Autour du shaman ou du montreur de marionnettes des liens se tissent pour faire face au désordre grâce à une parole en mouvement. A une représentation humaine ou animale, à un objet animé rituel ils insuflent une vie crédible car simulée et porteuse de l'énergie paradoxale des morts-vivants. La Chine porte la marque profonde de la culture des shamans : on amène un esprit dans la figure pour "jouer les dieux". Voyage initiatique en Thaïlande, Malaisie, Indonésie où l'on confortera cette idée. Mythes et rites se réduisent à des règles formelles... ou retrouvent vie et prise sur l'actualité. Le personnage de bois ou de terre apparaît, dans les mythes africains, comme un secret rapporté du monde des morts ou des esprits. Chez les Papous, en Afrique, en Europe, l'épouvantail, le mannequin, l'effigie permettent de contourner, symboliquement, la reproduction sexuée. Au Moyen Age, en Europe, le marmouset (marionnette, idole, fantôme, épouvantail) et son théâtre, se cachent derrière une chantefable, dans les fabliaux, aux origines de la farce et du castelet. Entre le shamanisme des origines grec et celui des Barbares se resitue l'apport de Platon dans sa définition de l'âme. Comment se définit le "je" chez les Papous, chez le poète Fernando Pessoa, dans le mythe moderne de Pinocchio, chez le marionnettiste qui vit "plusieurs vies" ? L'art dramatique du XIXe siècle se meurt, épuisé par l'ego des comédiens ou écrasés par le réalisme naïf des marionnettes et la Grande Guerre amène à découvrir la prothèse, la vie simulée, l'acteur mécanique, l'effigie. Entre l'absence de conscience du mannequin et la conscience infinie du dieu, dirait Kleist, on agit dans les règles du jeu

Developments in video games over the last few decades have opened up many new kinds of musical experiences that pose substantial challenges to traditional understandings of music and musical agency. Virtual spaces grant us opportunities and freedoms to interact with music in manners that might not be prudent, practical, or even possible in the physical world. Players and creators of games have considerable license to play with music – to push the boundaries of music’s signifying and sensational potential within far-reaching narrative, ludic, and social contexts. This dissertation investigates how modern technologies of digital gaming enable and motivate such transgressive modes of musical engagement. Video game players, composers, and designers frequently employ (or otherwise interact with) music, noise, and speech in ways that deliberately or inadvertently violate technical rules, social expectations, cultural conventions, aesthetic norms, and ethical codes. Just as creators of games are constantly surprising gamers with innovative concepts and progressive designs, so gamers often come up with forms of emergent play that creators themselves might not have anticipated or intended. Though gameplay isn’t always explicitly transgressive, I argue here that it can be productively conceptualized as an activity that is largely bound up in potentialities for transgression. Play isn’t simply about make-believe, but additionally about re-making belief – about redrawing the limits of the imagination through accomplishments of acts previously unimaginable (or believed to have been outright impossible). The particular liberties that can be taken with (and in) games may ultimately teach us some profound things about what (we think) music is (and isn’t), how it works, what it’s good for, and why and to whom these questions should matter in broader social, cultural, and intellectual contexts. / Music

This dissertation presents an instrumentalist’s perspective on cognition and meta-cognition in music performance. The goal of the study is to identify and apply methods of inquiry that are phenomenologically resonant with instrumental practice. The first chapter, situating the study in the context of the writer’s musical training, examines ways of studying and representing performance knowledge. The second chapter presents a case study of the preparation of Tōru Takemitsu’s Masque for Two Flutes (1959-1960). Using grounded theory methodology, this chapter investigates the role of gesture in the negotiation of musical understanding. Chapters 3 through 5 draw on Herbert H. Clark’s joint activity theory of language use to conceptualize music-making, taking into account context, process, and other domains of musical activity. Finally, Chapter 6, in addition to re-defining "virtuosity" for the 21st century instrumentalist, presents a set of philosophical considerations for cognitive studies in music performance.

Nikolaïs a prolongé la pensée de Laban et l'a enrichie en l'expérimentant sur les corps-mêmes des danseurs de sa compagnie. son approche s'est développée dans un va-et-vient constant entre les 'principles' et l'expérience sensible du corps dansant. les éléments de langage chorégraphique (qualités de 'motion', 'shape'...) et les outils pédagogiques de nikolaïs (décentrement, 'gestalt' ou totalité reconnaissable, triade technique-improvisation-composition...) se sont élaborés sans être soumis à un savoir théorique extérieur. Cet enseignement consiste à munir le corps et l'esprit d'un savoir et d'une conscience immédiate des facteurs entrant en jeu dans le mouvement dansé. L'étude tendra à affirmer que là où il y a pédagogie, il y a théorie. la 'theory' est chez Nikolaïs un moment d'investigation à travers l'improvisation où concept, chorégraphie et performances sont instantanés. l'improvisation, un des éléments-clés de la modernité en danse, semble donc représenter le processus privilégié où pratique et théorie se confondent ou se vérifient l'une l'autre. Par ailleurs, sera aussi questionnée la prétendue "universalité" des outils et éléments de syntaxe de Nikolaïs, par l'analyse du contexte particulier des années 1950 (historique, socio-politique, artistique et technologique) et l'idéologie très liée à la personnalité de son créateur et à l'engouement qu'il a suscité. On se propose donc de déconstruire le modèle en empruntant une troisième voie au-delà de l'héritage fidèlement entretenu ou rejeté pour tenter, en contrant la présence diffuse de cet enseignement en France, une réhabilitation et une analyse qui questionneront la pertinence et les enjeux de cette pensée aujourd'hui.

In the following thesis I investigate aspects of soundscape research and study practices through the gaze of certain methodologies presented in Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis. I argue that elements of the practice Lefebvre has coined “rhythmanalysis” may function as useful tools in the study of sound environments. My research attempts to demonstrate that aspects of rhythmanalysis parallel and complement the important soundscape research that R. Murray Schafer and Hildegard Westerkamp have conducted over the past four decades. The thesis brings Lefebvre’s theories of capitalist modes of production into dialogue with Schafer and Westerkamp’s soundscape explorations. I consider how the rhythmanalytical method corresponds to and diverges from soundscape analysis. The thesis draws on both Schafer and Lefebvre to analyze a soundscape environment that I have personally experienced and inhabited. Lastly, I demonstrate the value in considering rhythmanalysis and Westerkamp’s interpretation of soundwalks as a connected discipline.

During the nineteenth century middle and upper-class women in Nashville and the surrounding region occupied a clearly defined place within society, and their social and academic education was designed to prepare them for that place. Even as female education gradually became more progressive in the later nineteenth-century, its scope was still limited by gender roles and expectations. Parents wanted their daughters to learn proper social graces, and “ornamental” studies such as music, needlework, and painting were a large part of their education. As the nineteenth gave way to the early twentieth-century, the focus of women’s education began to shift, with more scholarly subjects added to the list of studies and more career choices open to women. Women became empowered in new ways through the women’s suffrage movement and sought to use their new freedom to pursue higher education and academic careers. Female education mirrored the changing status of women in general, and music, in particular, provides a unique perspective on the changing role of women in American society during this time. This study focuses on three schools in Nashville, Tennessee, a city which provides an excellent example of the formation and development of women’s education in female academies and seminaries, as well as being a cultural center of the South. The music programs at the Nashville Female Academy, Ward’s Seminary for Young Ladies, and the Ward-Belmont School for Girls are studied in order to demonstrate how the level of instruction changed over time, mirroring similar changes in society as a whole. Recital programs, instruction books, and biographies of faculty members all help to develop a picture of the music education students received. As changes in repertoire, faculty, and coursework from the mid-nineteenth-century into the twentieth century are discovered, connections emerge between female music education in Nashville and the status of women across America.

English-language texts associated with fiddle and banjo in the southern United States are described and then indexed for comparative reference. The fiddle songs are typically humorous, very brief, highly variable and disunified. The same is true of many banjo songs associated with the banjo. Ballads in the fiddle and the banjo repertory are not indexed if previously catalogued by Child or Laws. Fiddle and banjo songs are defined as texts associated with fiddle or banjo playing, either through instrumental accompaniment or because informants mentally associate them with the fiddle or banjo. Various ways of performing the songs are enumerated, with particular attention to instrumental accompaniment and the square-dance context. The texts are often improvised, and they tend to be formulaic. The nature of formula is discussed, with analysis of certain formulaic structures in fiddle and banjo verses. The disunity and variability of most fiddle and banjo songs has made them difficult to compare. They are therefore indexed, not as integral texts, but as stanzas which are taken as self-contained entities. The Index of Stanzas is compiled from printed collections and from fieldwork in West Virginia. Stanzas are arranged according to subject matter, with cross references and an open-ended numbering system to allow for expansion. Anglo-American and Afro-American texts are indexed together, and some useful information pertaining to the provenience and the context of each stanza is included.

The Saṅgītanārāyaṇa, attributed to the Gajapati king Nārāyad nadeva of Parlākhimidi but almost certainly composed by his guru Kaviratna Purud sottamamisra, is the most extensive surviving Sanskrit treatise on music to have been composed in the eastern region of India now known as Orissa. The treatise contains four chapters, gītanirnaya (on vocal music), vādyanirṇaya (on instruments), nāṭyanirṇaya (on dance and the mimetic art), and śuddhaprabandhodāharaṇa (sample compositions of the śuddha and sālaga varieties). The thesis contains a critical edition of the first, second and fourth of these chapters with an English translation, commentary and introduction. Though the whole text was issued in a printed edition by the Orissa Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1966, the new edition offers substantial revisions and corrections to the published version. Eleven manuscripts have been examined; these are in Nagari, Bengali and Oriya scripts and are held in collections in Orissa, in other South Asian libraries, and in two British libraries. All of the manuscript evidence has been presented in a critical apparatus and in a section of supplementary textual notes. The commentary examines the technical contents of the work in detail and places the treatise within its Eastern Indian context. Special attention is drawn to certain subjects, for instance the account of compositional forms and metres, which represent a regional tradition, but all topics are placed also against the background of Sanskrit musicological traditions from other parts of India; some topics in the traditional sastra are thereby re-examined. In the introduction, the historical setting of the work is assessed, and the manuscript evidence is summarised. The proposed stemma codicum shows two groups of manuscripts, one from Orissa and one based in North India; manuscripts discovered in the future are expected to fit into one of these two.

This dissertation presents an instrumentalist’s perspective on cognition and meta-cognition in music performance. The goal of the study is to identify and apply methods of inquiry that are phenomenologically resonant with instrumental practice. The first chapter, situating the study in the context of the writer’s musical training, examines ways of studying and representing performance knowledge. The second chapter presents a case study of the preparation of Tōru Takemitsu’s Masque for Two Flutes (1959-1960). Using grounded theory methodology, this chapter investigates the role of gesture in the negotiation of musical understanding. Chapters 3 through 5 draw on Herbert H. Clark’s joint activity theory of language use to conceptualize music-making, taking into account context, process, and other domains of musical activity. Finally, Chapter 6, in addition to re-defining "virtuosity" for the 21st century instrumentalist, presents a set of philosophical considerations for cognitive studies in music performance.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A. Adviser: Katherine Syer. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 240-255) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.