Reflecting on Music and Erotic Agency: Sonic Resources and Socio-sexual action (Body & Society 1997)

It is nice to be invited to reflect on this essay. Thank you to the editors for the invitation. I am especially pleased to be appearing in Transposition along with Annegret Fauser and the other authors. This was a piece I published the year I began the research for Music in Everyday Life (DeNora 2000). I was a much younger scholar (and woman), it was a particular “moment” circa 1995, and I was teaching a final year course on gendered bodies. I thought the Goffmanian perspective applied to sex..

How is extra-musical meaning possible. Music as a place and space for work

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . It is a pervasive idea in Western culture that music is in some way capable of symbolizing emotions, images or ideas. Equally pervasive however, within the fields of philosophy, musicology, social psychology and linguistics, is the view that, in spite of increasing attention devoted to the topic, attempts to explain empirically music's communicative ability have met with relatively little success. Thus, from the outset, the issue of musical meaning is characterized by paradox: at the level of the listening experience music seems infinitely and definitely expressive while, at the level of taxanomic analysis, the same music seems perpetually capable of eluding attempts to pin it to semantic corollaries. There is, in other words, a tension between the apparent validity (at the level of listening) and the apparent invalidity (at the level of empirical analysis) of music's symbolic capacity. This "gap," as John Rahn (1972 p. 255) has put it, "between structure and feeling," is not necessarily problematic for the study of musical meaning. It can, as I shall argue below, be seen instead as a resource, making the study of musical meaning all the richer. Yet the conventional ways in which the paradoxical aspect of musical meaning has been attended to, have consisted, for the most part, of attempts to collapse the issue into one or the other of two equally unsatisfactory extremes. On the one hand the formalist position describes music as essentially abstract and expressionless whereas on the other, the expressionist position likens music to language in that its compositional elements may be said to possess extra-musical referents of one kind or another. As the sociologist of music Ivo Supicic has argued: American Sociological Association The scientific flaw of all formalist and expressionist concepts lies in their readiness to generalize, to put forward one principle and aspect and exclude all others, or at least to play down the value of other principles and aspects (pp. 198-199). The major consequence then, of framing the study of musical meaning in terms of formalism an

Music and Erotic Agency – Sonic Resources and Social-Sexual Action

Comment l’être et le corps se nouent-ils dans une configuration culturelle ? Comment les produits culturels sont-ils mobilisés, et comment les textes, les images, les structures et les représentations sonores « entrent-elles en action » ? Ce sont là des questions fondamentales pour les études culturelles, la sociologie et la psychologie sociale. Pourtant elles n’ont guère été abordées de front jusqu’ici, et elles ne sauraient faire l’objet d’une « mise à l’épreuve empirique » à partir d’une théorisation de l’agentivité déjà complète. Cet article suggère que l’on peut développer une bonne théorie de l’agentivité en observant des milieux sociaux et des matériaux culturels particuliers. Dans ce but, après quelques considérations théoriques sur les liens entre culture, nature et agentivité sociale, je pars de la question érotique pour développer un propos plus général sur la relation entre les moyens expressifs et l’agentivité sociale. Plus spécifiquement, je me penche sur la question de comment l’agentivité érotique peut être « composée musicalement », c’est-à-dire comment l’agentivité peut se déployer par des moyens musicaux.How does the cultural configuration of being and body happen? Just how are cultural products mobilized and how do texts, images, sonic structures and representations inform and thereby “get into” action? These are key questions for cultural studies, sociology and social psychology. They have so far not been addressed head on, and they by no means entail a mere “empirical implementation” of an otherwise already complete theorization of agency. In this article, I suggest that a good theory of agency can be developed through specific considerations of particular social realms, and with reference always to particular cultural materials. To this end, after some initial theoretical clarification of the links between culture, nature and social agency, I focus on the erotic, in order to pursue a more general concern with the interrelationship of expressive media and social agency. More specifically, I consider the question of how erotic agency maybe “musically composed”, by which I mean how agency may take shape with reference to musical media

HEALTH AND MUSIC IN EVERYDAY LIFE – a theory of practice

Denne artikel er baseret på især to undersøgelser foretaget af medlemmer af Kunst-sociologi-gruppen ved Exeter University (UK). Undersøgelsernes fokus er almindelige menneskers anvendelse af musik (‘lay-musicking’) [Begrebet ‘musicering’ (musicking) refererer til C. Small m.fl.s tolkning af ‘musik’ som en interpersonlig aktivitet mere end et objekt]. Data fra undersøgelserne bruges som afsæt for udvikling af en teori om musikkens psyko-kulturelle rolle og funktioner som et kommunikations- og regulerings-medie, og som et redskab til at skabe mening i dagliglivets specifikke, tidslige kontekster. Der trækkes forbindelser mellem de processer, der kan observeres i ‘læg-musicering’, og musikterapeutisk teori og praksis, og dette sker på en måde, der understreger, hvad musiksociologien kan lære af musikterapien og af lægfolks musicering inden for sundhedsområdet

Music and talk in tandem. The production of micro-narratives in real time

In this text I explore the interrelationship between musical encounters and the selfperception, and self-report, of health-status and self-identity.1 I describe how music can be seen to interact and offer a basis for the type of action with which sociologists are most familiar—verbal action as a means of narrating, telling and consolidating social realities. For this task, I present two ‘worked examples’, the first illustrating how musical activity can prime, cue, or trigger forms of self-report, the second illustrating how wellness identities and wellness orientations can be built from the ways in which musical activity and self-reporting about that activity (for example in the form of narratives) make mutual reference. Overall, my aim will be to consider how music offers resources for making a change in wellness situations. As I will describe in the conclusion, the topic of musically-linked micro-narrative connects with a growing body of theoretical work devoted to the question of where and how music can ‘help’ as a medium of relational health (DeNora, 2007; Aasgaard, 2001; Ruud, 2010; Stige, Ansdell, Elefant & Pavlicevic, 2010; Ansdell & DeNora, 2012). In particular, the focus on micro-narratives and music can tell us about practical consciousness and its formation

Beethoven et l'invention du génie

Beethoven und die Erfindung des Genies In unzähligen Schriften ist Beethoven als das Genie der europäischen Kultur und als Revolutionär der Musik dargestellt worden. Diese Art von Portrait läßt außer Betracht, daß sein Erfolg und sein Ruf des Genies unter seinen Zeitgenossen darüber hinaus als soziale, kulturelle und technische Konstruktion begriffen werden können. Der Artikel untersucht den sozialen Hintergrund der Beethovenschen Laufbahn während seiner ersten fiinfzehn Jahre in Wien. Insofern ist Beethovens Erfolg ebensowohl durch Veränderungen der sozialen Organisation und des kulturellen Klimas des musikalischen Gönnertums, durch die Unterstützung im Umkreis seiner aristokratischen Mäzene und durch eigene Bemühungen um eine Neubestimmung der Beziehung Musiker/ Mäzene um die Jahrhundertwende möglich geworden. Dieses Klima erhöhter Aufnahmebereitschaft gegenüber dem Beethovenschen Werk wird umgekehrt fur Beethoven zu einer Quelle der Entwicklung neuartiger künstlerischer Projekte und geeigneten Boden fur die Annahme seines musikalischen Stils.Beethoven and the Invention of Genius Beethoven is typically portrayed as the quintessential genius of western culture and as a revolutionary of music. These portrayals underplay the ways in which his success and reputation as a genius among his contemporaries can be understood as a social, cultural und technological construction. This paper explores the social bases of Beethoven's success during his first decade and a half in Vienna. Beethoven's success was facilitated by changes in the social organization and cultural climate of musical patronage, by the supportive and practical activities of his close circle of aristocratie patrons, and by Beethoven's own efforts to renegotiate the musician-patron relationship at the turn of the nineteenth century. The expanding climate of receptivity to Beethoven's work became in turn a resource for the further development of Beethoven's own artistic projects and for the perceived idiosyncrasies of Beethoven's musical style.Beethoven et invention du génie Beethoven est souvent décrit comme le génie de la culture européenne et comme un révolutionnaire de la musique Ce portrait sous-estime la manière dont son succès et sa réputation de génie auprès de ses contemporains peuvent être compris comme une construction sociale, culturelle et technique. Cet article explore les fondements sociaux du succès de Beethoven pendant ses premières quinze années à Vienne. Le succès de Beethoven fut facilité par les changements dans l'organisation sociale et le climat culturel du parrainage musical, par le soutien du cercle proche de ses mécènes aristocrates et par les propres efforts de Beethoven pour renégocier la relation musicien/mécène au tournant du XIXe siècle. Le climat de réceptivité à l'oeuvre de Beethoven devint à son tour une ressource pour le développement des projets artistiques de Beethoven et pour la réception de son style musical.DeNora Tia. Beethoven et l'invention du génie. In: Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. Vol. 110, décembre 1995. Musique et musiciens. pp. 36-45

‘‘Time after time’’: A Quali-T method for assessing music's impact on well-being

This article considers the question of how to produce ecologically valid assessments of music's role as a health technology. To address this question, I consider critically some of the standard quantitative instruments used to assess well-being and quality of life. I suggest that these instruments do not lend themselves well to the production of ecologically valid assessments and understandings for two reasons: (1) the process of data elicitation is removed from everyday meanings and practices and therefore risks producing data that is an artifact of the situation in which it is elicited (2) standard, quantitative instruments are not neutral but are rather discursive texts that are inevitably imbued with a politics of expertise and an image of the health care client. For these reasons, I suggest that we consider the question of how to develop ecologically valid, client-centered assessment measures. To that end, I introduce a third critique of the standard quantitative instruments, namely that they are associated with, and promote, an ontology of wellness/illness that downplays the temporally variable and situationally emergent nature of both wellness/illness and musical interventions themselves. As an alternative mode of assessment, I suggest that we reconsider the value of singular case studies and I describe a set of principles that can assist researchers to produce ecologically valid assessments. To this end I introduce the concept of the musical event as a more ecologically valid means for illuminating the specific mechanisms by which music aids well-being. I suggest that the case study approach is temporally sensitive, that it lends itself to an emergent ontology of wellness/illness, and that it is client-centered (and can also be user-led)

Quand la musique de fond entre en action

Les recherches actuelles en sociologie et psychologie sociale de la musique présentent celle-ci comme un moyen de transmettre des ordres à notre corps. En analysant trois exemples de musiques entendues dans la vie quotidienne (dans les magasins et pendant des cours de gymnastique), il est montré comment la musique est utilisée et peut être diffusée dans certains contextes pour entretenir ou modifier des sentiments, ou encore afin de nous remémorer et faire revivre des expériences émotionnelles passées. L’article suggère en conclusion que « nous faisons les choses en musique », d’une manière consciente ou inconsciente. La musique constitue un ingrédient actif dans la formation d’une action et d’une efficacité sociales et esthétiques, en temps réel et dans tout un éventail de contextes sociaux.When background music gets into actionCurrent research in sociology and social psychology has described music as a medium for the ordering of bodily subjects. Three cases drawn from everyday life (of music in the retail sector and in fitness classes) show how music is diffused in social settings and in real time in order to maintain or change “feeling states”, or to recall emotions or make us relive past emotional experiences. We “do things with music”, consciously and unconsciously. Music actively enters into the formation of social and aesthetic agency across a range of social settings and in real time