Listeners' Bodies in Music Analysis
Gestures, Motor Intentionality, and Models
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4390774 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mariusz Kozak (0000-0002-4910-3567, Columbia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2015-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Music Theory Online (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1067-3040 • E-ISSN: 1067-3040 |
| Publisher | Society for Music Theory (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.30535/mto.21.3.7 |
| OpenAlex | W2161555260 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 58 |
In this article I demonstrate how listeners understand musical processes with their bodies, and how their gestures can be used to build analytical models. Specifically, I draw on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to argue that situated, active listeners project their motor intentional gestures inside music, where they reconstitute the very nature of musical space and its objects according to their own unique perspective. Rather than passively reflecting gestures of performers, these listeners use their own bodily states to create the structure and meaning of music. I illustrate how those states can be mobilized for analysis by taking quantifiable features of gestures-acceleration and temporal profiles-as models of musical structure, and by using those models as a basis for analytical narratives. I focus on three pieces-Olga Neuwirth'sVampyrotheone, Elliott Carter'sASKO Concerto, and Thomas Adès'sLiving Toys-in which motion-capture studies revealed the different roles of listeners' gestures in organizing musical experience
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Gesture · Linguistics · Literature · Musical · Narrative · Situated · Visual arts · Communication · Computer Science · Music Technology and Sound Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Neuroscience and Music Perception · Philosophy · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence
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Intersubjectivity and Shared Dynamic Structure in Narrative Imaginings to Music
Gestural Perspectives on Popular-Music Performance
Method for Analyzing Gestural Communication in Musical Groups
Movement, Music, Feminism
Mainstream popular music research
Intercorporeal Self, The
Musical Gestures
Three Short Essays on Neo-Riemannian Theory
Ways of Listening
Skillful Coping
Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology
Listening to Noise and Silence
Hearing in Time
Musicking
Dance topoi, sonic analogues and musical grammar
Inferring musical structure through bodily gestures
The roots of music
The evolutionary nature of musical meaning
Agency and Embodiment
Origins of Human Communication
Keeping Together in Time
Vibrating Colors and Silent Bodies. Music, Sound and Silence in Maurice-Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Dualism
Biological roots of musical epistemology
Varese's 'Density 21.5
Merleau-Ponty, Gibson, and the materiality of meaning
Embodied Cognition is Not What you Think it is
Beyond Words
Guitar Voicing in Pop-Rock Music
Embodying Music
The flux between sounding and sound
Music-Drastic or Gnostic
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,78 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |