Hearing, feeling, Grasping Gestures

Chapter 3

Hearing, Feeling, Grasping GesturesAmic Cox

Musical gcstures are musical acts. and our perception and understanding ofgestures involves understanding the physicality involved in their production. Alone leve! this is a rather straightforward mauer, but when it comes 10 using rheconcepl of 'gesture' 10 analyse meaning construction, sorne of our assumptionsleave problematic gaps in our cxplanations. For example, consider the followingclaims by David Lidov (1987: 82, emphases added):

The variables of pulse are speed and intensity, Speed is excuing.lntensity is involving. The values of simple pulse are fairly obvious:trong, forcground pulse as in folk dances and marches controls

11101c111c111 directly. Attcnuatcd pulse is a factor in the sublimation o/somaticforce.

On the surfacc there may not be a problcm here, since pulse is sornething we oflenfeel when listening to music and it does seern lo control movement in certainconiexts. But there is a circularity here, for we could jusi as well say that a feelingof moverncnt generales a fecling of pulse, and that the sublimation of somatic forceis a factor in attenuated pulse - or so 1 would claim. Wherc does this feclng ofpulse originatc? lfwe say tbat it is a property oftbe music (of the acoustic stimuli),which we fcel when listcning to music, thcn we are lcd bnck lo whcrc \Vestartcd:wc fccl pulse bccause pulse is thcre 10 be fcll. Thc problcm hcrc is onc shnrcd byother concepts rclatcd to embodicd meaning, including 'gcsturc': How is it thatmusic rnakes us feel anything al ali? (1 am not refcrring nccessarily to emotionalfeelings but 10 the more visceral sensations related directly lo movement.) In thecontext of folk music and marches it might not seem that this is a matter in need ofexplanation: peoplc dance to dance rnusic and march to mnrch music, and thequcstion o how music works in thcsc contexts may not scern to sorne a crucialarca of scholarly inquiry. However, Lidov is using these exarnples of obviousphysicnl engagernent as part oan cxplanation of how similar types of engagernentoccur in musical experience generally, including 'art music', and sincc thisengagemenl and its cause are not as obvious as in other repertoires, and because agreat deal is at stake, this claim requires a more explicit understanding of howmusic engagcs us. What is at stake, to my mind, is the claim that musical meaningis generated by our embodied experience of it - that our embodicd experience isnot only nccessary for expcricncing meaning that is somchow inhercnt in the music

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46 Muste mu/ Gestureitsclf, but that meaning arises in our conccptualizations of cmbodicd musicalexperience and that abstrae! meaning is the product of embodied reasoning. Thisbroad claim requires an examination of the concepts that we tend to take forgranted, including the far-reaching question of how we conceptualize relationsamong musical events in tcrms of 'rnotion' generally, and io tcrms of 'gesture'specifically, The topic of tbis chapter is tbc quesrion of what motivares andstrucrures conccptualization of music in tcrms of 'gcsrures', and what scnsc theremight be in using 'gesture' in addition to, or instcad of, the afien cocxtensivc'motive' and/or 'figure'. To answer this, 1 first offer an account of how musicengages us bodily.

Thenretical Background: The Mimetic Hypothcsis

Do you ever ftnd yourself tapping your toe to music? Jf so, why should this be?This very common response to music, along with other subtly overt embodiedresponses such as head-bobbing or swaying, is not something we normally chooseto do (nlthough we are of course certainly capable of choosing to engage witbmusic in overtly cmbodicd ways). lnformaUy conducting, playing 'air guitar', and'beat boxing' (vocal imitation of the rhythm section in rap) are similar responses.although these are perhaps more often a matter of volition. But we do more thanvisibly move to music; we also sing along, in real time and in recall, aloud and inour heads. By way of example, let me offer the following anecdote.

1was at a recital by the renowned bass Thomas Quasthof in which he sangthc Kcms/Hammcrstein tune 'Old Man River' for an encore. As he sang 1 thoughtthat 1heard a sort of echo and theo realized that an elderly gentleman was actuallysinging along. His wife shushed him, but when the cborus rerurned he startedsinging along once more (much to her quite evidcnt cmbarrassmcnt). As 1read thisscenario. this man's impulse to cngage with the music as he did ovcrrode his socialinhibition: it was clear that his wifc thought he should listen quietly, but it was as ifhe could not hclp himself. 1 believe that bis response is of the same sort as toe-tapping and other kinds of involuntary participation, and 1 believe that these areovert forms of an imitative participation that is a regular pan of musical cxperienceand comprebension. Bascd on observcd mimetic panicipation of these sorts 1haveproposed thc following hypothcsis: pan of how wc understand music involvesimagining making the heard sounds for ourselves, and this imagincd participationinvolves covertly and overtly imitating the sounds hcard and irnitating the physicalactions that produce these sounds.1 Mimetic participation occurs in three forms: ( 1)covert and oven imitation of the actions of pcrformers (whether the performers areseen and hcard, or heard only, or rccallcd); (2) covert and overt subvocal imitationof the sounds produced, wbether the sounds are vocal or instrumental (likely toinclude an imitation of timbre as well as pitcb, rhythm and dynamic lcvcl): and (3)an amodal, cmpathctic, visceral imitation of thc excrtion partcms that would likclyproduce such sounds. Each of thesc forms occurs in real time and in recall.sometimes within the same modality (as in vocal and subvocal imitation of asingcr) and olcn across modalities (vocal and subvocal imitation of an

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Hearing, Feeling, Grasping Gestures 47

instrumental melody). The strength of each fonn of mimetic part.icipation varesfrom person to person, which establishes a variability in the meanings that wederive from musical experience, including the meaning of 'gesrure'. Understandingthe variability in different listeners' particular habits of mimetic engagement isimportan! for communication about music in tenns of 'gesture' and other bodilybased conceptions.

Before considering the evidcnce for the hypothcsis, 1should compare lhisto similar ideas on the subject. The rnimetic hypothesis is similar to ideas pul forthby Patricia Carpenter (1967), Manfred Clynes (1977), Thomas Cliflon (1983),David Lidov ( 1987), KendaU Walton ( 1993, 1997), Naomi Cumming ( 1997)Andrew Mead (1999) and thc ninetecnth-ccntury philosopher Herbert Spenccr( 1857). What cach of thcsc writcrs agrcc on is that imitation on thc pan of listcnersscems clearly lo play a role in musical expcrience; however, there are threcimportan! ways in which their conceprions differ from the mimeric hypothesis:they provide liule orno evidence (beyond the anecdotal such as 1have offered thusfar in a preliminary way); thcy do not examine the forms, or modalities, of mimeticparticipation; and tbey do not consider the breadth of tbe implications.2 In thiscssay 1 follow this third rcstriction, although clsewhcrc 1 considcr briefly thcvarious aspccts of musical meaning in which mimetic participation would scem toplay a role (Cox 2001 ). One implication beyond the topic of 'gesture ', which 1must allude to here in the interest of contextualization, is the construction of theconcepl of musical verticality, or 'high' and 'Iow' notes. Most of us take this asone of our most basic, quasi-literal concepts, but cven whilc acknowledging itsmetaphoric basis there is not a generally accepted account of thc metapboricrcasoning that gives us this conccpt. 1 havc offcrcd a preliminary account of howthis conccpt can be undcrstood to be motivated by mimctic panicipation (Coxl 999a), which in turn activares the cmbodied metaphoric rcasoning described byGeorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson ( 1980, 1999; Jobnson 1987). The significancefor tbe present context is tbat the mimetic hypothcsis is something that hasimplications eveo for our most basic, quasi-literal concepts - including conceptssuch as 'asccnt', 'dcsccnr' and 'contour' which dcpend on thc concept of musicalverticality - as well as thc conccpt of 'gesturc', which is why this aspect of musicalcxperience and conceptualization needs lo be deiailed with carc.

Mimctlc Participation in Dally Lifc and in Musical Expcriencc

Mimetic participation is fundamental to human comprchcnsion, and its role inmusical experience is very much simply a special case of how the cmbodicd mindworks generally. Since thc evidcncc is detailcd elsewhcre (Cox 2001) 1will rcvicwit only bricfly hcre. Clinical evidence for the mimctic hypothesis can be sorted intofour kinds: (1) studics of imitation in facc-io-face communicarion; (2) motorimagery studies involving mirror neurons; (3) subvocalization studies for spcechand for rnusic; and (4) non-vocal motor imagery studies for music. lt is Importantto note that each of these is a kind of motor imagery: hand and limb movernents,adjustmcnts of posturc, facial gesrures and vocal 'gesrures' (the motor actions thnt

Co1..yr .1htcdir,-.1011

48 Mvsic and Gestureproduce speech and song). To pul it another way, in each case thc sounds areevidence of the motor actions that produce them, and our comprchension of thesounds involves comprehension of the relevant motor actions. In addirion to theclinical evidence, we also have (5) the indirect evidencc of our vocal descriptionsof non-vocal sounds: we regularly describe instrumental sounds in terrns of vocalsounds (such as cantabile for an instrumental mclody), and thc voicc is rcgularlyuscd as a modcl for mclodic playing in instrumental pcdagogy. One implication ofthis is that instrumental sounds are rcgularly conceptualized in tenns of vocalcxpcrience, and that this is motivated by subvocal imitation of non-vocal music,l. Imitation in face-to-face comrnunication includes, among other tbings,srudies of infant-parent intcractions.3 Babies imitatc ihosc around them and this ispan of how we lcam to understand otbcrs: wc scc and hcar things - facial, vocal,gestural - and wc imitare thcsc actions. Our specics sccms to have evolvcd in sucha way that succcssful imitation is crucial for succcssful communication, includingleaming to reproduce thc vocal sounds of spcech. Signi ficantly, when infants andparents imeract it is not only the infants who do thc imitating but the parents aswell. Why should it be that parents spend any Limeirnitating their bables? One way10 understand this is that mutual imitation fosters mutual understanding. In mutualimitation we bccome likc those we are trying to undcrstand - we undcrstand (insorne mcasure) what it must be like to be thcm because we are being like them.This son of empathy is fundamental 10 being human, which brings up anotherpoint. While it might seem thai the imitation we praciise as infants is something weoutgrow. it appears instead that our imitation becornes more covert as wc mature -and occasionally becomes overt in certain situations. We can understand this asresuhing from thc gradual development of motor imagery: the capacity toremcmber and plan motor actions in imagination, without having to rehcarse theseactions ovenly.2. Some of the best evidence for mirnetic participarion gcnerally comes fromstudics of mirror 11e11rom.These are neurons that firc not only when a goal-oricruated action is pcrformed - particularly grasping gestures - but also whcnsimilar actions are obscrved. Care must be takcn in applying this evidencc tomusic-producing actions (which have yet to be studied direetly). but the findingsare suggestive.3. Perhaps the most spccialized motor imagery is that rclatcd to speechproduction and comprehcnsion, and part of how wc comprehend speech is throughmimetic subvocalization (Gibson & Levin 1975; Gathercole & Baddcley 1993).5Wc can vicw subvocalization in aduhs as a covcn form of what infants andchildren do in acquiring language. We can also see this as a special case of motorimagery: this aspee! of speech comprehension is comprehension of the motoractions that produce thc sounds of spccch. In addition to the speaking voice, notsurprisingly, a similar process occurs in comprehending the singing voice,6 so thatpan of how wc undcrstand song (in real time and in reeaU) involves subvocalimitation. Since subvocalization is groundcd in the physical cxpcricncc of ovcrtvocalization, comprchension of heard song thus appears 10 involve comparisonwith our own experience of singing or otherwise vocalizing. This subvocalcmpathy is part of what wc fccl when listcning to singing, and difTerent kinds of

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Hearing, Feeling. Grasping Gestures 49

singing (e.g. Dusty Springfield, Maria Callas, Janis Joplin, Ella Fitzgerald) can beunderstood to generate dilTerent kinds of feeling in pan because they invitediffercnt kinds of mimetic participation.4. There is a similar story to be told about instrumental musical sounds but itis twofold. There is little dircct evidencc for mimctic motor imagery regarding thcmotor actions of instrumental musicians - we have, for example, the fingcrmovemeots of pianists when listening to piano music (Haueisen & Knoschc 2001)- but 1believe that it is only a matter oftime before we have more evidence in thisdomain. Clynes's (1977) work indicares a degrec ofisornorphic physical responsesacross modalitics. By itself his work rnight be interpreted as indicating little morethan thc fact that music generales a physiological response that somchow marchesthe intensity of the rnusic heard; however, in combination with thcse other kinds ofcvidence his work can be interpreted as part of an impulse to understand throughimitation - by matching (unconsciously, or normally so) the physiological intensitythat is somehow isomorphic with the rnusic and its meaos of production.5. Of panicular interest is the cvidcncc for subvocalizaticn for instrumentalmclodies (Baddeley & Logie 1992; Smith, Reisberg & Wilson 1992). Since mostof us havc a voice and havc used it to make and imitare sounds for most of ourlives, it should not be surprising that we would draw on vocal irnagcry tounderstand instrumental musical sounds generally. But this means that musicalsounds generally are understood partly in terms of our embodied vocal experience,making the exertions of specch and song relevant for understanding musicgenerally. In other words, pan of what we fccl when listcning to music are theimagined, imitativc (sub)vocal cxertions along with the imagined, imitative intra-modal exertions (the exertions specific to a given instrument). We can see this asbeing reflected in our vocal descriptions of instrumental sounds: 'cantabile",'cantilena' and 'mezza vocc' in music for strings and for piano; polyphonic'volees': 'voicings' of piano hammers and organ pipes; 'choirs' of strings;'scrcarning' jazz trumpets and rock guitars; and getting notes to 'speak' on windinstrurnents. To feel what 1mean, try the following: recall a favourite instrumentalmclody - perhaps the slow movcmcnt of a symphony or a chambcr work - andwhile doing so, ask whether your voice is engaged in any way at ali: thc fccling ofsinging along, or only the urge to somehow participare subvocally. With fewexceprions peoplc repon that they do indeed feel sorne son of subvocalcngngement. (There are several ways in which this could be and should be tesredcmpirically, along with the question of whether people subvocalize without beingaware of it.) This is a remarkablc phcnomcnon - that rccall of an instrumentalmclody should cngagc thc voice - because it indicates that pan of how wecornprehend music (at least in rccall), is in terms of vocal cxpcriencc, rcgardless ofthe medium of the sourcc. This would makc the exertions of vocal experiencerelevan! for comprehension and conceptualizarion of music generally andregularly, and this would give us une way of showing explicitly how musicalmeaning is embodied. For this to be dircctly relevant to 'gesture', however, itwould have to be shown how exertions in the vocal modality are felt in othermodalities. 1 addrcss this in thc next scction.

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50 Music and Gesture

Grasping Gestores Within and Across Modalities

If the physicality of gestures were grasped only within the same modality in whichthey are produced, their meaning would have quite a different character than 1believe they do in fact have. When we hear, say, the sound of a violin, the mimetichypothesis holds that we comprehend it in three ways: (1) via (covert) imitation ofthe arm and finger movements; (2) via subvocal imitation of the sounds produced;and (3) via an amodal, visceral imitation of the exertion dynamic evident in thesound (a pattem of exertions that would produce the same or similar sounds). Theintra-modal imitation will vary according to experience: a violinist, for example,will comprehend the finger and arm movements of a violin performance differentlythan a musician who has never played a string instrument, who in tum willcomprehend these differently than someone who has never played a musicalinstrument. Yet even having never played the same instrument or any instrument atall, we will automatically have sorne idea of what it must feel like to move one'sfingers and arms in a certain way.

1 have already discussed the cross-modal example of subvocal imitation,but there is another kind of mimetic comprehension that is akin to subvocalizationand this is the comprehension of one instrument (or voice) in terms of anotherinstrument - for example, representing violin sounds in terms of the motor actionsthat produce essentially the same sounds on the piano. 1 believe that this is moreleamed than innate, and it may also be more intentional and less automatic thanother kinds of representations, but it is common enough among musicians that itought to be considered here. The ability to represent one modality in another ispossibly (or perhaps likely) dependent upon an amada/ representation of theexertion dynamic that would produce a sound or a sound pattern in one domain oranother, and this is the third kind of imitation listed above. This is a very difficultmatter to discuss because the relevant feelings are ineffable and, related to this,their location is invisible. But it is a visceral response to music which is not locatedin either the limbs or the voice and yet is fundamental to the embodied foundationsof musical meaning. To understand the roles of these various kinds of imitation,consider the gesture that opens the final movement ofBeethoven's Violin Concerto(Example 3.1).

Violin

. / -p ~ ~ - ~ ==~Example 3.l Beethoven, Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, 111,bars 1-4

~Let us focus on the initial two-note gesture. According to the hypothesis,

this event (or event pair) would motvate imitation of the arm and fingermovements of the violinist (whether the violinist were seen and heard or heardonly, or whether the performance were only recalled or otherwise imagined), as


well as subvocal imitation of the pitch, contour, rhythm, accents (phenomenal andagogic) and dynamic level. But I believe that most of us would also feel somethingthat was not located in either the limbs or the voice - something in the gut thatsomehow matched the energy pattern of the music. This might well be manifest inthe modalities of toe-tapping, head-bobbing and/or conducting, but none of theseare specified by the music (the violin playing). The question of where in the bodyan amodal representation might be located is irrlportant, and it may be that this isonly a phantasm resulting from the fact that embodied representations can be andare manifest in any of several modalities.7 But the more crucial point here is that,according to the mimetic hypothesis, a musical gesture motivates imitativerepresentations that are not confined to the modality in which they are produced(for example, the finger and arm movements of a violinist). This means that agesture has a meaning which is at once in accord with its mode of production andtranscendent of its mode of production. The melodic 'sigh', for example, retains itsvocality while being comprehensible as a sigh in any instrumental medium. It isnot sigh-like only by exterior (acoustic) association with its origins in vocalrepertoire, because even in an instrumental realization it is comprehended in partvia subvocal imitation: it is sigh-like because it is comprehended by the sigh-producing medium of the voice. At present, however, although the mimetichypothesis shows that comprehension is cross-modal, it can only suggest that theremight be an amodal, visceral representation.

Robert Hatten and the Mimetic Hypothesis

If the mimetic hypothesis has relevance for theories of musical gesture, then thereis no better place to demonstrate this than in the context of Robert Hatten's work.In this section I consider how the mimetic hypothesis bolsters the claims andexplanatory power of Hatten's proto-theory as set forth in a series of onlinelectures (Hatten 2001).

In Lecture 2, 'Embodying Sound: The Role of Semiotics', Hatten offers aset of eight 'presuppositions for a semiotic theory of gesture'. Number 1 reads:'Gesture is movement interpretable as a sign, whether intentional or not, and assuch it communicates information about the gesturer (or character, or persona thegesturer is impersonating or embodying).' If applied to danceor theatre, there is noimmediate difficulty here: the gestures referred to are those of the gesturer(including gesturer-as-character/persona). But when we speak of musical gestures,to what extent are we speaking of the gestures of the performers? Without questiona performer's gestures communicate information about the gesturer (theperformer), but the role of the musical performer in reproducing signifyinggestures is different than that of other performers. The same musical gesture - forexample, the 'melodic sigh' - can be produced by a great variety ofphysical means- for example, on the violin, the oboe, or the piano - and yet be classified the same(as a 'melodic sigh'). These various modes of performance of what we take to bethe same thing must then have something in common, and we ought to be able tosay precisely what this is. If we focus on music's acoustic features (pitch, contour,

52 Muste and Gesture

rhythm) thcn 1scc lcss scnsc in using tcrms such as 'sigh' and 'gesturc'. In thc caseof the 'sigh , we might say that in each performance medium it sounds like a sigh.This is true enough, and an exterior mapping - this event sounds like that eventsounds - might suffice to account for the metaphoric tcrm 'melodic sigh', \Vecould also specify thc identity in terms of shared acoustic features in order tocxplain the rcasoning. But 1do not fiad this satisfactory. for whcn 1hcnr a 'sigh' 1feel a sigh, or somcthing very much like the feeling of a sigh. 1 believe that thisfeeling motivares and grounds the meaning ofterms like 'sigh' and 'gesturc', and 1believe we ought to seek a theory that accounts for the viscerally afTectivedimension of musical meaning.

\Ve might apply Johnsoa's theory of image schemata (Johnson 1987) andnote that cach mclodic sigh performcd by vnrious instrumcnts maaifcsts. somchow,thc samc irnagc schcrna; and wc rnight furthcr note that imagc schcmata aregrounded in ernbodied experience, and that this ernbodied grounding is thus thebasis for using the terms 'sigh' and 'gesturc'. Such an application of Johnson'swork gives usa very good conjecture, but we would still need to specify the meansby which musical gestures are ernbodied. This, thcn. is preciscly where thcmimetic hypotbesis bccomcs relevan! for gcsture theory. First, sincc thc tcrm'rnclodic sigh' makcs seosc in sorne measurc as a sigh, regardlcss of theperformance medium, and since the term 'musical gesturc' makes sense in sornemeasure as gesture, regardlcss of the performance medium, thcn we must considcrwhat ihese have in common as sighs and other gestures. Second, since the acousticfeatures by themselves motivare only a superficial understanding (this sounds liketltat), thosc of us interested in embodied meaning must explain how events called'rnelodic sighs' and 'musical gesrures' fee/ like gestures and sighs. According tothe mimetic hypothesis, events that wc call 'gcsrurcs' and 'sighs' not only souodalike, but thcy also fccl alikc because thcy are ali comprehendcd in part viamimctic participation. Specifically, cornprehcnsion of a mclodic sigh involvcs thcfollowing (in various rneasures, in both real time and rccall):

011 tire vio/in: (1) imitation of the fingering and the bowing; (2) subvocalimitation of the musical sounds produced (the rwo-note dcscent, likely sbaped insorne mensure by timbre aod dynamic level); and (3) amodal. visceral imitation ofthc exenion dynamic of the evcnt.

011 tite oboe: (1) irnitation of the fingcring, cmbouchurc and blowing; (2)subvocal imitation of the musical sounds produced (thc two-note dcsccnt); and (3)amodal, visceral imitation of the exertion dynamic of the event,

on the piano: (1) imitation of tbe finger and arm movernents; (2) subvocalimitation of the musical sounds produced (thc two-note dcsccnt); and (3) amodal,visceral imitation of thc cxcrtion dyoamic of the cvcnt.

Notice that only the superficial medium difTers(the fingcrings and so forth), whichis not where the essence of 'sigh' tics. Rcgardless of thc performance medium,

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Hearing. Feeling. Grasping Gestures 53

each is comprchendcd via subvecal imitarion, and in this way each not only soundslikc a sigh butfee/s like a sigh.

11is worth noting here that in each case the fingcr movernents are nlsoimitated, and we ought to ask why this docs not motivare a compctingconceptualization. There are severa! factors that work against a digitally basedconceprualization. Onc is that there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondencein each case, since a stepwise dcsccnt on the oboe might involvc a combinarion ofsevera! fingers. Anotber reason is that the finger acrions here are out of proponionwith thc most salicnt features o the cvent - thc duration, contour, timbre, dynamiclevcl and harrnonic/tonal context - and are instead rcsponsible for only the verticaldimension of the contour. Nonetheless, in another context the finger acrions couldeasily bccome much more salient, as in a virtuosic passage work, and in sucb acase a different sort of conceptualization would be motivated - sucb as thernctaphors of 'passagc' or 'run' (including thc corrente).

Returning now to Hauen's prcsuppositions. the first ofthesc also leads toanothcr importan! qucstion: how might gcstures bccome abstractcd into gesturcs ofa charactcr or a persona? According 10 ihc mirnctic hypothcsis, we experiencepauerns of exenion by way of mimetic participation. and in this way it is as if weare acting - acting in a way that is more or less isomorphic with the sound-producing actions heard (and sccn). In conceptualizing these patterns of exertion.wc rnap these amo our own experiencc of making similar cxcnions. and among thcmost straighrforward rnappings is that omo gestures: wc do not fcel only abstrae!sensarions of cxertion; wc also undcrstand these as the intentional, expressivegestures that we have madc and have scen made in other domains of experience.One result of this mimetic participation is that we enact the role of a character orpersona - that oan ideal gesturing perforrner (at once making music and not, sincetbc excrtions are not confined to tbe spccific domain of sound production), At tbesame time. howcvcr, thc othemcss of the music rcmains, sincc wc are not thcprincipie (original) souree of the sounds with wbich we are engaging. The fact thatthe musie is produced by a source exterior 10ourselves may be what motivares aprojcction of our rnimetic musical agency outwards, perhaps towards this exteriorsource. 8111sincc this agency cannot be identified directly with the actlons of theperformers, it remains nn ideal agency 1ha1 is noi-us. We call this agent 'themusic', and its genesis might follow this pattern: (1) the sound-producing actionsofthe pcrforrncrs are (2) henrd/scen and imitatcd by a listcner, which (3) morivatcsa participatory agcncy within the listcncr, which (4) is thcn projectcd ourwardstowards the original sourcc but which (5) cnnnot be identified directly with thissource and so rcmains ideal.

The only oiher of Hallen's cight prcsuppositions that 1 wish to considerhere is that regarding posture (presupposition 8), which he says 'rnay be consideredas gesture "under a fermata." A "frozen rnotion" or pose may revea! the energy andaffect with which it is invested. Sucb momcnts can be among the most powerful inmusic. Part of their affect results simply frorn the anticipation of what will follow.hui part ofit results from the feeling ofbolding an imagined pose. According to themirnetic hyporhesis, in the case of a hcld mamen! we fecl vicariously thc cnergyrcquired to sustain a sound - ar 10sustain a silcncc - in sorne cornbination of intra-

54 Muste and Gesturemodal, cross-modal (including particularly thc subvocal) and amodal (visceral)imitation. The scnsation of holding a pose would result also from the same sense ofmimctic agency described above: among the gesrures made by our musical persona(our own, or that projected away from us) are poses which may be held forexpressive purposes just as in othcr domains of expcricncc.

Let me apply and extcnd this to an exarnple from Hattcn 's analysis of theopening of Schubert's late A major sonata, D. 959. 1 should note that the topicfrom which the following excerpt derives is the question of 'resonance' as agcsrurc; however, for my purposes hcre 1 am interested in thc pcrsonification andlocomotivc metaphors. The analytical excerpt refers to the beginning of thc firstrnovement (Exarnple 3.2).

11'll"' ' ,,.---...-"-"-1 ., # I~ * ; ; - ;1 .,;. w'~it/ ft, ft, ==- =-.,._ -

~. . 1 ! 1 1 ' ' '~.Example 3.2 Schubcrt, Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959, 1, bars 1--0

Hallen (2001: Lccrure4: 3, emphases added) writes:

Here, the le hand has the (...) gestural motive onc, and its 'stoichcroisrn' mny be scen to 'resonare' ihe right-hand's sustained chords,which [...) strive in stepwise ascent until rclaxing into thc half cadenceon thc dominont in bar 6. The determined wil! of a persona is clearlyimplied and gesturally projected.

1 havc alrcady described the role of mimctic participation in thepcrsonification of music, but it is one thing to talk in general about gestures andanothcr to talk spccifically about the strivings of a persona in a stepwisc asccnt,That is, once we havc a musical persona, how do we spccify its acrions within themetaphorical terrain of musical space? We have 10 start by rejecring the view thattherc is a bass line rhat ascends by step. along with the view that a personificationof this motion is a rnetaphoric interpretarion of the objcctivc facts. As Marion Guck( 1994) has pointcd out, even such quasi-objective obscrvations are analyticalcuons based on a metaphoric understanding. Our musical fines, ascents and stepsare mctaphoric conccptualizations of relations among tones in tcrms of spatialrelations. Thc conception of musical motion and space and the conception ofmusical personae are both products of the sarne embodied metaphoric reasoning, solet me sketch an account of this embodied reasoning.

According to the mimetic hypothesis, when we hcar the opening of thissonata we participare vicariously with the production of the music - specifically,thc bass linc and the sustained chords - and our participation takes threc fonns:

o: 'Yr.1hl,

Hearing. Feeling. Grasping Gestures 55

imitation of the ann gesrurcs, subvocal imitation of the sounds produced, nnd avisceral exertion that matches the excrtion dynamic manifest in thc music. Again,the degree and combination of participation will vary from pcrson to pcrson, sothat more properly 1should say that thcse are ihe specific kinds of participation thatthe music affords and motivates. With respect to the bass-line chords, we feel therwo-part arm gcsturcs and thcir gradual progression 'up' the keyboard (that is, theirprogression 10 thc right), Wc also fccl what it would be like to sing the sounds thatare produced by these gesrures, including the difference in tcrms of what wc cali'pitch', which in this case gives us 'asccnt'. Finaliy, we also fecl an amodal,visceral excrtion that is in this case more or less isomorphic with the imagined annand vocal excrtions. As in other domains of experience, the embodied feelingsmotvate conccptualization in tenns of basic, concrete experience (Lakoff &Jobnson 1980, 1999; Johnson 1987), and these include 'gesture as wcli as thequasi-objective spatial conceptions. Tite pattern of cxcrtion in the Schubert, withinand between the succcssive lefl-hand gcsturcs, activares thc conceptual metaphorsgreater is higher and states are locations, along with the related metaphors ofchange o/ state is motion between locations (change is motion} and differencebetween states is distance between locations (differencc is disumce).8

The conceptual metaphor greater is higher is onc of our most commonmetaphors, undcrlying conccpts such as 'highcr' priccs, 'higher' quality, 'highcr'cducation and 'higber' frequencies, ali of which are literaliy greater andmetaphorically 'higher'. In tite present case, this mctaphor is activated by thegreater and lesser exertions fclt in imagining producing the piano sounds by way ofubvocalization, where the phenomenon that we call 'ascent' norrnaliy involvesgreater exenion. The state-locations meraphors are also very cornmon - giving usemotional, financial, musical and othcr mctaphoric locarions - and in this contextthcy givc each musical evcni a location, with small, discrctc differcnces conccivedas 'steps' (on successive downbeats in the bass). and greatcr, discrete dilTcrcnccconceived as 'leaps' (the crotchet octave leaps in each bar). These mctaphorscombine to give us musical locarions, distances and motion within the verticalmusical dimensin. while the horizontal dimensin is the product of these andother conceptual rnetaphors that simiJarly becorne rclevant va mimeticparticipation, Although thc dctails of our conccptions of musical rnotion and spacecannot be cxplored Itere, thc crucial clnim is that ali such spatial conceptions beginwith the feeling of an exenion dynamic that rcsults from mimctic participarion.Once felt, and then conceived in terms of kinds of motion, we can then srep backand adopl a third-person analyrical perspccrivc, positing an ideal agcnt in our place.lt is this musical agent that thcn exerts in this way and that way, performinggesturcs and moving in various ways through and between meiaphoric locations.Our conceptual and linguistic habits thcn perpetuare the analytical perspective - forexample, the common fonnulation, 'here thc rnusic does this' - but languagedepcnds on the ernbodicd mctaphoric rcasoning 1 have skctched (both originallyand as a reinforcemcnt of language's meanings). lt makes scnsc to describe thcopening of this Schubcrt sonata in terms of 'striving' and otherwise 'gesruring ' notbecause we cmpathize with the actions of sorne already-given musical persona, andnot because there is a musical motion already given, but because we feel the

56 Music ond Gesture

excrtions involvcd in thc sound's production, and the exertion dynamic that we feclis more or lcss isomorphic with the fecling of striving, progressing and gesturing.

Hcaring, Feelng,Comprchcnding, Conccivingand Grasping 'Gcsturcs'

My primary intcrest gcncrally is in how music engages us and in the rclationshipberween experience and conccptualization. Although ali of our rnetaphoricconceprions of motion and space can be understood to bear thc residue of theirembodied origins, 'gcsiurc' secms to foreground Lhiscmbodiment more than most.My final point in this chapter concems the place of 'gesturc' in musiccpistcmology and thc diffcrcnccs bctween Lhis and othcr conceptualizations interms ofthe kinds ofknowlcdgc thcy hclp cstablish.

Our cmbodicd engagcmenl wilh music afTords an intimatc, visceral andintuitive way of knowing music. A good portion of Lhis type of knowlcclgc isineffable (RafTmaa 1993), but our embodied expericnce also motivaresconcepruatizations whose mcaaings remain tied to this embodied cxpcricnce bywny of the pauerns of cxcrtion shared betwecn music and other domains ofcxperience, 'Gesture' is one such conccpt, and whilc it might be extended 10includc largc-scale relationships, and perhaps to other less immcdiate events andrclations, the more immcdiatc cvents and relations that are roughly coextensivcwith 'motives' and 'figures' are in a sense more viscerally cngaging and thus morerneaningful." These irnrnediate events nnd relations, as in the opcning of theSchubert A major Piano Sonata, are those which we can most rcadily 'grasp'(comprchend) and thus know in a way that is different from large-scalerclationships. Thc use of thc term 'gesture' highlights this diffcrencc, but whatadvantage is there in the use ofthis tcrm over 'figure' and 'motive'?

lf one examines the concepts in English related lo knowing, one quicklyfinds that thesc are dominated by visual terms (Johnson 1987; Swcetser 1990).aturally, this extends to music analytical discourse (Cox l999b; Johnson 2002),

where we 'reveal ', 'show', 'clarify' and so forth. lndeed, rhe very word 'theory' isitself a visual term (rneaning 10 show', with the same root ns theatre). Siacehuman perception is dominated by visual iuformation, this visual bias in ourcpistemology is not surprising; and since most of the non-visual perccptualinfommtion we den) with also has a visible sourcc - invisible smclls, lastes andsounds come from othcrwisc visible objccts - in most cases this bias


have the advantage of aligning with our more general epistemology but which alsohave the disadvantage of objectifying a non-objective, embodied experience.

But we have another way of conceptualizing knowledge in English, andthat is in terms of 'grasping' (Johnson 1987; Sweetser 1990; Cox 1999b).'Comprehend', 'conceive' and 'perceive' are each grounded in the experience ofgrasping. Much like our visual bias, the importance of grasping objects in thehistory ofour species makes it unsurprising that 'grasping' should structure ourconception of conceiving and comprehending. But grasping has a different feelthan seeing: grasping is more immediate; and while it still objectifies that which isgrasped, our knowledge of the thing grasped is more intimate and visceral than it iswhen we simply regard it. The large-scale 'structure' of a musical work is perhapsnot easily graspable, but in contrast to this, we know a work more intimately in ourmoment-to-moment experience of its more easily graspable events and relations(Levinson 1997), and these events and relations are at the level of motives, figuresand gestures. But 'motive' and 'figure' do not reflect that quasi-tangible featureindicated by 'gesture', which focuses our attention on a more physically intimateunderstanding of how the music works.

To see this - to feel this - compare the following conceptualizations ofthe opening two-note event of the finale of the Beethoven Violin Concerto: (1) afigure, (2) a motive, (3) a leap and (4) a gesture. 'Figure' suggests something thatis external to us and fixed. 'Motive' highlights the dynamic of change, conceivedas motion, but still leaves the event(s) as extemal. 'Leap ' suggests a moreembodied sense of motion, but it is too big for us to feel directly in terms of ourown experience of leaping: to leap requires a much greater exertion than theexertion reflected in this opening event; it has an analogous dynamic, or exertion'contour', but it is out of proportion. However, 'gesture' suggests not only ananalogous exertion dynamic, but one of the same proportion, and this isomorphismaffords a closer comparison with our own embodied experience.

'Gesture' seems to match best the level at which we grasp (comprehend)music most viscerally and intimately, and in this way it highlights a kind ofmusical knowing that is distinct from our more visual and quasi-objectiveconceptualizations. By focusing on musical gestures we draw attention to a crucialarea of musical meaning, and by understanding how musical gestures are graspedand conceived we strengthen our understanding of how musical meaning isconstructed.

Notes

1.This is a slightly different formulation than that in Cox 2001.

2. One exception is Clynes (1977), who offers a particular kind of empiricalevidence which I discuss below. Lidov (1987) bases his arguments on Clynes'swork.


3. A good sample of such research as it bears directly on music can be found inPapousek (1996), Malloch (1999/2000) and Trevarthen (1999/2000).

4. Much work has been done in this area; a representative sample includes Galleseet al. (1996), Rizzolatti et al. (1996), Gallese and Goldman (1998) and Fadiga et al.(1998).

5. 1 take subvocalization to include both silent vocal imagery and sotto vocerehearsal and imitation.

6. Evidence for this can be drawn from Baddeley and Logie (1992); Smith,Reisberg and Wilson (1992); Smith, Wilson and Reisberg (1995); Vaneechoutteand Skoyles (1998).

7. Daniel Stem (1985) has argued for amodal perception in infants. Although hesuggests that we eventually outgrow this, it may be that amodal perceptionbecomes disguised by the gradual dominance o modally specifc perception.

8. For a fuller explanation of how this and how other conceptual metaphorsstructure musical thought, see Cox l999a.

9. Compare Hatten (2001), Lecture 4: l.

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