Marvellous Minutiae: in defence of the details

McCluskey, Iain Robert (2017) Marvellous Minutiae: in defence of the details. MMus(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Previous studies of music and meaning largely focus on the effect of overarching musical forms and features on listener’s experiences or interactions between society and a piece of music to describe the mechanism by which listeners engage with musical works.
The following paper is an attempt to argue for a change in focus in musical analysis that pays more attention to the detail in subjective musical experiences to better account for how music is understood and evaluated by listeners, and how they derive value from musical works going forward.
Initially, this paper posits an account of musical understanding which identifies the shortcomings of Formalism in the description of the fundamental mechanisms of musical understanding and experience.
The account of musical understanding offered is one that describes the similarities between Concatenationism and computational heuristics to explain the fundamental principles by which listeners identify and process musical sounds thus rejecting the notion that apprehension of musical form is a necessary condition for understanding music.
Following on from this an examination of the limitations of cultural analysis of musical works is contrasted with an approach that concentrates on the effect of individual’s dispositions in understanding how musical meanings and values are created for listeners.
The above study is undertaken by analysis and criticism of the work of various authors who have written about either musical understanding or the value and meaning of musical works.

• Item Type: Thesis (MMus(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Concatenationism, heuristics.
• Subjects: M Music and Books on Music > M Music
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Music
• Supervisor's Name: Butt, Professor John
• Date of Award: 2017
• Depositing User: Mr Iain Robert McCluskey
• Unique ID: glathesis:2017-8592
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 24 Jan 2018 14:56
• Last Modified: 10 Dec 2019 12:32
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.8592
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/8592