Part 3: Horn Playing as a Skillful Act

Part 1 dealt with the different metaphors for horn playing. Part 2 builds another metaphor that aims to integrate the views from Part 1.

How to explain this to a 10 year old?

Synopsis

This chapter builds a framework for thinking about “What is this thing called horn playing?”. The goal is not to claim the views from Part 1 are wrong. I aim to show how they fit together.

The main idea: everything is interconnected.

Harmonising the views is not a simple affair and requires several things.

• Respecting the complexity
• Suspending judgment and not jumping to premature conclusions
• Expanding our repertoire of mental models and ideas
• Willingness to investigate fundamental questions, like “what exists?” and “how do we know?”

Horn playing is complex. The existence of the many perspectives testify to that. Handling complexity, however, is tiresome. As humans, we want to reduce complexity because it is accompanied by uncertainty.

We want to achieve certainty - to find the absolute truths that are valid regardless of circumstances.

We use several strategies. We give more importance to one view at the expense of another. (Horn playing is like sports).

This tends to hide the complexity.

abstract ideas contribute.

Ignoring the complexity in turn allows us to be more certain.

In order to do so we need to broaden the scope.

Intentional Movements

Moe, Breivik

Discourse about the so-called Western Classical Music is permeated by dogma and prejudice. WCM is taken for granted as a unique, discrete entity in an ontological sense. One pre-supposes that such an entity exists and that it is distinct from other entities. The boundaries are clean-cut both culturally and historically.

There is a lot to unpack. An uncritical subscribing to this ontology perpetuates the dogma. Let’s investigate in what ways the above might be true, and in which not.

It is true that what is called WCM is separate from other things because it has a distinct historical path and cultural situatedness.

Due to being situated in a context where formal research has been done, WCM also differs because it is characterized by a greater degree of theorization that’s been done to it as a cultural-historical practice.

Comparative methods juxtapose WCM with other musics focusing on the differences. This strengthens the chasm.

Other research focuses on the difference between novice and expert. This transition often conceives of the novice as a ‘tabula rasa’, a blank slate. However, from educational research we know that learner’s come into learning situation with their preconceptions.

Yet other research has focused on smaller entities of the field: the score/Werktreue, the sound and its properties. Ontologically these ideas are detached from the lived life, the inhabitted life and live in the realm of abstract. Nonetheless these have been accepted as essential characteristics of music.

On a more practical side, the difference is highlighted by instrumental methods. While different disciplines are said to be unified by being musicians, the

In the latter years

Research

Conceiving music as a discipline of Intentional Movements is not common.

The perceived uniqueness and discreetness doesn’t by itself imply any hegemony.

that new insights can be drawn.

The goal of this chapter is …

I want to say that ..

Introduction. Preliminary remarks.

Being explicit. A couple things to agree on:

• horn playing is done by humans
• horn playing is essentially the same from the first time we do it to being professional
• the difference is not of kind, but of nuance and sophistication

Ideals/Taste Acoustics

• habitual intention?

Outline

Repertoire of things

1. On Acting
2. On Skill

Ideas

Bakhtin’s Act

Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world and Zeughaftigkeit

Perception

Seeing

• Reading music

• Seeing conductor

• Seeing audience

• Seeing other musicians

• Perceiving the instrument. Blowing technique is dependent on the equipment:

  • Mouthpice with small/large bore
  • Instrument with much/little resistance
  • Difference in resistance on different fingerings

• Kinesthetic awareness - Awareness of yourself

• Proprioception. Awareness of your psychomotorical state

• Meta-cognition

Repertoire of stuffs

On listening/perceiving

• Whom to listen to?
• How to listen to yourself?
• Is listening the same as audiation?
• Listen to what? • Intonation • Rhythm/precision • Timing • Harmony • Melody

Or are these parts of audiation?

• Neighbour? Principal? Conductor?
• Listening to yourself. Or should this be audiating? Can you only listen to the room?
• Listening to the room

Playing characters

• innlevelse in the literature