I’m sure we’ve all had those students that certainly made us wonder! I had to consider what I’d witnessed, eventually weighing the effects of nature versus nurture in my own experiences. In the comments Deb, always a thoughtful reader and responder, pondered if teaching musicality was even possible especially for those don’t seem to be born with a musical gene. Within the article I shared some reasons why it is important to help your students improve their musical receptivity and offered a few methods to help bridge the gap in experience and increase students’ sensitivity to music at any age.
Musicality meaning how to#
In a previous blog post I offered my thoughts on How To Develop Musical Awareness In Dance Students. It is a key ingredient in a dancer’s display of artistry (more on developing artistry can be found here). Musicality in dance then might be considered a measure or degree to which a dancer is receptive and creative in his translation or rendering of music through movement. Musical creativity (or musical artistry) is the ability to connect with accompanying music, interpret it, or phrase and add movement dynamics that relate to music even in the absence of accompaniment, in a way that is unique or interesting. Musical receptivity is ones ability to receive, comprehend, be sensitive to, and have a working knowledge of musical concepts like rhythm, tempo, phrasing, and even mood. Musicality in dance has two main components. The conference will be open to the public.Image by carolyntiry via Flickr What Is Musicality? Scholars across the disciplines will discuss how sound studies has impacted their work and field, and begin connecting their work to education. This interdisciplinary, virtual conference explores how such musicalities and embodied knowledges of sound might bear on education and pedagogy on any level and within any context. Such scholars seek to characterize and theorize the concept of sound and sound experiences, viewing them as foundational and integral to concepts of music and musical experiences. The work of Jonathan Sterne, Les Black, Michael Bull, and Anahid Kassabian has been especially foundational to this area of inquiry. As part of a ‘sensory turn’ across the academy (see the work of David Howes), these sound studies and auditory culture scholars have utilized and developed new theoretical frameworks, beyond traditional musicological/aesthetic frameworks, to explore human experiences with sounds and their meanings, musical sounds included. At the same time, in the last several years, a number of scholars, in a variety of disciplines outside of music and music education (performance studies, media studies, cultural studies, film studies, communications, etc.), have begun to chart this territory.
Embodied cognitive theory (psychology) and ecological theory (philosophy) have potential for helping us understand such phenomena-but, so far, these alternative musicalities have been under-explored and under-developed within institutional music education and general education contexts. A natural extension of these phenomena is that music listeners likely also procure musicalities in their abilities to interpret and understand musical sounds directly. Such practices connect to the ways that humans overwhelmingly interact with music throughout the world, in vernacular and non-western contexts where notation plays a less prominent role. Increasingly, digital technologies allow composers, producers, and DJ’s, among other musicians, to demonstrate a kind of musicality without notation as an intermediary musical sounds can be created and manipulated directly without reference to western notation or traditional music theory. Music educators across all levels have traditionally concerned themselves with teaching musicality and musical interpretation as it is mediated by western music notation.