Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

8.1.1 Qualitative music research
In qualitative, post-positivist music research ‘music’ is not defined or understood as a
variable that can be manipulated within experimental or behavioural research designs.
Studying music as an intentional, semantic or pragmatic phenomenon means studying
how music interacts with the body, mind and spirit of a person, e.g. a client in music
therapy. Philosophical and methodological inspiration can be found in musicology,
but with some caution, as musicologists have other interests than music therapists.
However, music therapy and the so-called ‘New musicology’ (e.g. the emergent
musicology that is influenced from post-modern ideas) do share some important basic
assumptions. (See Ansdell 1997, 2001; Ruud 2000).
The challenge of music research is the “attempt to connect two separate yet inherently
connected worlds; the personal and the musical” (Lee 2000). How can they be
connected or bridged through music research? – Theoretically qualitative music
research is often based on the axiom that a client’s music (experience) reflects his/her
personality and pathology or problem (Bonde 2002; Bruscia 1994). Smeijsters (1999,
2003; see also section 3.6) has formulated a theory of music as analogy used within
the framework of the double conceptualization of “pathological-musical processes”
and “therapeutic-musical processes”. Bruscia (1987, 1994) has explored the analogies
of musical expression and existential-psychological themes and he has transformed
(even operationalized) them to the listening perspectives of the Improvisation
Assessment Profiles and Heuristic Music Analysis (see below).
It is important to distinguish between description, analysis and interpretation of
music. The Canadian music semiologist Nattiez (1990) introduced a model of
semiological process levels. He defined the semiological tripartition as an analytic
process covering three dimensions of a symbolic phenomenon, in this case music: the
poietic dimension (the symbolic form as a result of a process of creation), the esthesic
dimension (the assignment of meaning to the form by the “receivers”), and the trace
(the physical and material form in which the symbolic form is accessible to the five
senses). (Nattiez 1990, p. 11-12). Aldridge (1996) and Ansdell (1999) have
demonstrated the relevance of the model and of Nattiez’ concepts of trace, esthesic
and poietic analysis for music therapy research.
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