Musical Inquiries of an Orchestral Conductor and a Music Psychologist (1998) Hodges, D. Musical inquiries of an orchestral conductor and a music psychologist. In M. Martinello, G. Cook, & L. Woodson (eds.) Modes of Inquiry: Voices of Scholars Across the Fields of Study, 81-86. Carrollton, TX: Alliance Press.

Donald A. Hodges Most people play a number of roles in life. For instance, I am at various times a husband, a father, a son, a neighbor, a university professor, and so on. Several of the professional roles I play were illustrated by two events in the spring of 1993. In January I hosted a neuromusical research conference (concerned with the study of music and the brain) and in March I traveled to Moscow to conduct an orchestra at the Russian Academy of Music. In reflecting on the purposes of this essay, I thought it might be useful for me to write about being an orchestral conductor and a music psychologist and the modes of inquiry they require. Let me share the musical inquiries of a conductor first. What exactly does a conductor do and in what way does a conductor inquire? Of course, the answers to these questions can vary tremendously depending on the situation; the conductor of a beginner's group has quite a different job from the conductor of a professional orchestra. However, for the purposes of this discussion, we might divide a conductor's responsibilities into two parts: physical/mechanical aspects and mental/expressive aspects. The physical/mechanical part is that which the players and the audience can observe. At the simplest level, the conductor must enable the group to start and stop together and he must show the group how fast or slow and how loud or soft to play. Beyond that, the conductor must balance each instrument part, create a certain quality of sound and style of playing appropriate to the music,

and through the motion of the baton, hands, face, and body show nuances of phrasing and expressiveness. He does that by reading a score, which has every note played by all the different instruments written down. In a large score, this might involve 30 or more separate lines of music (one for each woodwind, brass, percussion, and string instrument). While the orchestra is playing, the conductor reads the score from top to bottom (what notes all the instruments are playing at the same time) and from left to right (as the music moves along in time). On top of that, the conductor must constantly be analyzing the sound he is hearing at the moment (Who just played that wrong note? Are the trumpets too loud here?) as well as anticipating what is about to happen in the music. Every gesture the conductor makes is one of preparation; it anticipates the next sounds and shows the players what comes next. For example, suppose the music calls for the orchestra to play loudly for awhile and then suddenly softer. The conductor must anticipate the sudden change of dynamic with an appropriate gesture given just a fraction of a second before that moment in time. The entire piece, then, for the conductor becomes one of controlling and shaping the sounds by physical gestures which are timed in such a way as to coordinate the activities of 75 players or more. How a conductor determines which physical/mechanical gestures are needed is the mental/expressive aspect of conducting. Here we are at the point of inquiry. A conductor must do a great deal of homework and study before he stands on the podium for the first rehearsal. He must have in his mind's ear a clear conception of how the music should sound before he starts rehearsing the orchestra. Of course, some of these ideas can be changed based on the actual experience of the rehearsal, but this does not allow for learning the piece during the rehearsals; that must be done ahead of time.

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The first stage of inquiry is in choosing what pieces of music should be performed for a given concert. In making these decisions, the conductor must weigh such variables as the technical capabilities of his ensemble (Is this piece of music too difficult or too easy? Will the players enjoy rehearsing and performing it?), the nature of the audience and the occasion (Will it be a musically sophisticated or naive audience? Is there a particular season or circumstance that would dictate choosing a particular piece of music?), and the nature and value of the music (Is this a light, entertaining piece of music or is it one of the deepest, most profound expressions of grief or joy?). Once a composition is selected, the conductor next begins to "learn" the piece. My approach generally is to learn a piece from the outside-in; that is, I start with the largest details (What is the overall structure or organization of the piece?) and work down to the smallest details (perhaps there is a tricky rhythm in one spot). While some conductors are excellent pianists and can play the score at the piano, I am not. Most of my study is away from the piano, using my sense of inner hearing; occasionally, I might play certain passages at the piano to confirm certain notes or harmonies. Some people might think that listening to a recording of an unfamiliar piece might help. While that is an option, I usually prefer to delay listening to a recording until after I have developed my own conception; otherwise, the temptation is too great to copy someone else's interpretation. Learning the score, then, means to know how the music goes; this involves knowing how each of the individual instrument parts will sound and how they will sound when combined. Since a long symphony might last up to an hour, with the score running more than a hundred pages, I find it helpful to sketch out the overall structure in shorthand form, so that I can see how inner portions relate to the whole. (A simple version would be: ABA, where A 3

represents a musical theme, B is a contrasting theme, and A is a return of the original idea.) All of this study needs to be informed by historical context. Most of the time I write program notes for the audience, sharing with them when the piece was written and under what circumstances. Researching this information helps me to gain a better grasp of the composer's intentions. Getting at the composer's intentions is the perhaps the most difficult and yet the most important facet of a conductor's inquiry. Often this is somewhat elusive because the ambiguity of musical notation does not allow the composer to communicate his intentions in an exact fashion. If the composer indicated forte (loud) at one spot, how loud is loud? If he wrote allegro (fast), how fast is fast? More elusive than these basics is the emotion or meaning that the composer intended to express. What did Mozart wish to express in a given passage? Here, the nuances of phrasing must be attended to. Mozart's musical language is not the same as Beethoven's and within Mozart there are numerous shadings and subtleties. Striving to understand what insights a great composer wanted to share about love or grief or joy can be a humbling experience. There is a great deal in a score that is open to interpretation. Actually, it is this very allowance for interpretation that makes the performance of music so exciting. I can err on the side of being too literal and faithful to the score and cause a very bland, inexpressive performance. Conversely, I can err on the side of too much personal expressiveness and give a reading that is an exaggeration or distortion of what the composer intended. The primary focus of my inquiry, once the basic understanding is gained, is to find that "happy medium" which is a delicate balance of the composer's intentions—as best they can be understood through careful study—and my own, personal expressiveness. To participate in the re-creation of a work by a great composer such as Mozart or Beethoven is a thrilling experience. 4

Another role I play, that of a music psychologist, is perhaps best introduced through a brief vignette. As a college sophomore, I was trying to write a term paper on the nature of human musicality. After several days of searching fruitlessly in the library for appropriate source material, I finally made an appointment with one of the senior professors, Dr. E. Thayer Gaston. (Dr. Gaston, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, is widely recognized as one of the major leaders in the development of music therapy as an academic discipline.) When I had blurted out my frustrations, Dr. Gaston responded by saying, "Son, musicians are like people in love; they are happy but they don't know what they are doing! If you want to know about human musicality, you have to look first to those who are students of human behavior—biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists—for music, after all, is a form of human behavior. Music is mysterious, but not magical. It responds to the same laws and principles that govern all human behaviors." In the years since then I have tried to take his advice and much of my career has been in music psychology, the study of human musical behavior. In 1991, we established the Institute for Music Research (IMR) at the University of Texas at San Antonio to promote research in music psychology and music technology. Current activities of the IMR are divided into six categories: Research, Computer Information Services, Conferences,

Publications,

Presentations, and a Ph.D. proposal. In 1996 the IMR Press published the second edition of the Handbook of Music Psychology (Hodges, 1996). The starting point for an inquiry into musical behavior is to gain an understanding of the literature. This leads to a wide-ranging reading list and on my shelves are books such as: Mind and Brain: Dialogues in Cognitive 5

Neuroscience (LeDoux and Hirst, 1986), The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (Zukav, 1979), and Cultural Anthropology (Ember and Ember, 1973). In addition to books, there are thousands of journal articles that are relevant. A colleague of mine, Dr. Charles Eagle, now Professor Emeritus retired from Southern Methodist University and himself a student of Dr. Gaston, has spent more than 30 years creating a database of relevant research literature. This database was created from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective, incorporating literature from such fields as anthropology (ethnomusicology), physics (acoustics and psychoacoustics), biology (neuromusicology), sociology (the influence of music on social behaviors), medicine (music medicine), and so on. As one of the first projects of the newly-established IMR, we offered to take over the distribution of Dr. Eagle's database via a computer network. In November of 1992 we launched CAIRSS (Computer-Assisted Information Retrieval Service System) for Music. CAIRSS is a bibliographic database of music research literature (primarily in the fields of music psychology, music education, music therapy, and music medicine) that is available as a free service anywhere in the world via Internet. As one of the services at the IMR website (http://imr.utsa.edu) CAIRSS provides to access to more than 16,000 article titles for thousands of users all over the world. As Director of the Institute for Music Research, I have an interest in all the activities of the IMR. However, my own research is focused on how music is processed in the brain. To that end I collaborate with Dr. Peter Fox, neurologist and Director of the Research Imaging Center (RIC) at the University of Texas Health 6

Science Center at San Antonio, and with Dr. Larry Parsons, cognitive neuroscientist, also at the RIC. In our first study, we were curious about what parts of the brain were most active while musicians were busy making music. Ten professional pianists served as subjects in an experiment that involved taking a PET (positron emission tomography) scan of their brains while they played the piano. An MRI (magnetic resonance image) of their brains gave us very detailed information about the structures of their brains, while PET data gave us information about the levels of activity going on in different parts of their brains. Data from MRI and PET were combined to map function onto location. For this experiment, the pianists reclined on the PET scanner bed while an electronic keyboard was suspended above them. An IV allowed the introduction of a minute amount of radioactively-tagged water into their veins. They were asked to do three tasks—play a portion of the Bach Italian Concerto from memory (Bach), play scales up and down the keyboard (Scales), and lay there quietly (Rest). Each task was repeated three times in a randomized order. Analysis of PET data is done by a subtractive technique; that is, data (brain activation) from one task is subtracted from another. In our case, by subtracting Rest from Bach, we could see what brain activations were required beyond the normal activity of a brain at rest. Subtracting Scales from Bach showed us what was necessary to perform Bach beyond simply playing scales up and down. Although some of the results are reported in highly technical language, essentially there were four findings: 1. With Rest and Scales subtracted from Bach, the primary brain activation remaining was in the areas having to do with control of complex motor patterns (i.e., moving the arms, hands, and fingers). Part of the explanation for this is fairly simple: playing Bach requires 7

many more complicated movements than playing scales. That explains why additional motor areas were activated, but it doesn’t explain why other areas of the brain weren’t involved. Primarily, it is likely because anything a musician thinks or feels about the music must be communicated to an audience through muscle movements. If the pianist wants to share a musical idea or feeling with a listener, that can only be done by moving the fingers in such a way as to express that idea or feeling in the music (e.g., by striking a key slightly stronger, or by slowing down slightly, etc.). 2. Related to the previous discussion was the finding that the pianists showed strong areas of brain deactivation; that is, there were clearly identified areas of the brain that were less active while playing Bach than they were at rest. This can be explained by the fact that the parts of the brain having nothing to do with playing the piano must be “switched off” so as not to get in the way. 3. A third finding was that certain areas of the brain were more active on the left side of the brain during Scales and others were more active on the right side during Bach. A potential explanation, though not an entirely convincing one, is that the Bach might be recruiting areas from the right side of the brain having to do with emotional expressiveness. 4. A fourth finding was that there are auditory projection areas (related to hearing) in the cerebellum (related to the programming of complex motor movements and timing), a connection previously unknown. This means that what the musicians were hearing while they played informed and corrected muscle movements.

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Following completion of the piano study, we wanted to study music cognition. The neural networks involved in language are fairly well known, but not in music, so we wanted to design an experiment that would begin to give us an idea of those parts of the brain that are most active in music processing. In this experiment, ten professors of music were scanned as they completed five tasks, each one repeated for a total of ten trials. There were two trials each of: Rest Passive Listening—subjects listened to a Bach chorale and looked at a fixation point. Melodic Errors—subjects read a correctly notated Bach chorale while they heard one with intentionally implanted errors in the melody. Rhythmic Errors—subjects read a correctly notated Bach chorale while they heard one with intentionally implanted rhythmic errors. Harmonic Errors—subjects read a correctly notated Bach chorale while they heard one with intentionally implanted errors in any of four voices. In the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic tasks, subjects mentally recognized when there were mismatches between what they saw and what they heard. Data analysis showed that (a) melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic error detection involve many regions of the brain in a distributed network and that (b) the network for each of the tasks is discreet from the others, although with some overlapping areas. Let me close by commenting on how these two roles—orchestra conductor and music psychologist—dovetail and come together for me. You will remember that the most important inquiry I can make as a conductor is how to balance the composer's intentions with my own musical expressiveness. 9

Implied in this inquiry is the notion of sharing the musical "message" with an audience. This chain of sharing—from creator (composer) to re-creator (conductor and orchestra) to listener—represents one aspect of human musicality, the same one that is at the very core of my inquiry as a music psychologist. As a conductor, the purpose of my inquiry is to move people emotionally, to bring the composer's musical message to an audience in such a way that they gain deeper insights into the human condition. As a music psychologist, the purpose of my inquiry is to learn more about the ways music touches people. Why do we respond so strongly to certain types of music? Why are all human beings biologically equipped to be musical? Progress in one mode of inquiry has direct bearing on the other. To create music and to understand how and why it "works" the way it does is one of my greatest joys. It is enough to keep me busy for as long as I have energy to keep inquiring. References Ember, C. R. and Ember, M. (1973). Cultural Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Hodges, D. A. (Ed.). (1996). Handbook of Music Psychology. San Antonio: IMR Press. LeDoux, J. E. and Hirst, W. (Eds.). (1986). Mind and Brain: Dialogues in Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zukav, G. (1979). The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. NY: William Morrow and Co.

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