An Enactive Approach to Learning Music Theory? Obstacles and Openings

Abstract

While music theory learning remains at the core of traditional music education, calls for more embodied and enactive approaches to music instruction rarely address theory pedagogy directly. This paper reconsiders theory teaching through a 4E lens, by (1) clarifying the obstacles that attend a legacy of Cartesian thought underlying conventional theory curricula, and (2) introducing an affordance-rich curricular tool that promotes embodied and enactive sense-making in music theory classroom environment. The tool is an adaptation of Conduction ® -a lexicon of signs and gestures created by jazz artist Butch Morris as a flexible alternative to notation, allowing Morris to compose in real-time with an ensemble of any type, size, or background. In a theory-learning context, students bring their instruments to class, form an ensemble, and take turns using signs and gestures to conduct their peers, guided through processes aligned with learning objectives (e.g., harmonic minor scales, Neapolitan chords, or polytonality), as well as to more freely experiment with musical structure in situ, with minimal or no reliance upon notation. Listening skills, structural knowledge, analytical proficiency, and performance technique are all enacted in the three roles students play: individual performer, ensemble member, and conductor. As students are placed in contact with the conceptual metaphors that scaffold a sense of musical structure, the cumulative effect is a deeply embodied sense of musicality, and an experience of music theory not just as an abstract exercise, but as theorizing in the present through bodily action.

Music Teachers’ Perspectives and Experiences of Ensemble and Learning Skills

“…Consider how one can develop a particular fingering solution that is easier when practicing alone but can then be re-explored and modified to account for a particular expressive necessity that only emerges when playing with others, leading to online adaptive regulations, or how a phrasing choice can be revisited to convey a better sense of tension, which may be further developed via open discussion with peers and teachers. "Listening" (to themselves and to others) becomes then an enabling condition for meaningful music making, a tool for sonic discoveries that is negotiated and transformed collectively to serve a variety of creative functions (see also van der Schyff et al, 2018;Gutierrez, 2019). Students and performers need to be attuned to their peers, be aware of the environment in which they perform and learn, and adapt themselves to what such a setting may offer.…”

Improvised Sound-Making within Musical Apprenticeship and Enactivism: An Intersection between the 4E`s Model and DMIs

“…Although the pedagogical treatments of improvisation by Dalcroze have had a profound influence on modern music education, improvisation remains identified as a complex human activity [15,19,24]. The specific argument that improvisation is essential within music teaching and learning is held by a growing number of music pedagogues [7,17,18,34,36] and deeply integrates the fundamentals of music into a more comprehensive musicianship [13,19]. Furthermore, due to the intrinsic nature of improvisation, it is considered as a highly inclusive, cross-cultural practice in which people participate in a more embodied form of music-making than that entailed in repertoire performance.…”

“…For Christopher Small (1998), listening is a seminal aspect of "musicking", the term he uses to express the activity of music, where music is not primarily a thing or a collection of things, but an activity in which we engage [13,34]. The association of the enactive approach and the term "musicking" within improvisation, an activity that generally involves some kind of spontaneity for listening and acting, is addressed in this work from the perspective of pedagogy.…”

“…Once knowledge is embedded, it depends a lot on the physical and socio-cultural milieu; cognition is extended to the environment. The environment defines the cognitive load among other beings and technologies [13,32]. Finally, based on these three previous principles, there is an enactive knowledge, since knowledge is formed through coadaptive couplings between beings and their environment.…”

“…The communication between the performer´s gesture and the DMI sound response will determine the cohesion of the established temporary unity. Technologically enhanced listening accompanied by gestural feedback may become a tool of great significance for learners in the 21st century [13,19,31]. Existing between the acts of musical study, the practice of performing and listening through DMIs [24,25] may provide music learners with a profound perception and sensibility for music that can shift the way they get into listening, improvising, performing and any activity that involves an aural sensibility [19,27].…”