Beyond Messiaen’s birds: the post-verbal world of dementia

This paper investigates the use of verbatim musical transcription as a research method in dementia care. It reports on an art-based ethnographic study (Aesthetic Research in Everyday Life (Aeriel)) in which verbatim transcription was applied to everyday interactions in dementia care, making use of musical—instead of verbal—notation. Starting from the notion that medical and healthcare settings can be sites of ‘found performance’, the paper reviews literature relating to artistic methodologies within medical humanities, music, ethnography and dementia care. From this review, it proposes a research design and method of verbatim musical transcription as a potential avenue of investigating communication between carer and cared for in dementia care. The paper offers an illustrative example from Aeriel and draws conclusions from the synthesis of verbal and musical data analysis. Findings indicate an important advance in studies of dementia care communication towards a concept of the ‘post-verbal’ enabled by a musical research method and the clinical applications that it offers.

In Honor of What We Can’t Groove To Yet

This chapter advances the premise that a reconstructed approach to musical transcription can anchor future university music curricula across all music subdisciplines. Arguments for this position include the relevance of transcription for integration of ethnomusicology, music theory, composition, and performance; its benefit to cultivating embodied musicianship (especially singing); and its potential to foster cross-cultural ethics and empathy. Transcription is also an ecumenical medium in which to keep our teaching strongly anchored in literacy, the core value of Western universities, without unduly tilting toward Eurocentrism or any other sort of centrism. It can engage the general student in many ways: it need not imply staff notation, and the creative task of visually representing music can powerfully reward music and non-music students alike. The conclusion of the chapter proposes a pedagogy of transcription, as well as sample assignments at several levels of challenge that can be effective for all students.