Embodied Musicology

For most of its history, as one might reasonably imagine, music has involved composites of sounds and the bodily actions that produce them. To whatever extent this proposition might be accurate, it suggests that music has been, and to varying extents remains, a genre of theatre. But the possibility of separating sounds from their visible, corporeal sources — as in listening to singing that is performed in a dark cave or performed behind a rood screen, or in listening to LP recordings in one’s den — became a distinct way of experiencing, understanding, and teaching music, especially in various forms of higher education. By contrast, the current interest in embodiment, branching off from gender studies, invites us to appreciate the roles of corporeality in shaping musical experience, which this collection of seventeen essays explores in the genres of opera, theatre, contemporary classical post-tonal music, the music of Jimi Hendrix, and the role of album cover art in shaping listening experiences. Beyond repertoire are essays on innate, acquired, and culturally imposed bodily limitations; eurhythmics; human-computer integration exercises; the cognitive semiotics of musical motion; and the corporeal bases of aesthetic evaluation of musical experiences.

Arnie Cox, Introduction

Part One: Education

Anna Maria Freschi, Feeling, Understanding, Communicating: Bodily Movement as a Catalyst of Musical Knowledge

Anne Marleen Olthof – Jouke Velinden – Somaya Ben Allouch, «Io la musica son»: Studying Embodied Knowledge in the Context of Human-Computer Integration

Part Two: Innate, Acquired, and Culturally Imposed Bodily Limitations

Ryan Weber, Embodied Knowledges, Critical Thresholds: Tracing the Roots of Ableism in Music and Medical Professionalism

Vinicius de Mello Jordão, Embodiment and Chronic Pain in Musicians: The Role of Our Perspective

Sanna K. Iitti, Eduard Hanslick’s Anxiety About the Body

Part Three: Opera and Theatre

Jane Sylvester, Callas on the Catwalk

Danielle L. Herrington, Embodying Rameau’s «Les Indes Galantes» through Contemporary Artistic Direction and Postmodern Camp

Gabrielle Ferrari, The Voice of Power: Simulating Disembodiment with Mrs. Meurig Morris

Part Four: The Roles of Bodies in Western Post-Tonal and Contemporary Art Music

Xuezi Xu – Sio Pan Leong, Body, Prosthesis, and «musique mixte»: The Case of Chaya Czernowin’s «Hidden» (2014)

Riccardo D. Wanke, Listening to Sound-Based Music: A Trajectory between Embodied Cognition and Virtual Affordances

Hubert Ho, Apprehending «musique concrète instrumentale» and Other Contemporary «avant-garde» Music through Embodiment and Embodied Cognition: A Case Study of Julien Malaussena’s «8 minutes after boiling»

Polina Korobkova, Spaces Surrounding Music, Spaces Seeping into Music

Litha Efthymiou, Composing Gestures

Part Five: Two Cases from Popular Music

Victor Arul, Monterey, Woodstock, Maui: Bodily Gesture in Jimi Hendrix Media as Countercultural Communal Representation

Maria Athanasiou, «Epitáphios» and «To traghoùdhi tou nekroù adelfoù»: Embodiment and Iconography in Album Covers

Part Six: Musical Motion and Emotion

Gabriele Giacosa, Moving Sounds, Moving Together: Musical Meaning, the Body and Atmospheres

Arnie Cox, Experience and the Bases of Musical Value