MUSICAL GESTURE: FROM BODY AND MIND TO SOUND PDF

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MUSICAL GESTURE: FROM BODY AND MIND TO SOUND Nataša Crnjanski Abstract: According to the theory of embodied cognition, gestures are at the very heart of human cognitive processes. The idea of embodied cognition is based on cognitive schemata and categories that emerge from the amassed experience of ...

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MUSICAL GESTURE: FROM BODY AND MIND TO SOUND Natasa Crnjanski MUSICA movet : affectus, ludus, corpus

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MUSICAL GESTURE: FROM BODY AND MIND TO SOUND Nataša Crnjanski Abstract: According to the theory of embodied cognition, gestures are at the very heart of human cognitive processes. The idea of embodied cognition is based on cognitive schemata and categories that emerge from the amassed experience of being and acting in the world. In human cognitive processes, many features of cognition are shaped by aspects of the entire body of the organism, so the physical domain serves as a source domain for understanding an idea or conceptual domain, using the tools of metaphor. As a basic element of the physical domain, the phenomenon of gesture has garnered particular attention and it has been recently studied in various fields such as phenomenology, EMT (Extended Mind Thesis), psychology, neurophenomenology, neo-cognitivism, robotics, critical theory, linguistics, neuroscience, constructivism, but also in music theory. In music, gestures encompass a large territory – from purely physical (bodily) on one side of the axis to mental (imagined) on the other. From a student's adopting of a teacher's posture, even facial expressions, to the syndrome of “watching” music, as in conductors’ and players’ gestures, both practical (sound producing) and expressive (auxiliary), to metaphorical concepts of up and down in intervals, scales, or as recognizable idioms of a composer's language (strategic) or style (stylistic), the phenomenon of gesture in music can be explored and perceived from many different viewpoints. In this paper, the issue of the inseparability of body and sound in musical practice will be explored, especially how these two basic types of gesture in music can intertwine and help deepen its performance. For this purpose, Alexandra Pierce's embodied analytical exercises will be used, those which enable the performer to explore gesturally the expressive meaning of a musical piece. It will be demonstrated that musical gesture supports performance-oriented analysis more than we think, know, or imagine. Key words: gesture, metaphor, perception, Alexandra Pierce, embodiment, performance.

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INTRODUCTION According to the theory of embodied cognition, gestures are at the very heart

of human cognitive processes. The idea of embodied cognition is based on cognitive

schemata and categories that emerge from the amassed experience of being and acting in the world. In human cognitive processes, many features of cognition are shaped by aspects of the entire body of the organism, so the physical domain serves as a source domain for understanding an idea or conceptual domain, using the tools of metaphor. As a basic element of physical domain, the phenomenon of gesture has garnered particular attention and it has been recently studied in various fields such as phenomenology, EMT (Extended Mind Thesis), psychology, neuro-phenomenology, neo-cognitivism, robotics, critical theory, linguistics, neuroscience, constructivism, information theory, cybernetics, behavioralism, modern anthropology, sociology, philosophy, social interaction, music theory, and, finally, as an important element of cognitive ability (cognitive linguistics). Psychologist Roger Shepard, explaining the evolution of the human mind, stated that our minds coevolved with the physical world, changing in response to ever-changing conditions (cited in Levitin 2006: 8). The term embodiment can be defined as “the integration of the physical or biological body and the phenomenal and experiential body” (Bressler 2004: 7). This concept was especially studied in cognitive linguistics with the presumption that understanding human cognition requires more careful study of body experience, especially in the field of metaphor, which would later turn out to be crucial in creating the theory of musical gesture as well. For this reason, this paper will first address scientific achievements in cognitive linguistics that have contributed to a clearer understanding of the notion of gesture in music, and then focus on the reasoning behind why mapping the physical and musical domains improves our understanding of music. Thereafter, the definition of musical gesture will be reexamined, and finally, some theory in practice will be applied. Understanding of cognitive processes begins with the concept of metaphor. Metaphor is usually viewed as a feature of language, as a means of poetic imagination and rhetorical figuration. Although most people understand the concept of metaphor, they would be surprised to know that they often use metaphor unconsciously in everyday life and thinking. This means that metaphor is not only possible beyond language, but that our entire conceptual system is metaphorical - the way we think,

perceive, and work involves the metaphor. The most significant observation that Lakoff and Johnson pointed out is that metaphor is not limited to language, and that there is a distinction between conceptual and linguistic metaphor, where the first is a process in which an abstract and unknown domain is explained by the terms of the more concrete domain. That is, the source domain is mapped to the target, while the linguistic metaphor is a reflection of such cognitive mapping within the language itself. After a major breakthrough in metaphor research in the early 1980's, and the expansion of gesture studies that began in the 90s, metaphor and gesture interactions have gone on to become an important scientific topic ever since. As a material carrier (signifier, signifiant) of a certain idea and human's thought, gesture is a proof element of the concept of embodied cognition.1 “Gesture provides evidence for the embodied basis of thought. Gesture can provide an important locus for cognitive linguistic research on metaphor because it physically manifests the tenet that (many) metaphors are grounded in embodied action” (Cienki 2008: 16). In their study Metaphors We Live By (2003), Lakoff and Johnson gave a series of explanations of how our mental life is guided by metaphors, and so is the structure of our languages, which function as metaphorical representations of our bodies and their interactions with the environment. One of the basic principles is that a metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon is created by cross-domain mapping. As explained earlier, it appears as a need to understand a more abstract domain (target) by using some that are closer and more specific (source). This principle is fundamental to establishing the theory of musical gesture, since the entire concept is based on the idea of mapping the physical domain onto the field of music. However, there is one crucial condition which explains why it is exactly these two domains that are suitable for mapping – because the source and target domain share structural similarities, in this case the feature of processuality, since music takes place through In his article “The Neuroscience of Metaphoric Gestures: Why They Exist” (2008), Lakoff argues that metaphorical gestures are proof of the theory of a conceptual metaphor, which functions in non-verbal communication, but not in the spoken language. The unique role of the interpreter in the process of creating meaning as well cannot be neglected, since for certain gestures to be considered as signs and something meaningful, it primarily depends on the cognitive abilities of the one who interprets signs. The embodied meaning implies different types of characters in the mind, and sign functioning, depending on who is the interpreter and how they interpret it. Cf. Wahman (2008).

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time; we hear its components as musical gestures analogous to physical gestures. In other words, the metaphor Music is Movement is not artificial, but most natural – the movement is not imposed on music, but it represents its structural feature that music shares with the body. Since music is an abstract field that we understand and conceptualize through the mapping of fields from our physical, psychological, and cultural experience, consequently our musical vocabulary is strongly metaphoric. Nicholas Cook wittily quipped: “just try to talk about music without falling into metaphor” (Cook 1998: 69). If we take the most used metaphor, Music is Language, by which we perceive music as a linguistic flow, what follows is a whole series of terms such as sentence, phrase, syntax, theme... by which we make determination of musical features. “The similarity of music and language rests on the deep similarity of mental processes on which both these creations of the human spirit are based” (Zatkalik 2005: 9). Since it is not the only metaphor used in music, we easily find overlapping metaphors, among which there must be correspondence, i.e., crossmetaphorical coherence. The result is a rich meta-language, open to the coexistence of different languages that, through mapping, support different elements of musical flow. Where words disappear for one term, there are a handful of others ready to be used.2 However, it can be reliably argued that music (like some other domains), shares the greatest structural characteristics with the physical domain as “elementary field of experience;” it is structured inside of our experience as Gestalt. Johnson explained Gestalt structure as an “organized, unified whole within our experience and understanding that manifests a repeatable pattern or structure...experimental Gestalts have internal structure that connects up aspects of our experience and leads to inferences in our conceptual system” (Johnson 1987: 44). Gestalt perception is a primitive and inherent cognitive ability, which was originally explored in imagination by Köhler and Wertheimer, the founders of experimental psychology. Gestalt theory clearly asserts what allows music to be perceived as language or body: it corresponds

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There is always a usable and unusable part of the source domain that regulate the usage of only certain terms from one area (language) to correspondent concepts in a metaphorically defined field (music). Therefore, one must avoid the paradox that could arise if applying the unusable part of the source domain in the same metaphor.

to their elements. The following example illustrates graphically the principles of Gestalt theory, which are proximity, good continuation, and similarity.

Figure 1: Illustration of Gestalt principles. “(A) Proximity. We tend to group nearer elements together rather than spacing them apart; therefore, we tend to perceive this diagram as four sets of three lines each rather than a set of 12 lines. B) Good continuation. We tend to perceive that the set of dots starting from point A goes to point B rather than going to point C or D. C) Similarity. We tend to perceive the above as rows of similar elements – namely, rows of squares or circles – rather than perceive columns combining both squares and circles.”3

Another important element that allows metaphorical mapping of the physical and musical domains is categorization. Categorization is a process of identifying a type of object or experience by emphasizing certain characteristics, while at the same time excluding others. Categorization is a necessary element of cross-domain mapping, because the understanding of a certain phenomenon always includes categories, with some items being “better” exemplars than others. One of the main reasons why Lakoff and Johnson focused so strongly on metaphor is because it unites reason4 and imagination. While this may seem at first quite paradoxical, imagination 3

This example and explanation of principles are taken from Dowling (1994: 174) “Reason [...] involves categorization, entailment, and inference. Imagination, in one of its many aspects, involves seeing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing – what we

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is very important for reasoning, for creating new metaphors, for cognitive systems, and for human knowledge in general.5 What gives coherence and structure to our experience are also image schemata6 or dynamic images of our perceptual interaction and motor programs. Johnson illustrates the tendency of using spatial orientation, for example up-down from a verticality scheme whose structure we understand through thousands of activities during the day (the feeling of standing up, climbing stairs...). In music too, this scheme of verticality is prevalent. Zbikowski (1998) says that the conventional describing of pitches as “high” and “low” is enabled by the conceptual metaphor pitch relations are relations in vertical space.7 But this mapping of spatial orientation of up-down on the pitch continuum is possible according to invariance principle, i.e., there is a correspondence in the cognitive structure of image schemata in the spatial and acoustical domains. The most complete cross-domain mapping is thus that which contains the greatest degree of linking structures in the image schemata of the source and target domains. Furthermore, verticality does not only describe pitches, but is related to musical line as well: at the peak of a melody is typically the moment of greatest tension, while when it reaches the lowest pitch, a feeling of resolution and ending emerges. Here is a correlation with physical height, like climbing, when the energy of the body increases (because of the potential danger and gathering energy), while upon descending comes a decrease in tension.8 The next section will reconsider some of the important features of musical gesture, arguing that called metaphorical thought. Metaphor is thus imaginative rationality” (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 193). 5 Mark Johnson even considers imagination a prerequisite for all human knowledge: “Without imagination, nothing in the world could be meaningful… Without imagination, we could never make sense of our experience. Without imagination, we could never reason toward knowledge of reality” (Johnson 1987: ix). 6 This term originated from Kant. Lidov considers the use of schemata in music theory: “A major claim of this theory is that schemata constitute and intermodal level of cognitive representations, intermodal in the sense that they interpret kinaesthethic, linguistic, visual and surely [...] aural actions and experience” (Lidov 2006: 38). 7 Zbikowski is asking how D4 can be above C4 on the piano, when both pitches are at the same horizontal line? Or what about playing a higher pitch on the cello which requests the down movement of the hand (finger)? 8 Image schematas were deeply investigated by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier, especially as primary schemes of conceptual blending; that is, the basic cognitive operation of making new meaning from an old one; it is dynamic, elastic, and active and it is more and more used in mathematics, geometry, syntax, text analysis, and lexical semantics. For further reading: Turner & Fauconnier (1995, 1999, 2002).

without an embodied approach, not only would the musical experience be chaotic and incomprehensible, but also the whole human experience.

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MUSICAL GESTURE RECONSIDERED

The connection between music and language hails back to the earliest writings on music. Comparisons between music and language were usually made on three fundamental components: phonetics, syntax, and semantics. And as has already been described, contemporary research in psycholinguistics has introduced the cognitive level in the perception of music (Clarke, 1989; Lerdahl and Jackendoff, 1983; Aiello, Sloboda, 1985). It should not be surprising that the first semioticians of music were actually linguists, such as Nicolas Ruwet, influenced by the father of semiology, Saussure, and others who related music to language more profoundly. But, musical semiotics has come a long way since the taxonomic analysis of Nattiez and Ruwet. Currently, musical semiotics is viewed as a multidisciplinary scientific field, which often gives the impression of the existence of many micro-semiotics. This tendency, that nowadays so many scholars write about Otherness in music, on musical meaning construction, is due to a phenomenon which could be termed sign emancipation. The dramatic consequences of this were forewarned by one of the most prominent semioticians of music – Eero Tarasti; that semiotics would strive toward the status of a universal method which “one can use [...] to ‘prove’ almost any thesis whatsoever” (1997: 17). Since the 1990s, under the influence of achievements in cognitive linguistics, information theory, general semiotics, and the theory of literature, the theory of musical gesture has been developing. Musical gestures are discussed using terms and conditions of conceptual metaphor theory and cognitive science, which define musical gesture as a cognitive phenomenon, implying that as a musical thought, gestures are grounded in embodied experience. The theory of musical gesture has been most thoroughly developed by Robert Hatten and David Lidov, among many

others.9 Hatten's definition of gesture is strongly influenced by Gestalt theory; he sees gestures as emergent Gestalts that convey affective motion, emotion, and intentionality by fusing otherwise separate elements into continuities of shape and force. Further, his general definition of gestures is: “communicative (whether intended or not), expressive, energetic shaping through time (including characteristic features of musicality such as beat, rhythm, timing of exchanges, contour, intensity), regardless of medium (channel) or sensory-motor source (intermodal or crossmodal)” (Hatten 2004: 109). For him then, gesture is “any energetic shaping through time that may be interpreted as significant” (Hatten 2006: 1). But, for Hatten, gestures are not just translations into music; they are more than just energetic shaping through time. They draw on sensorimotor mappings, i.e., the basic shapes of gestures could be mapped onto any sensory and motor system: “interactivity of representation, via mapping of analogous energetic shaping through time across the visual, aural, tactile and motor realms, is termed intermodality” (Hatten 2006: 2).10 In Hatten's opinion, there are gravitational fields in music just like in physical space and the forces of the body; that is, tonal and metric forces constitute a virtual environment for musical gestures. His research on musical gestures is thus strongly connected to tonal music and style, so stylistic types of gestures – as a symbolic level of motivation – are at the peak of typology. Stylistic gestures embrace all of the other gestural types as strategic adaptations: spontaneous, thematic, dialogical, rhetorical, and troping (as creative juxtapositions and implied figurative interactions of two gestures). Some of these types have been discussed in literature more than others. For example, the rhetorical gesture “under fermata” is often criticized for being a type of gesture that represents the negation of movement itself. Lidov argued that the term “gesture” here is incorrect “because a posture is an equilibrium, or nearly so, whereas no moment of gesture, except the final instant might be said to be so” (Lidov 2006: 32). Another debate could be regarding spontaneous gestures. Hatten defines these gestures as original, but as thematically marked at the same time (some sort of overlapping gestures). As There are elements of this theory – musical gesture, topics, markedness, correlation, tropes, interpretant, and music personae – whose understanding is relevant to understanding the theory as a whole. Many other authors have written on musical gestures: Lawrence Zbikowski, Ole Kühl, Kenneth F. Cardillo, Na...