Abstract
Music provides an arena for the exploration of semiotics and the meaning that individuals make of sign systems. In this chapter, I describe monk rehearsals, an activity that I used during my teaching experience, and provide a semiotic interpretation of the two texts that the rehearsal included—musical gesture and classroom management. In my analysis of the gestural signs within my rehearsal, I draw on Peirce’s (1893–1910) types of representamina (qualisigns, sinsigns, and legisigns), objects (icons, indexes, and symbols), and interpretants (rhemes, dicisigns, and arguments). The analysis indicates the insistent role of these two texts in a musical rehearsal, how they allow for communication, instruction, and the creation of music.
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Notes
- 1.
I did not invent the use of monk rehearsals as an instructional strategy. I believe I found out about them through a discussion at a music conference in the 1980s.
- 2.
I learned this conducting convention in my choral conducting course with Edwin R. Fissinger (1920–1990) as an undergraduate at North Dakota State University.
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Schuh, K. (2015). The Semiotics of “Monk” Rehearsals: A Weaving of Two Texts. In: Trifonas, P. (eds) International Handbook of Semiotics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9404-6_11
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