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SHAPER-PND trial: clinical effectiveness protocol of a community singing intervention for postnatal depression
Get PDFIntroduction: Postnatal depression (PND) affects approximately 13% of new mothers. Community-based activities are sought after by many mothers, especially mothers that prefer not to access pharmacological or psychological interventions. Singing has shown positive effects in maternal mood and mother–child bonding. The Scaling-Up Health-Arts Programmes: Implementation and Effectiveness Research-Postnatal Depression study will analyse the clinical and implementation effectiveness of 10-week singing sessions for PND in new mothers. This protocol paper will focus on the clinical effectiveness of this trial.
Methods and analysis: A total of 400 mothers with PND (with a score of at least 10 on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) and their babies will be recruited for this hybrid type II randomised controlled trial. The intervention group will attend 10 weekly singing sessions held at community venues or online, facilitated by the arts organisation, Breathe Arts Health Research (Breathe). A control group will be encouraged to attend non-singing sessions in the community or online for 10 weeks. A package of assessments will be collected from participants for clinical, mechanistic and implementation outcomes, at different stages of the trial. Clinical assessments will include questionnaires and interviews for demographics, mental health and social measures, together with biological samples for measurement of stress markers; the study visits are at baseline, week 6 (mid-trial) and week 10 (end of trial), with follow ups at weeks 20 and 36. Multiple imputation will be used to deal with possible missing data and multivariable models will be fitted to assess differences between groups in the outcomes of the study.
Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval has been granted by the London-West London and GTAC Research Ethics Committee, REC reference: 20/PR/0813.
Trial registration number: NCT04834622; Pre-results
Program of the International Symposium on Performance Science 2021
Get PDFThe Schulich School of Music is delighted to host the eighth International Symposium on Performance Science: ISPS 2021.
This year’s theme, Performance Health and Wellbeing, aligns perfectly with the Schulich School of Music’s strategic objective to integrate its strengths in research and music performance—in collaboration with colleagues from across McGill University—to create a multidisciplinary, team-based approach to training students, using the development and application of research-informed strategies to enhance performance skills and healthy learning.
The theme resonates as well with the extraordinary times we are experiencing as a society, where the value of health and wellbeing has been highlighted through the global pandemic. Questions about how to ensure healthy performance practices in a wide range of fields will be explored in the Symposium through a remarkable collection of keynote addresses and interdisciplinary sessions. The conditions under which people perform are very often different from those in which they learn. How can the gap be bridged between the training and performing environments? What are the current best practices in 21st-century performance education? What needs to be developed? What can we learn about health and wellbeing from different performance fields and research results
Introduction: listeners in music history: studying the evidence
Get PDFThis essay is the introduction to a themed issue of Nineteeth Century Music Review, titled The Listening Experience, and edited by Helen Barlow and Trevor Herbert.
This themed issue focuses on the study of listeners in history. The articles address the personal responses to music of ‘ordinary listeners’ – that is, people whose experiences of music are recorded in personal documents and third-party descriptions (as opposed, say, to music critics who wrote about music in order to influence the ideas and tastes of a public readership). This overview essay proposes that the testimony of ordinary listeners can cast new light on musical practices, the way music has been heard and its role in past societies. It points to a perceived gap in historical musicology, whereby the evidence left by listeners in the past has been the subject of little targeted research and has generally been relegated to a supporting role. The themed issue emerges from work conducted as part of the Listening Experience Database project, a research project set up to address that gap, and focuses on empirical historical research.
This overview essay discusses the types of evidence on which the articles are based and some of the issues and cautions they raise, and sets out to demonstrate the unique quality and value of the evidence through the exploration of five topics in the history of British music in the long nineteenth century. The approach they exemplify has potential to shed light on music as part of the experience of ordinary people, often in contexts and places that have not featured prominently either in nineteenth-century music history or in musicological study generally
György Ligeti: the 18 Études
No full textA recording on Hyperion Records of György Ligeti's Études for Piano by Danny Driver. Catalogue number CDA68286. Available to purchase from 5 March 2021
Recreating history? The early clarinet in theory and practice
No full textDescription of 'The Clarinet' (ed. Jane Ellsworth): With essays written by leading performer-scholars, The Clarinet offers unique perspectives on the clarinet's historical role in various styles, genres, and ensembles. Beginning with a chapter on clarinet iconography, the book continues with an overview of the instrument's early history, chapters on the clarinet in the opera orchestra and the traditional symphony orchestra, and examinations of important genres involving the clarinet (the concerto and the clarinet quintet). Also included are chapters on leading twentieth-century clarinetists, the instrument's use in the historically informed performance (HIP) movement, and an expansive look at the clarinet's use in ethnic traditions and early jazz. The emphasis on topics not covered elsewhere makes this book an important contribution to the clarinet literature. Written in an accessible style, this volume engages a wide range of readers, from professional musicians to clarinet aficionados and music lovers with less specialized knowledge
Score-dependency: over-reliance on performing music from notation reduces aural pitch replication skills
Get PDFBackground in music performance: Most music is performed or improvised by ear, but Western classical musicians primarily perform music from notated scores.
Background in music perception: Classical musicians have greater difficulties playing melodies by ear than musicians with other backgrounds (Woody & Lehman, 2010). This ties in with Harris and de Jong’s (2015) finding that non-improvising musicians exhibit less activation in the right auditory cortex than improvising musicians. The right auditory cortex is known to play a central role in pitch processing (Peretz & Zatorre, 2005).
Aims: (1) To investigate score-dependency (SD) in a behavioural study as a tendency for classical musicians to rely on notation over aural engagement in a music-learning scenario, and
quantify SD levels for research. (2) To establish whether SD affects pitch perception. (3) To establish whether SD is a result of long term engagement in a score-focussed performance culture that precludes or minimizes participation in ear-playing scenarios.
Main contribution: Through a behavioural experiment we explore how score-dependency (SD) affects aural reproduction mechanisms, especially with regards to pitch. We introduce the
SDR (score-dependency rating) measure for establishing musicians’ individual levels of SD in relation to that of their peers. 20 notationally literate classical musicians were played a number
of melodies and were asked to reproduce them on their instruments while simultaneously referring to provided music notation. By manipulating the degree of pitch and rhythm
information shown in the music notation, we controlled the amount of pitch/rhythm information participants had to reproduce by ear alone. Counting how many times they needed to hear each melody again before task completion let us quantify their individual levels of dependence on notation. More score-dependent musicians showed a significant effect of struggling to
reproduce pitch content—but not rhythm content—by ear. This effect was not found for nondependent musicians. As pitch and rhythm are likely processed separately, SD may selectively
affect aural pitch perception mechanisms, explaining reportedly limited activations in the right auditory cortex among SD musicians. Participants' age and years of music experience
correlated with their SD levels, suggesting that long-term reliance on notation may increase this effect. Our results therefore indicate that SD may be an extreme form of overlearning,
stemming from a long-term involvement in score-focussed performance practice without engaging in mitigating ear-playing scenarios. This posits SD as an effect of extreme task specialisation that creates a dependency on a specific technology (notation). We argue that this may limit a wider embodied engagement with music in favour of developing skill-specific
cognitive mechanisms.
Implications: Our data suggests that a score-specific musical focus as often found in classical music education can endanger aural reproduction skills for pitch and associated perception/action mechanisms. Consequently, results have implications for music education and performance, as well as for cognitive and neuroscientific research into perception of music
Sound and Music Go Compose project 2020: research report
No full textGo Compose was a two year project run by the organisation Sound and Music, the national charity for new music in the UK, with funding from Youth Music. It aimed to work with young people from a variety of challenging circumstances and to foster an interest in composing music. Researchers from the Birmingham Music Education Research Group (BMERG) based at Birmingham
City University were asked by Sound and Music to research work done during the Go Compose project. Go Compose offered an opportunity for both Sound and Music and BMERG to better understand the difference that composing can make to young people. ***** This report is available open access at the Official URL given below. ****
Performing music research: methods in music education, psychology, and performance science
No full textWhat is it that drives people to undertake music research? Such interest frequently grows from on-the-ground experiences as learners, performers, facilitators, composers, arts administrators, and educators. It can emerge, for example, from music teachers trying out new teaching methods, performers wishing to know more about how to improvise effectively, educators pursuing the most effective ways to structure music curricula, musicians aiming to explain why their music enhances wellbeing among different groups of people, and orchestral managers seeking to promote and protect the health of their players. At the heart of all of these enquiries lies a question of some sort, and it is these research questions that determine the direction of the research to be undertaken.
Performing Music Research is a comprehensive guide to planning, conducting, analyzing, and communicating research in music performance. The book examines the approaches and strategies that underpin research in music education, psychology, and performance science. It reviews the knowledge and skills needed to critique existing studies in these fields and to design and carry out new investigations. Perspectives on qualitative, quantitative, and multistrategy methodologies are highlighted across the book in ways that help aspiring researchers bring precision to their research questions, select methods that are appropriate for addressing their questions, and apply those methods systematically and rigorously. Each chapter contains a study guide, comprising a chapter summary, a list of keywords, and suggestions for further discussion, and the book concludes with a resources section, including a glossary and supplementary material to support advanced statistical analysis.
The book's companion website (https://www.performingmusicresearch.com/) provides information designed to facilitate access to original research and to test knowledge and understanding
Arts engagement trends in the UK and their mental and social wellbeing implications: HEartS survey
Get PDFEvidence on the role of the arts in promoting health and wellbeing has grown over the last two decades. In the United Kingdom, studies using secondary data sources have documented temporal variations in levels of arts engagement in the population, its determinants and its mental wellbeing implications. However, arts engagement is often characterized by prioritizing “high-brow” art forms. In this article, we introduce the HEartS Survey, a tool that aims to increase the balance between inclusivity and brevity of existing arts engagement measures and to focus specifically on the connection between arts engagement and social wellbeing. We explore trends in participatory and receptive engagement with literary, visual, performing, crafts and decorative arts among 5,338 adults in the UK in 2018–2019 using summative engagement scores and cluster analysis. Regression models, adjusted for demographic, socioeconomic, health, and social covariates, examine correlations between arts engagement and psychological and social wellbeing measures. Over 97% of respondents reported engagement in one or more arts activities at least once during 2018–2019, with reading and listening to music being the most popular activities. Arts engagement grouped into three distinct clusters: 19.8% constituted “low engagers” whose main source of engagement was occasional reading; 44.4% constituted “receptive consumers” who read and listened to music frequently and engaged with popular receptive arts activities such as cinema, live music, theater, exhibitions, and museums; and 35.8% constituted “omnivores” who frequently engaged in almost all arts activities. In agreement with existing studies, more arts engagement was associated with higher levels of wellbeing, social connectedness, and lower odds of intense social loneliness. In contrast, we found a positive association between more arts engagement, depression, and intense emotional loneliness for the most highly engaged omnivores. We conclude that arts engagement in the population forms specific profiles with distinct characteristics and consider implications for mental and social wellbeing
Discrepancies and disagreements in classical chamber musicians’ characterisations of a performance
Get PDFTo what extent do classical chamber musicians converge in their characterisations of what just happened in their live duo performance, and to what extent do audience members agree with the performers’ characterisations? In this study a cello-piano duo performed Schumann’s Phantasiestücke, Op. 73, no. 1 as part of their conservatory studio class in which members critique performances in development. Immediately after, the listeners and players individually characterised what had most struck them about the performance, first writing comments from memory and then marking scores while listening to a recording on their personal devices. They all then rated (on a 5-point scale) their agreement with comments by two other class members. Findings demonstrate that classical chamber performers can characterise the performance quite differently than their partner does and that they can disagree with a number of their partner’s characterisations, corroborating previous findings in case studies of jazz performance. Performers’ characterisations can overlap less in which moments strike them as worthy of comment and in their content than their listeners’ characterisations do, and they can agree with a non-partner’s characterisations more than with their partner’s characterisations. At the same time, the data show that listeners who have played the piece before—though not necessarily those who play the same kind of instrument (strings vs. piano)—can be more likely to endorse comments by others who have also played the piece before, even if the comments they make don’t overlap with each other more in timing, content or theme