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Gouk, P. (2004). Raising spirits and restoring souls: Early modern medical explanations for music's effect. In V. Erlmann (Ed.), Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound Listening and Modernity (pp. 87–105). Oxford: Berg.   
Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 15/05/2008, 10:18
"There are many reasons why sound has been left out of mainstream European cultural history -- not least the assumption that a shift to a predominantly visualist culture took place between the Renaissance and Enlightenment."
Nuckolls, J. B. (2004). Language and nature in sound alignment. In V. Erlmann (Ed.), Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound Listening and Modernity (pp. 65–85). Oxford: Berg.   
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 20/12/2007, 16:59
Ideophones constitute an expressive and affective sound alignment with the natural world. Common to many cultures, onomatopoeia is one form of ideophone.
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.   
Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 22/11/2023, 17:15
"performance does not exist in order to present musical works, but rather, musical works exist in order to give performers something to perform."
Music, through western academia and music criticism, has become equated with the western tradition, 'classical' music, which, through this equation, becomes privileged, and all other musics (including western popular musics) are relegated to the field of ethnomusicology. As Small points out (writing in 1998), even in the West, classical music sales of records account for only 3%.
The performance of a work of music:
  1. is merely a presentation, performers play "no part in the creative process" and merely provide "an imperfect and approximate representation of the work itself" and thus "music's inner meanings can never be yielded up in performance. They can be discovered only by those who can read and study the score" (5)
  2. has only one line of communication "from composer to individual listener through the medium of the performer" and so the "listener's task is simply to contemplate the work" (6), meaning is "the composer's business" (6) and cannot be added to by the listener.
  3. "suggests also that music is an individual matter, that composing, performing and listening take part in a social vacuum" (6). Small maintains that communication also flows from listeners to performer(s) and between listeners.
In traditional musicology, "each musical work is autonomous," it has qualities that are inherent and without reference to "any occasion, any ritual, or any particular set of religious, political, or social beliefs."
Definition of musicking: "To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing."

This is a concept that is "descriptive, not prescriptive."

Small claims that the questions "What is the meaning of music and What is the function of music in human life? are the wrong questions to ask, for "[t]here is no such thing as music. Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do."
Citing Dalhaus (1983, 4), the "concept of 'work' and not 'event' is the cornerstone of music history."

Small elaborates: "[M]usicologists . . . ascertain the real nature and contours of musical works by recourse to original texts . . . theorists . . . discover the way in which the works are constructed as objects in themselves . . . aetheticians . . . deal with the meaning of sound objects and the reasons for their effect on a listener. All are concerned with things, with musical works."

Dalhaus, C. 1983. Foundations of Music History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Music conceived as an object, a thing, came about through "the trap of reification." An abstraction, through language use, of the action of music.
Studying the meaning or nature of a work of music is a pointless task where there is (as often is the case in many cultures) no concrete musical work to study (10). Indeed, many musical cultures do not have a thing such as a musical work (11).
"music's primary meanings are not individual at all but social. . . . The fundamental nature and meaning of music lie not in musical works at all, but in action, in what people do."
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