This thesis engages with complex issues of musical expression and movement, and their relation, on the one hand, to musical structure and, on the other hand, to embodied musical experience. It aims to fill a gap in music theory and analysis: most methods overemphasise abstract conceptualisation of structural relations at the expense of the more dynamic, intuitive aspect of musical experience. As a solution, it offers a specific analytical method that can be used to explore dynamic aspects of music as experienced through the whole body. Drawing mainly on nineteenth-century piano music, I analyse aspects of structure in both composition and performance in terms of expressive and motional qualities, revealing the relationship between musical and physical movement. Expressivity in music derives its meaning, at least partly, from the embodied experience of music: performers shape expression through their whole body while listeners react to it in a comparable way, albeit less overtly. Two related systems of graphic notation are introduced, which provide a non-verbal means of representing expressive movement and at the same time encourage an immediate, visceral relationship to the music. The first notation captures the animated quality of expressive movement by analogy with the motion of a bouncing ball, while the second breaks down the expressive musical flow into discrete gestural patterns of specific motional character. While the ultimate value of this method lies in the analytical process it instigates, it also provides a novel theoretical framework that sheds light on the interaction, as well as integration, between structures such as metre, rhythm, harmony and voice-leading, which are traditionally studied mostly independently. In addition, it provides a useful tool for the study and communication of performance interpretation, based on data extracted from recordings in the form of tempo and dynamic fluctuation graphs.

The dissertation entitled Art-educational contexts of music pedagogy in the innovation of primary education characterizes from the scientific point of view philosophy, psychology, music psychology, neurophysiology, pedagogy and music pedagogy the importance of music education for the development of human personality. It follows the stimuli of the new academic discipline of transdidactics and deducts it to the practical level of primary education, in the focus of which they are strong activating means of musical activity. Through authorial creation and the use of artistic inspirations, it aims at the synergy of musical activities with other aesthetic and educational disciplines, whose cooperation deepens emotional experience and develops a relationship with artistic and ethical values, leading to the discovery of beauty. Deepening experiences with artistic activities based on polyesthetics and integrativity enables quality communication of cognitive and emotional processes in the child's consciousness. They are deepening, which represents an irreplaceable influence on the improvement and development of the child's personal integration in a very important period of the beginning of schooling. Contemporary education can positively influence this process through transdidactics using polyesthetics and...