Music – source of immense joy or of disturbing frustration?

Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, 2023

The difficulty of capturing or deciphering music in words is largely why the same questions continue to be asked and the same tensions continue to be explored. Contributors to this special issue add fresh perspectives and new insights to these enduring themes and inquiries, looking at music in both the general sense and examining specific musical pieces, movements, and moments. Each article has its own focus, makes its own arguments, and occupies its own branch(es) of philosophy: ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, politics, and, of course, aesthetics. Beyond the centralizing subject of music, what ties them together and into the best of philosophical traditions is that they not only ask big questions but also, in seeking to answer them, add more questions to the ongoing discourse.

International Journal of Music Education, 1984

Muziki, 2010

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At the end of the 19 th Century composers faced a crisis of creativity. The question was; how to produce original melodies, from a tonal system that seemed to have exhausted its potential of making original melodies and forms? What precipitated this situation, and how composers of the 20 th century rose to the challenges posed to the tonal system, is the subject of this essay. In this analysis I will argue, that the aesthetics of these alternatives have shaped the relation of orchestral

In this essay I approach the mysterious art of music from several perspectives. As a classical pianist, I think about music as an immensely powerful way of communication. As a music teacher, I am interested in explaining tangibles of music in the clearest terms possible. And as a scholar in the cognitive sciences, I believe that the psychology of music can advance our understanding of the human mind.

Invenzione musicale (Musical invention) is a book by Renata Zatti (1932-2003) that will be published posthumous [1]. Invenzione musicale is an unusual manuscript that may be read as an unconventional handbook for young composers and a novel as well. The contents of this article establish the type of musical education that should be used in a teacher-pupil relationship, as outlined by Renata Zatti. Musical creativity should be an interplay between the two poles of the complete liberty based on inner competences and a guided technical learning. It has been said that composition cannot be taught and the most the teacher can do is to guide the student in his/her work [2]. Musician and self-taught composer Renata Zatti [3] wrote a book in the ‘80s trying to show this vision. The book is staged as a Plato’s dialogue, and it is based on two characters: the teacher (R. Zatti) and the pupil (Carlo). This character really existed: Carlo was born in 1970 and took very pleasant musical lessons, as he recalls, with his aunt during the first half of the ‘80s. The materials they produced became materials for the book. The narration follows the progression of creative exercises in musical simple compositions, in terms of musical theory, forms, traditional and modern harmony (examples are taken from XVII to XX Century). The dialogue follows the interwoven and dynamic act of creating, planning, doing, and readjusting. The research I am presenting can be located in the framework of musicological research, philological research (all known sources pertaining the generative process of this book were gathered: working documents, letters, memos, and sketches) and, more specifically, in the teaching of music to young students. This paper presents the main findings of the study of this book and its writing, with competences and issues from which music teachers could benefit.

2024

btc.web.auth.gr

After the Avant-garde revolution, the notion of musical form as organically structured started from being left aside to even being disregarded absolutely. The introduction of non-Western conceptions of time, the emergence of electronic music and a wish to break with the previous musical standards led to the creation of new genres and new ways to render compositional ideas. The notion of form has been broadened, if not changed, and has even been questioned. But besides these discussions, the need to define some principles for composition teaching has led to the research on the new concepts on the matter that have arisen after the modern revolution, particularly, the division into organic and non-organic structuring of time. Although most of the research on the listeners' perception of form has been done with examples from the tonal harmony realm, there is a slowly growing corpus of investigations that pays attention to post-tonal practices. This paper deals with the matter of musical form, for the composer's and the listener's points of view basically within a psychological approach, starting from Kramer's notion of musical time and the aesthetic views of some contemporary composers and composition teachers. In spite of the above mentioned division of music time into two main types, it has been observed that the chronological or absolute time is an unavoidable one-directional dimension needed to appreciate or measure any proposed structuring of time. Hence, form as a tool in the composition teaching, has to deal with the idea of passing time, whichever the conception of musical time selected to be worked on. And this is the notion to be considered in the process of teaching composition.

Cuadernos de Música, Artes Visuales y Artes Escénicas, 2021

This paper presents some reflections on the paradox that emerges in some musicians between a facet of the musical experience that is spontaneous and anchored in enjoyment, and another that has somehow been "contaminated" by physical, emotional and mental marks, with an emphasis on fear in the relationship with music. We propose, based on our experience as musicians, educational managers, and teachers, that, in the formal music education system, we find the origin to several of these traces when approaches turn too much towards musical products and towards the mastery of techniques and analytical knowledge as ends and not as means for sensitive expression. We find a friction between the institutional habitus and the idiosyncrasy of the music student who is permanently situated in an "interstitial tension" between the canon and his own inner world. We propose that this type of education focused on the technical and analytical mastery of canonical knowledge neglects the link of musicians with their own inner world and its expression through music, and thus the power of individual voices is wasted and the appearance of pathologies (physical, emotional, mental) that manifest themselves with different levels of intensity in people, is overlooked. Finally, we propose, as an alternative, a somatic perspective that provides light on the development of self-awareness integrating body, mind and emotion, and that favours the search for one's own voice in the artistic context of the musician in relation to himself, to others and to the life situations he goes through. A perspective in which a permanent question is at the centre of the sense of the profession: Why do we make music?

New Sound, 2012