Music composition as arts-based educational research & performative Inquiry in the creation of nostos: a journey of others
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Date
2021
Authors
ZALIS, ZANE
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Abstract
Music education and education through music are critical in addressing understandings of the human condition and learning. Musical expression connotes felt knowing and experiencing that reveal self in the confrontation of other. Using arts-based educational research (ABER), I establish cognition as a gestalt entanglement of reason and emotion, elevating the role of music in education. My research unfolds analytically and creatively though a constellation of inquiries intertwined thematically.
I first engage in a theoretical inquiry of my experience as a composer-educator-researcher, working in music education and community as a composer and producer. Herein, the principles of phenomenology (Heidegger, 1949; Levinas, 1969; Merleau-Ponty, 2012), hermeneutics (Gadamer, 2013), gestalt theory (von Ehrenfels, 1988; Werthheimer, 1944) are explored and supported by neuroscience (Scherer, 2013).
Second, I conduct a systematic mapping review, scoping the literature targeting music composition (music and words) as an act of performative inquiry (PI). A void in the literature was found that addresses music education, composition, PI, or performativity as a phenomenon of doing and experience or enactment. The outcome calls for further research and development of creative practices in music education which are performative, intellectually disruptive, aesthetic, and generative.
My central inquiry augments understandings of human experience employing a genre of ABER—music composition as PI. The outcome is an original composition—Nostos: A Journey of Others, consisting of a 186-page orchestral/choral/soloist score (music and lyrics) exploring notions of otherness, destructive discrimination, and hope for a humane world.
Finally, I present an auto-ethnographic account of Nostos as PI that is an irreducible first-person perspectival reading of composing as PI and in-depth account of my creative process. The unique perspective of me as researcher/observer provides insights that invites readers to walk a vicarious path.
In conclusion, I posit becoming a person in a transcultural world of difference and différance (Derrida, 1995) recognizes knowledge of the particularity of a person as much more than a handmaiden for generalizing people, for its constitution is of the universal. The phenomenology of our actions as persons being and becoming brilliantly corresponds and relates to the phenomenology of music composition as PI.
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Keywords
Music composition, Arts-based educational research, Arts-based research, Phenomenology, Critical arts pedagogy, Critical pedagogy, Music, Lyrics, Empathy, Cognition, Entangled cognition, Transformative education, Affect, Emotion, Learning and understanding, Knowledge generation, Human condition, Other and otherness, Gestalt theory, Social justice, Transcultural experience and difference, Human rights, Symphony orchestra, Choir, Performance and identity, Autoethnography, Systematic mapping review, Nostos: a journey of others, Creativity, Performative inquiry, Artistic inquiry, Composing music and words, Artistic intuition, Music Performance and inquiry, Cognition and emotion, Curriculum, Teaching and learning, Aesthetic experience, Holistic learning, Choral, Performativity, Immigration, Migration, Discrimination, Neuroscience, Ethics, Philosophy, Music education, Hermeneutics, Transformative learning, Aesthetic encounter, Music composition as performative inquiry, Neuroscience, Ethics, Philosophy, Reason