Andrea Schiavio

Playing together without communicating? A pre-reflective and enactive account of joint musical performance

In this article we explore the role of pre-reflective, embodied, and interactive intentionality in joint musical performance. Putting together insights from phenomenology and current theories in cognitive science, we present a case study based on qualitative interviews with the Danish String Quartet (DSQ). A total of 12 hours of interviews was recorded, drawing on ethnography-related methodologies during tours with the DSQ in Denmark and England in 2012 and 2013, focusing mainly on their experience of perception, intentionality, absorption, selfhood and intersubjectivity. The analysis emerging from our data suggests that expert musicians’ experience of collective music-making is rooted in the dynamical patterns of perception and action that co-constitute the sonic environment(s) in which they are embedded, and that the role of attention and other reflective processes should therefore be reconsidered. In putting forward our view on ensemble cohesion, we challenge Keller’s and Seddon and Biasutti’s influential positions, maintaining that the cognitive processes at play in such intersubjective context are grounded in the concrete (inter)actions of the players, and are not reducible to processes and structures ‘in the head’. We argue that this is a significant step forward from more traditional accounts of joint musical performances, which often involve mental representations as principal explanatory tools – downplaying the embodied and participatory dimension of music-making – and we conclude that ensemble performance can take place without attention to either shared goals, or to the other ensemble musicians. We finally suggest that if other researchers want to understand what it is like to play with other musicians then they must shift their focus from Joint Musical Attention (JMA) to Joint Musical Experience (JME), facilitating the development of more ecologically valid models of collective musical performance.

Exploring Music-Based Rehabilitation for Parkinsonism through Embodied Cognitive Science

Recent embodied approaches in cognitive sciences emphasize the constitutive roles of bodies and environment in driving cognitive processes. Cognition is thus seen as a distributed system based on the continuous interaction of bodies, brains, and environment. These categories, moreover, do not relate only causally, through a sequential input–output network of computations; rather, they are dynamically enfolded in each other, being mutually implemented by the concrete patterns of actions adopted by the cognitive system. However, while this claim has been widely discussed across various disciplines, its relevance and potential beneficial applications for music therapy remain largely unexplored. With this in mind, we provide here an overview of the embodied approaches to cognition, discussing their main tenets through the lenses of music therapy. In doing so, we question established methodological and theoretical paradigms and identify possible novel strategies for intervention. In particular, we refer to the music-based rehabilitative protocols adopted for Parkinson’s disease patients. Indeed, in this context, it has recently been observed that music therapy not only affects movement-related skills but that it also contributes to stabilizing physiological functions and improving socio-affective behaviors. We argue that these phenomena involve previously unconsidered aspects of cognition and (motor) behavior, which are rooted in the action-perception cycle characterizing the whole living system.

Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology: A critical review

During the past few decades, one of the core issues in the debate on human musicality has become explaining how we understand, or make sense of the musical material. Embodied music cognition and mediation technology1 was written by Marc Leman with the aim to clarify this sense-giving process focusing on the cognitive relationship, in the broadest sense, that ties musical subjects and objects. His approach assumes that the (musical) mind results from an embodied interaction with music: The human body can be seen as a biologically designed mediator that transfers physical energy up to a level of action-oriented meanings, to a mental level in which experiences, values, and intentions form the basic components of music signification. The reverse process is also possible: that the human body transfers an idea, or mental representation, into a material or energetic form. (p. xiii) This perspective has been developed according to the previous literature in different disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, musicology and cognitive science. We will discuss later the peculiar way Leman tackles the problem of musical understanding, as well as its internal and external coherence. For now, we will explore some implications and sub-problems that arise from the adoption of an embodied approach to the study of musical experience.

Active Drumming Experience Increases Infants' Sensitivity to Audiovisual Synchrony during Observed Drumming Actions

In the current study, we examined the role of active experience on sensitivity to multisensory synchrony in six-month-old infants in a musical context. In the first of two experiments, we trained infants to produce a novel multimodal effect (i.e., a drum beat) and assessed the effects of this training, relative to no training, on their later perception of the synchrony between audio and visual presentation of the drumming action. In a second experiment, we then contrasted this active experience with the observation of drumming in order to test whether observation of the audiovisual effect was as effective for sensitivity to multimodal synchrony as active experience. Our results indicated that active experience provided a unique benefit above and beyond observational experience, providing insights on the embodied roots of (early) music perception and cognition.

Evolutionary Musicology Meets Embodied Cognition: Biocultural Coevolution and the Enactive Origins of Human Musicality

Despite evolutionary musicologys interdisciplinary nature, and the diverse methods it employs, the field has nevertheless tended to divide into two main positions. Some argue that music should be understood as a naturally selected adaptation, while others claim that music is a product of culture with little or no relevance for the survival of the species. We review these arguments, suggesting that while interesting and well-reasoned positions have been offered on both sides of the debate, the nature-or-culture (or adaptation vs. non-adaptation) assumptions that have traditionally driven the discussion have resulted in a problematic either/or dichotomy. We then consider an alternative “biocultural” proposal that appears to offer a way forward. As we discuss, this approach draws on a range of research in theoretical biology, archeology, neuroscience, embodied and ecological cognition, and dynamical systems theory (DST), positing a more integrated model that sees biological and cultural dimensions as aspects of the same evolving system. Following this, we outline the enactive approach to cognition, discussing the ways it aligns with the biocultural perspective. Put simply, the enactive approach posits a deep continuity between mind and life, where cognitive processes are explored in terms of how self-organizing living systems enact relationships with the environment that are relevant to their survival and well-being. It highlights the embodied and ecologically situated nature of living agents, as well as the active role they play in their own developmental processes. Importantly, the enactive approach sees cognitive and evolutionary processes as driven by a range of interacting factors, including the socio-cultural forms of activity that characterize the lives of more complex creatures such as ourselves. We offer some suggestions for how this approach might enhance and extend the biocultural model. To conclude we briefly consider the implications of this approach for practical areas such as music education.

The Future of Musical Emotions

Basic Emotion Theory proper (BET) has only recently begun to make an appearance in musical research (see Juslin, 1997, 2013a,b). However, much theory and research in music psychology has been driven by a more general assumption that musical emotions should be investigated in terms of discrete ad-hoc1 categories associated with the ways specific neural mechanisms respond to musical stimuli (see Schiavio et al., 2016). This has been problematized, however, by studies that show that the physiological changes associated with musical emotions do not always align clearly with those exhibited in association with everyday emotion categories (Krumhansl, 1997, p. 351; Scherer and Zentner, 2001). Such concerns have led some scholars to posit that musical emotions may be somehow different (or perhaps “impoverished”) versions of real emotions (Sloboda, 2000). In response to this, other researchers (e.g., Scherer and Coutinho, 2014) have developed models that do away with the notion of basic emotions altogether, preferring instead to describe emotional reactions to music in terms of complex information processing components that combine in various ways to produce relevant outputs (see also Huron, 2006). Still others (Krueger, 2013; van der Schyff, 2013; Schiavio et al., 2016; see also Koelsch, 2013) have suggested that reducing musical experience to a stimulus-response framework—where emotions are thought to be caused in listeners by pre-given stimuli in the environment—may play down the active and creative role living embodied agents play in musical experience. With this in mind, we offer below a brief critique of BET, suggesting that it may not in fact provide the best way forward for research in musical emotions. We then outline an alternative perspective, drawing on research that employs dynamical systems theory (DST) (Lewis and Granic, 2000; Colombetti, 2014). To conclude, we offer some preliminary suggestions for how this approach might be applied in musical contexts. Before we begin, it should be noted that musical research that draws on the idea of basic emotions has indeed produced important insights2. Such studies are carried out in controlled settings that adhere to high scientific research standards—they offer important sources of data that will have to be taken into consideration by any alternative theoretical orientation. To be clear, then, our aim is not to debunk or discredit the work of researchers endorsing BET. Rather, our goal is simply to outline another perspective that could make important contributions to the dialogue3.

Negotiating individuality and collectivity in community music. A qualitative case study

In this paper, we report on a qualitative study based on the “Meet4Music” (M4M) project recently developed at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria. M4M is a low-threshold community-based program where participatory sessions dedicated to different artistic activities are freely offered to people from different social and cultural backgrounds. Our study explores how M4M promotes self-expression, creativity, social understanding, and artistic development through a number of interviews that we collected with the “facilitators”—those who help guide the heterogeneous ensemble of participants without being committed to a fixed and pre-defined teaching content. Our data focus on three aspects of M4M: “mutual collaborations,” “non-verbal communication,” and “sense of togetherness.” Taking the “enactive” approach to cognition as a theoretical background, we argue that M4M helps to promote a sense of community that goes beyond the distinction between “individuality” and “collectivity.” M4M encourages participants to meaningfully engage in collective forms of artistic activities, and develop new perspectives on their cultural identities that can play a key role for their flourishing as musical beings. In conclusion, we briefly consider possibilities for future research and practice.

4E Music Pedagogy and the Principles of Self-Organization

Recent approaches in the cognitive and psychological sciences conceive of mind as an Embodied, Embedded, Extended, and Enactive (or 4E) phenomenon. While this has stimulated important discussions and debates across a vast array of disciplines, its principles, applications, and explanatory power have not yet been properly addressed in the domain of musical development. Accordingly, it remains unclear how the cognitive processes involved in the acquisition of musical skills might be understood through the lenses of this approach, and what this might offer for practical areas like music education. To begin filling this gap, the present contribution aims to explore central aspects of music pedagogy through the lenses of 4E cognitive science. By discussing cross-disciplinary research in music, pedagogy, psychology, and philosophy of mind, we will provide novel insights that may help inspire a richer understanding of what musical learning entails. In doing so, we will develop conceptual bridges between the notion of ‘autopoiesis’ (the property of continuous self-regeneration that characterizes living systems) and the emergent dynamics contributing to the flourishing of one’s musical life. This will reveal important continuities between a number of new teaching approaches and principles of self-organization. In conclusion, we will briefly consider how these conceptual tools align with recent work in interactive cognition and collective music pedagogy, promoting the close collaboration of musicians, pedagogues, and cognitive scientists.

Musical creativity and the embodied mind: Exploring the possibilities of 4E cognition and dynamical systems theory

The phenomenon of creativity has received a growing amount of attention from scholars working across a range of disciplines. While this research has produced many important insights, it has also traditionally tended to explore creativity in terms of the reception of products or outcomes, conceiving of it as a cognitive process that is limited to the individual domain of the creative agent. More recently, however, researchers have begun to develop perspectives on creativity that highlight the patterns of adaptive embodied interaction that occur between multiple agents, as well as the broader socio-material milieu they are situated in. This has promoted new understandings of creativity, which is now often considered as a distributed phenomenon. Because music involves such a wide range of socio-cultural, bodily, technological, and temporal dimensions it is increasingly taken as a paradigmatic example for researchers who wish to explore creativity from this more relational perspective. In this article, we aim to contribute to this project by discussing musical creativity in light of recent developments in embodied cognitive science. More specifically, we will attempt to frame an approach to musical creativity based in an 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) understanding of cognition. We suggest that this approach may help us better understand creativity in terms of how interacting individuals and social groups bring forth worlds of meaning through shared, embodied processes of dynamic interactivity. We also explore how dynamical systems theory (DST) may offer useful tools for research and theory that align closely with the 4E perspective. To conclude, we summarize our discussion and suggest possibilities for future research.