To become one with the instrument: The unfolding of a musical topography

Abstract

The present article advances the notion of musical topography to describe the engagement between a practitioner and the musical instrument, emphasizing its developmental character. From the point of view of semiotic anthropology, it is suggested that the development of such a practical engagement is guided by expressivity, and that the instrument appears not only as an extension of the body, but participates in the generation of a unitary field, where bodily motion, the instrument and the tonal space are intertwined. The development of lived musical practice draws its force from a situated tradition that consists of normative, structural and stylistic elements, and of a constellation of genres and values shaped and reshaped by generations of practitioners. Finally, it is emphasized that the notion of musical topography brings back to musical praxis its long neglected imaginative dimension.

From Vico to the sociocultural imagination

“…Pern (2015) puts Hobbes and Vico in dialogue, and progressively specifies each of their perspectives, especially in what regards sense making. Lastly, Rojas (2015) starts to explore the experience of learning to play music through musicians' accounts before coming back to Vico's propositions. Hence, Vico seems to be an inspiring and stimulating thinking partner.…”

“…(Vico, 1725(Vico, /1993b The papers by Granatella (2015), Pern (2015) and Rojas (2015), invited by Tateo (2015) engage in a dialogue with us in an unusual way. Written by young scholars versed in philosophy and semiotics rather than strictly psychology, they propose their original readings of the texts of Giambattisto Vico, a relatively obscure author from the 18th century, so as to emphasize his possible contributions to cultural psychology.…”

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AbstractThe papers by Mariagrazia Granatella (2015), Tuuli Pern (2015) and Pablo Rojas (2015), invited by Tateo (2015) engage in a dialogue with the texts of Giambattisto Vico, a philosopher from the 18th century. In this commentary, focusing on imagination, I first follow the authors' effort to show the compatibility between Vico's ideas and current cultural psychology; I then highlight two issues of particular interest emerging from this dialogue.

Keywords Vico, imagination, music, body, semiotic mediation Still nowadays, the Americans call God anything that goes beyond their limited intelligence.

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Imagining cultural psychology

“…In his study of the engagement between a musical practitioner and her instrument, Pablo Rojas (2015) directs our attention to the idea of practical topography-an orientation to the ''landscape'' (or perhaps ''taskscape'' to borrow a term from Tim Ingold, 1993, referring to the pattern of dwelling activities) afforded by the practical contexts in which we live. In the case of music making, the practical topography is built upon the gestures and movements afforded by the instrument, as Rojas makes clear, and it goes hand-in-hand with the idea of a continuous field between instrument, sound, and auditory imagination.…”

“…Mariagrazia Granatella (2015), Tuuli Pern (2015), and Pablo Rojas (2015) have done us a great service in articulating various aspects of the philosophy of Giambattista Vico that will be useful for human and social scientists in general and cultural psychologists in particular. In this commentary, I will highlight a number of significant points from the three papers and try to develop them into a framework for cultural psychology.…”