Music, Motion, and Emotion Theoretical and Psychological Implications of Musical Embodiment, 2010

This project aims to throw light upon both aesthetic and therapeutic/prophylactic dimensions of musical meaning; the primary objective being to increase our awareness and understanding of the positive powers of music in everyday life, as well as in crisis. A selection of CD recordings (programs) that have been developed within the music-therapeutical method Bonny Method of Guided Imagery in Music (BMGIM), will serve as point of departure for the theoretical discussions, which will investigate possible relations between structural features of the musical selections, as evidenced by a combination of score-based and auditory analyses, and the imagery that may arise during BMGIM sessions, as reported by anonymous clients and transcribed by the BMGIM therapist Svein Fuglestad at Aksept, a Norwegian support organization for people affected by HIV. In addition to increasing our awareness of music´s potential as an affect regulator in situations of crisis as well as in everyday life, the project also has two main theoretical aims: to gain insight into the cognitive and psychological processes underlying music's rich array of affordances; and to further develop a listener-oriented music-analytical approach that seeks to reflect the cross-modality of musical experience. The theoretical discussions will be interdisciplinary, drawing upon relevant work both within musicology and a number of other fields, most importantly: music therapy, cognitive semantics, music psychology, infant research, neuropsychology, body-oriented contributions within philosophy and literary theory, and research within psychosomatics.