Lara Pearson (Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik, Frankfurt am Main)
Adjusting to the Other: Gesture in Music as Interaction

Music can be understood as a form of sonic and bodily interaction. This is most evident in live performance where, in addition to sonic interaction between performers, we often see performers and audience members responding to each other and to the sounds produced through modes such as gesture, facial expression, dance and utterance. Such multimodality is central also to a range of other musicking contexts, including music lessons and rehearsals. But which theoretical frameworks and analytical methods can help us better understand these multimodal, interactional qualities of music? In this talk, I present an approach that applies phenomenological and pragmatist theoretical frameworks to the analysis of musical interaction in pedagogic and performance contexts. The performance tradition explored is Karnatak vocal performance, a South Indian style of art and devotional music, with which I have had the privilege to be involved for the past 15 years. In my analyses of Karnatak vocal lessons, I explore how gestures and utterances contribute to teachers’ and students’ grip over their interactions, enabling them to adjust both to the other person and to the musical phrases sung. I also present work set in performance contexts, examining correspondence between performers’ bodily motion and vocalization, and situate this within the same phenomenological and pragmatist frameworks. I propose that these theoretical approaches can provide a productive account of musicking, connecting the sonic and bodily details of musical interaction to broader understandings of music’s interpersonal and sociocultural roles.