Music and its meaning, how has the last 30 years of music psychology research progressed our knowledge?

• Authors: John Anthony Sloboda
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

There are three different types of scholarship, primary, secondary, and meta-scholarship. This paper applies a meta-approach to the question of musical meaning, which involves some assessment of where the enterprise as a whole has come from and is heading, its value and external impact. Three aspects of meaning are discussed: referential, functional and socially transformative. Referential meaning refers to our ability to apprehend a musical object as pointing beyond itself. Functional meaning refers to valued personal outcomes that musical engagement engenders. Transformative meaning refers to effects on the wider society. Consultative data from an expert panel is used to frame the discussion. This data shows multiple ways in which recent psychology research has advanced our understanding of how music acquires referential and functional meaning. To date, stronger theoretical clarity has been achieved in the area of referential meaning than in functional meaning. The strongest socially transformative effect of music psychology research has been on the discipline of musicology itself. Weaker, but still significant, effects are found in the wider society, relating to understandings of the benefits of musical engagement, and the acceptance universality of musical capacity as an inherent human attribute.

Keywords

PL

musical meaning; scholarship; music psychology research; referential meaning; functional meaning; socially transformative meaning

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2011
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 31-46

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

John Anthony Sloboda

• research professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, emeritus professor at Keele University. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and has been President of both the Psychology and General Sections of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, where he has served on the editorial board of its journal Musicae Scientiae. He was recipient of the 1998 British Psychological Society’s Presidents Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge, and in 2004 was elected to Fellowship of the British Academy. He is also a programme Director of Oxford Research Group and Co-founder of the Iraq Body Count Project. He is the author of many books and articles. His books include: The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology o f Music, Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology o f Performance, Improvisation and Composition, Musical Beginnings: Origins and Development o f Musical Competence, Perception and Cognition of Music, Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, Exploring the Musical Mind, Psychology for Musicians, Beyond Terror: The truth about the real threats to our world.