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- Björkén-Nyberg, Cecilia
(författare)
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"My Home Is My Factory" : Lady Pianists and Working-Class Discipline
- 2012
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The picture of the bourgeois woman seated at the piano is a familiar one. It has been reproduced in countless paintings, photographs and fictional accounts. Piano playing was one of the accomplishments to be displayed by the nineteenth-century young lady in the private sphere. Today we tend to regard this woman as a decorative relic, who was engaged in an unsystematic leisure activity, victimised by lacking career opportunities and far removed from the realities of industrial life in mid-nineteenth-century England. In fact, her pleasant music-making could be considered the antithesis of factory discipline, according to which time was strictly regulated by the demands of making a profit. During long working hours in the factory, the mechanistic principle disciplined the body; the movement of hands and legs, for instance, was subject to surveillance. As late as the early twentieth century, Havelock Ellis described how foremen were encouraged to monitor young women seated at sewing machines in order to prevent sexual excitement as a result of the wrong positioning of their legs. In comparison, solitary music-making in a secluded home appears to be the very epitome of harmony and freedom. However, I argue that the similarities between female factory workers and amateur lady pianists were greater than our construction of the Victorian period may lead us to believe. Factory discipline was implemented in bourgeois homes all over England. The standard piano practise for young women restricted physical freedom to such an extent that, like factory workers, they were fettered to a machine, the pianoforte. This mechanisation of music was established through the musical institution of the conservatory. Due to the emergence of conservatories all over Europe, the virtuoso became the norm for all pianists. The repertoire was standardised as was the recommended hours of practise. Thus, the distinction previously made between a professional pianist and an amateur disappeared. In addition, the more sophisticated the pianoforte became, the more it turned into a machine that had to be controlled. More often than not, though, the woman was controlled by the machine. Hand gymnastics was introduced as one means of preparing the fingers for the machine-like activity of performing almost impossible pianistic feats without wasting any time. Thus engaged in the virtuoso factory at home, the lady pianist would have no time for such potentially subversive activities as day-dreaming. Ironically, not until piano playing was in actual fact mechanised due to the launching of the player piano, were women freed from their musical servitude. In 1901 they had access to 6,000 music rolls, which they could operate at their own liberty without previous practise. What is more, while doing so they were at leisure to make the music accompany their own thoughts and desires.
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- Björkén-Nyberg, Cecilia, 1962-
(författare)
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Vocal Woolf : The audiobook as a technology of health
- 2016
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Ingår i: SoundEffects. - Aarhus : Aarhus Universitetsforlag. - 1904-500X. ; 6:1, s. 69-87
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores the therapeutic potential of the performing audiobook voice. It takes its point of departure in the view that the audiobook negotiates the semantics of a text and its vocal manifestation. A key idea is that the performing voice is an affordance for creating a salutogenic sense of coherence in the listener. The argument is theoretically situated within the context of the psychology and sociology of music with affect regulation and ‘health-musicking’ as significant elements. The British actress Juliet Stevenson’s reading of Virginia Woolf’s second novel Night and Day (1919) will be approached as a case of ‘health-musicking’ and an event-based appreciation of sonic culture. This discussion will focus on the listeners’ appropriation of the sound object for their own empowering purposes.
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- Pusey, Christopher Garry, et al.
(författare)
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Put Some Music on : The Effects of pre-Task Music Tempo on Arousal, Affective State, Perceived Exertion, and Anaerobic Performance
- 2023
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Ingår i: Music & Science. - London : Sage Publications. - 2059-2043. ; 6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research on the ergogenic effects of music on athletic performance usually includes multiple antecedents simultaneously. Consequently, this study set out to isolate a single antecedent using a highly controlled experiment. More specifically, the aim of the study was to investigate the effect of pre-task, slow- and fast-tempo music on arousal, affective state, perceived exertion, and anaerobic rowing performance by isolating music tempo as the sole intrinsic musical factor. Forty young adults (male = 23, female = 17) participated in three trials where they all were exposed to no-music, slow-tempo, and fast-tempo music conditions in a randomized order. The music was exclusively composed for this study and equally novel for all participants. It was based on the same electronic track with a techno-orientation rendered to both 110 (slow-tempo) and 140 (fast-tempo) BPM. Following music exposure, the participants were momentarily asked to report levels of felt arousal and affective state before being instructed to perform a 30-s maximal rowing test on an ergometer. Upon completion of each rowing test, subjects were then asked to report their perceived exertion. Both fast- and slow-tempo pre-task music exposure led to increased arousal and positive affective state when compared to no music. Fast-tempo music led to a significantly higher mean power output than slow-tempo music. No significant differences were found for peak watt output or rating of perceived exertion when comparing all conditions. These findings suggest that exposure to pre-task music may offer positive psychological benefits prior to commencing anaerobic sporting tasks. Results also suggest that fast-tempo music may have an ergogenic effect on anaerobic performance. © The Author(s) 2023.
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