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• Daniel Callejas

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Chapter 3

Hearing, Feeling, Grasping Gestures Amic Cox

Musical gcstures are musical acts. and our perception and understanding of gestures involves understanding the physicality involved in their production. Al one leve! this is a rather straightforward mauer, but when it comes 10 using rhe concepl of 'gesture' 10 analyse meaning construction, sorne of our assumptions leave problematic gaps in our cxplanations. For example, consider the following claims by David Lidov ( 1987: 82, emphases added): The variables of pulse are speed and intensity, lntensity is involving. The values of simple pulse trong, forcground pulse as in folk dances and 11101•c111c111 directly. Attcnuatcd pulse is a factor in

Speed is excuing. are fairly obvious: marches controls the sublimation o/

somaticforce.

On the surfacc there may not be a problcm here, since pulse is sornething we oflen feel when listening to music and it does seern lo control movement in certain coniexts. But there is a circularity here, for we could jusi as well say that a feeling of moverncnt generales a fecling of pulse, and that the sublimation of somatic force is a factor in attenuated pulse - or so 1 would claim. Wherc does this feclíng of pulse 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 by other concepts rclatcd to embodicd meaning, including 'gcsturc': How is it that music rnakes us feel anything al ali? (1 am not refcrring nccessarily to emotional feelings but 10 the more visceral sensations related directly lo movement.) In the context of folk music and marches it might not seem that this is a matter in need of explanation: peoplc dance to dance rnusic and march to mnrch music, and the qucstion oí how music works in thcsc contexts may not scern to sorne a crucial arca of scholarly inquiry. However, Lidov is using these exarnples of obvious physicnl engagernent as part oían cxplanation of how similar types of engagernent occur in musical experience generally, including 'art music', and sincc this engagemenl and its cause are not as obvious as in other repertoires, and because a great deal is at stake, this claim requires a more explicit understanding of how music engagcs us. What is at stake, to my mind, is the claim that musical meaning is generated by our embodied experience of it - that our embodicd experience is not only nccessary for expcricncing meaning that is somchow inhercnt in the music

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