Musikkopplevelse som muligheter for følelseskunnskap : en studie av musikkopplevelse som medierende redskap for følelseskunnskap, med vekt på emosjonell tilgjengelighet og forståelse

Summary in English Our culture seems to carry an idea of music being closely connected to emotion (Benestad 1983; Budd 1992; Dissanayake 2001; Hjort & Laver 1997; Juslin & Sloboda 2001b; Langer 1942/1979: Matravers 2001; Meyer 1956; Myskja 2000; Swanwick 1994). On a general level, this even includes developing human personality (Aristoteles 1997; Elliott 1995; Gadamer 2007; Platon 2001; Reimer 2005). This project investigates music experience more explicitly in the way it relates to emotion learning and knowledge. Its research question is: Can music experience be considered to be a mediating tool for emotion knowledge? If so, how? 38) The project is empirical and based on ten semi-structured, individual interviews of five women and five men of different ages and with different genre preferences. Five of them are music professionals and five are from other professions. The analysis, which was performed in several sequences, can be called ideographic content analysis, or more specifically meaning condensation, with elements of meaning categorization and meaning interpretation, primarily inspired by van Manen’s (2001) hermeneutic-phenomenological and Giorgi’s (1985, 1989) phenomenologic-psychological methods. The study started with a phenomenological approach, seeing experience as reality. However, it acknowledges that avoiding interpretation is impossible. Therefore, not only lived experience, but also the knowledge learned from the experiences, were considered relevant data. Accordingly, this analysis is also inspired by phenomenography (Marton & Booth 1997), socio-cultural (Vygotskij 1934/2001; Säljö 2004, 2005, 2006) and discursive (Heritage 1984; Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998; Winther Jørgensen & Philips 1999) thinking. The initial analytical steps were very close to the empirical material, while the later ones took into account theory from music psychology (Juslin & Sloboda 2001a; Jørgensen 1989; Sloboda 2005), emotion theory (Mayer & Salovey 1997/2004; Monsen 2000) and learning theory. The project could thus be considered to be in-between several “prototypes” (Rosch 1978). The preliminary analysis categorized the empirical material as a whole, dividing the material into two research questions: ‘What aspects of music experience can be considered to mediate emotion knowledge?’ ; and ‘What aspects of emotion knowledge can be considered to be mediated by music experience?’ The many aspects of music experience were grouped into four perspectives: the structural perspective includes the categories manners of meeting, music elements and genres; the relational perspective is divided into the categories alone, interaction, dialogue, meeting, care and acknowledgement; the referential perspective comprises the categories describe, remember, reverberation and embodied; the affording perspective includes the categories open, abandon, awake, strengthen, care and change. In the preliminary analysis, the aspects of emotion knowledge were categorized as emotion(al) 39) availability, consciousness, empathy, understanding, reflection, expressivity, regulation and interaction. In the main analysis, the research questions were limited to ‘What aspects of emotional availability can be considered to be mediated by music experience?’ and ‘What aspects of emotional understanding can be considered to be mediated by music experience?’ The question related to availability includes both the more embodied awareness and the mental consciousness inspired by the phenomenological theory of consciousness (Christensen & Zahavi 2003; Merleau-Ponty 1945/1994). However, the limitations of reflection were discussed based on an embodied focus and formulations from the interviews which regarded the first bodily reaction as the first movement in reflection, and considered reflection also to be non-verbal. Furthermore, the western individually-based understanding of awareness was inspired by more intersubjective thinking (Stern 1985/2000, 2004). The analysis also emphasized that the emotions involved in music are often experienced as recognizable, even though they seem to be “new”, and that the music experience can be a necessary tool, a more superficial memorandum, and something which changes the ability to be emotionally available whether music is present or not. Availability was further seen in the light of attending different emotional spaces, and enduring them. The data were also analyzed in relation to categorical, dimensional and vitality aspects of the knowledge. They were all represented in the material. However, vitality affects (Stern 1985/2000) seem to have a more important role in music experience than they have in general emotion theory. The same is the case for traditionally negative emotions, compared to older research in music psychology, although “negative emotions” are not necessarily experienced as negative in music experience. The first part of the analysis of emotional understanding concerned reflection, understood as both a mirror/echo and a sequence of thought. The second part focused on self-knowledge, including material on identity. This part also acknowledged the possibility of both a pre-reflexive and reflexive understanding, paralleling the pre-reflexive and reflexive consciousness. Emotional understanding of others was called intersubjective understanding because of the social aspects. The issues of sharing, relations and empathy were strongly emphasized in the data. Although the starting point was rather traditional in its individual focus, both of the categories from the main analysis were led in a more intersubjective direction. The chapter on understanding was concluded with material on nonverbal understanding and tacit knowledge, which seemed to be very important in music experience. The last chapter discusses some of the pedagogical and psychological questions raised or alluded to in earlier chapters. It discusses whether emotion knowledge, as a part of the intrinsic content of music education, also deserves a more explicit space. Problems of referentialism and absolutism are discussed in relation to the phenomenological stance and instrumentalism, and the topics of intersubjectivity and reflection are developed into further discussions and questions. Another possibility for further research into the topic is related to theories of learning strategies, possibly also defined as appreciation strategies. The chapter also includes a discussion of the nonverbal aspect of the topic, the problems it caused and the problems it could cause in a society which relies heavily on the verbal development of knowledge alone. The chapter concludes with some reflections concerning categories, gender perspectives and further research into the empirical material. 38) The term ’emotion knowledge’ is used for instance by Denham & Kochanoff (2002:239ff), but here it is a translation of the Norwegian term ’følelseskunnskap’. In the translation of this term, ‘emotion’ is preferred to ‘feeling’ because in English, the term ‘feeling’ is often connected only to the (conscious) sensation of emotion, whereas in Norwegian, ‘emosjon’ is not colloquial. 39) The most consistent term would be ’emotion availability’, though this may sound strange. However, certain theoretical perspectives consider emotion learning to be about emotional content, while emotional learning mainly refers to the form (of any learned content). This study focuses on emotion(al) content, also on this categorical level. Whether the two are possible to separate is another discussion