MUSI 2540 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Good Music
9 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Bateson’s “Frame”
A mental framework for interpreting a particular slice of experience.
Musical experience stimulates empathy:
Spending time in artistic activities enhances the individual sensitivity and ability to
connect.
Distinguishing between the Actual and the Possible:
● “Much in our Actual lives is habit passed and needs to be, but a strictly habitual life leads
to stagnation and boredom. We also need the Possible - dreams, hopes, desires,
ideals: these are the elements of life that add dynamism and challenge and what makes
u s want to keep living.”
● “For me, good music making or dancing is a realization of ideal - Possible - human
relationships where the identification of others is so direct and so intense that we feel, for
those best moments, as if our selves had merged.”
Oxytocin - what’s released when you’re happy
● ”Love hormone”
● Released most when we’re born
A working understanding of culture:
● According to Turino: shared habits of thought and action and our repertoires of choices.
● According to Warren: culture does not exist apart from the subjects creating it, and
subjects do not exist outside of culture.
Ethics in Music
● Warren’s position: Ethical responsibilities arise in musical experience.
● “If musical experience brings us into relationships with others, and relationships with
others create ethical responsibilities, then music involves ethical responsibility.”
Perspectives on Musical Meaning
1. Meaning is located within music
2. Meaning is in the ear of the beholder.
3. Music’s meaning depends on the body’s response to it.
4. Music’s meaning is determined by culture.
5. Meaning is formed through the interrelationship between personal experience, history,
and other people.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
A mental framework for interpreting a particular slice of experience. Spending time in artistic activities enhances the individual sensitivity and ability to. Much in our actual lives is habit passed and needs to be, but a strictly habitual life leads to stagnation and boredom. We also need the possible - dreams, hopes, desires, ideals: these are the elements of life that add dynamism and challenge and what makes u s want to keep living. According to turino: shared habits of thought and action and our repertoires of choices. According to warren: culture does not exist apart from the subjects creating it, and subjects do not exist outside of culture. Warren"s position: ethical responsibilities arise in musical experience. If musical experience brings us into relationships with others, and relationships with others create ethical responsibilities, then music involves ethical responsibility.
