Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Research Publications
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ItemBy myself but not alone: Agency, creativity, and extended musical historicity(Routledge, 2022-11)In this paper we offer a preliminary framework that highlights the relational nature of solo music-making, and its associated capacity to influence the constellation of habits and experiences one develops through acts of musicking. To do so, we introduce the notion of extended musical historicity and suggest that when novice and expert performers engage in individual musical practices, they often rely on an extended sense of agency which permeates their musical experience and shapes their creative outcomes. To support this view, we report on an exploratory, qualitative study conducted with novice and expert musicians. This was designed to elicit a range of responses, beliefs, experiences and meanings concerning the main categories of agency and creativity. Our data provide rich descriptions of solitary musical practices by both novice and expert performers, and reveal ways in which these experiences involve social contingencies that appear to generate or transform creative musical activity. We argue that recognition of the interactive components of individual musicking may shed new light on the cognition of solo and joint music performance, and should inspire the development of novel conceptual and empirical tools for future research and theory.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableExploring Shared Musical Experiences in Dementia Care: A Worked Example of a Qualitative Systematic Review and Thematic Synthesis(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2022-09)Qualitative systematic reviews, or qualitative evidence syntheses (QES), are increasingly used in health settings to guide the development of practice and policy. Thematic synthesis is one of the most well-developed approaches used for QES, however there are limited worked examples describing how to apply the steps of analysis in the literature. This paper describes the processes and decisions undertaken in a qualitative systematic review and thematic synthesis from the perspective of a novice researcher. The described review aimed to explore the shared musical experiences of people living with dementia and their family care partners across a range of settings. We found that shared musical activities fostered experiences of connection and wellbeing for people living with dementia and their family care partners. This was demonstrated with moderate-high confidence through six themes, and our findings informed the development of the Contextual Connection Model of Health Musicking. In presenting a worked example of our review, this paper introduces a systematic approach to coding and discusses the complexities of developing and reporting on analytical themes. We identify the need for a specific thematic synthesis reporting tool, and the need to embed reflexive practices into QES tools more broadly.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDemographic and clinical profile of residents living with dementia and depressive symptoms in Australian private residential aged care: Data from the Music Interventions for Dementia and Depression in ELderly care (MIDDEL) cluster-randomised controlled trial(WILEY, 2022-12)OBJECTIVES: 1) To describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of residents with dementia and depressive symptoms in the Australian private residential aged care (RAC) context; and 2) to investigate the association between neuropsychiatric symptoms, depression and quality of life and their interactions with dementia severity. METHODS: This study examined the baseline demographic and clinical data from the Australian arm of the Music Interventions for Dementia and Depression in ELderly care (MIDDEL) study, a multinational, cluster-randomised controlled trial. Demographic characteristics, neuropsychiatric symptoms, depression, quality of life and dementia severity were collected in 330 residents of 12 private RAC facilities across Melbourne, Australia. Descriptive statistics, the Kruskal-Wallis test and the Pearson Χ2 test were used to describe and compare the demographic and clinical characteristics according to dementia severity. The association between clinical characteristics and dementia severity was examined using linear regression analyses. RESULTS: Residents' mean age was 86.5 years, 69% were female, and 44.2% had severe dementia. There were no significant differences between the dementia severity groups on age, sex and education. Residents with severe dementia were more likely to have a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (40.3%) and be born overseas (46.8%). Higher levels of neuropsychiatric symptoms, distress and depressive symptoms, and lower quality of life were associated with more severe dementia. CONCLUSIONS: The findings from our study highlight the diverse and complex care needs of people living with dementia in the Australian private RAC setting, which can be used to inform targeted, person-centred dementia care planning, staff training and allocation of resources.
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ItemNo Preview Available25th Anniversary Mimir Chamber Music Festival USA(Mimir Chamber Music Festival / https://www.mimirfestival.org, 2022-06-27)coming soon
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAustralian National Violin Conference(Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne / https://finearts-music.unimelb.edu.au/showcase/dorcas-mcclean-competition, 2022)The inaugural Australian National Violin Conference was held at the Ian Potter Southbank Centre over four days, from 10–13 February 2022. Bringing together musicians and scholars from around the country, its program began with lectures on several of Australia’s most renowned twentieth-century violinists by Dr Suzanne Robinson (University of Melbourne), Dr Goetz Richter AM (Sydney Conservatorium) in association with Dr Jeanell Carrigan AM (Sydney Conservatorium), Dr Kay Dreyfus (Monash University), Ibby Mikaljo (University of Western Australia) and Dr Curt Thompson (University of Melbourne). A presentation on the teaching and influence of Jan Sedivka by Keith Crellin OAM, including an interview with Elizabeth Morgan AM, was followed by a panel discussion involving several of his most prominent students: Kirsty Bremner, Sarah Curro, Peter Exton, Amanda Fairs, Trevor Jones and Cindy Watkin. Two additional sessions focused on Mozart and the violin, with presentations from Professor Cliff Eisen (King’s College London) on Mozart’s library and the significance of the violin to his career, from his early violin performances as a child prodigy to his employment as a violinist at the Salzburg court and later in Vienna. Running parallel to the conference, the program of the Dorcas McClean Travelling Scholarship for Violinists included masterclasses with distinguished guest artists Robert Davidovici (Artist-in-Residence ansd Professor or Violin at Florida International University, Miami) and Cho-Liang Lin (Benjamin Armistead Shepherd Distinguished Professor at Rice University, Houston), a guest artists recital and recitals by the scholarship’s semi-finalists. Altogether the conference was a landmark in the study of violinists, violin performance and violin culture in twentieth-century Australia, creating a pathway for future study and collaboration, and for ongoing cooperation and exchange between scholars, teachers, performers and students. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=dorcas+mcclean+anvc&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
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ItemNew Objectivity and the Middlebrow(Oxford University Press, 2022)There is much about the New Objectivity in music that might suggest understanding it as middlebrow. Emerging in the mid- to late 1920s, it combined elements of modern art music composition with jazz and popular culture in the name of accessibility, thus seeming to bring together Andreas Huyssen’s categories of modernism and mass culture. This chapter argues, however, that the New Objectivity’s emphasis on function and its rejection of the ideology of artistic autonomy disqualify it from the category of the middlebrow. It analyzes the New Objectivity as a middlebrow-like relational category between another “Great Divide” described by Huyssen: avant-garde and culture industry. This approach refocuses our attention on the relationship between Dada and the New Objectivity and also provides new insight into how the New Objectivity navigated the shifting cultural landscape of Weimar Republic Germany until its basic premises became untenable in the early 1930s.
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ItemThe HOMESIDE Music Intervention: A Training Protocol for Family Carers of People Living with Dementia(MDPI, 2022-12)Background: The number of people living with dementia (PwD) worldwide is expected to double every 20 years. Many continue living at home, receiving support from family caregivers who may experience significant stress, simultaneously to that of the PwD. Meaningful and effective home-based interventions to support PwD and their caregivers are needed. The development of a theory- and practice-driven online home-based music intervention (MI) is delivered by credentialed music therapists, nested within the HOMESIDE RCT trial. Methods: Dyads including the PwD and their family carer are randomised to MI, reading (RI) or standard care (SC). MI aims to support health wellbeing and quality of life by training caregivers to intentionally use music (singing, instrument playing, movement/dancing, and music listening) with their family member (PwD) in daily routines. MI is underpinned by cognitive, relational, social, and psychological theories of mechanisms of change. Results: Preliminary sub-cohort results analyses show MI can be delivered and is accepted well by participants and music-therapist interventionists across five countries. Conclusions: The specialist skills of a music therapist through MI enable carers to access music when music therapists are not present, to meet carer and PwD needs. Music therapists embrace this changing professional role, observing therapeutic change for members of the dyads.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMusic Therapy and Other Music-Based Interventions(Springer International Publishing, 2022)The interest in music and musical abilities of autistic children have been observed since the earliest descriptions of the condition. Music is a universal language known for millennia and music-based interventions including music therapy have found several applications in the fields of developmental psychology and mental health over the last decades. This group of complementary therapies aims to help the clients to optimize their health, using various facets of musical experience and the relationships formed through them. Several psychological theories and neurobiological models may explain the specific mechanisms through which music-based interventions work for autistic individuals. The present chapter aims to describe the sensorimotor, attentional, emotional, and social processes underpinning the potential effectiveness of music therapy in this population and to provide an overview of the most recent literature findings. At the end of the chapter, an account of the autistic giftedness and talent for music is presented.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRespect-focused writing: An invitation to reflexivity in the use of terminology(GRIEG ACADEMY, 2022-10-20)