Vortragsreihe "Plurale Musikwissenschaft" - Ian Cross, Music as communication: communication as music

01. Februar 2017 | 17.45 - 19.15 Uhr | Alter Seminarraum (R. 1.416a), Hauptgebäude

Prof. Dr. Ian Cross von der Faculty of Music der Cambridge University:
"Music as communication: communication as music"

Drawing on recent ethnomusicological, linguistic, ethological and psychological research, this paper suggests that music and speech can be conceived of and explored most informatively as complementary components of the human communicative toolkit.  I shall argue that this fact has been obscured by the metonymic operationalisations of language and music employed in much mainstream research, which focus on properties of language that are most clearly exhibited in text, and on attributes of music that are most relevant to aestheticized or commodified sound.  I shall discuss some of our group's recent research on spontaneous interaction in speech and music to support the argument that music and speech are best explored and explained as manifestations of an underlying repertoire of human-specific communicative behaviours.