Week 1

It has been a wonderful week that produced some reflections (always a good sign) and even first revelations. I was not sure what to expect, and so far, what I took away from the class has exceeded my expectations. Granted, I was not entirely sure what I was hoping get–I pitched the idea for this class to my Committee and to Dr. Robison on pure speculation that there will be a connection to Arts Based Research–at least, in the way I conceptualized ABR at that time–at that, too is already changing.

Week 1 Major takeaways:

1. 1. There is more than one Bach!
      Eons ago, I used to know that “The” Bach had sons musicians, but the fact faded from my memory due to lack of context and relevance.
      I am piecing it together now: who is s/he, The Human of the Modernity? Can  artifacts of humanities spur (and inform) phenomenological inquiry? I should read up more on phenomenology… or maybe further evaluate phenomenology as a genre of contemporary social science research.
   2. If music was (obviously) a family business in that era, does it mean music was a commodity? That is something that was produced, bought, and sold? It occurred to me that so far in ABR context, I have been looking at music as an alternative to language in agreement with Derrida’s critique of linguistic structures. In other words, music is a form of communication, a way to express painful or elusive thoughts and memories, for example, by eliciting affect. This is what music has been to me–an expression. It tells stories. Instruments are voices. Movements are discourses. But…
      what if I do look at classical music from the social systems lens? Can this angle produce something new and useful for my present obsession with General Systems Theory?
   3. A happy thought: I can hang in this class! Although my ear is far from trained. I rely on Dr. Robison’s podcasts and walk-throughs to make note of the nuances that separate one piece from the other (or one school from the other, for that matter), but I am pleased that I do not struggle to understand most of the language he uses to analyze excerpts (i.e. “dynamics” crescendos, diminuendos,  fermata, syncopation, key changes, and so forth). More importantly, these terms opened the floodgate for my happy memories of when I attended music school in preadolescence. This is my special, personal tie to music that cannot be fairly expressed through language–the experience of MAKING music, and, even more important, making music together with others, making that special connection…

      I had to look up the basic structure of symphony and brush up on forms–minuet, sonata, etc. but this is great–an easily digestible analytic material.

   4. The extractions, the bullet points are helpful–a fellow student commented that Italian music is about beauty and elegance. By contrast, the German music of the time is about thought. Dr. Robison pointed out how it privileged complexity and refinement. I should definitely look up Italian and German philosophers of the time–historically, schools of thought draw from many contexts. Paradigm shifts marked by hyper-productivity in the arts always seem to be geographically and politically situated.  I am thinking Moguchaya Kuchka that ,
   5. There relationship between the philosophies of Enlightenment–the domain of humanities, and philosophies of inquiry–the domain of social science research  is gaining visibility for me. I can definitely see how just about any work in this class will be a fertile ground for my thinking. I am not entirely sure in what way.