Music and Embodied Cognition

Arnie Cox

Description

Taking a cognitive approach to musical meaning, Arnie Cox explores embodied experiences of hearing music as those that move us both consciously and unconsciously. In this pioneering study that draws on neuroscience and music theory, phenomenology and cognitive science, Cox advances his theory of the "mimetic hypothesis," the notion that a large part of our experience and understanding of music involves an embodied imitation in the listener of bodily motions and exertions that are involved in producing music. Through an often unconscious imitation of action and sound, we feel the music as it moves and grows. With applications to tonal and post-tonal Western classical music, to Western vernacular music, and to non-Western music, Cox's work stands to expand the range of phenomena that can be explained by the role of sensory, motor, and affective aspects of human experience and cognition.

Acknowledgments
Part One: Theoretical Background
Introduction
1. Mimetic Comprehension
2. Mimetic Comprehension of Music
3. Metaphor and Related Means of Reasoning

Part Two: Spatial Conceptions
4. Pitch Height
5. Temporal Motion and Musical Motion
6. Perspectives on Musical Motion

Part Three: Beyond Musical Space
7. Music and the External Senses
8. Musical Affect
9. Applications
10. Review and Implications
Appendix I. Mimetic Subvocalization and Absolute Pitch
Appendix II. Levels of Abstraction Among Metaphors
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Technique musicale
• Technique musicale
• Techniques musicales
• Music
• Instruction
• Musicology
• Theory
• Appreciation
• Study
• Multiple signal classification
• Cognitive Science

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9780253021670
• Langue: English

Extrait

Music and Embodied Cognition
Music and Embodied Cognition
Listening, Moving, Feeling, and Thinking
ARNIE COX
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by Arnie Cox
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences- Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cox, Arnie, 1963- author.
Title: Music and embodied cognition : listening, moving, feeling, and thinking / Arnie Cox.
Other titles: Musical meaning and interpretation.
Description: Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 2016. | 2016 | Series: Musical meaning and interpretation | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016004456 | ISBN 9780253021601 (cloth : alkaline paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Music-Psychological aspects. | Emotions and cognition. | Emotions in music. | Music-Philosophy and aesthetics.
Classification: LCC ML3830 .C69 2016 | DDC 781.1/1-dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016004456
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: Theoretical Background
1. Mimetic Comprehension
2. Mimetic Comprehension of Music
3. Metaphor and Related Means of Reasoning
Part 2: Spatial Conceptions
4. Pitch Height
5. Temporal Motion and Musical Motion
6. Perspectives on Musical Motion
Part 3: Beyond Musical Space
7. Music and the External Senses
8. Musical Affect
9. Applications
10. Review and Implications
Appendix I. Mimetic Subvocalization and Absolute Pitch
Appendix II. Levels of Abstraction among Metaphors
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
My music studies began in the public schools under Vernon Ludwig and Jim Reynolds; my professional life as a music teacher and scholar has been possible only because of the existence of such programs and the efforts of these educators. In my undergraduate studies at Humboldt State University I was fortunate to learn from Frank Marks, Charles Moon, Hubert Kennemer, and our instrument technician and mentor-in-residence Dan Gurn e, each of whose encouragement and lessons have contributed to the ideas in this book.
I encountered two scholars during my graduate studies at the University of Oregon whose influence provided the most direct and substantive foundation for this book. Nadine Hubbs was a visiting member of the music theory faculty at the time, and while introducing me to the breadth of alternatives and complements to structural music analysis she directed me to the work of Mark Johnson, who, as it happened, had recently accepted a position as chair of the philosophy department across campus. Mark s interest in the bases of musical meaning led to a very beneficial collaboration, and I m grateful for his guidance and encouragement, from my coursework and dissertation to the eventual book.
I would also like to acknowledge the help and educational benefits of studying with my other teachers at the University of Oregon: Peter Bergquist, Jack Boss, Robert Hurwitz, Dean Kramer, Steve Larson, Harold Owen, and Marian Smith.
Since arriving at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music my ideas have been shaped through conversations with many current and former colleagues, in particular Tim Best, Rebecca Leydon, Charity Lofthouse, Joe Lubben, and Diane Urista. Colleagues at other institutions who have been especially helpful include Candace Brower, Murray Dineen, Marion Guck, Eric McKee, Janna Saslaw, Mari Takada, and Larry Zbikowski.
I have refined most of the ideas in this book in the context of my teaching, and the feedback from my students is reflected throughout the following chapters. First among these is Kendra Juul, whose analysis of Bj rk s Enjoy confirmed early on my belief in the value and practicality of the kind of holistic analytical approach that eventually became what is outlined here in chapters 8 and 9 . There are too many others to acknowledge, but among those who pointed to difficulties and lacunas, helped in addressing both, and/or otherwise particularly encouraged the endeavor are (in approximate chronological order): Ellen (Stewart) Baker, James Garlick, Aaron Helgeson, Joe Kimmel, Mary Larew, Erin Grady Milne, Teddy Rankin-Parker, Matt Chamberlain, Marek Poliks, Jessie Downs, Doug Farrand, Josh Rosner, and Elizabeth Castro Abrams. At the very start of my time at Oberlin, Lucy (Davis) Vander Kamp s ideas and encouragement were especially helpful.
I am grateful that Indiana University Press and the Music and Meaning Series under Robert Hatten took an interest in this project. I want to thank Robert for his comments, questions, and suggestions with regard to the manuscript, along with Elizabeth Margulis for her comments and suggestions on behalf of Indiana University Press. I would also like to thank Raina Polivka and Janice Frisch at Indiana University Press for their encouragement and help in the process, and Candace McNulty for insightful questions and comments along with the copyediting.
Finally, I would like to thank two longtime friends, Dave Pinyerd and Adrienne Valencia, for listening, offering feedback, and otherwise supporting me as I tried out various ideas over the last two decades. And my parents: Sylvia (Lavell) Cox, who most often went by Toby and who had the most beautiful soprano voice one could wish to hear, and Rod Cox, who can t carry a tune in a bucket, as he would say, and yet loves to sing. They encouraged my music studies from the first lessons through graduate studies and beyond, and they fostered in me a perspective that is woven into the fabric of the following pages.
Music and Embodied Cognition
Introduction
I do not know how the sentence
I have a body is to be used.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Like many music students, I spent a good deal of my undergraduate and graduate coursework in music theory focusing on musical structure and making more or less factual observations about how the various elements of music fit together in particular works and styles. Since I enjoyed this kind of study, for my doctoral thesis I planned to take the same approach in analyzing the music of Debussy. But then one day the stove in my apartment stopped working, the repairman came over, and we started chatting. He asked if I was a student up at the college, and I said yes, and that I was studying music theory. He replied, with unexpected enthusiasm and seriousness, Music theory-so you must study how music makes us feel things. With some embarrassment I explained that I was actually studying hierarchical relations among musical tones, at which point our conversation quickly died a quiet little death. His assumption, however, that a music theorist naturally would study musical affect led me to reflect on my scholarly priorities. One result of this reflection was my attention to the fact that, although my analysis revealed relevant and interesting details about the music, it seemed to miss something important about how the music works and about why I was drawn to this music in the first place. From this reflection emerged a desire for a more holistic approach.
My search for a more holistic, interpretive approach led me to Debussy s letters and critical writings, where I intended to learn what I could about how he understood his own music and the music of others. Since these writings proved to be filled with metaphors, both conventional and idiosyncratic, I then needed a way of understanding more explicitly the relationship between his words and the music to which they referred. I eventually settled on conceptual metaphor theory, and the book you are reading is a result of my study of the relationship between musical experience and conceptualization-or, how music makes us feel and think whatever it is that it makes us feel and think. This exploration has led me beyond the music of Debussy to a number of principles that apply to music generally, some of which are directly in line with the repairman s assumption, and some of which lead to still more questions.
Experience and Meaning
This book concerns the question of how we make meaning from musical experience. We are Homo sapiens , members of particular cultures, and individual persons, and the starting point in this exploration is the premise that musical meaning emerges via a combination of feeling and thinking in response to musical actions and sounds. Accordingly, I will be describing what I take to be some of the processes whereby music gets inside of us and makes us feel whatever it is that it makes us feel, and how this feeling then shapes conceptualizations of musical experience. While conceptualizations in turn shape what one feels, the main focus here will be on the bottom-up portion: from feeling to thinking. The perspective will be primarily that of listeners, but I will also give consideration to the crucial roles of performers and composers.
Strictly speaking, the notion of embodied cognition in the title of this book ought to be redundant, on the premise that there is no disembodied cognition. But this term is meant to highlight the connections between the flesh of experience and conceptualizations of this experience. The chapters in this book are an attempt to specify some of the relevant processes and