Zoekresultaten

De kerk van de toekomst

Het zingen van liederen maakt ons menselijk, net als het vermogen om op muziek te dansen en het begrijpen van muzieksyntax. Iedereen is muzikaal d.w.z. iedereen kan meezingen, melodieën herkennen, en op muziek. Zingen leer je alleen door het te doen. Dat heeft te maken met de integratie van perceptie en motoriek in het brein. De consumptiecultuur heeft tot gevolg dat wij meer luisteren en minder zingen. Wij moeten ons evenveel zorgen maken om het teloorgaan van het zingen als om de klimaatsverandering. Hoewel de minister geld beschikbaar stelt om het muziekonderwijs te verbeteren, zal alleen het formele leren daarmee geholpen zijn. Het informeel leren is belangrijker. De kerk is bij uitstek de plaats om te leren zingen. Het gebruik van beamers en het bekijken van YouTube opnames in de kerk zal het zingen niet bevorderen.

Singing Like a Sailor

Short description of book, directed to academic community

Een destination marketingcampagne en een vulkaan: het succes van Inspired by Iceland

The cerebral organization of audiomotor transformations in music

The realization of one’s musical ideas at the keyboard is dependent on the ability to transform sound into movement, a process called audiomotor transformation. Using fMRI, we investigated cerebral activations while classically-trained improvising and non-improvising musicians imagined playing along with recordings of familiar and unfamiliar music excerpts. We hypothesized that audiomotor transformation would be associated with the recruitment of dedicated cerebral networks, facilitating aurally-cued performance. Results indicate that while all classically-trained musicians engage a left-hemisphere network involved in motor skill and action recognition, only improvising musicians additionally recruit a right dorsal frontoparietal network dedicated to spatially-driven motor control. Mobilization of this network, which plays a crucial role in the real-time transformation of imagined or perceived music into goal-directed action, may be held responsible not only for the stronger activation of auditory cortex we observed in improvising musicians in response to the aural perception of music, but also for the superior ability to play ‘by ear’ which they demonstrated in a follow-up study. The results of this study suggest that the practice of improvisation promotes the implicit acquisition of hierarchical music syntax which is then recruited in top-down manner via the dorsal stream during music performance. In a study of audiomotor transformation in Parkinson patients, we demonstrated a dissociation between dysprosody in speech and music. While patients’ speech could reliably be distinguished from that of healthy individuals, purely on the basis of aural perception, no difference was observed between patients and healthy controls in their ability to sing improvised melodies.

Musicking in Groningen

This study focuses on the uses and functions of music in the life of individuals in the province of Groningen at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The study is an ethnomusicological study representing the sub-discipline of ethnomusicology-at-home. It uses Andreas Reckwitz’ formulation of practice theory as a theoretical starting point and introduces methodological principles from the field of qualitative sociology. Central in the study is the individual. 30 theoretically sampled individuals recounted their musical biographies in narrative-biographical interviews, which were analyzed in detail and eventually led to a sufficiently suggested grounded theory of the uses and functions of music in Groningen AD 2010. The theory consists o three interrelated compartments. The first compartment contains a description o the uses o music a expressed b the interviewees. ‘Use’ refers t the ‘customary exercise o music’ i concrete musical social situations. The result o this study i of this study. The study describes how three cultural codes seem to be shared amongst many (though not all) of the interviewees: the codes of playing an instrument, craftsmanship, and musicality, together forming the supercode of the music specialist. These three more general codes are combined with two further codes to form the highly specific and culturally hegemonic musical subject culture of art music, expressing that music is a specialism; it is the craft of playing an instrument by talented individuals; that this craftsmanship must be combined with expressivity; and that through this form of specialized expression musical objects come into being which represent the ideal realm of the artistic. By discussing this attempt at a grounded theory of the uses and functions of music in Groningen AD 2010, a picture is delivered of how individuals become musical individuals. Through their musicking in the context of concrete musical social situations they use music for the functions of affirmation, connection and regulation of the self; and they do this in the context of a web of cultural codes labeling shared and disputed – and sometimes hegemonic – ways of doing and talking. An evaluation of the theory and methodology used in this study shows that both assist in further developing the field of ethnomusicology(-at-home); an evaluation of the results in the light of existing research shows that they contribute to further insights into the uses and functions of music. Four areas for further research are mentioned: typologizing the uses and functions of music, musical discourses, musical subject cultures, and the place of the musical subject order of art music in contemporary society. The study ends with a description of the possible implications for conservatoires. Conservatoires are recommended to encourage students to think of their future audiences in the broadest possible terms, taking into account the wide variety of uses and functions of music figuring in the daily lives of musicking individuals. They are encouraged to make students look upon themselves (also) as service providers, and as such to be open and non-judgmental in their relationships towards the musical other. Conservatoires are recommended to translate this into their curricula by devising transformative projects in which students meet ‘musical others’, and by encouraging their students to take their possible audiences into account consciously in any musical social situation they devise or find themselves in.

Ludiek uit de Branding (Lezing)

Een lezing gehouden op de opleiding Creatieve Therapie over het woord Ludiek. De vraag was indertijd (1984) of deze opleiding zich met benamingen als muzisch ludisch diende te gaan afficheren. De auteur was van mening dat dit niet zo voor de hand lag. Het is tevens een aardige studie naar de etymologie (eigenlijk meer de sociogenese) van ludiek. En passent komen we te weten wat de toenmalige opleidingsvereisen waren: "Heerkens meldt voor het ludisch (genoemde) vak muziek, dat de leerlingen 75 liedjes goed moesten kunnen zingen en deze zowel met behulp van zelf vervaardigde instrumenten kunnen begeleiden, alsook kunnen meespelen met grammofoonplaatjes die harmonisch op die liedjes aansloten (bedenk wel, dit waren eindexameneisen."