Making Music and Making Sense Through Music - Reinhard Kopiez

It would be hard to imagine a world without the existence of music as a form of communication, a means of conveying meaning, or an implicit or explicit mode of expression. Bolton & Newmn’s ‘Tic-toc effect’ provides simple evidence that even the non-musical mans desires to find meaning in music. However, our search for meaning in music is still incomplete.

This chapter considers the musical message from the performers perspective i.e. how they develop their plan for the performance of a piece. Performance research has delved into imaginary narration, holistic and serial practice approaches, timing and note duration (Palmer, 1989, parameter theory). Investigating musical expression is taken from either an emotional or structural expression perspective. The strong relationship between compositional structure and musical expression is supported by Langer (1953) with the assumption of isomorphism. The performers interpretive intent is distinguished by elements of timing in this context. Irrational components of expressive perfromance such as movement and emotion are yet to be investigated.

The rule-based systems of musical expression have been used to analyse the implementation of expression marks. However, even these are subject to the debate of uniformity and individualism in music and are all subject to the listener’s expectancies. Variations of accoustical and expressive cues are commonly used in expressivity and should be nurtured from a young age. Their associations with basic moods have also been researched e.g. ‘happy’ and ‘angry’ associated with faster tempo which directly influence the character of the piece (individuality of the piece and expressiveness of the performance).

Cross cultural studies of emotional response have attempted to shed light on the concept of music as a universal language, to no/little avail. Elements such us synchronicity, expectancies, psychoenergetic experiences all play an undeniable role in music, from any culture. Meyer makes an interesting statement “Music in a style with which we are totally unfamiliar is meaningles”.