The question about practice

The term ‘practice’ is widely used in everyday conversation. When I say I want to see whether there is such a thing as a vocal ensemble practice, and whether this practice differs from other vocal practices, such as solo singing or choir singing, I must begin by defining the concept of ‘practice’. Although it is an ‘everyday’ term, the concept of ‘practice’ is difficult to define precisely. When we talk about musicians, we speak of them ‘practising’, rehearsing something again and again to master a skill in music making. But the verb ‘to practise’ does not include all the activities that we find within a practice. The dictionary’s definition of the word sheds some light: it is defined as an actual application or use of an idea, belief or method (as opposed to ‘theories’) or a customary, habitual or expected way of doing something.55 _{There is a distinction between the terms theory}

and practice, though they are linked. Aristotle made a distinction between them, describing three different types of active discipline, theoria, praxis and

poeisis. Theoria is connected with ‘thinking’ and with a purpose of explaining

or finding the reality. Praxis is connected to practical knowledge,56 _linked

up with ‘action’ and can be a result of experience, while poeisis is linked

54 Filstad 2010 p. 108

55 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/practice?q=practice (Viewed 24.11.2013)

56 The definition by Aristotle of praxis as connected to actions, is found in his Nicomadean

to production.57 _{When nvs sings, the resulting production is of course the}

sound itself, but to master their practice they have to invest and channel their experience and knowledge through their own bodies, and this bodily know-how, often evolved through social interactions with others,58 _{can be}

seen as one of the elements required in the mastering of a practice. This bodily know-how, or ‘bodily doings’ has been a focus point when theorists have tried to define the concept of practice. Since it is said that practice has something to do with actions or activity that take place in human encounters, some have tried to place these actions or activity at centre of the definition. Schatzki (2001) says that, given the multiplicity of issues within the discussion of practice, it is difficult to find a unified approach, although he states that most theorists lean towards a definition of practice as arrays of activity. He continues:

[…] most theorists, above all those in philosophy and the traditional social sciences, identify the activities involved as those of persons: practices are arrays of human activity.59

Schatzki first defines practices as ‘organized nexuses of activity’, before giving a new definition of practices as ‘an organized web of actions’.60

As Hovland (2013) points out, it looks as though there is some confusion about terms, whether the actions involved are ‘nexuses’, ‘arrays’ or being ‘organized’ (and what is organized by who and how?).61 _{Schatzki’s focus is}

human actions, understood as ‘either bodily doings and sayings or actions that these doings and sayings constitute’.62 _{But is a practice understood only}

through the human activity involved within it, or could we suggest that there is more to it than that? If all the members of the vocal ensembles throughout the world went home and sat down on their own without doing anything, then would vocal ensemble practice not still exist? Practice is in some way a social order, but this ‘order’ is, as Schatzki says, more than an order made of regularities and their apprehensions. Schatzki puts forward Wittgenstein’s example of how different activities count as games, and in that sense

compose an order, a ‘tangle of sameness and similarities among the activities

57 Potur and Kayihan 2011 p. 119 58 Collins 2001 p. 109

59 Schatzki 2001a p. 2 60 Schatzki 2001b p. 48 61 Hovland 2013 p. 2 62 Schatzki 2001 p. 48

Frank Havrøy: Alone Together

involved’.63 _{It is therefore perhaps not very daring to suggest that language}

and discourse are parts of a practice as well as the actions involved, as the members of a practice play out roles, roles constituted by their practices, and roles which constitute practice in themselves. If we look at these roles as not only constructed by free will, nor determined by structures, but created as an interplay between the two over time, they remind us very much of habitus, the term used to describe a system of structured, structuring dispositions, constituted in practice and always oriented towards practical functions.64

I will argue that there are individual as well as collective actions involved in practice, together with discourse and language, making up a complex web of processes. If we choose to study a practice, it may not be enough to study the members’ actions only; we need also to hear them describe these individual and collective actions. We also need to hear the members of the practice describe their world, and how they place their own practice within the world of other practices that surround them. Hovland, in his essay

Turning to Practice (2013) argues that the social sciences (very generally

speaking, as he says) seek knowledge about practice, while what we seek (as musicologists) is knowledge in practice.65 _{According to my point of}

view, to understand or have an insight into a practice involves both of these viewpoints. The following chapters will therefore give an insight into knowledge about practice and knowledge from within the practice.

But the aim here is also to provide a transition into the next chapter of this thesis, by deciding how to study a practice. Barry Barnes (2001) describes how people can engage in what he calls shared practices, explained as ‘the accomplishments of competent members of collectives.’66 _{I read this as an}

attempt to say that practice is a collective thing (although it can be exercised alone), by people who have some knowledge and routines which enable them to perform the required actions. Barnes also states that practices are learned from other people, and it is a part of the nature of shared practices that learning what it is and enacting it are inseparable.67 _{The question, of}

course, remains: what is learned, and how? And this is perhaps the core

63 Ibid. p. 43 64 Bourdieu 1990 p. 52 65 Hovland 2013 p. 2 66 Barnes 2001 pp. 24–25 67 Ibid. p. 25

issue here as well: if you are to look at practice, you have to study all sides of it. Barnes talks about riding in formation as practice, how the members need to know different aspects of riding together, such as knowledge about terrain, besides the skill of riding itself. To study the practice of riding in formation means to look into these different dimensions of the practice and to gain knowledge about and in practice. In his article, Hovland exemplifies how playing an instrument engages the body into different internalized movements, movements that cannot be seen as practice itself, but bodily acts which a practice ‘articulates’.68 _{All these different sides of the practice,}

whether it is knowledge about riding a horse or playing an instrument, contain their own theoretical platform(s). Therefore, through the following chapters, the theoretical concepts of the term practice are not obviously present, but form the background against which the actions discussed are played.