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One of my students gave me a greeting card. On the front is a photograph of an artwork by Deidre Schere titled "Woman and Cello". The work is made of fabric and thread. The woman is old. Her hair is entirely white. The joints on her hands are somewhat disfigured, perhaps by arthritis. She plays the cello. Her eyes are closed. She is deeply engaged. Though she plays, creating the action on the instrument, she is in a receptive posture, hugging the cello, as in relationship, and receiving what the cello has to give.

Below the artwork is a short poem by Rumi:

Let yourself be silently drawn
By the strong pull of what you really love.
It will not lead you astray.

My student gave me this card because she knows I love to play the cello and have a hard time "being silently drawn". The card is now well-positioned on my piano - another place I do not visit enough.

As I reflect on this card and as I AM drawn into playing the cello, I've gone back into my files to find an old article, "Music as Knowledge" by David J. Elliott (1991). I want to reflect on the epistemology of this experience. And my question is what am I knowing when I play the cello?

In order to reflect on this question, I turn to phenomenology and another book on my shelf, David Sudnow's Ways of the hand: The organization of improvised conduct. (1978). In this classic work, Sudnow described how he learned to play improvised jazz.

We know that the problem with theories is that they become so complex and detailed that they can become very far away from the concrete experiences they are attempting to represent and understand. Phenomenology is particularly compelling in this case because it is empirical. So today, I'm going with Elliott's conclusion that "constructed knowledge" (Csikszentmihalyi) is the type of knowledge we acquire from playing music. And I'm also going with Sudnow's phenomenological way of describing in order to answer my question. A very short example:

I know that whenever I play my cello I can feel the warmth and resonance of tone. This is a form of self-care for me. What do I know? I know something about Handel and von Weber today because I play their works. I know that the more I practice, the more skill and facility I acquire so that I can be more expressive on my instrument. And, yes, the cello is so giving. As I play, I feel the resonance of the instrument in all of the cells of my body. I come alive in a particular way. When I play the cello, I am inside the music. The sound that comes out also gives me knowledge about myself. I hear and feel my own qualities. So playing the cello is self-reflective and allows me to engage in self-care. On some days I hear and feel melancholy. On others, joy. Then there is tenuousness, humor, depth. Oh, so many. Many of the qualities do not have words to represent them.

Last week I got two new strings - the A and the G. I also got a new endpin that makes the cello lighter. Does this change the knowledge I receive. Yes, it changes the knowledge and adds different dimensions, though I cannot name them all with words. The sound is different. I feel the resonance in a new way. I get more out of playing because it is easier to play. There are more rewards for my effort.

Sometimes the cello is too easy. I need a challenge and get bored when I practice the same little phrase over and over again to perfect it. But I continue and endure. When I can memorize a piece and play the cello like the old woman on the front of the card, I remember that the practice pays off. I can become completely immersed in the music without referring to a manuscript.

Do I acquire knowledge from reading the manuscript that represents the music? Yes, I do. I like the early stages of learning, even though they are sometimes frustrating and I avoid being drawn into my music space because I don't like failure and I don't like the lack of perfection. But I can feel my brain stretch. That's good. So, I feel good. So I also know goodness for a while.

I could go on. I could write a book at least as long as the Sudnow work about just one practice session on my cello. But I'll pause here to make a few comments about how we can relate these ideas to music therapy.

By considering music as knowledge, I am reminded of how important it is to continue to be "drawn by the strong pull" of the music we, as music therapists love, and the experiences we have playing our own instruments. No matter how many theoretical ideas we create and no matter how scholarly our works, if we do not engage in continuing to develop ourselves, in one way or another, musically, we are loosing the parallel tacit knowledge of the experiences we are asking our clients to have.

I like Randi Rolvsjord's (2004) idea of a "resource" approach to music therapy. In this case, the great resource, the one we are in relation to, the one that keeps "constructing" resilience is playing a musical instrument that I love. There is mutuality between not only the cello (an inanimate object) and I, but also the constructed knowledge that comes from the composer, the interpreter of each piece who has placed the particular version of my music into manuscripts, my teacher, the technician who replaced my 2 strings and the endpin. There is mutuality and resonance between all of these and the people I have spoken to on the telephone today, the dreams I had last night. And the story goes on and on. This is truly a relational system.

But in this short column, I come back to Rumi. Though there are many ways to give a day meaning and definition, one of my strongest "principles" nowadays is that my day will be a good day if I am drawn into the space of playing the cello because I love it so. When I play I learn; I feel; I know.

Readings

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi. & Isabella Csikszentmihalyi (eds.) (1988). Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Elliott, David J. (1991) Music as Knowledge. Journal of Aesthetic Education. Vol. 25, No. 3, 165-173.

Rolvsjord, Randi (2004). Treatment Principles in a Resource-oriented Approach to Music Therapy: Cultural issues. Symposium in Qualitative Music Therapy Research, Berlin.

Sudnow, David (1978). Ways of the Hand: The organization of improvised conduct. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

How to cite this page

Kenny, Carolyn (2005). Reflections on Music as Knowledge. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 12, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2005-reflections-music-knowledge