations, requiring specific media. Empirical research on music listening and appreciation, however, tends to overlook the effects these situations and media may have on the listening experience. This article uses the sociological concept of the frame to develop a theory of an aesthetic experience with music as the result of encountering sound/music in the context of a specific situation. By presenting a transdisciplinary sub-field of empirical (concert) studies, we (...) unfold this theory for one such frame: the classical concert. After sketching out the underlying theoretical framework, a selective literature review is conducted to look for evidence on the general plausibility of the single elements of this emerging theory and to identify desiderata. We refer to common criticisms of the standard classical concert, and how new concert formats try to overcome alleged shortcomings and detrimental effects. Finally, an empirical research program is proposed, in which frames and frame components are experimentally manipulated and compared to establish their respective affordances and effects on the musical experience. Such a research program will provide empirical evidence to tackle a question that is still open to debate, i.e., whether the diversified world of modern-day music listening formats also holds a place for the classical concert – and if so, for what kind of classical concert. (shrink)

A special issue of_ New German Critique_ The posthumous publication of Theodor W. Adorno’s works on music continues to reveal the special relationship between music and philosophy in his thinking. These important works have not, however, received as much scholarly attention as they deserve. Contributors to this issue seek to provide insight into some of the key themes raised in these works, including the sociology of musical genre, the historical transformation of music from the "heroic" or (...) high-bourgeois era to late modernity, the meaning of both performance and listening in the era of mass communication, and the specific challenges or deformations of the radio on musical form, a theme that implicates many of the digital practices of our own age. There is much left to discover in these new publications, and they pose again, with renewed vigor, the question of Adorno’s _Aktualität_—his polyvalent, untranslatable term for, among other things, the intellectual relationship between the present and the past. Contributors Daniel K. L. Chua, Lydia Goehr, Peter E. Gordon, Martin Jay, Brian Kane, Max Paddison, Alexander Rehding, Fred Rush, Martin Scherzinger. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editorial Reflections on Philosophizing in Music EducationEstelle R. Jorgensen and Iris M. YobIn this article, we reflect on issues that go to the heart of teaching and scholarship in the philosophy of music education. After thirty years of editing Philosophy of Music Education Review, it is a good time to take stock of the philosophical work that has been and is being published and of challenges (...) that remain.Over the years, there has been a growing quality of philosophical articles published in the journal, due in significant part to the efforts of reviewers and the willingness of writers to work with their suggestions. Authors regularly express appreciation for the informed, critical, and constructive reviews their work receives. An exemplary body of philosophical scholarship in music education has been published over this time and PMER is regarded as a premier journal internationally devoted exclusively to the philosophy of music education. In thirty volumes of uninterrupted publication, we have sought to be responsive to important issues in music education. Our writers have engaged relevant subjects of interest to our readers, citations of articles remain strong, and articles are included in [End Page 109] university and college course reading lists. PMER is available in print and online via subscription; it has a wide digital exposure in search engines and leading indexes, and our readership continues to grow.Despite this progress, although the number of submissions has increased, their quality has sometimes been uneven. Our pedagogical commitment to foster philosophical writing and the philosophical inexperience of some writers has significantly impacted the work required to bring submissions to publication standard. Submissions sometimes evidence a lack of attention to formulating a tight argument, citing relevant sources, and polishing and editing the manuscript. The published style guidelines are too often ignored, creating a poor first impression with reviewers and editors. Writers are occasionally in a hurry to publish and less willing to entertain multiple revisions of their articles required to produce work of lasting value. The growing number of music education journals that publish philosophical work, while opening more fora, in some cases perversely result in ideologically driven, polemical, and philosophically uninformed articles in the name of philosophy. This is a good moment to reconsider the importance of philosophical fundamentals that should undergird our philosophizing in music education and what these mean for our academic responsibilities. To this end, we suggest several principles that need to be central to our philosophizing in music education. These principles also have broader implications for the expectations of scholarship in music education generally.WRITING PHILOSOPHYLike other subject areas in the academy, philosophy has its own intellectual structure, a canon of significant writings, its own interpretative methods, and its distinctive role and purpose. A philosophical paper in music education reads differently from papers in the history of music education, methods of teaching music, sociology of music education, empirical research in music education, multi-cultural, gender, and ethnic studies, music education curriculum building and policy making, and so on. And yet, the boundaries between these disciplines, which are artificial constructions when human knowledge is considered wholistically anyway, are somewhat porous with concepts and ideas and claims seeming to move easily from one discipline to another.To help distinguish between philosophy and other areas of study and research, it may be helpful to consider philosophy as a second-order activity. That is, first-order activity examines the raw data of research and experience and attempts to make sense of them. Using inference, pattern-seeking, deduction, hypotheses, statistical analysis, and so on, these activities result in claims, interpretations, and theories that give meaning to what we see, hear, and feel. [End Page 110]The second-order activity takes a step away from these first-order activities. It does not concern itself so much with raw data or with creating theories about them, but critically analyzes the claims and inferences that are made in regard to them. Where first-order disciplines analyze inputs from observation and experimentation, second-order disciplines analyze these analyses—that is, they function as meta-analyses. Philosophers do not need laboratories or fieldwork (which makes applications for grants to support philosophical research difficult to secure!). They need libraries... (shrink)

This book is an interdisciplinary project that brings together ideas from aesthetics, philosophy, psychology, and music sociology as an expansion of German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer’s theory on the aesthetics of play. This way of thinking focuses on an ontology of the process of musicking rather than an ontology of discovering fixed and static musical objects. In line with this idea, the author discusses the importance of participation and involvement in this process of musicking, whether as a listener or (...) as a performer. Christensen then goes on to critique and update Gadamer's theory by presenting incompatibilities between it and recent theories of aesthetic emotions and embodiment. He proposes that emotions are ‘constructed’ rather than ‘caused’, that the mind uses a system of ‘filters’ to respond to sonic stimuli and thus constructs aesthetic feelings and experiences. In turn, this approach provides music with a route into the development of social capital and inter-subjective communication. This work builds on the hermeneutical steps already taken by Gadamer and those before him, continuing his line of thought beyond his work. It will be of great interest to scholars in music aesthetics as well as a variety of other music related fields, including music psychology, philosophy and science and technology studies. (shrink)

This article documents experiences of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s virtual, synchronous improvisation sessions during COVID-19 pandemic via interviews with 29 participants. Sessions included an international, gender balanced, and cross generational group of over 70 musicians all of whom were living under conditions of social distancing. All sessions were recorded using Zoom software. After 3 months of twice weekly improvisation sessions, 29 interviews with participants were undertaken, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Key themes include how the sessions provided opportunities for artistic development, enhanced (...) mood, reduced feelings of isolation, and sustained and developed community. Particular attention is placed upon how improvisation as a universal, real time, social, and collaborative process facilitates interaction, allowing the technological affordances of software (latencies, sound quality, and gallery/speaker view) and hardware (laptop, tablet, instruments, microphones, headphones, and objects in room) to become emergent properties of artistic collaborations. The extent to which this process affects new perceptual and conceptual breakthroughs for practitioners is discussed as is the crucial and innovative relationship between audio and visual elements. Analysis of edited films of the sessions highlight artistic and theoretical and conceptual issues discussed. Emphasis is given to how the domestic environment merges with technologies to createThe Theatre of Home. (shrink)

This book considers the intersection of music, politics and identity, focusing on music (genres) across the world as a form of political expression and protest, positive identity formations, but also how the criminalisation, censuring, policing and prosecution of musicians and fans can occur. All-encompassing in this book is analyses of the unique contribution of music to various aspects of human activity through an international, multi-disciplinary approach. The book will serve as a starting point for scholars in those (...) areas where there has been an uncertain approach to this subject, while those from disciplines with a more established canon of music analysis will be informed about what each perspective can offer. The approach is international and multi-disciplinary, with the contributing authors focusing on a range of countries and the differing social and cultural impact of music for both musicians and fans. Academic disciplines can provide some explanations, but the importance of the contribution of practitioners is vital for a fully rounded understanding of the impact of music. Therefore, this book takes the reader on a journey, beginning with theoretical and philosophical perspectives on music and society, proceeding to an analysis of laws and policies, and concluding with the use of music by educational practitioners and the people with whom they work. This book will appeal to students and scholars in subjects such as sociology, criminology, cultural studies, and across the wider social sciences. It will also be of interest to practitioners in youth justice or those with other involvement in the criminal justice system. (shrink)

Trying to reduce the divide between culture and science, this article follows the producer of popular records, as an interface between music and its market. Like the innovator when he does not obey scientific, technical, and commercial reasons in succession, but reshapes them all together through a double task of giving its form to the product and the interesting people within it, the producer represents the public to the artist and the music to the media. First in a (...) local scale, then in larger and larger ones, alone with the singer, in the studio, and into the media, this sociology of the intermediary shows the producer experimentally organizing, as in a laboratory, a complete production-consumption cycle. Success is then not the mysterious leap to the public, but the last extension of an equation into which the public has been incorporated in many forms from the very beginning. (shrink)

The connection between static and dynamic forces in society became, once again, a topic for debate at the sociological congress held in Amsterdam in 1955. The reason for this renewed interest is not far to seek. Dynamic phenomena of great intensity force themselves on the observer of the contemporary scene. Within the Soviet sphere of influence, the structure of society is undergoing radical changes. At the same time, the Orient and all those areas said, not without reason, to be “developing,” (...) are in the throes of modernization. And finally, even in countries ruled by liberalism and marked by stable institutions, the inner structure of such fundamental social concepts as “individual,” “family,” “stratification,” “organization” and “government” is rapidly being transformed. On the other hand, there are many countries in which society appears to be gravitating towards a static condition, characterized by Veblen more than fifty years ago, as a “new feudalism.” When all areas beyond the present-day borders of capitalism will have been industrialized, capitalism will no longer be able to rely on new resources elsewhere, and its economic expansion, which was once thought to be demanded by the very nature of the system, will have come to an end. Capitalism will then have to revert to simply reproducing itself. This prospect is reflected in our present-day culture. Thus, Olivier Messiaen, a composer of the group known as “La Jeune France,” said only recently, that the historical development of music had reached a ceiling beyond which no further development could be imagined; whether he was right or not, is not the point. What should be of most interest in a discussion of the conflict between static and dynamic forces, is the question which of these will prove to be the stronger; whether the trend of development prevailing since the Middle Ages will continue, or whether it will terminate in a state of paralysis of the kind that Himmler prophesied when he said that the Third Reich would last for ten or twenty thousand years, until the “end of modern times.” But before we can speculate about the outcome of the conflict between the static and dynamic, we must reflect on the ideas connected with them; otherwise it would be like trying to settle the course of world history by idly tossing a coin. (shrink)