CHAPTER I:

Musical Imagery

As I said in the introduction, the inspiration for the core of my research was to explore and fully understand the impact of the imagery elements I use in my piano practice through the creation of an arrangement. This lead to gaining interest in exploring the concept of Musical Imagery and what has been written and found in this area of research.

What is Musical Imagery?

The term 'Musical Imagery' can have many different meanings, fluctuating from recognising and associating sounds with images away from the musical realm, to linking images with performance, perception and experience of the emotions expressed in music. It can also extend to more extra-musical image associations that listeners and performers may experience when reacting to a musical sound, such as images of landscapes, or a strong metaphor, a quotation from a good book or movie, historical events, personal experiences, etc. 

Godøy and Jorgensen define it as a person’s capacity for imagining a sound in the absence of a directly audible sound source, I.e. the recollection, re-experience or even invention of a musical sound through our “inner ear”. In their point Musical Imagery is a crucial part of musical experience and involves everyone working with music, making it, perchance, the very core of musical thought (Godøy and Jørgensen 2001, p. ix). In a wider context, musical imagery is often associated with mental imagery, which is the definition for the ability for experiencing internal images, taken from the external physical experience, but not faithfully reflecting it (Godøy 2010, p. 55). Keller (2012, p. 206) states musical imagery as a “… multimodal process by which an individual generates the mental experience of auditory features of musical sounds, and/or visual, proprioceptive, kinaesthetic, and tactile properties of music-related movements, that are not (or not yet) necessarily present in the physical world.”.

In many situations, musical imagery as used by musicians involves not only sounds but also the physical movements required to create them. It can also be the feelings and expressions a performer aims to communicate, and, of course, their personal rendition of the score, or their individual approach to their instrument. Some researches even suggest that the use of imagery can exponentiate a musicians physical practice, enhance the expressivity during practice/performance, pre-experiencing performance situations, and even work as a tool for learning and memorising music (Clark, Williamon and Aksentijevic 2011, p. 352).

Many layers of real-world music perception and music-related actions extend into the realm of musical imagery. It is clear that this is a wide concept, and the definitions for  it vary according to the point that the person who’s defining it is trying to make. If I try to define Musical Imagery in a way that is applicable for what I’m researching, I would say that Musical Imagery is any musical translation of a non musical impulse, such as an actual image, or a strong metaphor, a quotation from a good book or movie, etc. It can be translated and explained through gestures that evoke images, by the use of linguistics that trigger the performer into playing in more expressive way or by using images to express colour, texture and timbre. 

In this chapter I will approach some of the features that Musical Imagery englobe.

"Our belief is that musical imagery is at the very core of music as a phenomenon, because, after all, what would music be if we did not have images of sound in our minds?"

(Godøy and Jørgensen 2001, p. ix)

Expressivity and linguistics:

Musical Imagery is a crucial part of composition and related activities, such as improvisation, arranging, and of most kinds of performance. Most of what we know about imagery in performance and composition is from indirect sources, which means that in much of those cases we have to deduce what goes on in the minds of performers and composers from their musical practice (Godøy and Jørgensen 2001, p. x) or make, ourselves, the connection to an image external to the performance. This is where the topic of expressivity comes in. 'Expressivity', according to Godøy and Jørgensen (2001) is "a common term for denoting a live, “human” performance of a musical work, as opposed to a flat, 'machine-like' performance". This term, in a practical sense, is achieved by elements like changes in tempo and timing, dynamic subtleties, phrasing, and other features that aren’t as easily explained like colour, timbre or characteristics of the performer’s personality. An expressive performance is then anything that relates to a 'human touch' in a performance of a written piece of music.

We learn a lot about expressivity in performance from the way performers talk about it. Although, discussing music is not an easy thing when it comes to, for example, comparing the performances of a Prokofiev sonata from two brilliant pianists. Sound has a vocabulary of its own, and it wouldn’t be an outrage to say that almost all conversations about music are metaphorical. These metaphors can play a vital part for performers, teachers and students musical experience and understanding, especially when it is connected with musical expression (Leech-Wilkinson and Prior 2014, p. 35). Music’s 'meaning' come very often from its proximity to its causes and the feelings it expresses, so, it is natural to conclude that talking about what music feels like can be more meaningful and impactful than to say what it is.

The communication problem with Timbre:

Most people, disregarding wether they had any musical training or not, are capable of processing images of music and describe them with words. Imagery can be used, as I said earlier, not only as way to forget about some mechanical limitations of the instrument (in the case of performers), but also as a way to describe concepts that don’t have a defined and unilateral etymology. This is the case of timbre. Timbre fluctuates between the physical and the perceptual realm, and it is, therefore, very hard to describe. The term timbre is not a one-dimensional feature of music, not like the case of pitch, tempo, dynamics, articulation (all things that can be clearly and undeniably detailed in a musical score).

Regardless of the difficulties in trying to scientifically describe timbre, we do it everyday with the use of imagery. Timbre can be experienced in a very personal way, so that is way the attempts of describing tend to be very creative, like for example, describing the sound of an old upright piano as mellow, or describing a child’s voice singing as pure and crystalline, or even refer to Brahms’ piano writing as dense and oceanic.

"As ubiquitous as these experiences are, the cognitive processes involved in describing timbre are far from transparent. Where does this subjective yet vaguely agreed–upon vocabulary come from? How do we translate perceptions of timbre into semantic, verbal descriptions?"

(Wallmark and Kendall 2018, P. 2)

Gestures that evoke imagery in music:

Musical imagery is also strongly associated with gestural imagery, in a way that the latter can be highly useful in activating and maintaining mental images of musical sound. Gestural imagery can be described as the mental ability to imagine gestures without seeing or performing them, which means that it is possible to remember and relive or even invent new gestures through the use of our 'inner eye' or our own inner sense of movement and effort (Godoy 2004, P. 55). 

Anybody that listens to music, moves to music, wether it is by dancing, gesticulating, or any kind of body movement associated with music, played live or reproduced in an audio set, or even just by the simple access of imagination of music, with our inner ear. It is impossible to disassociate music with gesture, because music is mainly originated by body movements (such as hitting, blowing, scratching, bowing, shaking, etc.) and the musicians who use body movements as communicative tools in performance (such as nodding heads, the expressive use of breath with movement, waving hands, etc.). This connection between sound and movement is perceived by most listeners (not putting into matter their level of musical training) as 'music itself' (Godoy 2011, P. 231).

In many occasions, when people remember music, they mimic the sound-producing movements, or other types of movements that associated with the music, like, for example, moving your hands and fingers as if you were actually playing while remembering a piano piece. It is common for people, when in contact with music, to emulate the actions that seem to be generating the sound, or to be captivated by other characteristics of sound, wether it a strong melodic design or a peculiar rhythmic pattern: foe example, listening to a virtuosistic fortissimo passage in a trombone probably casts images of strong abdominal and pulmonary effort, or listening an open string of a cello  played long and softly evoke images of slow bow movements (Godoy 2011, P. 234).

It is clear that gestures are extremely effective in evoking images of musical sound.

Rolf Inge Godøy in his paper Sound-action awareness in music (2011, Pp. 234-235) makes the distinction between two sound-related actions: sound-producing and sound-accompanying. Sound-producing actions are essentially excitatory actions, meaning, activities that are actually involved in the production of the sound, and in the transmission of energy from the bodies of the performers to objects that produce sound (strings, membranes, tubes, etc.) such as hitting, blowing, scratching, bowing, shaking, etc. These activities also englobe actions that change the sound, often called modulatory actions. In this actions we include the vibrato, dampening strings on the piano, picking a register in an organ, etc. The movements made by performers that might not extremely needed for producing sound are also seen as types of sound-producing actions. This type of actions addresses movements used to increase expressivity, or to make a musical gesture clearer, or gestures used to communicate between performers, or even theatrical gestures to get a reaction from the audience. Sound-accompanying actions are sound related activities that are not directly involved in the production of the sound. This include dancing, walking to a beat, gesticulating (as long as it is not related with an activity that produces sound).

The gestures we use in our performance are, according to numerous studies, one of the principal agents in triggering and evoking images of sounds. In the past few decades we have seen the appearance of methods and experiments that might actually explain what happens in processes of imagery, like, for example, measuring reaction times, study the impact of mental preparation for numerous events, such as concerts or public speaking, and the benefits of mental practice. Studying the association between gestures and sound in an actual experience could also be extremely helpful in understanding the relation between gestures and musical imagery. This is due to the fact that imagery and actual experiences share a lot of qualities, being that imagery, in many situations, is a strong representation of reality. It is also interesting to mention that specific motor areas of the brain are activated during our imagination of sound, meaning that action and musical imagery are simultaneously active and present in tasks of musical imagery.

Gestural Imagery can also have a more practical use, with actions such as seeing melodic lines as gestures, experiencing musical textures as complex patterns of gestures (this can be also useful in reading scores), and even achieving a better understanding of rhythmical grouping, expressivity, and phrasing in the musical performance by mental practice of gesture patterns (Godoy 2004, P. 60).

Beneficial use of Musical Imagery:

From what was written before, it is natural to conclude that the use of imagery by musicians can be extremely helpful and effective as a practice method. With musical imagery a performer can make their practice more efficient, overcome technical difficulties, gain skills in music learning memory and sight reading, be more aware and sensible to details in sound, enhance levels of confidence in performance by gaining control over negative emotions, and even work on the connection with the audience.

The use of imagery is obviously not exclusive of the music world. In a study made with dancers, Nordin and Cumming (2005) found a some functions for imagery that could be interesting for musicians. The dancers affirm that the use of metaphorical imagery is extremely effective, with special mention to imagining being a swan when dancing Swan Lake. This use of images can be easily translated to music performance, in the way that we think about phrasing, touch, breath, etc.

We can conclude that imagery is not just effective in learning and memorising music, but also in communication of expressivity, in searching and achieving the desirable  sound in a piece, and in the general mental preparation for performance.

Concluding remarks:

I found a lot of writings regarding musical imagery and the numerous possibilities and domains in which it is applied and thought of extensively. When we talk about music we use imagery, when we express music through movement we use imagery, when we look for any kind of extra musical inspirations in our practice we use imagery, when we prepare for the moment of live performance we use imagery, when we study music mentally, we use imagery. 

Imagery is not only the search of images, is the search of an extra layer to our reality. And, although there is a lot of imagery required in composing musical works in order to get to its final result, the performance of music is vastly affected by it, even if it is not always conscious. The movement of sound can, and sound itself, can be explained scientifically and in an absolute way, but the preparation before producing sound and how the sound is perceived afterwords, are not at all absolute sciences. There is a lot written about it, and the knowledge and information about this subject will continue to expand and to be meticulously analysed.