JMM 6, Spring 2008, section 1

EDITORIAL

Welcome to JMM6

Since our last issue, JMM5, JMM has continued to gain recognition. In November 2007 the journal received a grant from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities that will cover our expenses for the years 2008-2010. We thank the Research Council for their consideration and support. Furthermore, we received notice that a special study of JMM has been included in a Swedish doctoral dissertation by Helena Francke entitled Re-creations of Scholarly Journals: Document and Information Architecture in Open Access Journals (Valfrid: Borås and Gothenburg, 2008; digital version http://hdl.handle.net/2320/1815) as exemplary of innovation in the field of electronic journals. Our webmaster Mikael Aktor deserves a special round of applause here! We hope to continue to make ourselves worthy of such recognition in years to come.

The present issue, JMM6, reflects the fact that the journal has its origins within NTSMB, the Danish Network for Cross-Disciplinary Studies of Music and Meaning. Pianist and conservatory student Niels Chr. Hansen has written a research report based on his BA thesis, which he also presented at the 12th National Meeting of NTSMB (http://www.ntsmb.dk), Musikalsk betydning i improvisation og performance (“Musical Meaning in Improvisation and Performance”) in Esbjerg, Denmark, May 25-26, 2007. Hansen’s study, “Different Approaches to an Improvisational Practice Based on the Piano Music of Toru Takemitsu” describes in an impressive hands-on way how the working principles of a specific composer, here the late Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, can be distilled and applied to provide innovative methods for use by piano teachers as well as to create new improvisations on the piano. Hansen’s article showcases the functionalities that JMM can provide with regard to graphics and audio. We continue to encourage researchers to submit work which contains audio, graphic and video examples, so that we may continue to develop as a forum for scholarly research that explores the ways in which the rigor of traditional text-based scholarship may be extended to research which exploits the technical functionalities of modern information technology.

Yet another of NTSMB’s meetings, the international conference Music and Sound in Public Space, November 16-17, 2007 in Esbjerg, Denmark, which was funded by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities, has spawned the essay by German journalist and curator, Johan Haslauer, “Inside a Common Being: Questions Concerning the Nature of Public Space”. The essay discusses the impact of aestheticized sounds when these are integrated into public environments.

In addition to Niels Chr. Hansens article, our Research Reports section presents an expanded reworking in English of an article that media researcher Iben Have has previously published in Danish in a local university forum. We found that her discussion regarding the manner in which background music is used in Danish political documentaries was interesting as a case study in the ways in which viewers process musical meaning. Have’s essay, “Background Music and Background Feelings - Background Music in Audio-Visual Media” will also serve as an informative introduction to current affairs in Denmark for readers unfamiliar with Danish politics.

Speaking of case studies, it is appropriate to introduce one of the two prominent peer-reviewed papers in this issue, namely Eitan Ornoy’s “Recording Analysis of J.S. Bach's g minor Adagio for Solo Violin (Excerpt): A Case Study”. The paper gives us a sophisticated and insightful perspective on how to describe the development in a specific area of Bach interpretation by means of thorough, technically expert analysis.

The other peer-reviewed paper, “The Matrix Revisited: A Reconsideration of Schubert’s Sonata Form Movements” by Barbara Barry provides a stimulating discussion of the ties between Schubert’s use of the classical sonata form in instrumental compositions and the structure of his Lieder.

With this issue we also mark the introduction of a “new” addition to the Editorial Staff. We now have a Book Review Editor who will be in charge of all book reviews in the coming issues of JMM. The person chosen for this assignment is none other than our present Recent Publications Editor, Jens Hjortkjær (who masterfully handles the task of putting together the recent publications list). Suggestions for book reviews (both by people wishing to write reviews and publishers wishing to provide review copies) should be addressed directly to Jens at jh@musicandmeaning.net In this issue we have just one book review, namely Ole Kühl’s review of Eric F. Clarke’s Ways of Listening. An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning. For those who need a brush up on some of the discussions that were among those which inspired the founding of this journal, Kühl’s review is an excellent read.

May 2008 saw a record-breaking 309 visits per day to JMM’s website (a visit corresponds to an actual person checking into the website and looking at one or more subpages), a total of 9581 visits for the entire month. The first 10 days of June have seen 286 visits per day, but we expect this number to rise dramatically as the current issue of JMM goes online. By comparison, after the May 2007 release of JMM5, the site experienced 193 visits per day. In other words, our readership is steadily increasing. Here are the twenty national Internet domains that have generated the most hits (hits being downloads of individual files – including images) on www.musicandmeaning.net in May 2008:

We would like to thank two of our Editorial Board members, Nicholas McKay and Lars Ole Sauerberg, as well as Editorial Staff member Edward Venn for their invaluable extra help in preparing this issue. We are pleased – and grateful – that Nicholas McKay has expressed the desire to be a permanent member our Editorial Staff and we welcome you heartily, Nic. We would also like to thank all of our peer-reviewers in general for their expert assessments of the ever-growing amount of submissions we receive.

Speaking of peer-reviewers, we welcome Theodore Gracyk, Catherine Elgin and Ole Kühl to our Editorial Board. All three are important figures in the international field of philosophical music research.

As we advertised in our last issue, JMM was pleased to present the award for Best Paper dealing with the conference theme for this year’s international joint CMMR (Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval) and NTSMB conference in Copenhagen, May 19-23, Genesis of Meaning in Sound and Music. The winner of the Best Paper Award was given to Javier Alejandro Garavaglia for the paper, “Music and Technology: What Impact Does Technology Have on Music’s Dramaturgy?” Garavaglia will prepare an expanded version of his article that we hope to bring in an upcoming issue of JMM in our invited papers section.

Best regards on behalf of the Editorial Staff,

Søren R. Frimodt-Møller, Managing Editor
Cynthia M. Grund, Editor-in-Chief