Musical gesture
In music, a gesture is any type of physical (physical) or mental (imaginary) movement. Such a “gesture” includes both the types of movements that are necessary to generate sound and the perceived movements that are associated with this gesture. In recent years more and more musicological disciplines have turned their attention to the concept of musical gestures; including, for example, music analysis , music therapy , music psychology or the conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).
An example of such a gesture is the “musical” movement of a C major chord ( tonic ) in a narrow position to a G major chord (dominant) in a narrow position. This requires physical movement on the piano from the first chord to the right (in space or upwards in pitch) to the second chord by four steps or four white keys on the keyboard . A gesture thus includes both the characteristic physical movement of the musician and characteristic melodies, phrases, chord progressions or chord breaks that generate this movement or are generated by it.
introduction
The concept of the musical gesture encompasses a wide area. It extends from the details of sound generation to more general emotional and aesthetic images of music, to culture-specific aspects and questions of style in contrast to universal , cross-cultural and cross-style expressions. In any case, it is assumed that the original function of human movement in music is expressed in the musical gestures. For this reason, scientists also speak of embodied music cognition , i.e. the idea that listeners associate musical sound with mental images of gestures. So it means that listening (or just imagining music) is also an incessant mental process in which these gestures are repeated.
Against the background of a multimodal type of music perception, embodied music cognition could bring about a paradigm shift in music theory and other music-related research. This research often tended to exclude considerations on body movement from its conceptual apparatus in favor of an emphasis on more abstract, note-based elements of music. Putting the focus on musical gestures offers a coherent, unified perspective for revising music theory and other music research.
Music related body movement
A subset of musical gestures is the so-called music-related body movement , which can be viewed either from the standpoint of the performer or the perceiver:
- Performers - movements that are part of a musical performance or a performance with music:
- Sound-producing: Musicians or actors produce musical sound.
- Accompanying the sound: dance or other forms of movement associated with music.
- Perceptual - movements that are an integral part of listening to music:
- direct connection: dance, air guitar
- loose context: jogging, exercising
- Groove : tap with your foot, nod your head, etc.
Formal definition
The concept of the “gesture” was first defined mathematically in the article Formulas, Diagrams, and Gestures in Music by Guerino Mazzola ( University of Minnesota ) and Moreno Andreatta ( IRCAM , Paris). Here a gesture is an arrangement of curves in space and time. Expressed formally, a gesture is a morphism on a directed graph from a “skeleton” of points to a “body”, ie a directed graph in space on a topological category (in the case of music these are time, place and pitch). Since a set of given skeletons and topological categories again define a topological category, gestures of gestures can also be defined, so-called hyper gestures.
Gestures in Indian vocal music
Indian singers move their hands while improvising melodies. Although each person has their own specific style in their gestures, the movements of the hand and the voice are linked by different control mechanisms and many students are similar in their gestures to their teachers. Nikki Moran (University of London) did more research on this topic. This was also a research topic in the project “Experience and meaning in music performance” by Martin Clayton and Laura Leante at the Open University . Clayton published an article (2007) on gestural interaction in Indian music.
Matt Rahaim, a singer and ethnomusicologist , published a book (2013) on the relationship between vocal making and gestures in Indian vocal music. Rahaim sees gestures and voices as expressions of melody that are parallel to each other. He also examines isomorphisms between the gesture space and the raga space, as well as the transmission and inheritance of so-called "paramparian" bodies - these are vocal / positional / gestural predispositions that are passed on through various lineages.
Hatten's Musical Gestures
Robert Hatten (2004) uses the concept of musical gestures to identify internal musical features:
“Musical gesture is biologically and culturally grounded in communicative human movement. Gesture draws upon the close interaction (and intermodality) of a range of human perceptual and motor systems to synthesize the energetic shaping of motion through time into significant events with unique expressive force. The biological and cultural motivations of musical gesture are further negotiated within the conventions of a musical style, whose elements include both the discrete (pitch, rhythm, meter) and the analog (dynamics, articulation, temporal pacing). Musical gestures are emergent gestalts that convey affective motion, emotion, and agency by fusing otherwise separate elements into continuities of shape and force. "
“Musical gestures are biologically and culturally anchored in communicative human movement. Gestures rely on the close interaction (and intermodality) of the spectrum of systems of perception and movement in order to generate significant events with specific expressiveness through the dynamic shaping of movement over time. The biological and cultural motives of a musical gesture are further negotiated within the conventions of a musical style, which contain both discrete (pitch, rhythm, meter) and analog (dynamics, articulation, tempo fluctuations) elements. Musical gestures are nascent figures that convey affective movements, emotions and representatives by placing otherwise separate elements in an uninterrupted connection between form and power. "
See also
Web links
- Musical Gestures Group , University of Oslo (Norway)
- Input devices and Music Interaction Laboratory , McGill University
swell
- ↑ NIME | International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. Retrieved May 8, 2017 (American English).
- ^ Marc Leman: Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology . MIT Press, Cambridge / London 2007, ISBN 978-0-262-12293-1 , pp. 320 .
- ↑ Rolf Inge Godøy, Marc Leman (ed.): Musical Gestures. Sound, Movement, and Meaning . Routledge, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-99887-1 .
- ↑ Guerino Mazzola, Moreno Andreatta: Diagrams, gestures and formulas in music . In: Journal of Mathematics and Music . tape 1 , no. 1 , March 1, 2007, ISSN 1745-9737 , p. 23-46 , doi : 10.1080 / 17459730601137716 .
- ^ Experience and meaning in music performance, The Open University. Retrieved May 8, 2017 .
- ^ Martin Clayton: Time, Gesture and Attention in a Khyāl Performance . In: Asian Music . tape 38 , no. 2 , August 13, 2007, ISSN 1553-5630 , p. 71–96 , doi : 10.1353 / amu.2007.0032 ( jhu.edu [accessed May 8, 2017]).
- ↑ Richard Widdess: Music King Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music . In: Ethnomusicology Forum . tape 22 , no. 3 , December 1, 2013, ISSN 1741-1912 , p. 377-379 , doi : 10.1080 / 17411912.2013.837778 .
- ^ Hatten, Robert (2004). Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert . ISBN 0-253-34459-X .