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Measuring distinct types of musical self-efficacy
No full textThis research examines the specific nature of self-efficacy beliefs within music. Separate questionnaires assessing self-efficacy for musical learning and self-efficacy for musical performing were developed and tested, and the reliability of the new questionnaires was demonstrated using internal reliability tests and exploratory factor analysis. A sample of 250 conservatoire and university music students completed the two questionnaires and provided self-ratings of musical skills and attributes. The learning and performing questionnaires produced robust Cronbach alphas of .82 and .78, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed a single underlying factor within each questionnaire, and the stability of these questionnaires over time was established through the absence of significant differences in test—retest scores over a period of two to four weeks. Conservatoire students’ self-efficacy for musical learning was higher than that of university students, whereas there were no significant differences between conservatoire and university students in self-efficacy for musical performing. The two questionnaires also showed different patterns of correlations with a range of self-assessed musical skills and attributes, further demonstrating their distinctiveness. These results, which underline the need for differentiation in musical self-efficacy, highlight the importance of specificity and correspondence when measuring self-efficacy beliefs. The implications for measuring self-efficacy within other domains are discussed
Nourishment, body and soul: modern performers, diverse tastes
No full textMusic and food enjoy each other’s company to an enormous degree. In fact, having one without the other is, for some, unthinkable. They certainly attract a common vocabulary, with the word taste somewhere near the top of the list
Brass instruments
No full textAn annotated bibliography of writings about brass instruments and brass music. After a listing of general overviews of the topic, items are grouped in the following categories: Reference Works and Bibliographies, Journals and Periodicals, Iconography, Organology and Acoustics, Individual Instruments, The Pre-Valve Era, The Valve Era, and Biography and Autobiography
Hans Keller and internment: the development of an emigré musician 1938-48
No full textThe Austro-German émigrés who fled Hitler for Britain in the late 1930s had to contend with the further upheaval of internment during 1940-41 as the Nazis threatened invasion. This fascinating new study traces the development of the eminent musician and writer Hans Keller before, during and after this period. The story begins in Vienna 1938 with Keller’s poignant memoir of the Kristallnacht and moves to London with his precocious account of England and the English. The internment months in Huyton and the Isle of Man are well documented through letters he sent home, and are supported by a detailed social and political account of the times. After release, Keller settled in London where, among other things, he burst into life as a remarkable, psychoanalytically-orientated commentator on music, composers and critics: a sketch of these years includes four early texts, among them the startling comparison of ‘Britten and Mozart’. This richly illustrated volume culminates in an affectionate memoir of ‘Hans Keller in the Early Days’ by his co-editor on the journal Music Survey, Donald Mitchell
Ambiguous modernism: the early orchestral works of Sergei Prokofiev
No full textSergei Prokofiev's association with modernism was a curious one: on the one hand, he thought his technically innovative, bold and challenging music positioned him as a modernist but on the other, he remained wary of aligning himself with any specific movement. Such a combination of reluctance and ambiguity in the face of a movement that was engaging interwar Europe with such intensity stems from what can be viewed as an overly protective attitude to his own purity of idiom. Prokofiev was keenly aware of his own prodigious talent and simultaneously anxious of possible musical influence. Nonetheless, he continued to be watchful of cutting-edge developments in music even if he was not particularly sympathetic to the accompanying philosophical debates on modern music
Who sings the cantus? Children as performers of secular music in the early modern period
No full textThis article is now available open access at the DOI given below
The practice of practising
No full textThe process of practising is intrinsic to musical creativity. Practising may primarily be thought of as technical, but it is often also musically meaningful, including elements of interpretation, improvisation, and/or composition. The practice room can be a space in which to explore a field of creative possibilities; a place to experiment and to refine ideas. To date, the literature on practice has been primarily pedagogical and psychological. Little attention is paid to the significance of practice, and especially to the role of embodied experience - of understanding gained through doing - in the forming of musical ideas. The Practice of Practising is primarily concerned with considering practising as a practice in itself: a collection of processes that determines musical creativity and significance. The volume comprises four diverse case studies, in relation to music by J. S. Bach, Elliott Carter, Alfred Schnittke, and Morton Feldman, presenting both solo and ensemble perspectives
An analysis of verbal responses to music in a group of adult non-specialists
No full textIn a workshop setting, two pieces of recorded music were presented to a group of adult non-specialists; a key feature was to set up structured discussion within which the respondents considered each piece of music as a whole and not in its constituent parts. There were two areas of interest, namely to explore whether the respondents were likely to identify the musical features or to make extra-musical associations and, to establish the extent to which there would be commonality and difference in their approach to formulating the verbal responses. An inductive approach was used in the analysis of data to reveal some of the working theories underpinning the intuitive musicianship of the adult non-specialist listener. Findings have shown that, when unprompted by forced choice responses, the listeners generated responses that could be said to be information-poor in terms of musical features but rich in terms of the level of personal investment they made in formulating their responses. This is evidenced in a number of connections they made between the discursive and the non-discursive, including those which are relational and mediated by their experiences. Implications for music education are considered
The backbone of night: mechanisms of evolution in Henri Dutilleux's 'Ainsi la nuit'
No full textDevelopmental tendencies in the work of Henri Dutilleux have been described variously as reverse variation, constant renewal or gradual motivic development. The term ‘progressive growth’ is often cited to describe the composer's process, particularly in his string quartet 'Ainsi la nuit' (1973–1976); but gradual motivic or harmonic development cannot explain the subtleties and larger inter-connective networks inherent in progressive growth, a concept that encompasses the use of involuntary memory and recursive/discursive narrative.
A number of interdependent procedures support evolution of material within specific formal, harmonic or timbral environments through forward development and referential circularity, and through memory encoding index components, direct juxtaposition of quotation or inference of previously heard gestures can occur. Progressive growth may be justifiably compared with an evolutionary process of variation, selection and heredity within selective environments, and by viewing it in evolutionary developmental terms our awareness of its dynamic potential is greatly enhanced