The purpose of this case study was to explore learner experiences of collective free musical improvisation. Specifically, the research examined how participants perceived that they developed and expressed musical voice when they improvised with others. To that end, the researcher tried out a Bakhtinian approach to the pedagogy of collective free improvisation in four workshops with six secondary school chamber musicians—musicians trained in Western classical music who had little or no previous collective free improvisation experience. Workshops were designed to support participants in learning by improvising with the researcher becoming one of the improvisers. Bakhtinian dialogism provided a lens through which to focus the investigation, and tools, tones, and concepts to inspire participants as they improvised together for the first time. In addition to the perception of expressing musical voice, the study explored how participants perceived that they invented utterances as they created music with others. Further, the research considered participant descriptions of the experience of addressivity—turning and responding to communicate—during collective free improvisation. Data were collected in the following ways: pre-workshop interviews, video and audio recording of the four improvisation workshops, journals and discussions during the workshops, post-workshop interviews, and researcher notes and reflections. In addition to spoken and written words, improvisations played during the workshops were analyzed as discourse using a method—Musical Utterance Analysis—developed by the researcher for this study. Data were initially coded using concepts from Bakhtin (1981, 1986): voice, utterance, addressivity, heteroglossia, polyphony, and carnival. Analysis was completed by reviewing and reassembling the words and actions of participants during the workshops and interviews to create a novella with dialogue. This final phase of analysis revealed a holistic perspective of musical dialogue in collective free improvisation that emphasizes the importance and impact of listening. In this study, musical dialogue is explained as synergies of listening. Participants perceptions and experiences of voice, utterance, and addressivity are explained as synergies: creative empowerment, knowing and being known, emergence of a collective voice, catharsis, and freedom. Notably, participants reported that by listening and responding to one other improviser, they could connect better with the group of improvisers. Overall, for the participants of the study, the implementation of and the experimentation with a Bakhtinian approach to the pedagogy of collective free improvisation was effective. / 2026-05-15T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48765 |
| Date | 15 May 2024 |
| Creators | Lanier, Mary Ann |
| Contributors | Smith, Tawnya D. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds