Music performance anxiety in classical musicians - what we know about what works

When pursued professionally, the demands of musical training and performance can interfere with musicians' well-being and health. Music performance anxiety, while energising at optimal levels, impairs performance quality when excessive. A range of interventions has been explored to address it. However, the poor methodological quality of such studies and the complexity of this issue should mobilise further research resources in this direction

Health education for musicians

Context and aims: Many musicians suffer for their art, and health is often compromised during training. The Health Promotion in Schools of Music (HPSM) project has recommended that health education should be included in core curricula, although few such courses have been evaluated to date. The aim of the study was to design, implement and evaluate a compulsory health education course at a UK conservatoire of music. Methods: The course design was informed by a critical appraisal of the literature on musicians' health problems and their management, existing health education courses for musicians, and the HPSM recommendations. It was delivered by a team of appropriately-qualified tutors over 5 months to 104 first-year undergraduate students, and evaluated by means of questionnaires at the beginning and end of the course. Thirty-three students who had been in their first year the year before the course was introduced served as a control group, completing the questionnaire on one occasion only. Items concerned: hearing and use of hearing protection; primary outcomes including perceived knowledge and importance of the topics taught on the course; and secondary outcomes including physical and psychological health and health-promoting behaviors. The content of the essays written by the first-year students as part of their course assessment served as a guide to the topics they found most interesting and relevant. Results: Comparatively few respondents reported using hearing protection when practicing alone, although there was some evidence of hearing loss, tinnitus, and hyperacusis. Perceived knowledge of the topics on the course, and awareness of the risks to health associated with performing music, increased, as did self-efficacy; otherwise, there were negative effects on secondary outcomes, and few differences between the intervention and control groups. The topics most frequently covered in students' essays were managing music performance anxiety, and life skills and behavior change techniques. Conclusion: There is considerable scope for improving music students' physical and psychological health and health-related behaviors through health education, and persuading senior managers, educators and students themselves that health education can contribute to performance enhancement

Inherent and learnt abilities for relative pitch in the vibrotactile domain using the fingertip

This paper reports experimental results concerning relative pitch discrimination. This is defined as the ability to distinguish one musical note as being higher or lower than another. Seventeen participants with normal hearing undertook a pitch discrimination experiment using the fingertip over a 16 session training period with a full baseline test before and after the training sessions. Two sinusoidal tones were presented, each of Is duration separated by a Is gap. A total of 24 tones were chosen to cover 12 intervals ranging from a semi-tone to an octave over the frequency range C3 to B4. The results show a high success rate for relative pitch discrimination with and without training. For intervals of 4 to 12 semitones, the success rates were >70% with or without the 16 training sessions. As a result of training, a significant improvement was found for individual intervals between 9 and 12 semitones when comparing the number of correct responses between pre-training and post-training tests. Comparison of pre- and post-training tests also showed an appreciable and significant improvement for the whole group of 12 intervals. In addition, reaction times to identify relative pitch tended to decrease over the training period

Getting Acquainted with Kant

My question here concerns whether Kant claims that experience has nonconceptual content, or whether, on his view, experience is essentially conceptual. However there is a sense in which this debate concerning the content of intuition is ill-conceived. Part of this has to do with the terms in which the debate is set, and part to do with confusion over the connection between Kant’s own views and contemporary concerns in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. However, I think much of the substance of the debate concerning Kant’s views on the content of experience can be salvaged by reframing it in terms of a debate about the dependence relations, if any, that exist between different cognitive capacities. Below, in Section 2, I clarify the notion of ‘content’ I take to be at stake in the interpretive debate. Section 3 presents reasons for thinking that intuition cannot have content in the relevant sense. I then argue, in Section 4, that the debate be reframed in terms of dependence. We should distinguish between Intellectualism, according to which all objective representation (understood in a particular way) depends on acts of synthesis by the intellect, and Sensibilism, according to which at least some forms of objective representation are independent of any such acts (or the capacity for such acts). Finally, in Section 5, I further elucidate the cognitive role of intuition. I articulate a challenge which Kant understands alethic modal considerations to present for achieving cognition, and argue that a version of Sensibilism that construes intuition as a form of acquaintance is better positioned to answer this challenge than Intellectualism

A preliminary comparison study of burnout and engagement in performance students in Australia, Poland and the UK

While there is a growing body of research concerning the well-being of music students, burnout and engagement remain largely unexplored. Likewise, cross-national variations in approaches to music education, and different educational experiences of men and women may influence burnout and engagement. This preliminary study aimed to inform further research by establishing the levels of, and exploring cross-national and sex differences in burnout and engagement in music performance students at conservatoires in Australia, Poland and the UK (n = 331). Self-reported levels of burnout were, typically, low to moderate. Nevertheless, one in ten students reported symptoms such that they could be classified as burned out. Australian and UK students displayed more burnout than students in Poland, although Australian students reported lower levels of reduced sense of accomplishment than Polish and UK students. Self-reported engagement was, typically, moderate to high. Students in Poland reported higher levels of engagement than those in the UK. Women displayed higher levels of global burnout and emotional/physical exhaustion, while men reported lower levels of reduced sense of accomplishment. Further research on burnout and engagement could build on this investigation to gain a better understanding of their impact and the influence of the educational experience on students’ music-related well-being

(Im)possibilities of Autonomy:? Social Movements In and Beyond Capital, the State and Development

In this paper we interrogate the demand and practice of autonomy in social movements. We begin by identifying three main conceptions of autonomy: (1) autonomous practices vis-à-vis capital; (2) self-determination and independence from the state; and (3) alternatives to hegemonic discourses of development. We then point to limits associated with autonomy and discuss how demands for autonomy are tied up with contemporary re-organizations of: (1) the capitalist workplace, characterized by discourses of autonomy, creativity and self-management; (2) the state, which increasingly outsources public services to independent, autonomous providers, which often have a more radical, social movement history; and (3) regimes of development, which today often emphasize local practices, participation and self-determination. This capturing of autonomy reminds us that autonomy can never be fixed. Instead, social movements' demands for autonomy are embedded in specific social, economic, political and cultural contexts, giving rise to possibilities as well as impossibilities of autonomous practices

Entanglements of faith: Discourses, practices of care and homeless people in an Italian City of Saints

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098013514620This paper investigates how Catholic-inspired services for homeless people are delivered in Turin, Italy. The purpose is to critically interrogate particular faith-based organisations’ moral discourses on homelessness, and to show how they are enacted through practices of care directed at the homeless subject. The paper contributes to the geographical literature on faith-based organisations addressing its shortcomings – namely the lack of critical and contextual focus on faith-based organisations’ ‘love for the poor’. To address this point, the paper takes a vitalist perspective on the urban and introduces the notion of the ‘entanglements of faith’, which allows an integrated and grounded perspective on faith-based organisations’ interventions. The outcomes of the work suggest that these faith-based organisations propose standardised services that, producing particular assemblages and affective atmospheres, have deep emotional and relational effects on their recipients. Further lines of research are sketched in the conclusions

Framing the Real: Lefèbvre and NeoRealist Cinematic Space as Practice

In 1945 Roberto Rossellini's Neo-realist Rome, Open City set in motion an approach to cinema and its representation of real life – and by extension real spaces – that was to have international significance in film theory and practice. However, the re-use of the real spaces of the city, and elsewhere, as film sets in Neo-realist film offered (and offers) more than an influential aesthetic and set of cinematic theories. Through Neo-realism, it can be argued that we gain access to a cinematic relational and multidimensional space that is not made from built sets, but by filming the built environment. On the one hand, this space allows us to "notice" the contradictions around us in our cities and, by extension, the societies that have produced those cities, while on the other, allows us to see the spatial practices operative in the production and maintenance of those contradictions. In setting out a template for understanding the spatial practices of Neo-realism through the work of Henri Lefèbvre, this paper opens its films, and those produced today in its wake, to a spatio-political reading of contemporary relevance. We will suggest that the rupturing of divisions between real spaces and the spaces of film locations, as well the blurring of the difference between real life and performed actions for the camera that underlies much of the central importance of Neo-realism, echoes the arguments of Lefèbvre with regard the social production of space. In doing so, we will suggest that film potentially had, and still has, a vital role to play in a critique of contemporary capitalist spatial practices

“Either Everyone Was Guilty or Everyone Was Innocent”: The Italian Power Elite, Neopatrimonialism, and the Importance of Social Relations

Rarely does the Byzantine world of football administration get exposed as clearly as during the 2006 calciopoli scandal. This scandal laid bare the interpersonal relationships of football administrators at the top three Italian men’s football clubs: Juventus, Inter, and AC Milan. This article draws on the media leaks that revealed the inner workings of those working within football to argue that the football clubs are pyramids of power for club presidents that allows them to operate within the Italian power elite. This is done through interpersonal clientelistic networks that operate within a neopatrimonial system. Theoretically, this article draws on four main concepts: C. Wright Mills’s concept of the Power Elite, Lomnitz’s model of “Pyramids of Power,” Eisenstadt’s notion of neopatrimonialism, and Mauss’s utilization of the gift. Power is exercised through quid pro quo relationships, with certain key individuals operating as brokers to the flow of favors throughout the network