University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2001 Music and Embodied Imagining: Metaphor and Metonymy in Western Art Music Deanna Kemler University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, Musicology Commons, Other Music Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Kemler, Deanna, "Music and Embodied Imagining: Metaphor and Metonymy in Western Art Music" (2001). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1184. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1184 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1184 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Music and Embodied Imagining: Metaphor and Metonymy in Western Art Music Abstract This dissertation poses the question, "How does music mean?" If we acknowledge that music exists in the material world as a complex sound wave only, we must wonder how music, as felt meaning, arises. Scholars have often approached this question through considering music as a language. I do not employ this approach. In fact, I criticize this analogy and the epistemology on which it is based as reductive and inconsistent with musical experience. This analogy diminishes a whole-bodied experience to one that involves only the mind and ears and decreases resonant, lived meaning to "content"--metaphorically an object transferred by speaker to hearer through the representative and referential functions of symbolic forms. Departing from this analogy, I develop a theory of whole-bodied, lived meaning based on Lakoff nda Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor and Polanyi's epistemology of tacit knowing (bodily-based, culturally-inflected knowing that one can feel, but cannot describe in full). Using this new theory, I analyze the speech of young musicians at the Curtis Institute of Music, taking it as descriptive of meaningful musical experience. I argue that enculturated listeners feel musical meaning when, employing metaphoric and metonymic processes, they use whole-bodied imagining and perceiving to integrate dimensions of tacit knowing with the sound wave. In so doing, they transform the sound wave's physical qualities (frequency, amplitude, complexity and duration) into music's felt dynamic qualities and events (e.g., motion, force, intensity, tension, relaxation, mood, gesture or momentum). In this way, musical meaning comes to life through the energetic mediumship of listeners' tacit knowing, resonating in and throughout felt reality. Listeners do not merely hear the music and thus grasp its meaning; rather, they live its meaning. Indeed, listeners may also, through participating bodily in live or recorded musical performances, live tacitly known, felt social meanings--such as a sense of identity or place--in intensified fashion. Thus, I suggest that symbolism involves a resonant level in which participatory, lived meaning effects a connection of participants with signs, and through signs, with each other and such transcendent social realities. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Music First Advisor Christopher F. Hasty Keywords music, metaphor, metonymy, art music, western music This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1184 Subject Categories Communication | Ethnomusicology | Musicology | Other Music | Social and Cultural Anthropology This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1184 MUSIC AND EMBODIED IMAGINING: Meta ph o r a n d m eto n y m y in western art m u sic Deanna Kemler A DISSERTATION in Music Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2001 Dissertation Supervisor non R ead er Graduate Group Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. fo r Henrietta and Jonathan, who taught me that life is for learning ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements In writing this dissertation, as in life, I am indebted primarily to my parents, Henrietta and Jonathan Koontz, to whom I dedicate this work. From them, I learned to approach the world as a student and to live life as a grand and fascinating experiment In them, I am genuinely blessed. I am also fortunate in those who have guided me through the dissertation process. Chris Hasty is a mentor and advisor extraordinaire. He acted not only as a sounding board for ideas, but also as a resonator his enchantment with the wondrous complexity of things, fascinating meanderings through the playground of ideas, attentive listening, guidance, and encouragement created a liminal space of potential for me to become more than I knew I could be. My gratitude exceeds my ability to express or reciprocate, but I do hope to pay the debt “forward,” as I model my own mentoring on his. I will miss our regular Thursday meetings very much. Marina Roseman figured most prominently in the beginning and end of this project. In her “Music and Language,” “Fieldwork” and other classes, she prepared the soil— a rich ferment of ideas and a safe, experimental space— out of which the work grew. At harvest time, she patiently, but persistently and with great s is u (Finnish: “internal fortitude”) insisted that I weed out a great deal of dross, as well as reconnect my work to the ethnorrrusicological ground from which it sprang. The work is much stronger for her insistence. I am indebted to her for helping me to see my work from the point of view and in the time frame of the reader. Readers should also be indebted, since her guidance has lightened the task of reading considerably. Any remaining infelicities are my own. I am grateful, also, to the people at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where I researched this dissertation. I thank Dean Robert Fitzpatrick for permitting and facilitating my research, Mary-Jean Hayden for helping me to make contact with many international students and Edward Aldwell, David Hayes, Mei-Mei Meng, and Otto-W emer Mueller for allowing me to sit in on classes and rehearsals. In particular, I thank the following Curtis students, especially those who talked with me at length on multiple occasions: Sara Bitlloch, Laura Caramelino, Amy Cheng, Glen Fischbach, Jonathan Gandelsman, Jason Gamer, Reza Jacobs, Amir Kats, Janet M iller, Inna Nassidze, Jim Nova, Min Sang Ptak, Anna Polonsky, Aaron Robertson, Deanne van Rooyen, in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Mike Vreilink, Catherine Wang, Chen Zhao. That they are talented is a given, since they are Curtis students. What I found a delightful surprise was hcrw warm, insightful and generous with their time and insights they were. I thank them warmly. Elizabeth Tolbert acted as unofficial reader of this dissertation. If not for bureaucratic red tape, she would have been official. Her unflagging enthusiasm and anticipation of being able to cite me encouraged mewhen I most needed it Marc Perlman and Larry Zbikowski have also shown interest in and enthusiasm for my ideas. The interest of established scholars can be a powerful incentive to slog on when the weight of one’s first large work becomes unwieldy. I thank these scholars sincerely. I would not have completed this project without the support of several fellowships. An American Association of University Women American Dissertation Fellowship, a Jacob K-Javits Graduate Fellowship, an Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, a Benjamin Franklin Graduate Fellowship, and a Chimicles Fellowship in the Teaching of W riting made possible the writing, as well as the classes out of which it grew. The nameless, faceless people who work behind the scenes to make scholarship financially possible are among the unsung heroes of academic life. Here, I sing my gratitude to them. Also among academia’s unsung heroes are the administrative and support personnel who make scholarship practically possible. Maryellen Malek, Margie Smith and Alfreda Frazier are the glue that holds the music department together. Having worked such a position in Penn’s Department of Folklore and FoQdife, I know the difficulty and importance of administrative work. If I were to sing my gratitude to them, it would have to be an oratorio. In that oratorio, I would also want to sing a chorus or two to the professors who guided me as graduate chair, particularly Lawrence Bernstein and Cristle Judd. Additionally, I’d sing an aria to Eugene Wolf, whose warm interest and encouragement saved my student career several times dining its difficult first year, and to Eugene Lew, who assisted me many times with computer problems. But for the following people, Pd sing a folk tune. Kenny Goldstein, Dan Ben-Amos and Roger Abrahams encouraged me to stretch myself beyond the safety of my administrative position in the Folklore department Without their belief in me, I would not even have begun my student career. I thank (and remember) them fondly. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fd also like to thank other members of the Music Department community. Elyse Carter Vosen, Jose Buenconsejo and Jeremy W allach played starring roles in “The Young and