Publication details: The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, edited by Blake Howe, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Neil William Lerner, Joseph Nathan Straus, 329-344. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Abstract: This essay suggests how cultural histories of the castrato (exemplified by the writings of Giuseppe Gerbino, Roger Freitas, Bonnie Gordon, J. Q. Davies, and Martha Feldman) and the field of Disability Studies can enter into dialogue, arguing that the discourses of stigma and freak help to explain aspects of castrato singers in eighteenth-century France. Inadequate scientific explanation of the castrato body in Enlightenment medicine led to the cultural mystification of these castrato singers. Despite receiving royal protection, castrato singers were sometimes subjected to stigmatization, and their performances were sometimes described as if they were freak shows. Employing a variety of textual evidence (including reviews, scripts, and dictionary entries), I argue that what might be called the “enfreaked” castrato singers disclosed a prejudice against the marvelous in the French Enlightenment.
Ensemble: Turning Point Ensemble and musica intima Recording details: Redshift Records, 2015 Producer: Karen Wilson (BMus’74) Recording Engineer: Will Howie (BMus’04) Link
Abstract: Seeking to articulate and explore a for comparative analysis of musical performances, this lecture considers questions that lie between music theory and analysis, cognitive science, and philosophical perspectives, then moves towards a preliminary formulation of two concepts that might prove useful for comparing performance interpretations and communicating performance choices and effects. The presentation begins by sketching a perspective on sensory experience in music, and then compares three modes of aesthetic interest.
On this basis, it then focuses on a particular type of and imaginative listening experienced by music professionals and intensive amateur listeners, the ability to experience actual and imaginary hearings concurrently in real time. This form of aesthetic experience, in turn, becomes notions of (rhythmic, metric, temporal) “propulsion” and “elasticity” are introduced. Illustrative examples will be drawn from performances of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.
Abstract: Music theorists have emphasized the intellectual, disembodied mind throughout music education’s history in Western culture extending back to the time of the ancient Greeks. Additionally, Regelski (2009) notes that the dominant and residual view of music curriculum involves the contemplation of music for its own sake (i.e., autonomous “works”) instead of experiencing it through action. Yet pioneering advocates for movement in music education, including Jaques-Dalcroze, Orff, Kodály, and Suzuki, all affirmed and emphasized the centrality of the body in music making and learning. Present-day instrumental music teachers’ proclivity toward teaching to the minds of their students (marginalizing physical action) seems incongruous with the views of these pioneers, especially when one considers the prevalence of movement and dance in contemporary popular music culture. When instrumental music teachers focus on teaching to the minds of their students, they ignore the importance of the students’ ancillary movements, those physical movements not directly involved in the production of sound (e.g., leaning forward, swaying side to side). Research on the importance of ancillary movements in the experiences of adolescent students studying instrumental music is sorely lacking. I thus undertook a two-month study utilizing a phenomenographic approach, which involves identifying and describing the varied conceptions of a phenomenon held by the members of a group collectively, not individual conceptions. I used interviews and student journals to map the different conceptions 24 adolescent instrumental music students have of ancillary movements. I found that ancillary movements reflect students’ degree of engagement with music-making and that these movements hold important meanings for them. Participants’ statements suggested that students become more engaged with music they are performing when they 1) are given freedom to make their own natural ancillary movements, 2) feel confident with their music skills (i.e., balance between challenge and skills), 3) do not feel self conscious about what others might think, and 4) discover that their teachers support ancillary movements. Moreover, students’ descriptions of their conceptions revealed increasingly complex understandings of ancillary movements, suggesting ways in which educators might develop more embodied approaches to teaching instrumental music.
