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Musical utterance as a way of knowing : a contemporary epistemology of music

This thesis takes its start from the identification of a gap in knowledge between the act of musical utterance and its significance for human being. Based on the proposition that music education could benefit from what it most appears to lack, a deep epistemology, the study first examines the knowledge gap as an epistemological omission in music curriculum and discourse, and then argues the case for retrieval of a logos epistemology to rectify the omission. The recovery of the meaning of the musical act, it is argued, is an ethical, biographical initiative taken up by the individual who senses the need to strive towards freedom of moral decision. Recovery consists in developing an epistemology specific to human utterance, namely, a logos epistemology. Since the logos is an original form-bestowing power whose sanctuary is the human being, it seeks and finds expression in uttered forms, and it is through fully conscious observation of one's own contribution to the emergence of these forms that one can find oneself as knower. It is significant that it is characteristic of the logos in the current era, however, that it is hidden from the (dual) perspective which humanity has taken up in its cognitive evolution. The condition of its recovery, then, is that it must be 'unconcealed' for it is obscured by its own forms, and consequently, by aesthetic and linguistic theory derived, not from efforts made towards enhanced musical experience, but inferred from the sense-perceptible elements of experience. It is argued that it is educationally responsible to cultivate the individual's latent epistemic resources, namely, self-observed, consciously directed intentionally, so that the meaning of the original experience of musical phenomena, tone and interval, can be raised to awareness, and musical culture renewed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/181958
Date January 2000
CreatorsBignell, B, University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, Faculty of Social Inquiry, School of Social Ecology
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
SourceTHESIS_FSI_SEL_Bignell_B.xml

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