Minerva Elements Records
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ItemRe-visioning music as a way of knowing( 2009)This dissertation explores perceived contradictions and mismatches through a phenomenological, poetic and individual approach to language as a means of expanding rather than contracting concepts, specifically in relation to musical phenomena. It reappraises the way in which we use language, re-envisioning it as something that is a departure from the realm of the literal. Here, language becomes a means to reveal, to use Heidegger’s term, to un-conceal (1971) rather than to represent or codify. The observations in this dissertation are not made from a distance. Personal context is necessarily epistemically implied in the discussion of this problem, and as such, the response to the subject matter and the nature of the research undertaken over the course of this dissertation is also drawn from a personal relationship with language.
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ItemBeyond words: newly-arrived children's perceptions of music learning and music making( 2009)This thesis examines the way refugee and immigrant children, newly-arrived in Australia, perceive and describe music learning and music making. Sited in a specialist English Language School for primary school-age new arrivals, it explores the meaning that children from diverse cultural backgrounds and prior schooling experiences ascribe to their music classes and experiences, inviting their perceptions of what they are learning, how they learn it, what aspects of the music program most engage and motivate them, and what sense they make of the music program and its existence at this school. The study also focuses on the methodological issues at play in a research context where multiple languages, culture shock, and pre-adolescent children with unknown pre-migration experiences, coincide with a subject matter that does not lend itself easily to spoken descriptions. These include issues of interpretation and assigning meaning, and the way that different cultural values and expectations can influence participants’ responses. The researcher sought to develop research methods and tools that would effectively elicit the children’s responses, supporting them in the unfamiliar research environment, while remaining sensitive to their preferred ways of communicating. This is a qualitative multiple case study that focuses on three individual students from diverse cultural and schooling backgrounds, with the school’s music program being the issue or concern upon which they offer their different perspectives. Both within-case and cross-case analysis was utilised, and a phenomenological approach to the inquiry was embedded within the case-study structure and research design. Data were gathered by means of interviews and participant observation, and were analysed and interpreted for emergent categories and themes, and for the additional meanings hidden between what was not said, or within awkward language, using interpretive poetics methods and direct interpretations of individual instances. Discussion points and conclusions include the significance of the music pedagogy in building shared understanding among culturally-diverse children, the impact of culture shock on children’s perceptions, the importance of social learning contexts for newly-arrived children, and methodological challenges and recommendations for research with a similar cohort of children.
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ItemAttending to silence( 2009)It may seem ironic or even slightly absurd to discuss silence in a context where the sound is art. Perhaps even more absurd is the fact that we are engaging in a kind of dialectical exchange about silence which inevitably materialises in sound. Paradoxes and contradictions aside, for a musician to ask, ‘what is silence?’ is for a painter to ask, ‘what is a canvas?’ or an actor to ask, ‘what is an empty stage?’ Silence has a necessary interrelationship with sound be it music, speech or noise. It also has potential to be translated to space, body and existence – our physical being in the world. Silence has often been construed as nothing, a void or completely disregarded. Instead of speculating the is-ness of silence, by objectifying it as a thing in the world that has positive or negative ontology and dismissing it as merely no-thing, the attempt here is to investigate the experience of silence in music and music performance, as it is as much an expressive gesture as music and sound and it gives light to the experience of listening and performing. An awareness of silence will hopefully be an invitation to a different perspective, regard and respect for its place and space in music and our own minds.