Nanette Nielsen

Enacting Musical Aesthetics: The Embodied Experience of Live Music (Open Access)

Remy Martin & Nanette Nielsen (Shared first authors)

The vitality and affective potential of the live concert experience is a result of rich, cross-sensory interactions and varied participatory practices. The complexity of such entanglements has recently led philosophers to argue for an enactive, affordance-based approach that interrogates a variety of perceptual and sensory possibilities inherent in aesthetic experiences. Further, Shaun Gallagher's recent addition of the 4As (Affect, Agency, Affordance, Autonomy) to the 4Es (Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, Extended) for clarifying mind–world relations seem to have potent explanatory power for these kinds of encounters. Building on such current philosophical approaches while examining specific (and actual) live musical engagement, this article offers an interpretation of selected audience data from the MusicLab Copenhagen with the Danish String Quartet research concert to discuss particular responses from the audience physically present at the venue. Responding to neuroaesthetic approaches, we clarify the audience members’ individual and collective aesthetic experience through an enactive, affordance-based approach. We suggest that what is at play in the live concert environment is a mode of attentive dynamic listening. Rather than seeking to characterize the audience as passively responding to music, a 4Es/4As approach to aesthetic experience seeks to clarify embodied-enactive audience engagement for which anticipation is a dynamic factor that enables further musical action and resonance, also for the musicians on stage.

Mind surfing: attention in musical absorption (Open Access)

Simon Høffding, Nanette Nielsen, Bruno Laeng (shared first authors)

Literature in the psychology of music and in cognitive psychology claims – paradoxically – that musical absorption includes processes of both focused attention and mind wandering. We examine this paradox and aim to resolve it by integrating accounts from cognitive psychology on attention and mind wandering with qualitative phenomenological research on some of the world’s most skilled musicians. We claim that a mode of experience that involves intense attention and what superficially seems like mind wandering is possible. We propose to grasp this different mode of experience with a new concept: “mind surfing”. We suggest that a conjoined consideration of attention’s intensive and selective capacities can partially explain how one can be both focused and freely “surfing” on a “musical wave” at the same time. Finally, we couple this novel and foundational work on attention with a 4E cognition account to show how music acts as an affective and cognitive scaffold, thereby enabling the surfing.

The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy

Edited by Tomás McAuley, Nanette Nielsen, Jerrold Levinson, and Associate Editor Ariana Phillips-Hutton

This Handbook offers an overview of the thriving interdisciplinary field of Western music and philosophy. It seeks to represent this area in all its fullness, including a diverse array of perspectives from music studies (notably historical musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology), philosophy (incorporating both analytic and continental approaches), and a range of cognate disciplines (such as critical theory and intellectual history). The Handbook includes, but does not confine itself to, consideration of key questions in aesthetics and the philosophy of music. Each essay provides an introduction to its topic, an assessment of past scholarship, and a research-driven argument for the future of the research area in question. Taken together, these essays provide a current snapshot of this field and outline an abundance of ways in which it might develop in the future.

Paul Bekker's Musical Ethics

Nanette Nielsen

German music critic and opera producer Paul Bekker (1882–1937) is a rare example of a critic granted the opportunity to turn his ideas into practice. In this first full-length study of Bekker in English, Nanette Nielsen investigates Bekker's theory and practice in light of ethics and aesthetics, in order to uncover the ways in which these intersect in his work and contributed to the cultural and political landscape of the Weimar Republic. By linking Beethoven's music to issues of freedom and individuality, as he argues for its potential to unify the masses, Bekker had already in 1911 begun to construct the ethical framework for his musical sociology and opera aesthetics. Nielsen discusses some of the complex (and conflicting) layers of modernism and conservatism in Bekker that would have a continued presence in his work and its reception throughout his career. Bekker's demands for a 'practical ethics' led to his criticisms of metaphysically grounded approaches to aesthetics, and his ethical views are put into further relief in a sketch of the development of his music phenomenology in the 1920s. Nielsen unravels the complex intersections between Bekker's ethics and his opera aesthetics in connection with his practice as an Intendant at the Wiesbaden State Theatre (1927–1932), offering a critical reading of an opera staged during his tenure: Hugo Herrmann’s Vasantasena (1930). Further works are considered in light of the theoretical framework underpinning the book, inspired by several intersections between ethics and aesthetics encountered in Bekker's work.

Music and Ethics

Marcel Cobussen & Nanette Nielsen

It seems self-evident that music plays more than just an aesthetic role in contemporary society. In addition, music's social, political, emancipatory, and economical functions have been the subject of much recent research. Given this, it is surprising that the subject of ethics has often been neglected in discussions about music. The various forms of engagement between music and ethics are more relevant than ever, and require sustained attention. Music and Ethics examines different ways in which music can 'in itself' - in a uniquely musical way - contribute to theoretical discussions about ethics as well as concrete moral behaviour. We consider music as process, and music-making as interaction. Fundamental to our understanding is music's association with engagement, including contact with music through the act of listening, music as an immanent critical process that possesses profound cultural and historical significance, and as an art form that can be world-disclosive, formative of subjectivity, and contributive to intersubjective relations. Music and Ethics does not offer a general musico-ethical theory, but explores ethics as a practical concept, and demonstrates through concrete examples that the relation between music and ethics has never been absent.

• Martin, Remy Richard & Nielsen, Nanette (2024). Enacting Musical Aesthetics: The Embodied Experience of Live Music. Music & Science. ISSN 2059-2043. 7. doi: 10.1177/20592043231225732. Show summary

  The vitality and affective potential of the live concert experience is a result of rich, cross-sensory interactions and varied participatory practices. The complexity of such entanglements has recently led philosophers to argue for an enactive, affordance-based approach that interrogates a variety of perceptual and sensory possibilities inherent in aesthetic experiences. Further, Shaun Gallagher's recent addition of the 4As (Affect, Agency, Affordance, Autonomy) to the 4Es (Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, Extended) for clarifying mind–world relations seem to have potent explanatory power for these kinds of encounters. Building on such current philosophical approaches while examining specific (and actual) live musical engagement, this article offers an interpretation of selected audience data from the MusicLab Copenhagen with the Danish String Quartet research concert to discuss particular responses from the audience physically present at the venue. Responding to neuroaesthetic approaches, we clarify the audience members’ individual and collective aesthetic experience through an enactive, affordance-based approach. We suggest that what is at play in the live concert environment is a mode of attentive dynamic listening. Rather than seeking to characterize the audience as passively responding to music, a 4Es/4As approach to aesthetic experience seeks to clarify embodied-enactive audience engagement for which anticipation is a dynamic factor that enables further musical action and resonance, also for the musicians on stage.

• Nielsen, Nanette; Høffding, Simon & Laeng, Bruno (2023). Mind surfing: attention in musical absorption. Cognitive Systems Research. ISSN 2214-4366. doi: 10.1016/j.cogsys.2023.101180.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2020). Den musikalske etik. In Varkøy, Øivind & Holm, Henrik (Ed.), Musikkfilosofiske tekster. Tanker om musikk – og språk, tolkning, erfaring, tid, klang, stillhet m.m. . Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISSN 9788202696818. p. 61–77. doi: 10.23865/noasp.115.ch4.
• Nielsen, Nanette & Phillips-Hutton, Ariana (2020). Ethics. In Nielsen, Nanette; McAuley, Tomas; Levinson, Jerrold & Phillips-Hutton, Ariana (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780199367313. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199367313.013.15.
• Nielsen, Nanette; McAuley, Tomas & Levinson, Jerrold (2020). Introduction. In Nielsen, Nanette; McAuley, Tomas; Levinson, Jerrold & Phillips-Hutton, Ariana (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780199367313. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199367313.013.61.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2019). 'Carl Nielsen, the Modern Musical Philosopher: Life as an Aesthetic Experience'. In Manos, Perrakis (Eds.), Life as an Aesthetic Idea of Music. Universal Edition. ISSN 978-3-7024-7621-2. p. 79–103. Show summary

  Musical practice is permeated by valuation and judgment. Audiences judge performers and composers; performers dote on and honour certain works while disregarding others; composers respect audiences or despise them. How do such valuations come about? Why do some valuations prevail while others fade into oblivion? And which standards, if any, underlie them? Such matters must be explored ever anew, for established valuations lose credit just as fresh ones arise and spread. In 1968 Harald Kaufmann founded Studien zur Wertungsforschung, enlisting the resources of philosophical aesthetics for understanding questions such as these. Valuations, Kaufmann argued, are not mere opaque feelings lying outside the realm of reasoned dispute. Rather, valuations are amenable to and stand in need of reflection and argument. Human attitudes manifest a diversity of values. There may not be a single elevated stance – such as an ‘aesthetic standpoint’ or the aspiration toward beauty – from which we are able to contemplate the entirety of musical values. On the other hand, abstaining from valuation, or pretending that valuation is beyond the realm of scholarly inquiry are no viable options for the study of music. To the contrary, inquiry into these subjects is a prerequisite for a full understanding of music

• Nielsen, Nanette & Evans, Elizabeth (2015). Preludium: The Memory Dealer. Journal of Sonic Studies. ISSN 2212-6252. 9.
• Nielsen, Nanette & Hibberd, Sarah (2015). Immersion and Proximity: Music, Sound, and Subjectivity in The Memory Dealer. Journal of Sonic Studies. ISSN 2212-6252. 9.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2013). ‘Ernst Krenek’s “problem of freedom” in Jonny spielt auf’. Twentieth-Century Music. ISSN 1478-5722. 10(1), p. 25–57. doi: 10.1017/s1478572212000400. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Nanette (2011). Opera for the people: melodrama in Hugo Herrmann's Vasantasena (1930). In Hibberd, Sarah (Eds.), Melodramatic Voices: Understanding Music Drama. Ashgate. ISSN 978-1-4094-0082-0.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2007). ‘Sein oder Schein?: Paul Bekker's “mirror image” and the ethical voice of humane opera’. Opera Quarterly. ISSN 0736-0053. 23(2-3), p. 295–310. doi: 10.1093/oq/kbn042. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Nanette; Morgenstern, Martin & Steichen, James (2007). ‘To the Mirror Image’, by Paul Bekker. Opera Quarterly. ISSN 0736-0053. 23(2-3), p. 311–317. doi: 10.1093/oq/kbn043. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Nanette & Hibberd, Sarah (2003). ‘Music in Melodrama: "the Burden of Ineffable Expression"?’. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. ISSN 2048-2906. 31(1), p. 30–40.

View all works in Cristin

• Nielsen, Nanette; McAuley, Tomas; Levinson, Jerrold & Phillips-Hutton, Ariana (2020). The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199367313. 1100 p.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2017). Paul Bekker's Musical Ethics. Routledge. ISBN 9781472486226. 242 p.
• Nielsen, Nanette & Cobussen, Marcel (2012). Music and Ethics. Ashgate. ISBN 978-1-4094-3496-2. 190 p.

View all works in Cristin

• Edwards, Peter & Nielsen, Nanette (2023). Kunstmusikken lever! Også på Universitetet i Oslo. Scenekunst.no.
• Nielsen, Nanette; Martin, Remy Richard & Bernhardt, Emil (2023). Entrainment, free will, and musicking: an enactivist perspective.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2022). 'On musical knowledge: a response to Carolyn Abbate'.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2021). As We Wait for Music. Filologen. ISSN 0807-9250. 2, p. 14–19.
• Nielsen, Nanette & Høffding, Simon (2019). Absorption in Schizophrenia, Music and Mystical Experience.
• Nielsen, Nanette & Høffding, Simon (2019). A Musical Matter of Mind.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2019). Alfred Hitchcock og Bernard Herrmann: mestere i spenning. Z filmtidsskrift. ISSN 0800-1464.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2018). ‘Carl Nielsen, the modern musical philosopher: life as an aesthetic experience’.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2018). ‘On attentive listening and moral understanding: music's challenge to philosophy’.
• Nielsen, Nanette; Aksnes, Hallgjerd; Edwards, Peter & Kvalbein, Astrid (2018). Launch for Nanette Nielsen’s book _Paul Bekker’s Musical Ethics_. Introduction and moderation by Hallgjerd Aksnes, panel discussion including: Peter Edwards (University of Oslo), Peter Franklin (University of Oxford), Sarah Hibberd (University of Bristol), Astrid Kvalbein (NMH) and Aksel Tollåli (Oslo).
• Nielsen, Nanette; Devine, Kyle; Hagen, Per Ole & Gadir, Tami (2017). How We Got into Academia, and How to Get (More) Out of It: Ideas Entrepreneurship in Action.
• Grindem, Karianne; Aksnes, Hallgjerd & Nielsen, Nanette (2016). Direkte knyttet til minner: Musikk. [Newspaper]. Dagbladet.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2016). Aesthetic Risks, Ethical Gains.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2016). The Death and Future of Postmodernism.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2016). Radikal Operaregi?
• Nielsen, Nanette (2016). '15 Minutes with ... The Jerome Roche Prize Winner'. [Internet]. http://www.rma.ac.uk/students/?p=2731.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2016). 'The work of musicology in the age of cultural reproduction', Jerome Roche keynote talk, University of Bangor, BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference, 6-8 January, 2016.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2015). 'Kan du endre musikken til Mozart?'. [Newspaper]. Dagsavisen http://www.dagsavisen.no/oslo/kan-du-endre-musikk.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2015). 'Is changing the music in an opera allowed?', on The Magic Flute, in discussion with David Levin, Per Boye Hansen, Ståle Wikshåland, and audience members, The Norwegian National Opera, 24 October 2015.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2015). 'Film Music and Spectator Engagement', Filmens Hus, Oslo, 'The Sound of Movies', 3-4 October 2015.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2015). 'Film music', interview, Norwegian National Radio (NRK), on the programmes 'Norgesglasset' and 'Brunsj', 12 May and 15 May, 2015 . [Radio]. NRK.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2015). 'Towards an ethics of listening: music, engagement, and subjectivity', keynote talk, Grieg Research School in Interdisciplinary Studies, Bergen, 26 November 2015.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2014). 'Danish music and modernism's legacies', talk for the Nielsen Study Day, IMR/Oxford Symposium, The Barbican, London, 11 October 2014.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2014). 'Towards an ethics of musical experience', keynote talk for a conference on 'Shaped by Beauty' at Heythrop College, University of London, 26-27 June 2014.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2013). 'Subjectivities merged, ethical responsibilities gained', RMA Annual Conference, IMR London, 19-21 September 2013, paper for panel on ‘Music in films: ethical-aesthetic discursive disruptions’.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2013). 'Music and Modernism', King's College London, Study Day on Modernism held by the British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS), 9 May 2013 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2013). ‘Paul Bekker’s musical ethics’, colloquium given at the University of Bangor, Wales, 23 April 2013 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette & McAuley, Tomas (2013). ‘Introduction’, Opera Quarterly special issue on ‘Opera and Philosophy’. Opera Quarterly. ISSN 0736-0053. 29(3-4), p. 183–185. doi: 10.1093/oq/kbu002.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2012). 'On the musically ethical', keynote talk with Marcel Cobussen for the conference 'Arts and Ethics', Trinity Western University, Langley, B.C., Canada, 18-19 October 2012.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2012). ‘Voice and the deconstruction of subjectivity in Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf’, paper for the Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group session ‘Music, Philosophy and Identity’, International Musicological Society Congress, Rome, 1-7 July 2012.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2012). ‘Voice and ethics in Berg’s Wozzeck’, paper given at the Royal Musical Association Annual Conference, Cardiff, 31 May-3 June 2012.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2012). ‘Music and Philosophy’, invited co-convenor and speaker for a Research Training Day held at the Institute for Musical Research, London 5 March, 2012.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2012). ‘Ernst Krenek’s “Problem of Freedom” in Jonny spielt auf’, colloquium given at the Oxford University Faculty of Music, 14 February 2012 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2011). ‘Paul Bekker’s ambivalent modernism’, lecture given at the Institute for Musical Research (IMR), Stewart House, London, 24 November 2011 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2011). Invited respondent to the AMS/RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group session, ‘The ethics of musical labor’, American Musicological Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 10 November 2011.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2011). Invited respondent to the paper ‘Jan W. Morthenson: The Reluctant Avant-Gardist?’, by Per Broman, Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, 29 October 2011.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2010). ‘Modernism and the masses: music and social change in the Weimar Republic’, University of Surrey, 16 November 2010 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2010). ‘Music and morality in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel’, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, pre-performance talks, 25 July and 1 August 2010 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2010). ‘Towards an ethical criticism of music’, given at the RMA Study Day, ‘Music and Philosophy’, King’s College, London, 20 February 2010.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2009). ‘The danger of music criticism and the case for control’, given at the SMA/IMR study day ‘Performance Criticism’, Stewart House, London, 16 December 2009 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2009). ‘Music, Beauty, and Ethics’, colloquium paper given at the Music Department, University of Nottingham, 3 November 2009 (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2009). ‘Between Politics and Ethics: Paul Bekker’s reception of Kurt Weill’s Die Bürgschaft (1932)’, given at the study day ‘Politics of Opera’, Taylorian Institute, Oxford, 9 October 2009.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2008). ‘Opera for the people: melodrama in Hugo Herrmann’s Vasantasena (1930)’, at the conference ‘Music and the Melodramatic Aesthetic’, University of Nottingham, 5-7 September 2008. (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2008). ‘The ethics of voice in Weimar opera’, for the Royal Northern College of Music Research Seminar Series (Manchester, 15 February 2008). (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2006). ‘“Should politics be sung?”’: voice and ethics in Bekker and Weill’, Royal Musical Association, 42nd Annual Conference, Nottingham, 11-14 July 2006.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2006). 'On the ethical in music', for the Royal Institute of Philosophy's Public Lecture series 'Apollo and Dionysus. Philosophy's troubled relations with the Creative Arts', University of East Anglia, 23 November 2006. (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2006). 'Ethical Encounters: Voice and Freedom in Bekker and Krenek', Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory, Los Angeles, 2-5 November 2006.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2005). 'An Intersection of Ethics and Aesthetics: Paul Bekker as Intendant', for the Faculty of Music Colloquia Series, University of Cambridge, 8 June 2005. (Invited speaker).
• Nielsen, Nanette (2005). Review of Claire Taylor-Jay, The Artist-Operas of Pfitzner, Krenek and Hindemith: Politics and the Ideology of the Artist (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Music & Letters. ISSN 0027-4224. 86(4), p. 664–668. doi: 10.1093/ml/gci124.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2003). ‘The Musicological Turn to Ethics’, at the Third Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music, University of Nottingham, 26-29 June 2003.
• Nielsen, Nanette (2002). ‘Musical Discourse and Moral Understanding’, at the conference ‘Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art’, University of Warwick, May 2002.

View all works in Cristin