The concept of musicianship has been at the center of a variety of philosophical inquiries, interpretations and traditions. Either addressed directly or as a con- sequence of ontological considerations about the nature of music, the question of what makes a musician a musician has occupied many thinkers, philosophers, musicologists and ethnomusicologists over the centuries.
The goal of this chapter is not to report on the richness, diversity and depth of views on global musicianship. My intention here is rather to elucidate the contributions of electroacoustic musical practices as part of a musician’s expertise. As a starting point, a working definition of musicianship can be expressed as the set of skills and virtues to make and appreciate music and to deepen one’s identity as a musician. The savoir faire of the musician, his or her expertise, cannot be a conclusive definition since it should be in tune with philosophical, ethical, moral
and spiritual trends that shape and guide society. Therefore, it should undergo permanent evaluation, reconsideration and redefinition.
To examine the input of audio technology and electroacoustic music in the know- how and know-what of the professional contemporary musician set of skills, let us first look at some influential ideas of musicianship in the scope of the western- European tradition. In Boethius’ chief work De Institutione Musica, which sum- marizes ancient Greek thoughts on music, the concept of musicianship emerges from the division of work in Boethius’s distinction between the intellectual, or knowing, musician, the creator and the maker.1 If not a direct link to the mod-
ern roles of critic, composer and performer, this idea is nevertheless related to the different activities and skills of judging, imagining, combining and producing sounds for musical purposes.
Over time, this idea of the division of labor in the musical field has fostered the development of highly specialized musicians and has favored training pro- grams that support and facilitate apprentices to concentrate on distinct aspects of musical activity: performing an instrument, writing music, analyzing art works, etc. However, Comprehensive Musicianship emerged as an alternative to the spe- cialized approach within the MENC (National Association for Music Education, formerly known as the Music Educators National Conference) over the second half of the twentieth century in North America. Comprehensive Musicianship is a concept that has developed from the query of integrating diverse musical activ- ities, such as composition, analysis, performance, improvisation, history, theory and listening skills, in a unified curriculum for music education.2
The underlying idea of Comprehensive Musicianship is to communicate through the educational process a holistic view of musical practice. How successfully this can be done has been hotly debated. The criticisms basically expose the difficul- ties of allocating and concentrating resources in a very condensed manner to cover very broad and time-demanding musical issues, such as analysis, history, compo- sition and interpretation.3 From another point of view, widening the agenda of
musical training in a multidimensional perspective has as a positive outcome the demystification of activities of composition and analysis for performers or conversely, the practice of improvisation and performance for composers and the-
1 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (Rome, 480-524/525). De institutione
arithmetica libri duo, De institutione musica libri quinque. B. G. Teub- ner, Leipzig, 1867. Book I chapter 34. http://archive.org/details/ DeInstitutioneArithmeticaLibriDuoDeInstitutioneMusicaLibriQuinque.
2 Choksy, Lois, Robert Abramson, Avon Gillespie, and David Woods. “Comprehensive
Musicianship: An American Technique and Philosophy for Teaching Music.” Teaching Music in the Twenty First Century, 2001, 115–123.
3 Grashel, John. “An Integrated Approach Comprehensive Musicianship: John Grashel
Explains How Comprehensive Musicianship, Too Long Ignored by Instrumental Edu- cators, Can Be Used to Advantage in the Rehearsal Room.” Music Educators Journal 79, no. 8 (1993): 38–41.
3.1 Musical expertise and music making 39
oreticians. Very often I have encountered the panic of the white page, when music performance students were asked to perform composition or improvisation tasks. However, in many of those cases, a tolerant and supporting framework of spaces for experimentation generated a liberating experience, enabling students to show their great creative potential. I am aware, however, that these experiences can- not replace the proper allocation of time and effort to develop composition or instrumental skills.
Either by dissociating the musician’s tasks and skills, as in Boethius’s views, or by unifying them, as in the Comprehensive Musicianship project, we seem to be facing an understanding of musicianship that includes three aspects of musical practice: performance, composition, and theory. In contrast with other cultures outside the western-European tradition, this triumvirate seems very focused on the craft of music-making. For example, in the candombe and santeria tradi- tions, the musicianship is related to the ability to interact with the supra- and infra-worlds and their deities in a query often related with supernatural, magical powers for healing.4 In these contexts, beyond physical or mental dexterity, mu-
sicianship assumes a larger set of qualities involving more spiritual and mystical competencies.
In certain European traditions, the capacity to convey and arouse emotions in the audience and/or to alter mental states has also been considered part of the musical skill set (see for example the Italian tarantella, or the movement of Sturm und Drang in the eighteen century). It is probably not a coincidence that some sub-genres of popular electronic music make allusion to trance and other altered states of mind relating to electronic sounds, dance, performance and some aspects of musicianship.5 However, much work and interdisciplinary analysis remains to
be done in order to gain an understanding of the aspects of spirituality and reli- giosity and the crossing borders of academic and non-academic electronic music. I am personally fascinated by the ideas of driving fundamental forces such as electromagnetism through music and sound, and have experienced some sort of mystical empowerment through performance. Furthermore, while working with circuits and soldering copper and tin to move electrons around to generate and modulate audio signals, I have tasted flavors of what could be called an alchemic enthusiasm. But all of these remain in the domain of anecdotical experiences; more rigorous philosophical and psychological analysis is needed to provide frame- works and analytical tools to grasp the depth of power of electroacoustic music and musicians over the human soul.
In the chapter “Defining the Musical Identity of Non-Musicians,” Nikki Richard and Tanchyuan Chin analyze the inconsistency in classifying musicianship on the
4 Rouget, Gilbert. Musique et La Transe. Vol. 66. Gallimard Paris, 1980.
5 John, Graham St. “Electronic Dance Music Culture and Religion: An Overview.”
basis of formal musical training.6They propose by quoting Sloboda,7and Elliott,8
to expand the concept of musicianship in order to include in parallel to the pro- ductive musical expertise a receptive musical expertise, giving to music-listening the same status as music-making. Richard and Chin’s argument challenges as- sumptions of formal musical training and intensive practice starting at an early age as the sole means of reaching musical expertise. Their reasoning stresses the benefits of long exposure to music and motivated and engaged listening as an alternative path towards musical expertise. This query of broadening the concep- tual framework of musicianship is in tune with some of the observations about electroacoustic music that I will develop below, for example, the shifting of lis- tening modes.
Another effort to widen the perspectives of musicianship is reflected in the work of Philip Alperson, who argues in “Robust Praxialism and the Anti-Aesthetic Turn” for a holistic view of praxialism in musical education. Alperson attempts to integrate aesthetic views (derived from a philosophy of aesthetic formalism with enhanced cognitive aspects tracing back to Kant) and praxial philosophy as developed by thinkers such as David Elliott and Thomas Regelski. In the holistic view of Alperson, musical processes and experiences are purposeful, contextual and socially-embedded.9
The praxial view, on my understanding of it, calls into question the hard distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values of music, arguing that the philosophy of music should take as its subject not only the specifically aesthetic values of music deriving from the sensuous, struc- tural, expressive, and referential aspects of music, but also those artistic values pertaining to the larger personal, cultural, and social significance of music that have been a part of musical practice since antiquity, in- cluding the possibility that music may play a role in the construction of Bildung, or (very roughly) spiritual formation.10
Although an inclusive approach, Robust Praxialism gives an extended framework to think about and elaborate on the different aspects and contributions of elec- troacoustic music to the concept of musicianship. In the next section, I focus on how performing with electronic instruments can be considered and integrated within the larger concept of musicianship.
6 MacDonald, Raymond, David J. Hargreaves, and Dorothy Miell. Handbook of Musi-
cal Identities. Oxford University Press, 2017.
7 Sloboda, John. Exploring the Musical Mind: Cognition, Emotion, Ability, Function.
OUP Oxford, 2005.
8 Elliott, David J. Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
9 Alperson, Philip. “Robust Praxialism and the Anti-Aesthetic Turn.” Philosophy of
Music Education Review 18, no. 2 (January 1, 2010): 171–93.