Body and Force in Music: Metaphoric Constructions in Music Psychology

Description

Our understanding of music is inherently metaphorical, and metaphoricity pervades all sorts of musical discourses, be they theoretical, analytical, philosophical, pedagogical, or even scientific. The notions of "body" and "force" are the two most pervasive and comprehensive scientific metaphors in musical discourse. Throughout various intertwined contexts in history, the body–force pair manifests multiple layers of ideological frameworks and permits the conceptualization of music in a variety of ways. Youn Kim investigates these concepts of body and force in the emerging field of music psychology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The field’s discursive space spans diverse contexts, including psychological theories of auditory perception and cognition, pedagogical theories on the performer’s bodily mechanism, speculative and practical theories of musical rhythm, and aesthetical discussion of the power of music. This investigation of body and force aims to illuminate not just the past scene of music psychology but also the notions of music that are being constructed at present. Cover Endorsements Half Title Title Copyright Contents List of figures Acknowledgments Introduction The human body and musical instruments Conceptual dimension of metaphoric construction Force and agency “Body and force” and “body versus force” The discursive space and disciplinary identity of music psychology Metaphors as shorthand for music psychology Roadmap Historicizing music psychology 1 The musicking body-machine Music, machine, and the body The emergence of the “human motor” model Rhythm: “an inevitable corollary from the persistence of forces” Psychological studies in the era of rhythm Musical rhythm and labor Rhythm in the “body culture” The “irrational,” continuous rhythm Rhythm and the piano-playing body Concluding remarks 2 “A force of nature”: tracing voice Animal, machine, and voice Speech theory of music Voice, the body machine, and the issue of agency Voice as both object and subject Voice of the “primitive” soul Recorded voice “Dragging movement” “How the voice looks” Concluding remarks 3 Motion, force, and “rhythm form” The “‘co-working of motion’ with one’s own will” Piano theories Motion in piano playing Force and the will The will, physiology, and piano-playing Force and postures Action–perception coupling at the turn of the twentieth century “Rhythmic massing” Concluding remarks 4 Minding gaps and musical energy The ball analogy The human motor capable of locomotion Capturing the musicking body Music as streams of energy Gliding between tones The agency of motion Revisiting the ball analogy Music as motion across disciplines and times Concluding remarks 5 Musical force acting at a distance Force acting at a distance In the words of amateur pianists and psychologists Force affecting the audience The metaphor of vibratory waves in psychology Force at a distance and the power of sound “Brain waves” in communication Inhibition and waves in music psychology The vibratory energy of music “Sympathetic oscillation” Concluding remarks Epilogue Bibliography Index