Framing

When we describe music, we do so in terms that spring from our physical experience of space, time, force, and form: The rise and fall of a melody, the recurrence of a motif, the acceleration of a rhythm. It is not the tones that fall, but rather we conceptualize an event that connects to movement through the creation of contexts: it takes multiple tones or sounds following a direction.

The concept of framing is discussed in linguistics, psychology, and the social and economic sciences in the context of how perception can be influenced by the choice of certain metaphors. American philosopher and linguist George Lakoff argues that all thinking begins with physical impressions, sensations, actions, and emotions, which subsequently develop into conceptual metaphors through association with current impressions. Directing listening to specific features of music (rhythm, phrasing, form) as movement, as applied in eurhythmics, comes very close to the concept of framing in terms of two aspects:

1. the physical and kinesthetic co-execution of music as a spatial event.
2. the expressive interpretation of music in movement as a metaphorical event (music as a storm, nervous trembling, etc.).

More recently, Arnie Cox's concept of mimetic comprehension has been increasingly taken up in music education. It describes the assumption that understanding of someone or something is based on processes of often unconscious imitation. Especially the form of intramodal imitation as imitation of certain parameter of music like dynamics and tempo in movement comes very close to the principles of eurhythmics. To this Cox refers the following two questions: "What's like to do that?" and "What's like to be that?". The first question can be related more strongly to the movements that are performed to create music, the second to the mimetic participation in those components of music and sound that are evoking emotions.

In the context of pedagogy, artistic work and research in the field of eurhythmics, framing plays a major role, as it shapes very individually the mind-body relationship to music. To stimulate the forming of analogies can be considered a central concern of eurhythmics. Analogies can be obvious, but they can also connect things that are more distant from each other. The philosopher Constanze Peres speaks of innovation when spectacular analogies are found, i.e. those that connect completely different things and thus create new framings.

Dorothea Weise