This book has been written for musicians who want to engage with audiences beyond the concert hall and other traditional venues. The study is equally worthwhile for conservatoires and music academies aiming to change the increasingly unrealistic goal of training young musicians solely for the stage. When taking the changing music profession and its market opportunities seriously, higher music education institutions can become aware of creative opportunities for establishing professional music practices in areas in society that are remote from concert halls and big festivals, from public media and stardom, and instead look for settings which reach out to various kinds of audiences. This does not mean, of course, that the results presented here wish to diminish the wonderful gift of being an accomplished soloist or chamber musician, but they would like to show that the role of music can be exhaustive, where artistic connection can bring about strong communication between people. Music can make a difference and be deeply influential, especially in social fields of illness and suffering, weakness and depression. ‘Music and dementia’ is the challenging topic of this book. It is not about educational suggestions to care staff to sing well-known children's songs in care homes for residents with dementia, just to lift the mood. Through engaging in music as a participatory process, its goal is to make the person behind the dementia visible again. The project presented in this study not only shows that this idea can be realised for people with dementia and their caregivers, but it has also opened up learning processes for the musicians involved which nobody would have expected before, nurturing their professional lives and development. The project has changed their understanding of the place of music in people’s lives; it has touched their personality and stimulated deep reflections about their identity. This positive effect should benefit young musicians in their music education. However, musicians are not the only target group. The discoveries of the study are also helpful and inspiring for caregivers of people with dementia and for families of a loved one living with dementia. The book explores the interaction between music and dementia through the stories of people who have been working closely together: three musicians, eight women living with dementia, five caregivers, a staff development practitioner, a project coordinator and three scientific observers. The result is a book in which all of them have participated in their own way. It consists of field observations, reflective journals, conversations, interviews and careful scientific analyses. If it can be read by many people at a profit, the project has worked. There will be, in the words of Clifford Geertz, a 'thick description' of a new friendship between music and dementia, a story about a fascinating practice that will stimulate and bolster committed people.
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This thesis contextualises the portfolio of relevant works that Than van Nispen created during the period of his Master of Music studies from 2014 to 2016.The projects described involve interactive live instrumental music, which is the subject of the thesis, and the interactive music is mainly based on video-game music methods. The projects that do not have an interactive system for the music at least have a set of rules for play and interaction for, or with the music.A focus of this Master of Music studies is the exploration of solutions for interactive music, based on game music methods, with the use of traditional music notation.
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Codarts, as a University of the Arts, develops practice-oriented research to enhance artistic development, the arts practice and arts education. Performing arts, specifically dance, music and circus, enable us to communicate beyond geographical, cultural, linguistic and religious boundaries and helps us connect our common values and dreams. The performing arts are universal in their capacity to unite and inspire, providing an excellent opportunity for us to expand our research to an international level. However, the current research strategy at Codarts does not sufficiently match our European research ambitions, even though our education is inherently international and there are multiple strong connections to relevant themes in the European Research Area. Accordingly, with this project, we aim to bridge the gap between our current national research activities and our European ambitions by aligning our research focus with the European Research Area. The aim is to develop a strategy that enriches the arts practice, arts education and our research, creating a stronger connection to the European Research Area and to relevant European networks. Expanding the scope of our practice-oriented research towards European projects is essential to increase research opportunities, improve the applicability and societal impact of our research outcomes and provide more opportunities for students, teachers and researchers to learn and exchange knowledge and insights. Additionally, it is necessary to create a sustainable future for our institution. Strategic brainstorm sessions, benchmark studies, detailed action plans and viability assessments need to make sure that we become aware of our current position in the European research field, as well as identify potential partners and networks to collaborate with. This project will eventually work towards participation in a relevant European project proposal as the first step towards strengthening our position as a leading University of the Arts in Europe.
The findings suggests that participation in music practices can significantly support caregivers' and nurses' contact with the people to whom they give care and the healthcare professionals' insights into the patients' and residents' personhood. Music can create experienced changes in the care environment through kairotic moments of connectivity and intimacy of the musical interaction. The music sessions support and reinforce the person-centred values of care delivery.The meaning of participatory music practices for the well-being and learning of healthcare professionals working with ageing patients and nursing home residents.
In leaving the more traditional territories of the concert performance for broader societal contexts, professional musicians increasingly devise music in closer collaboration with their audience rather than present it on a stage. Although the interest for such forms of devising co-creative musicking within the (elderly) health care sector is growing, the work can be considered relatively new. In terms of research, multiple studies have sought to understand the impact of such work on musicians and participants, however little is known about what underpins the musicians’ actions in these settings. With this study, I sought to address this gap by investigating professional musicians’ emerging practices when devising co-creative musicking with elderly people. Three broad concepts were used as a theoretical background to the study: Theory of Practice, co-creative musicking, and Praxialism. Firstly, I used Theory of Practice to help understand the nature of emerging practices in a wider context of change in the field of music and habitus of musicians and participants. Theory of Practice enabled me to consider a practice as “a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249). Secondly, I drew the knowledge from co-creative musicking, which is a concept I gathered from two existing concepts: co-creation and musicking. Musicking (Small, 1998), which considers music as something we do (including any mode of engagement with music), provided a holistic and inclusive way of looking at participation in music-making. The co-creation paradigm encompasses a view on enterprise that consists of bringing together parties to jointly create an outcome that is meaningful to all (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ramaswamy & Ozcan, 2014). The concept served as a lens to specify the jointness of the musicking and challenge issues of power in the engagement of participants in the creative-productive process. Thirdly, Praxialism considers musicking as an activity that encompasses “musical doers, musical doing, something done and contexts in which the former take place” (Elliott, 1995). Praxialism sets out a vision on music that goes beyond the musical work and includes the meanings and values of those involved (Silverman, Davis & Elliott, 2014). The concept allowed me to examine the work and emerging relationships as a result of devising co-creative musicking from an ethical perspective. Given the subject’s relative newness and rather unexplored status, I examined existing work empirically through an ethnographic approach (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Four cases were selected where data was gathered through episodic interviewing (Flick, 2009) and participant observation. Elements of a constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) were used for performing an abductive analysis. The analysis included initial coding, focused coding, the use of sensitizing concepts (Blumer 1969 in Hammersley, 2013) and memoing. I wrote a thick description (Geertz, 1973) for each case portraying the work from my personal experience. The descriptions are included in the dissertation as one separate chapter and foreshadow the exposition of the analysis in a next chapter. In-depth study of the creative-productive processes of the cases showed the involvement of multiple co-creative elements, such as a dialogical interaction between musicians and audience. However, participants’ contributions were often adopted implicitly, through the musicians interpreting behaviour and situations. This created a particular power dynamic and challenges as to what extent the negotiation can be considered co-creative. The implicitness of ‘making use’ of another person’s behaviour with the other not (always) being aware of this also triggered an ethical perspective, especially because some of the cases involved participants that were vulnerable. The imbalance in power made me examine the relationship that emerges between musicians and participants. As a result of a closer contact in the co-creative negotiation, I witnessed a contact of a highly personal, sometimes intimate, nature. I recognized elements of two types of connections. One type could be called ‘humanistic’, as a friendship in which there is reciprocal care and interest for the other. The other could be seen as ‘functional’, which means that the relationship is used as a resource for providing input for the creative musicking process. From this angle, I have compared the relationship with that of a relationship of an artist with a muse. After having examined the co-creative and relational sides of the interaction in the four cases, I tuned in to the musicians’ contribution to these processes and relationships. I discovered that their devising in practice consisted of a continuous double balancing act on two axes: one axis considers the other and oneself as its two ends. Another axis concerns the preparedness and unpredictability at its ends. Situated at the intersection of the two axes are the musicians’ intentionality, which is fed by their intentions, values and ethics. The implicitness of the co-creation, the two-sided relationship, the potential vulnerability of participants, and the musicians’ freedom in navigating and negotiation, together, make the devising of co-creative musicking with elderly people an activity that involves ethical challenges that are centred around a tension between prioritizing doing good for the other, associated with a eudaimonic intention, and prioritizing values of the musical art form, resembling a musicianist intention. The results therefore call for a musicianship that involves acting reflectively from an ethical perspective. Doctoral study by Karolien Dons
