Embodied experience within music performance learning and development processes

The enquiry into embodied experience in music performance learning contexts has been joined by psychologists, musicologists, cognitive scientists, music and Somatic practitioners and educators, who have enriched the field with a diverse range of interdisciplinary research, theory and practice. The interest in this field has shown that the body is present in all fundamental aspects of musical experience.7 _{While the}

connection between music and movement is widely accepted, the meaning and the nature of this relationship remains hotly debated in a broad range of directions. The literature has been dominated by two points of view. These attempt to understand the involvement of movement of the body in music performance in terms of either inner experience or outer expression (Sloboda and Juslin 2010: 74).

6_{LMA/BF is a framework for understanding, classifying and interpreting human movement. As a Somatic}

practice it enables a student to become immersed in their embodied experience of themselves in action, exploring a depth of self-knowledge with a sharper awareness through movement exploration.

7 _{Bresler 2004, 2010; Bowman 2002; Elliott and Silverman 2015; Godøy and Leman 2010; Broughton and} Davidson 2016; Clarke and Davidson 1998; Pierce 2007; Greenhead and Habron 2015; Greenhead, Habron and Mathieu 2016.

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The internal perspective investigates the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of the body in music performance. That is, it aims to provide answers to questions such as how music causes listeners to move their bodies (Godøy and Leman 2010), how performers’ movements can influence observers’ perceptions of the music being produced (Broughton and Davidson 2016) and what type of information is conveyed in the movements of musicians during performance (Davidson 1994, 2007).

The external perspective is mostly concerned with answering ‘where’ questions such as where did the performer make a certain gesture in the music (the score or performance) and where did performers communicate intention by use of physical gestures such as eye contact, breath and other movement cues (King and Gritten 2011; Ginsborg and King 2016). In other words, the external ‘where’ enquiry is mainly associated with the movement of the body being located in the music itself, in the score and/or performance. In contrast, the ‘how’ and ‘what’ generally seek to understand how movements perceived as expressive can shape how observers/listeners respond to music performance, how they might relate to the music being produced and how they might enable musicians to accomplish their musical intentions (Broughton and Davidson 2016).

The juxtaposition of internal and external perspectives has resulted in several influential frameworks. Davidson, Correia and Pitts (2001) proposed a social-psychological framework for music performance and perception research. This framework aimed to bring together the exploration of the interaction between individual performance body style, musical expression and communication in order to further understand how a coordinated and meaningful performance is created. For instance, Davidson (1994, 2007) showed that performances of the same piece of music with three different expressive intentions (‘deadpan’: without expression, ‘projected’: with normal expression and ‘exaggerated’: with exaggerated expression) could be clearly differentiated from the visual perception of the performer’s body movements. Further, in a study of a solo pianist (1994: 279–301) she explored in detail what type of information is conveyed in the movements of a pianist during performance and how those movements might guide the perceptions of an observer/listener. In this study a tracking

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technique was used to quantify the movements in two dimensions up/down and forward/backwards in relation to the keyboard and showed the expected relationship between movement size and expression (the more intense the expressive intention the larger the movement). Further, observer judgments explored the extent to which different regions of the body were informative of the performance intention (deadpan, projected or exaggerated) and findings suggested that the upper/torso and head region was sufficient for an accurate perceptual judgement. In yet another study, Davidson, Correia and Pitts (2001) explored whether movement information about the expressive intentions of a pianist was available to observers in a continuous stream or if it was limited to particular moments within a performance. While observers reported a cyclical body sway as indicative of continuous expression, they also reported that some moments were more obvious indicators of expression than others (such as a cadence point).

In Davidson’s work, systematic observations indicated that the pianists’ cyclical movements emanated from the hip region. Given the usual sitting position for pianists, it was suggested that the hips represent the fulcrum of gravity and therefore provide the pivotal point for all upper torso movements. Further, that this ‘centre of gravity’ seemed to be the general location for the generation of physical expression.8 _{In a more recent}

study that observed the use of expressive bodily movement in marimba players (Davidson and Broughton 2016), expressive movement observations were not consistently related to markings in the score such as accents or cadence points. One explanation of this might relate to Godoy’s notion of ‘goal points’ (Godøy 2010: 103– 125; 2011: 67–82). The ‘chunking by goal points’ hypothesis suggests that significant movements made during performance are not necessarily restricted to structural boundaries but rather relate to the central goal point of the initiated action. In Davidson and Broughton’s study these significant movements appear in moments of musical phrasing which although they can delineate the structure of the music can also transcend structural boundaries and relate to musical intention.

8_{The ‘centre of gravity’ or ‘centre of moment’ in this context refers to a point within our bodies which acts}

as a reference around which all the movements of the body are organized (Cutting, Proffitt and Kozlowski 1978: 357–72).

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Although the above studies give some insights into the types of movements being used it would be misleading to imply that movement in performance can be accounted for merely in terms of the primary processes of physiology, sensorimotor coordination and cognitive mechanisms. In respect to this, Davidson goes on to explain the idea that there is also a social component to the way in which we use and present bodily movement in music performance mimetically, as a way of communicating with co- performers and observers/listeners (Clarke and Davidson 1998). In support of this hypothesis, Johnson (2007: 37) discusses how learnt mimetic movements (movements acquired through imitation) can furnish human communication. He suggests that these movements can have an effect on establishing connections to other people. For example, the way a baby can establish communicative contact with its caregivers using vocal sounds, facial and body movements that give the carer information that can help them understand the baby’s needs, thoughts and feelings. As such, this is a primordial form of human agreement, a form of shared meaning and communicative intention. Clearly, mimetic movements may contribute significantly to the production and perception of a musical performance. It may be that mimetic movements are used at certain points during the performance to enhance the specific musical intentions at certain points. However, this would suggest that the movements need to be consistent with the intentions of the performer otherwise the physical tension and miscommunication created by inauthentic movements (movements that are not ‘found’ in the body but are put on like a dress or a coat; Pallaro 2006) may inhibit technical fluency, and upset the listeners with incongruity between the movement used and the musical intention. The mimetic hypothesis also suggests that we are all born with a capacity to unify the visual and proprioceptive information into one common framework. Although research on the mirror-neuron system is ongoing and is providing insights into the brain mechanisms of imitative learning, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (2009) points out that it fails to take into account the differences between proprioception (a sense of movement and position that includes tactility and gravitational orientation through vestibular sensory organs) and kinaesthesia (an awareness of movement and felt kinetic flow: the motion of bodies and forces associated with their movement) as part of

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its framework.9 _{As such, they omit the very stuff of life and the qualitative nature of that}

stuff. They omit animation. (See Sheets-Johnson 2009 for a closer examination of kinaesthesia as an awareness of a qualitatively felt kinetic flow).

Similarly, Cox (2016) offers additional kinds of evidence that specify more closely how musical concepts are tied to embodied experience. His recent work on motor imagery, particularly that involving mirror neurons, indicates that observed movements are perceived and conceptualized in terms of the observer’s own experience of making the kinds of movements observed; whether watching sports, dance or musical performance we can imitate who we are observing. In relation to listening to music, this could mean that we understand the gestures of performers in part through imitative participation, whether the performers are live, recorded or recalled (Cox 2016). Cox also includes the Somatic experience and suggests that if we feel how different kinds of music motivate different kinds of imitative participation, the connection between embodied experience and musical concepts can become enmeshed.

Clearly, the inner and outer perspectives discussed above are not always separated and sometimes inform each other in various ways to develop more refined approaches. And although, I do not delve more deeply into the neuroscientific debates in this thesis, these approaches have provided important insights across a range of music domains.10

However, there are reasons to question whether relying on the inner/outer dichotomy represents the best way to shed new light on music performance and embodied musical experience. Indeed, many of its underlying assumptions are challenged by new research that explores music performance learning as an embodied phenomenon (van der Schyff 2017, Elliot and Silverman 2015). Along these lines, researchers have drawn on both the so-called Enactive approach to cognition (Varela et al. 1991) and the Somatic approach to education (Hanna 1985, 2004) to investigate the music learning

9_{For a criticism of this view see Sheets-Johnstone (2009: 217–234) and Stawarska (2009).}

10_{Such as music psychology (Davidson 2001, Gritten and King 2011), music and philosophy (Elliot 1995;}

Elliot and Silverman 2015; Clarke and Clarke 2011; Clarke, Dibben and Pitts 2009), musicology (Godøy 2003, 2010, 2011), music performance (Rink 2004; Doğantan-Dack 2011, 2012) and music performance learning and development (Parncutt and Troup 2002; Bresler 2004, Williamon 2004).

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experience in more holistic ways.11 _{By holistic I refer to an experiential learning}

approach that recognizes the role of feelings and other ways of knowing such as intuition and bodily knowledge and the role of the relationships with others in the learning process (Taylor 2017: 17–29).

While there are various views on what constitutes embodied musical experience within the fields of Somatics and Enactivism, to clarify at this stage, my perspective is more in line with sensorimotor Enactivism. This view originates in the work of O’Reagan and Noë (2001) and has been developed by Johnson (2007, 2017), Barandiaran (2017), Degenaar and O’Reagan (2017) and others. My view is also integrated with the Somatics proposal that originates in the work of Hanna (1985, 1993, 2004), Laban (1950/2011), Bartenieff (Bartenieff and Lewis 1980; Hackney 2002) and Skinner (Skinner et al. 1979) and others. My goal is not to contrast a Somatic-Enactive framework with other similar accounts such as the Enactive ‘biological’ proposal (Varela et al. 1991) or the Somatic ‘mindfulness’ orientation (Langer 1989). Rather, I adopt conceptual and practical tools and models that are shared among these perspectives in an attempt to extend the Enactive approach developed in cognitive science and develop a methodological framework that can orientate points of views in the context of embodied musical experience and musical performance learning contexts. From this perspective, musical performance learning phenomena sit uncomfortably within pre- given inner–outer structures and are not perhaps best understood by observing sequential causes and effects.

In the next section, I consider these issues in more detail exploring how such insights into an integrated approach can deepen our understanding of embodied experience in music performance learning and development and can offer possibilities for developing a methodological framework that supports the application of Somatic and Enactive principles and perspectives to music performance learning and development contexts.

11 _{For Somatic approaches to music education see van der Merwe (2014); Greenhead and Habron (2015);} Paparo (2015); Greenhead (2016); Franklin (2013). For Enactive approaches see Johnson (2007) and (2017); Cox (2016); van der Schyff (2017).

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