Music, gesture, and the formation of embodied meaning

In previous work, scholars of music have identified gesture as a core component of musical meaning formation (Pratt 1931/1968; Truslit 1938; Coker 1972; Broeckx 1981; Hatten 1994; Cumming 2000). Broeckx (1981) holds that, through gesture, music can be experienced as the action of a dynamic organism similar to a human organism. Such an experience allows for the construction of meaningful relationships with the structural properties of music (pitch, rhythm, articulation, timbre) as well as with its cultural/historical contexts. For example, an aria in Mozart’s Don Giovanni can be experienced as being extremely gallant, with the musical properties of a dance (a Menuet) that can be linked to prototypes of aristocratic behaviour, and, perhaps, to Mozart’s implied criticism of aristocratic privileges (Allanbrook 1983). In this case, the formation of meaning is both direct and indirect. It is direct at the moment when the music is corporeally experienced (or should we say: felt) as a gallant gesture. It is indirect, and mediated by thinking, when this experience is understood as an expression of prototypical aristocratic behaviour, or of social class relationships in general. The gesture thereby appears as a vehicle for the construction of music-related meanings: first in our experience and next through our understanding and connection with structural features and cultural topics