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Saxophonist and composer, MA in musicology and semiotics. Ole Kühl combines the insight of the professional musician with a scientific approach to the central issues of music: how does music arise, why do we enjoy playing and listen-ing to it, and how can we describe the cognitive architecture of musical thinking. Kühl launched his professional career in 1969 as a member of John Tchicai’s Cadentia Nova Danica. The following years saw him as active on the frontline between the new electrical music and the jazz avantgarde, a couple of years as a member of legendary Blue Sun, and subsequently as a leader of Natdamperen and Dawn. Following this he has been active as a sideman in a number of experimental and more traditional groups, as a theatrical composer etc. His main instrument is the tenor saxophone. In 1995 Kühl began a college education in musicology and semiotics. The Master’s thesis from 2003 was issued in book form, titled Improvisation og Tanke (The Improvising Mind). He is currently engaged in a research project on Cognitive Musicology in collabora-tion between The Royal Academy of Music and Center for Semiotics, funded by the Danish Ministry of Culture. His teaching activities include courses in music history and musical semiotics at the University of Aarhus and music theory and ear training at the Royal Academy of Music.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
The Semiotic Gesture Abstract Musical meaning is fluid. The same piece of music can mean different things to different people, and the same person can experience a piece of music differently in different contexts. This does not mean, however, that the relationship between music as perceived structure and music as experienced content is absolutely arbitrary. We can share a musical experience, we can identify with specific musical styles, and, most importantly, we seem − in all cultures and at all times − to use music as an indispensable part of our most meaningful moments, as a device for sharing and bonding. So, although musical meaning cannot be pinpointed in any specified manner, like the meaning of language, there is still an amount of stable substance in musical communication, which can be defined. The most important, stable element in a musical semantics is the primary signification from musical phrase to gesture and from musical gesture to emotional content and social belongingness.
A semiotic approach to jazz improvisation (November 2004) Semiotic theory and cognitive science offer ways
to redefine musical analysis across the barriers of tradition. In this
essay an analysis of a famous jazz solo is used as a paradigm example.
Musical expression is seen as embodied, musical phrases as internalized
gestures and musical form as a cognitive map of a virtual space in which
the musical "play" is unfolded.
Phrase, gesture and temporality: In order to study how we "make sense"
of music, I suggest that we focus on the simpler, more natural forms
of musical communication, before we try our hands on the many-layered
transmission of old musical texts. And, as a further advantage of such
a scenario, I suggest involving the expressive side of music in the
analysis and not only the receptive side.
Bebop: elements of improvisation, in: Almen Semiotik 17 (under preparation) Improvisation og Tanke, København
2004. Cognition in jazz improvisation, in: “The Way We Think”, Odense working papers in language and communication 23/2002
RESEARCH PROJECT Foundations of Cognitive Musicology: Towards a Theory of Musical Meaning Musical cognition is not an isolated entity, conferred to a specialized chamber in the brain. Contrarily, music seems – on the neural level – to draw upon systems and subsystems that serve locomotion and gestuality, emotion, language faculties (semantic as well as syntactic) and spatial and temporal domains. Cognitively there is evidence that musical activity (listening, playing) involves well known cognitive functions such as categorization and blending. Musical meaning, then, in order to be that complete experience we know it to be, must be pictured as a multilayered thing, involving bodily, emotive and mental components. The key to understanding musical cognition appears to be temporality. Music plays out in time. Our perception of the world unfolds in time. Time is something very real and familiar: according to Augustine, time is that thing I know what is, except when I have to explain it. The human cognitive system is not only geared to function in time, but is furthermore able to process temporal information with the same natural ease as it processes spatial information. (When we think about something, we create a mental space, which sometimes means spatialization of temporal information, for instance we draw a musical theme “out of time” in order to consider it more closely.) The temporal faculties of human cognition are, however, not well understood. Musical phrases and rhythms perform real-time emulations in the human mind: music iconizes gestures and patterns of movement, hence the activation of motor centres in the human brain. Such body based brain patterns are probably closely linked to emotive patterns in such a way, that their activation concurrently activates emotive schemas and vice versa.
ABSTRACT The Improvising Mind: a study in the cognition and semiotics of bebop improvisation. The idea to this book emerged when I studied at the Center for Semiotics where I was under the tuition of Per Aage Brandt. The purpose of the study is to apply recent cognitive and semiotic theory on jazz improvisation. This originally involved the blending theory of Fauconnier and Turner, but, as the project has evolved, a number of neuro-biological and -linguistic, as well as more traditional semiotic models, have naturally “filled the gaps”. As some of the analyses involved had to be quite detailed, it soon became imperative to choose a specific musical field to work in, and for various reasons the classical bebop of 1940s and the music of Charlie Parker offered itself. This music is thoroughly researched, it is well documented, and it is still very much alive as the natural foundation of modern jazz and the basic skill that the developing improviser has to learn. Jazz improvisation can be viewed as a conceptual integration network with three inputspaces: 1) The PHRASE is a musical act, with a cognitive structure similar to other modes of representation, such as speech and motor acts. The presemantic integration, which leads to the actual conceptualization of the musical phrase, is a microstructural blend on its own, integrating temporal and tonal information within the three second window. 2) The metric/harmonic topography of the CHORUS serves as a reference for the act. It can not only be interpreted as a peircean sign structure, but it also serves as the narratological model for the improvisation. 3) The socio-cultural background frames the musical interaction in the GROUP, which can be described as a neuro-biological feedback system with an intersubjective scope. A number of musical parameters are negotiated in the musician’s shared time. It is not yet possible to offer a complete theory on the cognition of jazz improvisation, however the sketchy outlines of such a theory do seem to appear. There is evidence that the musical “gesture” could be tied with motor schemas on a very deep, preverbal level, leading to the notion that the musical impulse arises from a central motivating device in the limbic core of the brain, thus connecting the intrinsic musicality of the infant with the creative communication of the jazz musician.
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Updated June 14, 2006 by jpt. © Center for Semiotics. All rights reserved.