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Copyright

Odd Torleiv Furnes

Published On

2024-05-27

Page Range

pp. 225–250

Language

  • English

Print Length

26 pages

9. The Musical Object in Deep Learning

  • Odd Torleiv Furnes (author)
Chapter of: Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education: Exploring the Potential of Artistic Research(pp. 225–250)
From August 2020 the Norwegian National Curriculum for primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education and training was replaced. A main concern was to equip students with 21st century competencies aimed at enabling students to transfer and apply knowledge and skills in different contexts. One key aspect in achieving such competencies is that of providing for in-depth or deep learning. While deep learning is defined in slightly different ways in documents leading up to the new curriculum they all emphasise developing an understanding of concepts and relationships in and between subject areas (NOU 2014: 7, s. 7). This involves a break with so-called surface learning based on facts and isolated skills.
This chapter will investigate what it means to provide for deep learning in music by turning to two oppositional frameworks of understanding: on the one side sociocultural learning theories and pragmatic aesthetics and on the other side the more contentious perspectives of musical objectivism and musical autonomy. Within this field of tension, we find to some extent contradictory views on the role of musical knowledge and what this knowledge consists of. Research on perception and musical emotion strongly indicates that bottom-up perspectives are central to musical experience. Thus, taking a sociocultural stance that leans heavily towards a pragmatic and relativistic view on musical knowledge production may inhibit knowledge about, and even acknowledgement of, music as an aesthetic, perceptible object.

Contributors

Odd Torleiv Furnes

(author)

Odd Torleiv Furnes has a bachelor’s degree in music composition and a master and PhD in musicology. He has composed music for art installations and art films, and practiced as an electric guitarist and a guitar teacher. He has over 20 years of experience from teaching music in the teacher education programme in Norway. In his research he has been investigating approaches to musical analysis of popular music as well as exploring the relationship between musical structure and the experience of musical hits from a psychological perspective. He has also done research on musical understanding and the concept of deep learning (in-depth) in music. He has recently published a book about this subject called Deep learning in music – musical understanding through sensations, emotions, and concepts (translated from Norwegian). In his chapter in this anthology, he goes deeper into the reasoning behind his approach to deep learning in music, and how perceiving music as an object may aid our perceptual understanding and aesthetic experience.