1857 research outputs found
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Treating the musician rather than the symptom: the holistic tools employed by current practices to attend to the non-motor problems of musicians with task-specific focal dystonia
Full text linkMusicians Focal Dystonia (MFD) is a task-specific movement disorder affecting highly skilled musicians. The pathophysiology is poorly understood, and the available treatments are unable to fully and reliably rehabilitate the affected skill. Recently, the exclusively neurological nature of the condition has been questioned, and additional psychological, behavioral, and psychosocial contributing factors were identified. However, very little is known about how these factors influence the recovery process, and how, if at all, they are addressed in ongoing practices. For this study, 14 practitioners with substantial experience in working with musicians with MFD were interviewed about the elements in their approach which are directed at the cognition, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors of their patients and clients. A wide variety of tools were reported in three areas: (1) creating a supportive learning environment and addressing anxiety and perfectionism, (2) using body-oriented methods to optimize the playing behaviors and (3) consciously channeling the focus of attention to guide the physical retraining exercises and establishing new habits. The study also revealed that in-depth knowledge of the instrumental technique is profitable to retrain the impaired motor patterns. Therefore, the importance of including music educators in developing new therapeutic approaches will also be highlighted
Arrangements as a creative tool towards the performance of J. S. Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin BWV 1001–1006
Full text linkA performer’s musical interpretation reflects that performer’s creative discourse and praxis, which is often shaped by the performer’s exposure to concerts, recordings and pedagogical experiences. As a performance practice project, this dissertation proposes a way to expand a performer’s creative sources beyond these means by using arrangements as a creative tool. It models a process of score study that leads a performer to musical interpretations that are new to that performer.
The author is a violinist and focuses the study on J. S. Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, BWV 1001–1006 (hereafter the Solos), dated 1720. Three case studies demonstrate the use of arrangements as a creative tool, studying arrangements for harpsichord, organ, lute, piano and piano accompaniment drawn from the entire time span from Bach’s time to today. Each case study comprises detailed score studies of various passages in the Solos, each leading to musical interpretations that are new to the author.
This dissertation’s contribution to knowledge is the process rather than the author’s particular outcomes. As every violinist is different, every violinist will find different aspects of these arrangements relevant and interesting, resulting in different interpretive findings. This is not only recognised but celebrated, as it makes the world of musical possibilities all the richer
Specialist support for performers: osteopath
No full textLearn how an osteopath can help performers manage their health
In the process of becoming: an ethnographic case study of the development of community music practice in Hong Kong
Full text linkThe colonial background and political situation of Hong Kong have resulted in school music education in Hong Kong being placed in a problematic position, which in turn has increased the acceptance of community music (CM) practice. However, as an academic subject, Hong Kong CM practice has largely adopted vocabulary, concepts, and frameworks from Western academia, and a more specific and nuanced cultural understanding of the significance of CM development in Hong Kong is thus necessary. To that end, a case study of five local music practitioners who work both in and beyond school settings was conducted, with data collection
methods including interviews, participant observation, field notes, journals, and other documentation. The research draws theoretical support from the perspectives of both Paulo Freire and Gert Biesta and adopts a neoliberal view of education as an ‘orthodoxy’ and contrast it with CM practice as an emancipatory ‘heterodoxy’. Through articulating their practice, the study concludes practitioners’ practice is a practice of the ‘other’ (Lingis, 1994, p.10). It can be characterized as a ‘community of those who have nothing in common’ (Biesta. 2004). Their practice is situated in a ‘dialogic continuum’ which facilitates discourse among different groups
and parties, which is conducted over a ‘dialogic space’ which exists over the dialogue among these practitioners over their very differences (Camlin, 2016), and a specific model had been
designed to visualise and capture this unique symbiosis of these continua of CM practice.
Interestingly, this lack of consensus over the very meaning of CM and defining features of CM practice may appear like a weakness at first, but on deeper reflection it is also a source of its richness and diversity. CM practice demonstrates an ongoing process of conscientization (Freire, 1970) that allows practitioners to resist falling into a uniform stereotype and instead better assert their authentic selves on their individual terms while being part of a greater community with a shared purpose.
The unique, singular, and highly situated circumstances of individual CM practices result inevitably in the inability for this thesis to be able to provide a uniform description of CM practice but instead introduces the reader to a highly varied landscape of CM practice development in Hong Kong. However, despite this dissensus which is a feature of CM practice, I propose that the raising of critical consciousness implicated in the development of CM in Hong Kong will help those involved to become more aware of the inherent social and political contradictions and shall further support them to act to bring about desirable changes in the local
education system. The study also extends previous scholarly research by highlighting the pluralistic character of CM practice and articulating it within the context of Hong Kong. It illustrates the value of accounting for CM practice with more holistic consideration of the cultural significance of music education, especially in socio-political contexts where orthodoxy is contested.
To conclude, CM practice extends the possibilities of ‘becoming’ in ways that keep the possibilities of autonomy alive. It therefore illuminates the strong synergy between CM practice and the current social and political crisis in Hong Kong. It can also represent
epistemological shifts within communities and societies, where the act of musicking itself becomes a way to disrupt orthodox practice and lead to the practice’s transformation
Giants of the dulcian family: an exploration of the doppelfagott and the fagotcontra in music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
No full textFor more than a century, large dulcians were the lowest existing loud wind instruments next to the bass bombard and the bass sackbut. This thesis investigates the use of the quart-, quint-, and octave-bass dulcian from the moment of their creation in the second half of the sixteenth century until they retire from the music stage at the end of the seventeenth century, focussing on their repertory, geographical presence, makers, players, and their construction.
Large dulcians were especially favoured by the powerful Austrian Habsburg family, who held the title of Holy Roman Emperor for generations. Originating from the northeast of the Italian peninsula near Venice, large dulcians were predominantly used at the Habsburg courts and in the German-speaking states ruled by the emperor. They were put on bass parts in large-scale compositions, often following the fashionable Venetian polychoral style. Such grand works, employing a large number of musicians, were expensive to stage. Therefore, it is possible to recognize regions and periods of peace and prosperity in which large dulcians flourished and other times when they were in decline, such as the Thirty Years’ War in the German-speaking states.
The writings of Michael Praetorius give a detailed insight into the use of large dulcians in music from the second half of the sixteenth century in which the instrumentation was omitted, as was often the case. The lesser-known “Instrumentälischer Bettlermantl”, a musical compendium dating from the middle of the seventeenth century, provides valuable information concerning large dulcians in the middle of the seventeenth century. This thesis includes a thorough examination of the ten instruments that survived the perils of time currently preserved in collections in Germany and Austria, and a list of repertory containing parts for great-bass dulcian
Specialist support for performers: orthopaedic specialist
No full textLearn how an orthopaedic specialist can help performers manage the physical challenges of their craft
Specialist support for performers: ear, nose, and throat (ENT) consultant
No full textLearn how ENT consultants (who focus on the ear, nose, and throat) can help performers optimise their health
Musical models of democracy
No full textMusic's role in animating democracy—whether through protests and demonstrations, as a vehicle for political identity, or as a means of overcoming social divides—is well understood. Yet musicians have also been drawn to the potential of embodying democracy itself through musical processes and relationships. In this book, author Robert Adlington uses modern democratic theory to explore what he terms the 'musical modelling of democracy' as manifested in modern and experimental music of the global North.
Throughout the book, Adlington demonstrates how composers and musicians have taken strikingly different approaches to this kind of musical modelling. For some, democratic principles inform the textural relationships inscribed into musical scores, as in the case of Elliott Carter's 'polyvocal' compositions. Pioneers of musical indeterminacy sought to democratise the relationship between composer and performers by leaving open key decisions about the realisation of a work. Musicians have involved audiences in active participation to liberate them from the passivity of spectatorship. Free improvisation groups have experimented with new kinds of egalitarian relationships between performers to reject old hierarchies. In examining these different approaches, Adlington illuminates the achievements and ambiguities of musical models of democracy.
As a result, this book not only offers an important new perspective on modern musicians' engagement with a central political idea of the past century, but it also encourages a deeper and more critical engagement with the idea of democracy within present-day musical life