Assignments for
Music 43805: Music
and Dance

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	Week 1
	Week 2
	Week 3
	Week 4
	Week 5
	Week 6
	Week 7
	Week 8
	Week 9
	Week 10

These are the assignments for Music 43805, Larry Zbikowski's seminar on music and dance at the University of Chicago, Spring term 2005.

April 1
Introduction: construals of dance and music

Class notes

1. Find the class locker, #3430.

2. Extract from said locker the tome containing John Blacking's “The Study of Man as Music-Maker” (which is in The Performing Arts: Music and Dance, ed. John Blacking and Joann W. Kealiinohomoku, World Anthropology (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1979), pp. 3-15). The essay is wide-ranging, but note in particular passages like this one from p. 6:

“The creation of music can be described as a sharing of inner feelings in a social context through extensions of body movement, in which certain species-specific capabilities are modified and extended through social and cultural experience. Music is a metaphor of feeling that draws on man’s own nature for many of its forms.”

3. Volunteer to bring an example of social dance in to the seminar. Okay, not everyone can do this, but I would like four people to start us off by doing the following:

1. Choose an example of social dance (which we can define negatively as not ritual dance, not ballet or similar forms, and so on) which has a discrete pattern of steps and/or moves. I'm not particularly fussy about what sort of dance this is--the Bunny Hop counts, as do polkas, sarabandes, the twist (arguably) and any number of other diverse forms--but it does need to have steps/moves that can be demonstrated and/or learned.
2. Dig out a recording of the music for the dance. (Alternatively, come prepared to play the piece.)
3. Either dig up or transcribe a rudimentary score for the music. (c) should present the essential features of (b). (If you find a score that isn't exact but is a reasonably good match for the recording, that's fine.)

April 8
Social dance as topos and structuring element

Class notes

Readings:

Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) [ML410 .M95 A635; in locker, along with a photocopy of the readings], chapter 2 (“The Gestures of Social Dance”), pp. 31-70. Optional: Introduction (“Expression, Imitation, and the Musical Topos”), pp. 1-9; and chapter 1 (“The Shapes of Rhythms”), pp. 13-30.

Sevin Yaraman, Revolving Embrace: The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound, Monographs in Musicology (Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2002) [ML3465 .Y37 2002; in locker], chapter 2 (“Putting Music under the Dancers’ Feet”), pp. 17-41. Optional: chapter 1 (“The Curtain-Raiser: A Discussion of Basic Issues”), pp. 1-16.

Analysis:

Mozart, String Quintet in C major, K. 515, second movement (cf. Allanbrook, pp. 36-37). Do a close analysis of this movement, with an eye toward how well it represents quintessential features of the minuet.

Haydn, String Quartet in B^b major, op. 76, no. 4, finale (cf. Allanbrook, p. 49). This is a longer and more complex movement; explore it with an eye toward how well it represents the features of a bourrée.

Be sure to look up “minuet,” “waltz,” and “bourrée” in the International Encyclopedia of Dance [GV1585.I586 1998, 3rd floor reading room]; you may want to check the New Grove as well.

April 15
The anthropology of dance

Class notes

Readings:

Barbara Browning, Samba: Resistance in Motion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) [GV1637 .B760 1995], chapter 1 (“Samba: The Body Articulate”), pp. 1-34; pdf of Browning, chapter 1.

Steven M. Friedson, Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing, Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) [ML350 .F750 1996], chapter 5 (“In the Vimbuza Mode”), pp. 128-162; pdf of Friedson, chapter 5.

Andrée Grau, “Dance as Part of the Infrastructure of Social Life,” The World of Music 37, no. 2 (1995) [ML5 .W9]: 43-59; pdf of Grau article.

Susan A. Reed, “The Politics and Poetics of Dance,” Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998): 503-532.

Optional readings:

John Blacking, “Towards an Anthropology of the Body,” in The Anthropology of the Body, ed. John Blacking, A.S.A. Monographs 15 (London: Academic Press, 1977) [GN298 .A62], 1-28.

Jane Cowan, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece, Princeton Modern Greek Studies (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990) [GV1588.6 .C690 1990], chapter 4 (“Dancing Signs: Deciphering the Body in Wedding Celebrations”), pp. 89-133.

Adrienne L. Kaeppler, “Dance in Anthropological Perspective,” Annual Review of Anthropology 7 (1978): 31-49.

Roderyk Lange, The Nature of Dance: An Anthropological Perspective (New York: International Publications Service, 1975) [GV1588 .L27].

Paul Spencer, ed., Society and the Dance: The Social Anthropology of Process and Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) [GV1588.6 .S630 1985].

April 22
The specification of bodily motion—dance notations and theories of gesture

Class notes

Remember that paper topics, together with initial research bibliographies, are due 4/22.

Readings:

Eric Clarke, Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning (New York: Oxford, 2005) [page proofs], chapter 3 (“Music, Motion, and Subjectivity”), pp. 62-100. N.B.: Clarke’s first and third extended music examples, from Berg’s Wozzeck and Mozart’s Quintet in C major, K. 515.

Robert W. Mitchell and Matthew C. Gallaher, “Embodying Music: Matching Music and Dance in Memory,” Music Perception 19, no. 1 (Fall 2001): 65-85; pdf of Mitchell and Gallaher.

Jill Beck and Joseph Reiser, Moving Notation: A Handbook of Musical Rhythm and Elementary Labanotation for the Dancer (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998) [GV1587 .B43 1998], chapter 1 (“Getting Started”), pp. 8-18 (§§1.7-1.13), pp. 20-23 (§1.15), pp. 27-35 (§§1.18-1.21).

Marie-Laure Bachmann, Dalcroze Today: An Education Through and Into Music, ed. Ruth Stewart, trans. David Parlett, preface by Jack P. B. Dobbs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) [MT 22 .B3130 1991], introduction, pp. 9-18; chapter 3 (“Eurythmics: Ends and Means”), pp. 115-135.

You may also find the web site for the Dance Notation Bureau useful.

Optional readings:

Patrick Shove and Bruno H. Repp, “Musical Motion and Performance: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives,” in The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, ed. John Rink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) [ML457 .P720 1995], pp. 55-83.

Carol L. Krumhansl and Diana Lynn Schenck, “Can Dance Reflect the Structural and Expressive Qualities of Music?: A Perceptual Experiment on Balanchine’s Choreography of Mozart’s Divertimento no. 15,” Musicæ Scientiæ 1, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 63-85; pdf of Krumhansl and Schenck.

David McNeill, Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) [P117 .M360 1992].

Ann Hutchinson, Labanotation, or Kinetography Laban: The System of Analyzing and Recording Movement, 3rd ed. (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1970) [GV1587 .H93 1977].

Ann Hutchinson Guest, Choreo-Graphics: A Comparison of Dance Notation Systems from the Fifteenth Century to the Present (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1989) [GV1587 .G820 1989].

Vera Maletic, Body-Space-Expression: The Development of Rudolf Laban’s Movement and Dance Concepts (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987) [GV1785 .L2 M350 1987].

Rudolf Laban, The Language of Movement: A Guidebook to Choreutics, ed. Lisa Ullman (Boston: Plays, Inc., 1976) [GV1587 .L11 1976].

April 29
Cognitive theories of bodily representation and meaning

Class notes

Readings:

Paula M. Niedenthal, Lawrence W. Barsalou, Piotr Winkielman, Silvia Krauth-Gruber, and François Ric, “Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion,” Personality and Social Psychology Review, in press; pdf of Niedenthal et al.

Antonio R. Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Inc., 2003) [QP401 .D203 2003 (Crear)] chapter 3 (“Feelings”), pp. 83-133.

Optional readings:

Lawrence W. Barsalou, “Perceptual Symbol Systems,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (November 1999): 577-609.

Lawrence W. Barsalou, “Perceptions of Perceptual Symbols,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (November 1999): 637-660.
pdf of BBS 22/4, pp. 577-660

Lawrence W. Barsalou, “Situated Simulation in the Human Conceptual System,” Language and Cognitive Processes 18, no. 5/6 (October-December 2003): 513-562; pdf of Barsalou 2003

Lawrence W. Barsalou, Paula M. Niedenthal, Aron K. Barbey, and Jennifer A. Ruppert, “Social Embodiment,” in The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory, ed. Brian H. Ross (Amsterdam: Academic Press, 2003), 43-92; pdf of Barsalou et al.

Terrence W. Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997) [QP399 .D43 1997] chapter 3 (“Symbols Aren’t Simple”), pp. 69-101.

Zohar Eitan and Roni Y. Granot, “How Music Moves: Musical Parameters and Listeners’ Images of Motion,” Music Perception: in press; pdf of Eitan and Granot (lacking tables and figures).

Analysis assignment:

Agustin Barrios, Vals, op. 8, no. 4. Consider, in light of the readings we have done thus far, how one might characterize "musical motion" in this composition; you may wish to concentrate on only one of the three (or four, depending on how you count 'em) sections of the work. Various recordings will be in the class locker.

May 6
Perspectives on the meaning and structure of dance

Class notes

Readings:

Judith L. Schwartz, “The Passacaille in Lully’s Armide: Phrase Structure in the Choreography and the Music,” Early Music 26, no. 2 (May 1998): 300-320. (pdf of Schwartz) [note that this entire number of Early Music is given over to dance; see also the February and May 1986 volumes]

Judith Lynne Hanna, To Dance is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication, with a new preface (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) [GV1603.H360 1987] chapter 3 (“Psyche and Soma: Some Bases of the Human Phenomenon of Dance”), pp. 57-82

Judith Becker, Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004) [ML3838.B433 2004] chapter 2 (“Deep Listeners”), pp. 45-68.

Optional readings:

Alice Singer, “The Metrical Structure of Macedonian Dance,” Ethnomusicology 18, no. 3 (September 1974): 379-404; pdf of Singer.

May 13
EDM (and a bit on origins)

Class notes

Readings:

Mark Butler, “Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music” (Ph.D. diss., Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University, 2003) [on CD in locker] chapter 3 (“Conceptualizing Rhythm and Meter in Electronic Dance Music”), pp. 86-114; chapter 5 (“Metrical Dissonance”), pp. 171-223.

Georgiana Gore, “The Beat Goes On: Trance, Dance and Tribalism in Rave Culture,” in Dance in the City, ed. Helen Thomas (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997) [GV1588.6 .D38 1997], 50-67.

Ian Cross, “Music and Biocultural Evolution,” in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, ed. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton (New York: Routledge, 2003) [ML3845 .C85 2003; on reserve], 19-30.

Optional readings:

Ian Cross, “Is Music the Most Important Thing We Ever Did?: Music, Development, and Evolution,” in Music, Mind, and Science, ed. Suk Won Yi (Seoul, Korea: Seoul National University Press, 1999), 10-39; available online.

Ian Cross, “Music, Cognition, Culture, and Evolution,” in The Biological Foundations of Music, ed. Robert J. Zatorre and Isabelle Peretz (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 2001), 28-42; pdf of Cross.

William Hardy McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995) [BF474.M370 1995] chapter 1 (“Muscular Bonding”), pp. 1-11; chapter 2 (“Human Evolution”), pp. 13-35.

May 20
Eugene Montague’s work on music and motion, and more on samba

Class notes

Readings:

Eugene Montague, “Moving to Music: A Theory of Sound and Physical Action” (Ph.D. diss., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2001), chapter 2 (“Theorizing”), pp. 41-86; chapter 3 (“Dancing”), pp. 86bis-131. [on CD in locker]

Jochen Eisentraut, “Samba in Wales: Making Sense of Adopted Music,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10, no. 1 (2001): 85-105.

Optional readings:

Patricia Ranum, “Audible Rhetoric and Mute Rhetoric: The 17th-Century French Sarabande,” Early Music 14, no. 1 (February 1986): 22-39; pdf of Ranum

Martin Clayton, “Introduction: Towards a Theory of Musical Meaning (in India and Elsewhere),” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10, no. 1 (2001): 1-17.

John Roeder, “Review of Christopher Hasty’s Meter as Rhythm,” Music Theory Onlin 4, no. 4 (July 1998): page link.

May 27
The waltz, the groove, and conceptual models

Class notes

Readings:

Thomas Wilson, A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing, the Truly Fashionable Species of Dancing . . . Part I Containing a Correct Explanatory Description of the Several Movements and Attitudes in German and French Waltzing (London: Printed for the author, published by Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1816) [photocopy in locker], pp. xxv-lxi, 62-110. The Reference Plate appears together with the title page on a single 8.5 x 14 sheet. The nine figures on this plate are discussed on pp. 64ff. The Plate of the Five Positions appears between p. xliv and p. xlv; the five figures there are discussed on pp. xliv-xlix, and elsewhere.

Friedrich Albert Zorn, Grammar of the Art of Dancing Theoretical and Practical: Lessons in the Arts of Dancing and Dance Writing (Choregraphy) with Drawings, Musical Examples, Choregraphic Symbols, and Special Musical Scores, ed. Alfonson Josephs Sheafe, trans. Benjamin P. Coates, reprint, 1905 (Brooklyn, New York: Dance Horizons, 1976) [excerpts copied; photocopy in locker], chapter 5 (“The Apportionment of Time”), pp. 55-61; chapter 16 (“Social Round Dances”), p. 226 [beginning with “The Galop-Waltz”] through p. 232; pp. 240-241.

Within the text Zorn will refer to various exercise numbers—for instance, in his discussion of the two-syllable waltz on p. 229 he mentions Exercise 106 in connection with Fig. 507. These “exercises” are complete pieces, and will be found in the Musical Score of the Grammar of the Art of Dancing (also by Zorn); copies of pp. 25-37 of this volume are in the locker.

Lawrence M. Zbikowski, “Modelling the Groove: Conceptual Structure and Popular Music,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 129, no. 2 (2004): 272-297; pdf of Zbikowski. There are sound clips available for the musical examples.

Optional reading:

Lawrence M. Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) [ML3838 .Z25 2002], chapter 3 (“Conceptual Models and Theories”), pp. 96-134.

A Practical Exercise

A focal point of my essay is the conceptual model, which is one of those marvelous theoretical constructs that seem fairly logical but are actually sort of elusive. As a focus for our discussion of this kind of construct I would like you to take a stab at putting together a conceptual model for the waltz (you may choose either the dance or the music). What you want to try to capture, through a compact set of informal propositions, are things that are basic to the waltz. (If it helps, you can think of these propositions as “conditions” that have to be satisfied in order to create the characteristic features of a waltz.) You can assume as much or as little sophistication about the waltz as you like, but the end result should be a set of “rules” that someone could use to figure out if something was a waltz or not. The rules don’t have to be 100% infallible, but they should work most of the time.

June 3
Student presentations

Class notes