scholarly journals Can music be figurative? Exploring the possibility of crossmodal similarities between music and visual arts

Psihologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Actis-Grosso ◽  
Carlotta Lega ◽  
Alessandro Zani ◽  
Olga Daneyko ◽  
Zaira Cattaneo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Research ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Gender Effect ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
Figurative Art ◽  
Music Genre ◽  
The Aesthetic

According to both experimental research and common sense, classical music is a better fit for figurative art than jazz. We hypothesize that similar fits may reflect underlying crossmodal structural similarities between music and painting genres. We present two preliminary studies aimed at addressing our hypothesis. Experiment 1 tested the goodness of the fit between two music genres (classical and jazz) and two painting genres (figurative and abstract). Participants were presented with twenty sets of six paintings (three figurative, three abstract) viewed in combination with three sound conditions: 1) silence, 2) classical music, or 3) jazz. While figurative paintings scored higher aesthetic appreciation than abstract ones, a gender effect was also found: the aesthetic appreciation of paintings in male participants was modulated by music genre, whilst music genre did not affect the aesthetic appreciation in female participants. Our results support only in part the notion that classical music enhances the aesthetic appreciation of figurative art. Experiment 2 aimed at testing whether the conceptual categories ?figurative? and ?abstract? can be extended also to music. In session 1, participants were first asked to classify 30 paintings (10 abstract, 10 figurative, 10 ambiguous that could fit either category) as abstract or figurative and then to rate them for pleasantness; in session 2 participants were asked to classify 40 excerpts of music (20 classical, 20 jazz) as abstract or figurative and to rate them for pleasantness. Paintings which were clearly abstract or figurative were all classified accordingly, while the majority of ambiguous paintings were classified as abstract. Results also show a gender effect for painting?s pleasantness: female participants rated higher ambiguous and abstract paintings. More interestingly, results show an effect of music genre on classification, showing that it is possible to classify music as figurative or abstract, thus supporting the hypothesis of cross-modal similarities between the two sensory-different artistic expressions.

Practice, performance and the archive: Cases from Indian classical music genres

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
Aditi Deo ◽  
Lakshmi Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
Practice Performance ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Indian Classical Music ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Musical Networks ◽  
Affective Dimensions

Given their emphasis on oral pedagogy and improvisatory approaches, Indian classical music genres present a challenge for constructing historically nuanced studies of musical practices, shifts in them over time and their links to broader developments. Much scholarship on Indian classical music tends to maintain loyalties to disciplinary silos such as social and cultural history, cultural studies and ethnomusicology, often sacrificing aspects of the spectrum of musical experiences. The dispersed nature of musical networks has meant that the archive for studying the phenomena of listening to, learning and disseminating music is fragmented, mobile and multi-local, not easy to capture with conventional methodologies of historical reconstruction or even purely ethnographic fieldwork. A central concern that drives the articles in this issue is a focus on exploring musical sound, repertoire and practices as archives. Such a focus raises two kinds of challenges. One is the identification of archives that can capture the ephemerality and immediacy of these musical practices; the other is the question of interpretive methods that can faithfully reflect the aesthetic and affective dimensions of musical practice. The contributors to this Special Issue explore a range of historical records centred on music ‐ notations, compilations, repertoires, biographies, texts, anecdotes, performances, recordings, pedagogic tools ‐ as their primary archives. Drawing upon disciplinary insights from cultural history, ethnomusicology and sound studies, and often in conversation with musicians and listeners, they offer conceptual and methodological lenses for reading such archives productively.

Class, Control, and Classical Music

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bull
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
The Aesthetic

Through an ethnographic study of young people playing and singing in classical music ensembles in the south of England, this book analyses why classical music in England is predominantly practiced by white middle-class people. It describes four ‘articulations’ or associations between the middle classes and classical music. Firstly, its repertoire requires formal modes of social organization that can be contrasted with the anti-pretentious, informal, dialogic modes of participation found in many forms of working-class culture. Secondly, its modes of embodiment reproduce classed values such as female respectability. Thirdly, an imaginative dimension of bourgeois selfhood can be read from classical music’s practices. Finally, its aesthetic of detail, precision, and ‘getting it right’ requires a long-term investment that is more possible, and makes more sense, for middle- and upper-class families. Through these arguments, the book reframes existing debates on gender and classical music participation in light of the classed gender identities that the study revealed. Overall, the book suggests that inequalities in cultural production can be understood through examining the practices that are used to create a particular aesthetic. It argues that the ideology of the ‘autonomy’ of classical music from social concerns needs to be examined in historical context as part of the classed legacy of classical music’s past. It describes how the aesthetic of classical music is a mechanism through which the middle classes carry out boundary-drawing around their protected spaces, and within these spaces, young people’s participation in classical music education cultivates a socially valued form of self-hood.

The Baroque and Philosophy

2018 ◽  
pp. 601-622
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Self ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
Art And Architecture

Although the concept “baroque” is less obviously applicable to philosophy than to the visual arts and music, early modern philosophy can be shown to have connections with baroque culture. Baroque style and rhetoric are employed or denounced in philosophical controversies, to license or discredit a certain style of philosophizing. Philosophers engage with themes current in baroque literature (the mad world, the world as a stage, the quest for the self) and occasionally transform these into philosophical problems, especially of an epistemological kind (are the senses reliable? how far is our access to reality limited by our perspective?) Finally, the philosophies of Malebranche and Berkeley, with their radical challenges to so-called common sense, and their explanation of conventional understandings of the world as based on illusion, have something of the disturbing quality of baroque art and architecture.

scholarly journals SOM E FÉ: DA PRÁTICA COMUNITÁRIA RELIGIOSA PARA A COMPLEXIDADE DO PENSAMENTO MUSICAL ERUDITO DO ÚLTIMO QUARTEL DO SÉC. XX

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
José Luís Postiga
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The West ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
Musical Concepts ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Western Classical Music

When faced with the artistic-musical concepts developed in the second half of the twentieth century, it is common to observe them from the perspective of the scientific advances they have promoted or resulted from, the abstract organizations in which they are based, the aesthetic principles they create or and almost always fall within the individuality of the interpretation present in the creative act and its representativeness, regardless of the support in which it presents itself. Paradoxically, some of the main classical musical works written in the last quarter of the twentieth century resulted from the musicological study and/or musical representation of concepts, rites, religious practices representative of different cultures of the West and especially the East. In this sense, throughout the present article will be addressed works by composers of Western classical music, such as the case of Jonathan Harvey and Tristan Murail, characteristics of the musical currents that fit, from serialism to spectralism, as well as acoustic and electronic casts, which result. reinterpretations of religious practices of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as sound behaviors of the communicative practice of peoples, such as the songs and instruments of Tibet and Mongolia.

scholarly journals Automatic Music Genre Classification and Its Relation with Music Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Hasan Can Ceylan ◽  
Naciye Hardalaç ◽  
Ali Can Kara ◽  
Fırat Hardalaç
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Music Classification ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
Deep Learning Algorithm ◽  
Genre Classification ◽  
Music Genre ◽  
Music Genre Classification

Because the classification saves time in the learning process and enables this process to take place more easily, its contribution to music learning cannot be denied. One of the most valid and effective methods in music classification is music genre classification. Given the rapid progress of music production in the world and the significant increase in the number of data, the process of classifying music genres has now become too complex to be done by humans. Considering the successful results of deep neural networks in this field, the aim is to develop a deep learning algorithm that can classify 10 different music genres. To reveal the efficiency of the model by comparing it with others, we make the classification using the GTZAN dataset, which was previously used in many studies and retains its validity. In this article, we use a convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify music genres, taking into account the previous successful results. Unlike previous studies in which CNN was used as a classifier, we represent music segments in the dataset by mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) instead of using visual features or representations. We obtain MFCCs by preprocessing the music pieces in the dataset, then train a CNN model with the acquired MFCCs and determine the success of the model with the testing data. As a result of this study, we develop a model that is successful in classifying music genres by using smaller data than previous studies.

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