A Playful Intervention into Music Research: Ontological Musings on Digital Technologies as Musical Instruments
Presentation
By Denise Petzold and Jorge Lozano, presented at the conference Digital Technologies Applied to Music Research: Methodologies, Projects and Challenges, organised by the Centre for the Study of Sociology and Musical Aesthetics (CESEM) at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal, 27-29 June 2024.
Digital technologies and media have become productive tools to research music: for example, digital databases facilitate the access to and dissemination of scores between scholars and communities; various programmes and innovative AI software help researchers to analyse musical pieces; and digitisation devices and processes have come to play an important role in the successful preservation of music. Many of these technologies are understood to facilitate existing research or open up new possibilities of how music can be researched. Constantly, new technologies are developed - for example within projects - which pose not only quality of life improvements but also significant challenges for music researchers. In turn, classical music contests the technologies in question. In our talk, we aimed to reflect on how researchers use such technologies, and what this implies both about the music researched - meaning how it is understood - and the ways in which this research is being conducted.
Digital technologies inform and are informed by specific understandings of the music in question, meaning how it exists and how we - as scholars - interact with it. Above all, what these technologies and their use have in common is their common focus on the concept or notion of the musical work (Goehr, 2007[1992]; Johnson, 1996). This is well visible in what is studied with such technologies, particularly under a more traditional frame of musicology and music history: scores and notations, performances, or recordings of musical works are common objects of enquiry. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches to classical music research can be found here, and both are resonant with the idea of music becoming a self-contained unit, dividable, quantifiable, measurable, and classifiable. However, this means that there is a tension considering the limits of such digital technologies: for example, how can music analysis software, developed for analytical text units such as scores of a musical work, relate to music that moves outside of these aesthetic parameters - for example early music? The objects of research, as the conference programme shows, are anchored in the aesthetics of the music; we transcribe musical text digitally, we analyse its harmonies, melodies, and rhythms, we catalogue and archive scores and create databases and repositories of composers and oeuvres. As a consequence, this makes it easy to consider digital technology as a tool for research, as something that rests outside of the actual music.
With our presentation at the conference, we aimed to ‘zoom out’ of this picture. We asked:
- In what ways are digital technologies fundamental to the continuing existence of music?
- How can digital technologies open up understandings of the music?
- How may this affect how classical music is researched?
In order to come closer to answer these questions, we used Christopher Small’s concept of musicking (1998), and consequently introduced a constructivist reading of music research practice as part of the many activities subsumed under this concept. Small (1998) argues that
To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing. (p. 9)
Proposing that research and music technology scholarship can be seen as ‘musicking’, we questioned the boundaries between music research and musical practice. Firstly, this allowed us to understand technology as an actor of musicking or as part of music as verb, holding a performative role in shaping music and the ways in which it is studied. Secondly, by viewing technology as an actor, questions of agency come to the fore; this helps to understand that digital technologies hold power over the music and research practices around it, opening up new possibilities for recognising and questioning these power relations. Thirdly, utilising the concept of musicking, researchers may go beyond the analytical units so common in this research, and facilitate an examination of musical practices or objects that have been neglected, or which remained largely invisible.
This was the conceptual underpinning of our intervention. Now, what does this all mean for researching music with digital technologies? In our talk, the next step consisted of introducing a thought experiment based on the idea of music research and technology as musicking. This thought experiment was guided by an overarching question:
What if we thought of the digital technologies that we use in music research as musical instruments?
After all, musical instruments are not merely tools, as several authors suggest (Ingold, 2018, 2020; McCormick, 2015; Petzold, 2024; Wagner, 2015). Instead, the engagement between musician and instrument is reciprocal and conjoint, providing an embodied and tactile experience. And instruments, too, are technologies, as a whole body of literature in Science and Technology Studies (STS) suggests; here, instruments are often understood as material agents that shape the histories, knowledge, and practices in which they are embedded (Bijsterveld & Peters, 2010; Bijsterveld & Schulp, 2004; Peters, 2020; Pinch, 2017; Pinch & Trocco, 2002).
The thought experiment, we believe, brings to light clear parallels when looking at digital technologies and musical instruments. These concern, we think, three areas in particular (but may not be confined to these three):
(1) Aesthetics and Practice.
Both digital technology and musical instruments are embedded in specific aesthetic/scientific traditions which assume and afford certain practices and usages (but also constrain and exclude others). At the same time, this use is contingent: while there might be routines and conventions, there is no pre-established outcome of this use. No two interactions are the same as they are situated in a specific context. Looking at music research, this issue concerns the validity of the reproducibility of research and highlights the role of the researcher and their positioning. While technology is thought to strengthen reproducibility and validity by “removing” human fallibility, the implications of a situated usage of digital technology in music research often falls behind a methodological meta-perspective that illuminates the context-dependency of such work in relation to its broader aesthetic and scientific practice.
(2) Craftwork and Embodiment.
Digital technologies, like instruments, have a genealogy of design. This design shapes the embodied relationships with the actors that use them. In this process there is trial and error, as well as experimentation. When we “play” technologies, they speak to imagination and creativity; they make us problem-solvers and highlight possibilities for playing around. In these embodied relationships, doing becomes thinking; as Ingold (2020) suggests, thinking happens through doing. Similar to musical instruments, technologies become a way for us to relate to, see, and understand the world through our modes of interaction.
(3) Impact and Performativity.
What is at stake? Just as musical instruments shape the music produced, digital technologies shape the research and interpretation of music, affecting its realization, performance, and reception. This also means that problematic power relations from scientific practices of doing music research - such as for example colonialist epistemologies - can travel into the musicking process. This affects future research: What are we doing with these technologies? What ideas of music, research and the world are reproduced? Where does power reside, or to formulate it differently: what and who are we actually listening to?
These three areas are suggestions that may serve as points for reflection or further research. To summarise, we proposed in the conference that comparing digital technologies to musical instruments can open up new understandings of the role and scope of digital technologies in music research. This, in turn, may inspire new questions and methodologies for music research and its various areas, such as music history, musicology, or music technology.
References
Bijsterveld, K. & Peters, P. F. (2010). Composing Claims on Musical Instrument Development: A Science and Technology Studies’ Contribution. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 35(2), 106–121.
Bijsterveld, K. & Schulp, M. (2004). Breaking Into a World of Perfection: Innovation in
Today’s Classical Musical Instruments. Social Studies of Science, 34(5), 649–674.
Goehr, L. (2007). The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Revised Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1992 by Clarendon Press)
Griffiths, P., & Whittall, A. (2011). indeterminate music. In The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780199579037.013.3412
Ingold, T. (2018). From the North with my Cello, or, Five Propositions on Beauty. In S. Bunn (Ed.), Anthropology and Beauty: From Aesthetics to Creativity (pp. 449–464). Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2020). Thinking through the Cello. In J. Bennett & M. Zournazi (Eds.), Thinking in the World: A Reader (pp. 202–222). Bloomsbury.
Johnson, J. H. (1996). Listening in Paris: A Cultural History. University of California Press.
McCormick, L. (2015). Performing Civility: International Competitions in
Classical Music. Cambridge University Press.
Mori, M. (1970/2012, June 12). The uncanny valley (K. F. MacDorman & N. Kageki, Trans.). IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-uncanny-valley
Peters, P. F. (2020). Crafting Baroque Sound: How the Making of Organ Pipes Matters Artistically. In H. Borgdorff, P. F. Peters, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Dialogues Between Artistic Research and Science and Technology Studies (pp. 125–136). Routledge.
Petzold, D. (2024). Exploring Human-Instrument Relationships in Classical Music: From Idealist Aesthetics to Post-Humanist Perspectives on a Significant, Sounding Other. Kunsttexte, 2(8).
Pinch, T. (2017). How STS Provides a New Way of Thinking About Musical Instruments and Their Sounds. In H. van Lente, T. Swierstra, S. Wyatt, & R. Zeiss (Eds.), Wegwijs in STS: Knowing Your Way in STS (pp. 105–109). Maastricht University Science, Technology and Society Studies (MUSTS).
Pinch, T. & Trocco, F. (2002). Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. Harvard University Press.
Reich, M. (2018, May 22). The story of minimalism, part two: From minimal to maximal. All Classical. https://www.allclassical.org/the-story-of-minimalism-part-two-from-minimal-to-maximal/
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Wesleyan University Press.
Wagner, I. (2015). Producing Excellence: The Making of Virtuosos. Rutgers University Press.