Making a Reflexive Turn: Practical Music-making Becomes Conventional Research

Abstract

In this chapter, the author describes a study which uses the conventional behavioural research methods she typically draws upon in her academic papers to explore performance preparation as a research topic. Historical musicology, ethnomusicology, musical acoustics, psychology and sociology, and music analysis are all typically regarded as research domains in music. If research is to do with experimentation, study, curiosity and enquiry, many practical music-making situations do at some level involve a research process. Clearly, in music-working contexts, psychodynamically informed music therapists work with individual versus group issues on a daily basis. Analysing the data from Dido and Aeneas , the single factor which seemed to permit the group dynamics to function was the flexibility between individuals, allowing a constant flux between individual and group needs, especially between the author as leader and the others, who often had fantastically spontaneous ideas.

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