It takes about twelve months before a linguistic consciousness begins to emerge in the human infant. But this momentous accession to a realm of meaning where sounds and relations between sounds stand for things and events in symbolic ways crucially depends on a prehistory of meaningful communication by more direct, or more essential, means. The mastery of language enabling the discrete labelling of intentions, desires and beliefs with precise reference to non-present objects and events is generally associated with the singular development of human culture. Language and cultural knowledge are deemed to be two of the most distinctively human abilities. Thus having a consciousness of culture might depend on the child being able to understand words and speak, to partake in the conversational negotiation of norms and plans of action in talk or text. But well before infants start experimenting with newly acquired sounds of language, before they attend to the specific syllables that must be strung together to form a word standing for something in a local world of meaning held-incommon, they are involved in a non verbal semiosis of mimetic expression and sympathetic action, which is already distinctly human (Trevarthen, 1990; 1994).

Musical narrative and motives for culture in mother-infant vocal interaction.

This paper deals with an action‐research project currently being undertaken at the University of Bologna concerning the observation of music making during daily routines with under‐four children during diaper change, bedtime and free‐play. Several observational protocols were carried out in natural and spontaneous contexts. The data analysis was based on the analysis of video‐recordings using an observational grid, check‐list and microanalysis. During diaper change we observed some interesting phenomena of face‐to‐face mother‐infant and father‐infant interaction and also triadic mother‐father‐infant interactions. Some differences between father‐child and mother‐child dyads were observed concerning temporal contingency, turn‐taking and musical quality of the vocal interaction. At bedtime, we observed ‘autotelic’ musical play of a young girl singing just before she closed her eyes and the imitative vocal interaction among peers. Fogel’s Relational Coding System (2000) allowed us to observe and analyse the m...

The musical dimension of daily routines with under‐four children during diaper change, bedtime and free‐play

Time and measure are to instrumental Music what order and method are to discourse; they break it into proper parts and divisions, by which we are enabled both to remember better what has gone before, and frequently to forsee somewhat of what is to come after: we frequently forsee the return of a period which we know must correspond to another which we remember to have gone before; and according to the saying of an ancient philosopher and musician, the enjoyment of Music arises partly from memory and partly from foresight. Adam Smith ([1777] 1982: 204)

Psychobiology of Musical Gesture: Innate Rhythm, Harmony and Melody in Movements of Narration

This paper presents the results of an ecological perturbation study of mother-infant vocal interaction. We compared the temporal organisation of spontaneous interactions between 3–month-old infants and mothers who suffered from “borderline personality disorder” and control mothers and infants. Previous studies of vocal interaction have shown that they present a hierarchical temporal organisation. This study focused specifically on “phrasal” units in the flow of expressive sounds produced by mothers and infants that can be segmented according to rules similar to those used by music performers, composers and listeners. Phrases in interaction are perceived and shaped by features such as final lengthening, pausing or lowered pitch and intensity. Acoustic analyses of audio recordings of 34 mother-infant dyads were performed. Results showed that the interactions of mothers with “borderline personality disorder” contained fewer “phrases” with longer phrase final pauses than those of control dyads. These findings...

Phrasing and fragmented time in “pathological” Mother-infant vocal interaction

Title: Musical play: Children interacting with and around music technology Author: Pernilla Lagerlöf Language: English with a Swedish summary ISBN: 978-91-7346-871-8 (print) ISBN: 978-91-7346-872-5 (pdf) ISSN: 0436-1121

Musical Play: Children interacting with and around music technology

Narrative structures the human experience of time, but does it also organise our musical experience? Behind this question lies another one, which concerns the narrative process itself: does it belo...

Narrative, splintered temporalities and the unconscious in 20th century music:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1029864908012001011

Michel Imberty

Papers

Narrative, splintered temporalities and the unconscious in 20th century music:

Narrative in Music and Interaction Editorial