Music plays an important role in our daily lives and is woven into the fabric of society. We listen to music while alone or in company, in a dance club or at home, through simple headphones or via high-end speakers, as background or as foreground, after we get up or before we go to bed. Music accompanies us when we are traveling, doing sports, shopping, working or relaxing. This omnipresence of music raises several questions: how does music affect our lives? What is the relation between the society we live in and the role, function, and position of music within that society? How is music influenced by and does music influence social, political, economic, technological, and multiple other developments? Do these questions trigger you? Music and Society provides a thorough introduction to the various ways in which music and society are connected through engaging lectures, insightful interviews, challenging assignments, interesting readings, and of course a lot of musical examples. The course aims at increasing your insights on where, how and why we listen to music, how music contributes to shaping our identity, how music forms, expresses, and subverts political ideas, and how music affects our norms and values.
Music and engagement: An interview with Nanette Nielsen
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From the course by Universiteit Leiden
The Importance and Power of Music in our Society
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From the lesson
Music and Ethics
In this module we will explore the relation between music and ethics. Music influences behavior and certain judgments of behavior are ethical judgments. We will explore the relation between aesthetic good and ethical good music. We will discuss how hospitality can evoke a fruitful attitude towards music. We will discuss the role of music in human flourishing.
Meet the Instructors
Marcel CobussenProf.dr.
Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Faculty of Humanities
Hafez Ismaïli M'HamdiPhD
Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Faculty of Humanities
Hi and welcome back to this module on music and
ethics in which we discuss how music can contribute to
philosophical discourses on ethics and also concrete moral behaviour.
Today I will do an interview with Nanette Nielsen, currently placed in Oslo.
Hi Nanette, welcome.
>> Hello Marcel thank you.
>> Hi, could you perhaps briefly introduce yourself before we really start?
>> Okay, so I'm an associate professor at the University of Oslo in
the department of Musicology here.
So my main areas are musicology but also philosophy.
And then I teach film music, as well.
>> And, but you're not, you didn't come from Oslo.
I mean, you're not Norwegian, are you?
>> I am not, no.
I am Danish.
>> Okay.
>> And, I've lived a big part of my life in England, as well.
And then, moved to Oslo.
And started my first year in January 2015, so fairly new.
Back to Scandinavia for me.
>> Okay, one last question for an introduction.
I always find it interesting to find out what are you listening to?
What kind of music is your favorite music?
>> Of course.
It's always an interesting question to get.
I don't have a very sort of set favorite kind of music.
So music that I listen to very much depends on the situation I'm in.
So I moonlight a bit as a spinning instructor for example.
>> Okay.
>> So that's a bit of a second career.
[LAUGH] And then I listen, of course, to dance music, trance music, stuff that has
a regular beat that pushes you forward in a physiological physical kind of way.
But other times, when I do University admin, I listen to a lot of J.S. Bach
because that pushes me forward in that particular situation.
So it really depends what I'm doing.
So no favorites, or maybe it's lots of favorites actually.
So it's more inclusive than exclusive.
>> So let's talk about the difference between the music that you're listening to
when you're doing your spinning exercises and when you're doing your admin or
professional work.
Would you say that there's a different kind of engagement, or
perhaps in some music listening, there is no engagement at all.
>> Well, maybe for some listening, there's no engagement or
there's certainly less engagement, it could be in the background.
We can return to that.
And the kind of engagement that we are particularly interested in music and
ethics, of course, is the kind of engagement that would elicit or
inspire particular responses on the part of the listener.
And it's kind of, I mean, sometimes, that can happen without you thinking about it,
and then you become attentive.
And sometimes it happens while you are already attentive.
And then you might be more reflective after a particular moment.
And so, yes, there are different kinds of modes of engagement.
And sometimes those modes of engagement can inspire or
elicit particular responses, and sometimes those can be ethical responses.
And it's about being able to generate a kind of openness towards that
kind of response if we take the ethical landscape into consideration certainly.
>> So attentiveness, how would you describe it?
What kind of behavior is that, is actually that you're talking about?
Is it that you are having full attention that you're listening quietly to what's
going on that you follow the structure of a piece or is it something else?
>> Again it depends, very much depends.
But the main thing would be to remain open to the possibility that
something might actually occur.
I guess what's particularly provocative
is if we close off the opportunity that something might occur.
And so in this course, in the chapter Discourse in Music and Ethics,
I write a bit about a particular philosopher who says that well,
we can only take the discussion of music and morality so far.
And then he ends up saying well,
I'm not sure how to explain this particular feeling about music.
And music remains this mystified object, it remains this thing that we've got to,
we reach a point we can no longer explain what's going on.
And so he fails to open up the possibility of engagement,
of ensuring that we can get the most out of music.
So what I do there is just to show, well you just need a little bit of a leap
of imagination there to find particular scenarios and
understand the ways in which when we engage in the process of music
that we might be able to respond, and sometimes those responses have got ethical
repercussions and you're asking about the attention, and
the thing is that it's not necessarily in the moment either so
the kind of engagement is sometimes a reflective engagement, right?
So, if that happens after we leave the concert hall,
after we've watched a particular film, after we've been playing.
And so it's about being open to possibility and
open to opportunity as well.
And just recognize that music has got this power.
>> In another video I was having a conversation with Anahid Kassabian and
we talked about so-called background music.
And her claim is that actually that doesn't exist.
So the result is a kind of,
she would perhaps say there's always a kind of engagement.
Perhaps not on a so much of a reflective level or on a level of being attentive.
But then she would call it, it's an embodied engagement.
So could you say something about that as well?
Is that also something that you take in to account when we talk about engagement?
And is there an ethical embodied attitude?
>> Yes, I think that in music we also, I think bring the music onto
the body if you like and into social relationships.
And I would very much agree with that particular viewpoint of Kassabian�s
that there's no such property, I suppose,
as utterly background of music.
Sometimes the engagement is less there sometimes it's not recognizable,
it particularly nice for a long time kind of experience actually rather than
an intellectual or reflective one or something.
But recently in New York,
and it was astounding.
The kind of level of noise your used too.
>> Yeah, so you would call like, dancing also as an act of engagement?
>> Yes, definitely so, it's an embodied engagement.
>> Yeah, and do you think that some music
requires, asks for more engagement than other music does?
I mean, I am not talking about background or foreground music so much, but
other typical genres of music which require necessarily because it is,
maybe because it is difficult music so
you need to be more attentive in order to be able to appreciate it somehow.
>> Well, I think that the ethical engagement that's at stake has
less to do with the particular kinds of music, and more to do with the engaged, so
in the framework that you and I are proposing, it's very quickly put onto
the shoulders of the listeners rather than the object of music, if you like.
And therefore I think it would be hard
to make any black-and-white distinctions between different kinds of music.
So, all kinds of music could elicit ethical responses, potentially.
It doesn't have to be complex.
The situation may be complex, and the music simple.
You asked me where I was born, I'll give you,
I'll give you a little anecdote then on this note.
>> Right >> So, yes I'm born in Denmark and I've
spent most of my adult life in England and then I've recently moved to Norway.
And the other night I was singing a Norwegian lullaby to my five year old
Danish niece and it's about trolls, and
I didn't begin this particular musical engagement with any
sort of kind of ethical perspective. It's a lullaby. She needed to sleep.
But then having sung it to her in Norwegian.
She then asked for it to be sung in Danish, and
then I sang it for her in Danish.
And then she asked for it in English after that.
And then I came away from the experience reflecting on the potential depth of
understanding on her part.
That she as a small child had somehow grasped, sort of a surprise to me, of
this sort of complex level of me belonging to different cultural environments.
And so there was maybe a sort of deeper human dimension to it
to that whole musical experience that I came in.
And then maybe a detrally ethical involvement.
>> So you would call that her reaction you would call like
real engagement with this lullaby.
>> That's right, she had a real engagement,
a different engagement than I had.
I hope she did fall asleep.
>> Yeah, it's- >> But I also came away reflecting on this
lullaby in a way that I certainly hadn't predicted.
>> What I am interested in, and this will be approximately my final question,
is how do we come from this engagement with music to a more,
let's say general idea about ethics or concrete moral behavior?
So how can music?
Our relation to music helps us in becoming, well,
let's call it better human beings.
>> [LAUGH] Well, let's begin with the human, because human is key, right?
So, music is human through and through.
So, the kind of ethical perspective that to rely on a person is a very much
humanistic perspective, so how do we get to something a bit more general maybe?
Well we begin by recognizing that because music is human through and
through it's part of lived experience right and so
once we are able to recognize lived experience in music,
in our engagement with music.
As experienced the music being engaged with,
then we are also capable of recognizing potential
ethical scenarios or perspectives from that.
And then so as far as recognizing if you like
how to live well through music I would say.
>> So once you've experience the music it is perhaps possible to also experience or
at least recognize it in other relations that you have.
>> Well, yes because it is such a fundamental tenet right so
if we recognize ourselves as human beings.
Ethical, ethics is a fundamental human thing.
So it's putting those two together.
>> Yep, well, Nanette, many thanks for this interview.
>> Pleasure.
>> And once more we've learned a lot.
How music plays an active role in the constructing not only of society, but
also how it contributes in its own specific way to ethics and morality.
In the last video of this module, Hafez and I will have a short discussion on all
the issues on music and ethics that we've discussed in this module.
So see you again, bye.
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