Events

Since the 1970s ethnomusicologists have been interested in the ways in which people who share a musical culture think about music in words. Of particular interest has been the metaphorical nature of speech about music and the way these metaphors shape musical perception, generate musical meaning, and influence musical experience. This lecture begins with an examination of metaphors of pitch and melodic contour in English-language music theory. It then compares that understanding to the reported experiences of musicians and singers in Bulgaria, Bali, China, and a few other cultures. Based on these findings, the lecture then asks whether the ethnographic methods ethnomusicologists typically employ in their research are adequate to answer the two foundational questions that animate the field of ethnomusicology, namely, "how and why are humans musical." For example, research in cognitive psychology suggests that the variation found in the ethnographic record on pitch metaphors and melodic contour contrasts with what may be a humanly shared perceptual apparatus. The lecture ends by asking this question: If the disciplines of ethnomusicology and psychology reach different conclusions about the nature of musical perception and understanding, what does that imply about the ambitions of ethnomusicology in the general field of music studies?

Timothy Rice | Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, of ethnomusicology at the University of Californa, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has served as president of the Society for Ethnomusicology, editor of the journal Ethnomusicology and founding director of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is the author of books on Bulgarian traditional music (May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music and Music in Bulgaria: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture) and on theory and method in ethnomusicology (Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction and Modeling Ethnomusicology). His research has been translated into Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Korean, Italian, Persian, and Spanish.