Karaseva, Marina V.

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764 Musikpädagogik – Jugendmusik – Popmusik – Musik und Medienbut also informing the multiple changes of perspective in the film’s lengthy voice-overs.The music is further framed by the sharp contrast of several non-period or un-authenticmusical works including Bach’s St Matthew Passion. In Casino, Scorsese uses popular music,and its ›other‹, to not only document and narrate but to create a uniquely fluid and ex-panded sense of cinematic space.Marina V. Karaseva (Moscow)NewMusic and Ear TrainingGroping for Way In – Widening Way OutSo called New Music, namely, music of the 20th century is now wide-spread in the concertpractice all over the world. However, it is known how difficult it is, so far, to learn modernmusic in ear training courses at universities because of the necessity to deal with modalscales, free tonal melodic patterns, chords, lacking thirds, etc. There are two main causesexplaining this situation. The first of them is quantitative: usually, not enough time isscheduled for studying modern music extensively. The second cause may be called qualita-tive – it consists of emotional difficulty of the aural perception of 20th-century musicwhich remains one of the most significant aesthetic obstacles even at the beginning of the21st century. It is a fact that only few elements of contemporary music, with its dissonancesand vague tonal basis, have been practiced in the ear-training part of a student’s academiccurricula. Thus it would be a one-sided decision to explain such a situation only throughthe rigid structure of the educational system. It is known that music may be considered as apsychological projection of a human state of mind. Therefore, in order to address the prob-lem of the listener’s aversion, it is necessary to apply not only musicological, but also psy-chological methodology.The aim of this paper is to deliver an integrated, practically-oriented interdisciplinaryapproach to 20th-century music perception. A principal element of the author’s method-ology is the interdisciplinary investigation in the fields of cognitive psychology and eartraining. Such an approach is based on the contemporary achievements in music theoryand pedagogy, music cognition and practical psychology.1 In Russia there is deep and multi-faceted experience in the discipline of ear training, concerning not only classical but alsocontemporary music. According to Russian curricula, students learn solfeggio for about15 years – from the very early childhood up to the graduation level. Therefore, there is a1 Such an approach has been delivered in my book on music psychotechnique. See Marina Karaseva,Sovremennoe solfedzhio (Course of Modern Solfege), 3 vols., Moscow 1996.Karaseva: New Music and Ear Training 765highly hierarchical system of musician skills development in Russian methodology. It pro-vides both a rich practical material and a well adjusted methodological base for the studyof practical music cognition.On this base, the main aim of my methodology of contemporary ear training withinthe Course of Modern Solfege2 was to try to combine the main achievements of the Russianacademic school in the field of ear training with the newest foreign achievements in thefield of modern psychotechnologies, especially neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)3.This paper aims to consider some of the most influential music patterns of the contem-porary musical language. It tries to present how we can use the synesthetical componentsin music listening in order to be able not only to hear music sounds but also to associatethem with something seen, smelled, touched in one’s individual imagination. A special tableof audible, visual and kinesthetical submodalities will be presented. The theory of the sen-sory submodalities extraction which is used in neuro-linguistic programming – as a partmodern practical psychology – has been chosen as a scientific base of our experiments.Let us begin with the term of synesthesia. Synesthesia is interpreted as »the conditionin which a sensory experience normally associated with one modality occurs when anothermodality is stimulated«4. This phenomenon has been an object of numerous investigationsin the field of visual arts. In the field of music the main accent has traditionally been madeon colored hearing as the experiencing of color with auditory stimuli. The starting point ofour methodology is the conviction, that the synesthesia is not something unusual; this maybecome evident through the series of special ear training exercises. The directed experimentson synesthetical hearing have been conducted by the author since the 1990s. Participantshave included students of different departments at Moscow State Conservatory (musicolo-gists, choral conductors, etc.) including foreign students of Moscow Conservatory.5Now we present some distinctive samples of the main components of musical language.The samples which are typical to the 20th-century music will be compared with classicalones. The examined components are the following: chords, tonal functions, melodic lines,rhythmic patterns.I. ChordsNumerous experiments have shown that certain types of chords are invariably perceived ina certain color (or in a sector of the color spectrum), geometrical figures, clearness, volume,contrast, density, temperature, taste, smell and so on. In such a way we can stimulate stu-dents to discover new interesting sensory properties of these non-romantic chords in orderto become familiar with them. A special study table of auditory, visual and kinesthetic sen-sory submodalities has been created to make a process of the sound effect extraction easier.2 See ibid.3 One of the first musicians who applied the NLP-methodology was Joseph O’Connor. See for exampleJoseph O’Connor and John Seymour, Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming, London 1995.4 Arthur Reber, The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, London and New York 1995, p. 779.5 The same experiments have been also made with non-musicians of different ages and social level.766 Musikpädagogik – Jugendmusik – Popmusik – Musik und MedienTable 1: Submodalities of Sensory PerceptionVISUALhow we seeAUDITORYhow we hearKINESTHETIChow we move and feelColor(kind or spectrum,warm/cold shade)Pitch(high, middle, low)Movement and its direction (ascending,descending, horizontal)Brightness(bright, pale, fade, dark)Timbre Weight(light, heavy)Shape(round, angular)Tempo(fast, slow)Texture(smooth, rough, sticky, elastic, foamy)Distance(near, far)Mono/Stereo Temperature(hot, mild, chilly)Contrast degree(high/ low contrast)Duration(prolonged, discrete)Muscle feelings(strained, relaxed, torpid)Size of mental ›picture‹(large, small )Dynamics(loud, soft /quiet)Pain feelings(acute, aching, dull)Clearness degree(clear, slurred)Resonance(sonorous, dull)Smell(fragrant, perfumed, floral, fresh,pungent, strong, acrid, smoky,chemical, poison)Movement in your ›film‹(static or not)Distance from the sound source(near, remote)Pressure(knocked down, floating, fluttering)Framing(with frame or panoramic)Articulation(conjunctive, disjunctive)Taste(sweet, bitter, sour, salty, insipid,spicy, hot)For the comparison, imagine two different chords: one from the classical style, such as d-f-a-c and another from modern music so called Webern-style chords, such as g-e flat-f sharpor e-g-e flat. In the process of experiments within ear training classes with students evok-ing associations, we got the possibility to select and classify their expressive properties. Itis important to say that all the student’s associations were nearly the same in their emo-tional spectrum, slightly differing in concrete details.For instance, the Webern-chord was permanently associated with cold shimmeringcolors, crystal in texture, chemical smell and pain feelings. As we know, all of these compo-nents may influence the decrease of blood pressure and pulse. On the contrary, chords withpentatonic base (for example d-f-a-c or f-b flat-d-g-c) were usually linked in perception withsomewhat natural, warm, sweet / fresh, relaxing, etc. In the opposite, chords in Spanishstyle (like d-a-f sharp-c-e flat-f ) were perceived in red spectrum as aggressive, spicy and hotones. These types of imagination may conduct the increase of blood pressure and pulse.All these tests show the frequency of the perception of the general metaphor – pleasant(in case of a classic chord) and unpleasant (in case of a Webern-chord) in the human mind.Therefore, music teachers must first remove or weaken the core of the negative part ofpersonal student’s associations and then transfer them to a desired cognitive channel – inother words, make students become interested in this sound.Karaseva: New Music and Ear Training 767II. FunctionsThe synesthetical approach to music understanding may also be applied to experiments ontonal function recognition. The perception of functional connections in music is directlyconnected with human feeling of gravitation as well as their temporal and spatial orienta-tion. We all need to have a sense of stability while interacting with these two coordinates.The lack of this feeling will cause our psychological frustration.In this connection, it is quite clear that a highly hierarchical tonal tension (S-D-T) inthe classic tonal system promotes the psychological effect of the time and space manage-ment, whereas the weakness and uncoordinated tonal relations in contemporary music mayproduce feelings of chaos and confusion, and then some trance effect. There is only oneway to avoid such feelings – to study new tonality’s functions methodically and all typesof their concatenation of the tonal center.III. MelodyThe same is true for the melodic design in modern music. Its most typical feature one maymark as spasmodic leaps associated in the human mind with the effect of visual glimpses.From the scientific field of video-ecology, devoted to visual problems of cognition, weknow that our eyes soon become fatigued if we look at periodical glimpses of lines and im-ages. Just as our ear – because while we are listening to the zigzag melody our vocal chordsmake a lot of synkinetic movements and without having a possibility to gather tones inthe whole form, soon become tired. It speaks for necessity of studying the main melodicmodels (as interval combinations) in new, tonally free music.IV. RhythmIn the realm of rhythm the listener’s emotional reaction also corresponds to his physiologi-cal reactions. It is well known that certain time durations are associated with some types ofbiological rhythms. For instance, crotchet duration is associated with pacing (MM = 120),quavers are associated with running, and half duration is associated with breathing. In thecase of irregular rhythmic patterns in modern music, inconsistency of perceptible musicwith one’s cardiac and kinetic, muscular rhythms may occur in the human mind. All thesemeans of modern music are able to make a considerable discomfort of the human state.To get the ability for rhythmic control in ear training methodology a complex of exer-cises must be applied in order to make it easier to count the smallest rhythmic beats withinone bar.Returning to the academic problems, we ask particularly this question: why is modernmusic so insufficiently promoted in academic courses of ear training? Where are specialcourses of modern ear training? The most of music educational institutions in Europe andAmerica, including the higher level of education, have focused on classical 18th and 19th-century solfege. Well, it is much easier, of course, to deal with well known old classic ma-terial. Nobody is afraid to hear it. However, we must also remember a simple psychological768 Musikpädagogik – Jugendmusik – Popmusik – Musik und Medienrule: if someone has a fear of something, the best way to remove it is to begin sensory in-vestigation of this object. The same happens with the 20th-century music chords, melodicand rhythmic-patterns assimilation through the special course of ear training exercises.Such a proposed method has been scientifically proved in the author’s tree volumeCourse of Modern Solfege as well as in her monograph (as a Post-Doctorate dissertation)Solfeggio – Psychotechnique of Ear Training 6. The Course of Modern Solfege is devoted to stu-dents of middle and high level of music education. This course contains a classificationof all the basic, frequently used models of contemporary music language as well as metho-dological and practical ways of overcoming them. In the first volume there are instructiveexercises, the second contains extracts from 20th-century music compositions and thethird one is devoted especially to harmonic solfeggio. This course has been practically ap-proved (and is nowadays always in process of further improvement) in the author’s peda-gogical two-decade experience in the Moscow Conservatory and also in various workshopsat other music colleges in Russia and abroad. The proposed psychologically-oriented eartraining methodology, being rather easy to apply, may contribute to a creative increasenot only cultivating specific skills for intoning and playing new music but also producinga real aesthetic pleasure from such a training.David Lines (Auckland)BecomingMusical: Creative Emergence, CulturalIdentity and LearningIntroductionIn recent years music education philosophers have debated the virtues of the praxial ap-proach to music learning. Theorists such as David James Elliott (1995), Thomas Regelski(1998) and others1 have shifted away from what has been known as ›aesthetic education‹,preferring to situate music learning as ›action‹, or more specifically ›right action‹. In thisparadigm of thought, learning is considered as process, as a series of unfolding momentswhere teachers and learners critically consider the ethical dimensions of experiences as theyare disclosed. The situated nature of learning as praxis is also consciously affirmed, that6 Marina Karaseva, Solfeggio: Psychotechnique of Ear Training, Moscow 1999.1 See for example Thomas Regelski, »The Aristotelian Basis of Praxis for Music and Music Educationas Praxis«, in: Philosophy of Music Education Review 6/1 (1998), p. 22–59; and David J. Elliott, Music Mat-ters, New York 1995.

New Music and Ear Training. Groping for Way In – Widening Way Out

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New Music and Ear Training. Groping for Way In – Widening Way Out

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