Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

This means that:
Description is never without influences, no matter how exact and objective the
researcher tries to be: Like the map is not the territory, the score, transcription or even
the recording is not the music, only a representation of some of its features within the
framework of a chosen language or symbol/coding system. A transcription may be
‘accompanied’ by a verbal description and/or indexes of the episodes, events as they
unfold in time. A phenomenological description is an attempt to describe the ‘Music
as heard’ (Clifton 1983), as an intentional phenomenon unfolding in the here-and-
now, as a virtual musical timespace (Christensen 1996) in the listener’s
consciousness. The language may use musical terminology, but the point is the
attempt to describe what happens in the music, while it is happening, as experienced
by/in a listener’s consciousness 54
Analysis goes beyond here and now and the real time description. Analysis seeks to
identity and classifies observable and describable events and their relationship across
the time-span: what is figure and ground, what is the role of a specific part in the
whole? This is done through the study of similarities and differences: identification of
musical patterns (in all parameters), repetitions and variations, types of experiences or
interaction between parts or performers, the presentation and development of themes,
motives and roles. According to Cook (1987) the purpose of music analysis (of art
music) is “to discover, or decide, how it works”. Analysis is an act of re-creation,
asking the music the right questions to make it unfold its secrets. Within musicology
there are a large number of analytic methods, but in spite of their apparent differences
the basic questions are very similar: is it possible to divide the whole “in a series of
more-or-less independent sections… how do components relate to each other and
which relationships are more important than other... and how is the influence of
context” (Cook 1987, p.2). In principle the questions are the same when analyzing
improvisations, songs or compositions in music therapy – the big difference is found
in the answers (only in receptive models we may be dealing with composed musical
masterpieces in elaborate form and with subtle harmonic properties), and at the level
of interpretation. However, some extra questions must be added: how is the musical
relationship of the players (active music therapy), or how is the interplay of music,
54 This purpose is different from the purpose of CRDI real-time studies, focusing on specific aesthetic
responses.
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