T561 Fall 2003

Musical Gesture: Theory and Interpretation

Instructor: Robert Hatten

Meeting times MWF 9:05-9:55 a.m., Music Annex 454

Musical gesture is biologically and culturally grounded in communicative human movement. Gesture draws upon the close interaction (and intermodality) of a range of human perceptual and motor systems to synthesize the energetic shaping of motion through time into significant events with unique expressive force. The biological and cultural motivations of musical gesture are further negotiated within the conventions of a musical style, whose elements include both the discrete (pitch, rhythm, meter) and the analog (dynamics, articulation, temporal pacing). Musical gestures are emergent gestalts that convey affective motion, emotion, and agency by fusing otherwise separate elements into continuities of shape and force.

The course will develop a workable general concept of musical gesture and then explore how gesture is negotiated with (or synthesized from) musical elements within the context of various musical styles (common practice and beyond) and performance practices. An important component of the course will be the expressive interpretation of musical gesture from the perspective of actual performance, as well as analysis and criticism. Categories of gesture to be examined will include the “spontaneous,” thematic, dialogical, rhetorical, and tropological. The role of gesture in the expressive discourse of entire movements will be demonstrated, and the interrelationships between gesture and other dimensions of musical form and structure will be explored.

Readings will include recent work on gesture, as well as theories of musical gesture by David Lidov, Manfred Clynes, Alexandra Pierce, Naomi Cumming, and Robert Hatten, including the manuscript of Prof. Hatten’s new book, Interpreting Musical Gesture, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart-Beethoven-Schubert (to appear, Indiana University Press). Readings specific to the interests of participants will also be selected. Additional assignments will include interpretive analytical essays, in-class performance interpretations, and a final paper interpreting a major movement or work from the perspective of musical gesture.

Theorists, musicologists, performers, conductors, and music educators are all encouraged to enroll. The course assumes tonal and 20th-century analytical abilities.