2190 Meaning of Movement, Musical Arc, Musical Gesture
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:32:07 -0700
From: Tom Stermitz <Stermitz@RAGTIME.ORG>
Subject: Meaning of Movement, Musical Arc, Musical Gesture
Hope everyone has updated their virus software!
I've been thinking about musicality and how to teach it over the past
year. I think rhythm and phrasing are easy concepts, but syncopation
and expressive movement are harder. Teaching how to dance the melody
is not as easy as teaching the beat. I've watched Brigitta Winkler
and Rebecca Shulman do excellent musicality workshops, but I feel I
have a lot to learn in this area.
I've come across some good ideas concerning MEANING of MOVEMENT or a
MUSICAL ARC (across a phrase, a song, a tanda or an evening), and the
idea of a MUSICAL GESTURE or PHRASE.
MUSICAL MEANING and ARC
I have been reading the Alexandra Pierce book, Expressive Movement,
which is really good.
e.g. on page 79:
"Ideally, movements are articulately phrased. An action such as
walking to close the door has a clear beginning, middle, and end. The
meaning, or motivation, reveals itself incrementally throughout,
becoming fully focused at the climax: Juan, interrupted by the noise
of the neighbors across the hall, abruptly turns, strides toward the
door and tosses it shut. Each of the nested subphrases (the initial
turn, the separate strides, the climactic toss of the door, the
impact of closing and latching, its quieting as Juan also comes to
rest) -- all these parts specify and yet bind themselves to the
coherence of the whole phrase, and they express Juan with precision.
The temporal shaping of phrase so that its component parts fall into
just the right places at the right moments is, like the ocean,
"tidy". Great athletes and comedians are masters of discriminative
pacing, and we all have a taste for its pleasures."
MUSICAL GESTURE
Ramu Pyrreddy from Ann Arbor turned me on to the following website on
"Musical Gesture" by Robert Hatten:
https://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/cyber/hat1.html
e.g. on page 3
Presuppositions for a semiotic theory of gesture
Gesture is movement interpretable as a sign, whether intentional or
not, and as such it communicates information about the gesturer (or
character, or persona the gesturer is impersonating or embodying).
That information (whether or not the "intended" signification) may be
classified following C. S. Peirce's categories as:
- a. qualitative (Firstness), in that it concerns the attitude,
modality, emotional state, etc., of the gesturer (or presupposed
agent),
- b. dynamic/directional/intentional (Secondness), in that it
reveals reactions, goals, and orientations, and
- c. symbolic (Thirdness), in that it may rely on conventions or
habits of interpretation (in contexts such as artistic styles) to
convey a wealth of extra meaning beyond the directness of its
qualitative and dynamic characteristics, and this "extra" may at
times displace or be emergent from more immediate sources of meaning
[emergence may be defined as that which is or would be unpredictable
from lower levels -- here, the qualities and dynamic characteristics
of gestures are more immediate and hence at a lower level].
Another way of defining gesture is as movement that is marked as
meaningful (David Lidov, 1993). The particular dimension of relevant
meaning may be marked culturally. For example, a pointing finger is
marked for indexicality, and other features of the gesture may or may
not be marked for attention (as in an imperious gesture of pointing,
which might convey power, as well as indicate an object or direction).
Psychologically, one may choose to interpret the available dimensions
for clues as to attitudes on the part of the gesturer, even when they
are not intentionally marked; indeed, anyone in need, or a prisoner,
or in love, is likely to over-exaggerate gestural significance in
search of clues to one's fate (will one's needs be met? will one be
tortured or released? will the beloved offer or continue to express
love to the beloved? ).
--
Tom Stermitz
https://www.tango.org/
stermitz@tango.org
303-388-2560
