Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

a music therapist or researcher may listen to client music – also psychological
relevance: Salience, Integration, Variability, Tension, Congruence, and Autonomy.
Through one, more or all of these profiles it is possible to analyse the relationship of
different elements of music, and scales of musical parameters are used to identify
important aspects in music making. Wigram (2002) made an adapted version of the
IAPs based on the profiles of autonomy and variability, which he found most relevant
for diagnostic assessment of communication disorder. Other researchers may choose
other profiles as especially suited to their research questions. In a recent review of the
IAPs Bruscia (2002) stated that the IAPs, even though they were developed for
qualitative research, can be used fruitfully also in quantitative research, if measurable
events are defined carefully. In the preface to the Norwegian translation of the IAPs
Bruscia (1994) wrote, that the method gives guidelines for how the musical elements
and the process of an improvisation can be interpreted, based on psychoanalytic and
humanistic-existential theories (see section 3.6.1). The IAPs are used in the Bruscia
Method of improvisation analysis, a procedure in (max.) 13 steps (Bruscia 1987). In
this method as in many of the following the combination of open listenings, focused
analyses and contextualized interpretation are key figures. However, there are also
many differences.
Eclectic Music Analysis, inspired by Phenomenology.
In 1984 the music theorist Lawrence Ferrara published the article “Phenomenology as
a tool for music analysis”, and Ferrara’s approach has inspired many music therapy
researchers. Amir 1990; Arnason 2002; Bonde and Pedersen 1996/2000); Forinash
and Gonzales 1989; Grocke 1999; Kasayka 1991; Ruud 1990; Trondalen 2003, 2004).
Ferrara did not analyze improvisations; the object of his study was the avant-garde
composition Poeme Electronique (1958) by Edgar Varese. For this untraditional piece
Ferrara suggested an eclectic analytic procedure incorporating phenomenological
description, formal analysis and hermeneutic interpretation in five steps: 1. Open
listening, 2. Syntactical level, 3. Semantic level, 4. Ontological level, 5. Open
listening, and followed by a meta-critique. Ferrara revised and expanded his method
in a later dissertation (Ferrara 1991). This version is reviewed in section 8.1.3.
Ruud (1990) substituted ‘syntactical’ by ’structural’, and ‘ontological’ by ‘pragmatic’,
and recommended an analytic procedure where the steps 1-4 are preceded by the
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