Musical Performance and Creativity Flashcards
- What value has Musical Notation?
If music is not retained by man’s memory, it is lost, since it cannot be written down’
Bishop of Seville: 7th century
For most of man’s history and in many cultures today music is not written down
- Who introduced notation in the 11th century?
Guido of Arezzo (11th century) in Italy perfected a system of using up to four horizontal lines, with notes marke
- Who introduced rhythmic notation?
In his Art of Measurable Music, Franco of Cologne (1200) distinguishing four lengths of notes that correspond to the modern semibreve, minim, crotchet & quaver.
So composers were now able to indicate precise tones and rhythms but marks of expression came much later
- What do modern composers use to help give musicians instructions?
Modern day composers may give very detailed and explicit instruction on how they want performers to play their pieces
These fine details about expression in compositions are referred to as the microstructure
This does not allow much freedom in musical playing.
- What genres of music allow for more creative expression by musicians?
Performing musicians working in other genres may have more freedom of expression such as jazz**. **
Distinction between composer and musician is not as well defined as in classical.
performer is less well defined for some musical genres
- What is improvisation?
- Improvising musicians produce novel musical utterances in real time
- Blacking (1976) made parallels between musical improvisation and verbal production
- Native speakers of a language produce new utterances easily and fluently
- Is performing live music a demanding task?
For the improvising musician interactions between other musicians and with the audience are extremely demanding
“Flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
concept of optimal creativity and experience
- What did Ashley 2009 state?
“The use of one’s abilities inside the constraints of one’s body and its limits in performance, the timing of one’s actions with external events, and retrieving and utilizing one’s knowledge promptly in improvisation provide a powerful framework for a sense of personal achievement”
**(Ashley, 2009) **
- Constraints on improvising musicians
Composers can draft and redraft scores
Improvising is more immediate. Like speech production but with the added difficulty of producing meaningful and interesting sounds in concert with other people (people don’t all talk together)
- Timing constraints are important state why.
“Music is the art that defines Man’s relationship to time”
Stravinsky
When improvising with others timing is a
critical concern, there is little margin for error
- Name some knowledge constraints
Improvising musicians rely on procedural (know-how-to do it – but outside of consciousness) knowledge rather than declarative (consciously known) knowledge
Declarative knowledge is accessed more slowly than procedural knowledge because it is interpreted before being used
Procedural knowledge includes information about musical structure that enables performers to produce coherent and stylistically appropriate musical output in- the-moment
- What did Johnson-Laid state about the consciousness of playing music.
It is difficult for improviser’s to explain how they do what they do
“Musicians can articulate only a limited answer, because the underlying mental processes are largely unconscious. If you ask yourself how you are able to speak a sequence of English sentences that make sense, then you will find that you are consciously aware of only the tip of the process
Johnson-Laird (2002)
- What is the nature of the information that improvisers are able to access?
Licks, Crips & Schemas can be thought of as recurring turns of phrase and are important in improvisation (Berliner, 1994)
Information about pitch organisation serves as a vocabulary or lexicon from which improvisers can select and on which transformations may be effected.
- What di Jarvinen (1995) study?
Carried out an in-depth analysis of improvised Saxophone solos by Charlie Parker and found that the pitch content of his improvisations reflected the principles of tonal organisation found in other musical repertoires
The broad statistical properties of tonality serve to guide the improviser at a deep structural level
- Steadman (1984) studied underlying harmonic prgressions explain this.
He has looked at how improvisers generate new versions of harmonic progressions from simpler underlying prototypes
He proposes a grammar of blues chord progressions which involves the use of typical transformation rules that allow simple progressions to be elaborated, recursively, into increasingly complex stylistically appropriate sequences.
- What did Friberg and Sundstorm (2002) show with Time and Rhythm?
Friberg & Sundstrom, (2002) showed that improvisers have extremely fine control of timing and great accuracy
These are constrained by limits in what the body can do
**23. Describe the Torrence test **of Creative Thinking (1966) **
Fluency – The total number of interpretable, meaningful and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus.
Originality – The statistical rarity of the
responses among the test subjects.
Elaboration – The amount of detail in the responses.
- Many of the most important early jazz musicians (e.g. Louis Armstrong) were self-taught. What was his story?
Study into Armstrong (Collier, 1983) highlighted factors implicated in his extraordinary abilities
Street performer from a young age. Extensive “ear” training.
1) Armstrong grew up in a very rich musical environment
2) Early systematic exploration of a performance medium (voice)
3) He had a lot of freedom to explore and experiment without negative consequences
4) No distinction between practise and performance
5) Strong motivation to engage in music
6) Graded series of musical opportunities and challenges
(Sloboda, 2005)
