North and Hargreaves shed interesting perspectives on existing research into the personality, identity, and environmental factors that influence musicianship. Although quoting as being founded in existing research, it left me with a lot more questions than answers.
According to Kemp, ‘personality manifests itself through musicianship’ (42) and the particular aspects of personality relevant to musicians include introversion, independence, trait anxiety, gender, and personality.
1) Introversion – somewhat of a contradiction considering the performance nature of musicianship, Kemp states that the extended periods of time spent practicing in isolation qualifies them as such
2) Independence – characteristic of mature musicians whereas young musicians display dependency. Kempt further included the description
a) field dependent
b) field independent
The latter includes the ability to analyse, extract, and reorganize elements of music (43)
3) Trait anxiety refers to emotional instability, frustration, suspiciousness, and apprehensiveness
4) Gender orientation delineates between feminine and masculine qualities. According to Kemp, musicians display an androgynous nature.
Personality and identity also play a distinct role in musical identity. The ‘self-system’ (self identification, self esteem, self efficacy) is closely linked to performance ability although it becomes differentiated with age. This in turn is also linked to motivation, as self-perceptions are intimately associated with the motivation to practice or pursue music. The closing section to the text refers to the influence of sex-typing with regard to musical activities specifically instrument choice. Disappointingly, the authors omit to include Abeles most recent research in the chang of stereotyping.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
There seem to be many contributing factors to musicianship that have been omitted in this chapter. I feel like Charles Madsen should have been represented to include factors like 'modeling'. If sex-typing was worthy of inclusion, then surely modeling and other behavioral concepts are worthy contributors as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm making a few bullet-points that may help me to remember this article when I review this blog:
ReplyDelete* Kemp believes personality factors are overlooked and cognition/perception is overemphasized in music psychology research
* Musicians - tend to introversion, though there are many variables
* Kemp explores neuroticism and trait anxiety
* William James - "I" vs. "me" in 1890, similar to Piaget's decline in egocentricism and Freud's view of the superego (around age 7 or so)
* Identity: Cooley in 1902 "looking glass self" and H. Mead in 1934, "generalized other" at age 7 or so
* Studies are needed on D.J.'s (I'd love to do that research!) and those who create mashups
* Ibarra (1999) - "provisional selves" for an individual to "try out"
* Discussion of gender, but weak