Om musikaliska generaliseringar

Abstract

The term “Musical generalizations” refers to generalizations of artefacts – signs and tools – in a music context. Issues about these generalizations are defined by means of cultural historical activity theory. Musical generalizations can be seen as as man’s acquisition of music culture and as the transformation of external conditions into internal (mental) representations. By generalizations musical artefacts are transformed into psychological tools. Generalizations on the basis of two aspects of language, the conceptual and the phonetic, result in conceptual and auditory generalizations. In turn, auditory generalizations comprise both language intonation and musical structures. Children’s auditory generalizations are unconscious and their function includes an ability to predict and to interpret development of musical structures. Infants’ auditory generalizations are associated with the emotionalcommunicative context. Both conceptual and auditory generalizations may involve some contradictions, by which a rich and dynamic relation within the music activity is indicated. Within the hierarchical structure of music activity, the learning activity consists of three levels and is also connected to different kinds of generalizations. Knowledge about musical generalizations seems to be of interest for musical learning, music education and for issues concerning music health. Keywords: musical generalizations, activity, psychological tools, musical learning levels, contradictions.