Musical Practice as a Form of Life - How Making Music Can be Meaningful and Real

How is musical practice connected with everyday life? Eva-Maria Houben shows that performing music as an activity - indeed, as playing - is a meaningful shift from an approach based on structural analysis. Musical practice, Eva-Maria Houben contends, can be understood as open and never finished. Such an emphasis on repetition offers freedom from perfection, productivity, and purpose, thus allowing meaning to unfold in specific situations, places, and relationships. Musical practice can become a form of life and a reality in its own right. The study includes musical examples from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries as well as contemporary music.

About the author

Eva-Maria Houben (Prof. Dr. phil.), geb. 1955, lehrt Musikwissenschaft mit dem Schwerpunkt Musiktheorie an der TU Dortmund. Sie ist auch als Komponistin, Organistin und Pianistin tätig.

Summary

How is musical practice connected with everyday life? Eva-Maria Houben shows that performing music as an activity – indeed, as playing – is a meaningful shift from an approach based on structural analysis. Musical practice, Eva-Maria Houben contends, can be understood as open and never finished. Such an emphasis on repetition offers freedom from perfection, productivity, and purpose, thus allowing meaning to unfold in specific situations, places, and relationships. Musical practice can become a form of life and a reality in its own right. The study includes musical examples from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries as well as contemporary music.

Additional text

Besprochen in:The Wire, 430 (2019), Tim Rutherford-Johnson

Report

»At 224 pages is an impressive condensate of thoughts and ideas for a personal, meaningful music practice.«

Heiderose Gerberding, Forum Musikbibliothek, 43/3 (2022), translated from German 20221129

Product details

• Authors: Eva-Maria Houben
• Publisher: Transcript
• Languages: English, German
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.09.2019
• EAN: 9783837645736
• ISBN: 978-3-8376-4573-6
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 147 mm x 226 mm x 15 mm
• Weight: 666 g
• Illustrations: 84 SW-Abb.
• Series: Musik und Klangkultur; Musik und Klangkultur 32; Musik und Klangkultur; Music and Sound Culture; Musik und Klangkultur 32; Music and Sound Culture (COL)
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Humanities (general); Musik, Dance, Education, Music, Media Studies, Culture, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Theory of art, Musicology, PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body, Metaphor, The arts: general issues, PSYCHOLOGY / General, ART / General, Social interaction, Philosophy, Psychology, Social & cultural history, PERFORMING ARTS / Dance / General, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, The arts, Humankind, Theatre Studies, Ethics & moral philosophy, Performativity, auseinandersetzen, Philosophy & theory of education, Corporeality, Sociology and anthropology, Musical Analysis, Western "classical" music, Philosophy and psychology, Culture and institutions, Groups of people, Ethics (Moral philosophy), Stage presentations, General principles and musical forms, Music Performance