• Skip to Content
  • Skip to Sidebar
IU

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington IU Bloomington

Menu

Music TheoryIU Jacobs School of Music

  • Home
  • HOME
  • Admissions
  • Degrees
  • Courses
  • Colloquium
  • People
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • Alumni
    • Staff
  • News & Events
  • Search

Goldman article in MTO

Posted on October 4, 2022 by Sarah J. Slover

Prof. Andrew Goldman recently published an article, “Returning to the Continuum: On the Value of Typological Distinctions in the Analysis of Improvisation,” in the latest volume of Music Theory Online. To view the entire article, visit the MTO Webpage.

“Sometimes music theorists describe an improvisation continuum connecting the extremes of completely determined performance and completely free and novel performance,” Goldman explains, “but, much of the theoretical work actually lies in determining the types of performance that define those extremes, not in drawing a continuum per se. What types of improvisation exist!?”

Goldman is assistant professor of music in music theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and assistant professor of cognitive science at the IU College of Arts and Sciences. His research, which has primarily focused on improvisation in music and dance, considers how scientific methods can be used to learn about musical perception and cognition in principle. He also designs and conducts behavioral and neuroscientific experiments with musicians and has worked on projects concerning the perception of musical form, embodiment in music, musical syntax, and corpus studies.

His work has been published in both music and psychology journals and has been presented at national and international conferences, including the Society for Music Theory, International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition, and American Psychological Association.

ABSTRACT: Improvisatory musical practices are often characterized as lying on a continuum between complete prior determination and complete in-the-moment novelty. Continua allow music analysts to avoid problematic absolutisms and enrich their comparative analyses, but their construction ultimately relies on typological distinctions. The poles or dimensions of the continuum must be defined, and this is where much of the theoretical work actually lies—including in constructing new typological distinctions. To this end, I discuss and demonstrate how a typological distinction between embodied and propositional improvisation—a distinction primarily motivated by (but not limited to) a performance practice called Live Coding—predicates a music-analytical research program. I show how this typological distinction forms productive connections with cognitive-scientific research that helps refine the distinction and its application to music analysis, and then use it to discuss the relative contributions of typologies versus continua in the analysis of musical improvisation more generally.

Filed under: Faculty, Faculty Accomplishments, IU TheoryTagged faculty, iu music theory, music theory

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Additional Content

  • Return to Main Page
  • Music Theory Faculty
  • Graduate Study in Music Theory
  • Exams
    • Validation/Exemption Exams
    • Graduate Entrance Exams
  • Associate Instructor Positions in Music Theory
  • Doctoral Minor Field in Music Theory
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • FAQs

Recent News

  • René Rusch Visits IU Music Theory for Five Friends Master Class Series Lectures
  • Michèle Duguay and David Geary Featured in MTO
  • IU Alumni Win SMT Awards
  • SMT 2022: IU Music Theory Events & Presentations
  • Prof. Jay Hook’s “Exploring Musical Spaces” Published with Oxford University Press
  • Goldman article in MTO
  • IU Graduate Music Theory & Musicology Associations Host 28th Annual Symposium on Research
  • Prof. Toru Momii Wins Outstanding Publication Award at SMT
  • SMT 2021: IU Music Theory Events & Presentations
  • IU Graduate Music Theory & Musicology Students Present 27th Annual Symposium on Research

FOLLOW US!

IU Music Theory

Search Music Theory

Indiana University

Copyright © 2022 The Trustees of Indiana University | Privacy Notice | Accessibility Help

  • HOME
  • Admissions
  • Degrees
  • Courses
  • Colloquium
  • People
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • Alumni
    • Staff
  • News & Events