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Arts & Communication

ARTICLE
A study of gestures representing musical

emotions

2
1
Yuwen Sun and Guerino Mazzola *
1 Department of Vocal Arts, School of Music, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
United States of America
2 Department of Music Theory, School of Music, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
United States of America

Abstract

The creation of music has originated from the burst of inspiration of the composer.
Many studies suggested that improvisation plays a more vital role than composition
in the emergence of new forms of music. The production of music, especially in
Western cultures, tends to follow its traditional music theory. With the emergence of
Pythagorean music theory, Western musicology has been defined and developed in
depth. The composer’s creation is based on music creation within the framework of
the Western music theory. However, in recent years, with the rise of the topic of music
gestures, some scholars have learned that music ontology as a four-dimensional
hypercube is inseparable from the performer’s gesture. Therefore, some musicians
also attempt to create flexible music from the perspective of music performers and
based on performance gestures. This kind of music creation breaks the traditional
music theory system and has more personal style characteristics, but few people can
understand the thinking logic behind this kind of creative behavior. Therefore, this
article focuses on the singing gesture and reversely analyzes its impact on musical
*Corresponding author: creation. We use a recent mathematic definition of gestures and we discuss emotion
Guerino Mazzola from its etymological origin (from the Latin e-movere) as a gestural movement from
(mazzola@umn.edu)
inside out. This article conducts an in-depth analysis based on the singer’s gesture
Citation: Sun Y, Mazzola G. A study for the following two reasons: First, the literature on the connection between singing
of gestures representing musical
emotions. Arts & Communication. gesture theory and composition theory remains scarce. Second, gestures produced
2024;2(4):2625. by a singer are the only performance form that is not enabled by other instruments.
doi: 10.36922/ac.2625
Received: January 4, 2024 Keywords: Composition; Singing; Gesture; Music ontology; Emotion
Accepted: March 13, 2024
Published Online: September 12,
2024
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s). 1. Introduction
This is an Open-Access article In mainstream thought in music, gesture was first listed as a subject of music performance
distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons theory. A precise definition of gestures is given in Section 2. This seems natural, as our
AttributionNoncommercial License, bodies in many ways serve as the physical medium connecting the musical score to the
permitting all non-commercial use, sound acoustics. Precisely because gestures serve as a bridge between performers and
distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work musical scores, there is a plethora of studies suggesting that performance is a subject
is properly cited. rich of sensibility and emotion. However, its operating logic is often neglected. In fact,
Publisher’s Note: AccScience the music score, as one of the basic facts of music, is like a “living fossil” that preserves
Publishing remains neutral with the spiritual changes of the composer when contemplating about music. The score is
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional also a frozen gesture derived from imagination, which can be traced back to ancient
affiliations. time, as the medieval grapheme of neumes encoded gestural cues in scores. These

Volume 2 Issue 4 (2024) 1 doi: 10.36922/ac.2625