Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T23:31:23.728Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Recovering disembodied spirits: teaching movement to musicians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Kathryn Woodard
Kathryn Woodard*
Affiliation:
Department of Performance Studies, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4240, USAwoodard@tamu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Understanding physical movement is an integral part of learning to make music. This article presents the action research that the author has pursued while teaching movement to musicians. The narrative provides a theoretical underpinning for the teaching practices discussed. It provides examples of musicians’ movement with analyses of the anatomical structures involved, and it discusses the influences of bodily perception on observing and learning movement (e.g. the body map). The implications of the study are to provide a somatic foundation for music education and thereby to enhance the understanding of music as embodied experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Music Education , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 153 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ALEXANDER, F. M. & BARLOW, W. (2001) The Use of the Self. London: Orion.Google Scholar
BAILY, J. (2001) ‘Learning to perform as a research technique in ethnomusicology’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 10 (2), 85–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BERGER, H. M. (2004) ‘Horizons of melody and the problem of the self’, in Berger, H. M. & Negro, G. Del, Identity in Everyday Life (pp. 43–88). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
BERTHOZ, A. (2000) The Brain's Sense of Movement. Weiss, G., trans. Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience Series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
BIAL, H. (2004) The Performance Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
BOWMAN, W. (1998) ‘Music as experienced’, in Philosophical Perspectives on Music (pp. 254–303). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
BOWMAN, W. (2004) ‘Cognition and the body: perspectives from music education’, in Bresler, L. (Ed.), Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds: Towards Embodied Teaching and Learning (pp. 29–50). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BRESLER, L. (1995/2006) ‘Ethnography, phenomenology and action research in music education’. Visions of Research in Music Education, 8 (1), 1–30. http://www.rider.edu/~vrme/v8n1/vision/Bresler_Article___VRME.pdf. [accessed as html on 19/11/08]Google Scholar
BRESLER, L. (Ed.) (2004) Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds: Towards Embodied Teaching and Learning. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CAIN, T. (2008) ‘The characteristics of action research in music education’, British Journal of Music Education, 25 (3), 283–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CAPADAY, C. (2004) ‘The integrated nature of motor cortical function’, The Neuroscientist, 10 (3), 207–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
CLARKE, E. & DAVIDSON, J. (1998) ‘The body in performance’, in Thomas, W. (Ed.), Composition – Performance – Reception: Studies in the Creative Process in Music. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
CONABLE, B. (2002) What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body. Portland, OR: Andover Press.Google Scholar
CONABLE, B. (2004) How to Learn the Alexander Technique: A Manual for Students. Second Edition. Portland, OR: Andover Press.Google Scholar
CONABLE, W. (1991) ‘Origins and theory of mapping’, in Proceedings for the Third International Alexander Congress. Engelberg, Switzerland, August 1991. http://www.bodymap.org/articles/artmaporigins.html. [accessed 18/11/2008]Google Scholar
DAMASIO, A. R. (1994) Descartes’ Error. New York, NY: Avon Books.Google ScholarPubMed
DAVIDSON, J. (1993) ‘Visual perception of performance manner in the movements of solo musicians’, Psychology of Music, 21 (2), 103–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DE VIGNEMONT, F. (2004) ‘The co-consciousness hypothesis’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3, 97–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DONALD, M. (2001) A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
ELLIOTT, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.Google Scholar
GALLAGHER, S. (2005) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GALLESE, V. (2006) ‘Intentional attunement: a neurophysiological perspective on social cognition and its disruption in autism’, Brain Research, 1079, 15–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
GALLESE, V. & GOLDMAN, A. (1998) ‘Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2 (12), 493–501.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
GEURTS, K. L. (2002) Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
GREENE, P. D. (2002) ‘Sounding the body in Buddhist Nepal: Neku horns, Himalayan shamanism, and the transmigration of disembodied spirits’, World of Music, 44 (2), 93–114.Google Scholar
IACOBONI, M. (2005) ‘Neural mechanisms of imitation’, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, 632–637.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
JUNTUNEN, M-L. & WESTERLUND, H. (2001) ‘Digging Dalcroze, or, dissolving the mind-body dualism: Philosophical and practical remarks on the musical body in action’, Music Education Research, 3 (2), 203–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
KOHLER, E., KEYSERS, C., UMILTA, M.A., FOGASSI, L., GALLESE, V. & RIZZOLATTI, G. (2002) ‘Hearing sounds, understanding actions: action representation in mirror neurons’, Science 297 (5582), 846.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MADISON, D. S. & HAMERA, J. (2005) The SAGE Performance Studies Handbook. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
MARK, T. (2004) What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body. Chicago, IL: Gia Publications.Google Scholar
MCNIFF, J., LOMAX, P. & WHITEHEAD, J. (2003) You and Your Action Research Project, Second Edition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
NESS, S. A. A. (2004) ‘Being a body in a cultural way: Understanding the cultural in the embodiment of dance’, in Thomas, H. & Ahmed, J. (Eds.), Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
O'DONOVAN-ANDERSON, M. (Ed.) (1996) The Incorporated Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Embodiment. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield.Google Scholar
OVERTON, W. F., MÜLLER, U. & NEWMAN, J. L. (Eds.) (2008) Developmental Perspectives on Embodiment and Consciousness. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
RAKHA, A. & SHANKAR, R. (1994) ‘Jaaptal’, and ‘Raga Jog’ in Indian Classical Music. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, FFH 5066, videorecording.Google Scholar
RAMACHANDRAN, V. S. (2000) ‘Mirror neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind ‘the Great Leap Forward’ in human evolution’, Edge, 69. http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge69.html. [accessed 18/11/2008]Google Scholar
RIZZOLATTI, G. & CRAIGHERO, L. (2004) ‘The mirror neuron system’, Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
RIZZOLATTI, G., FOGASSI, L. & GALLESE, V. (2001) ‘Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action’, National Neuroscience Review, 2, 661–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
RIZZOLATTI, G. & ARBIB, M. A. (1998) ‘Language within our grasp’, Trends in Neuroscience, 21 (5), 188–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SOMEKH, B. (2006) Action Research: A Methodology for Change and Development. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.Google Scholar
USZLER, M., GORDON, S. & MCBRIDE-SMITH, S. (2000) The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher. New York, NY: Schirmer Books.Google Scholar
ZION, L. C. (1996) ‘Making sense: kinesthesia’, ETC: A General Review of Semantics, 53 (3), 300–14.Google Scholar