From Musical Experience To Personality Transformation: The Practice of Musical Movement

Journal of Russian & East European Psychology
ISSN: 1061-0405 (Print) 1558-0415 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo20
From Musical Experience to Personality

Transformation: The Practice of Musical
Movement
A.M. Ailamaz’ian
To cite this article: A.M. Ailamaz’ian (2018) From Musical Experience to Personality
Transformation: The Practice of Musical Movement, Journal of Russian & East European
Psychology, 55:1, 15-41, DOI: 10.1080/10610405.2018.1491238
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10610405.2018.1491238
Published online: 10 Oct 2018.
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Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, vol. 55, no. 1,
2018, pp. 15–41.
© Taylor & Francis Group, LLC All rights reserved
ISSN: 1061-0405 (print)/ISSN 1558-0415 (online)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10610405.2018.1491238
A.M. AILAMAZ’IAN
From Musical Experience to Personality

Transformation: The Practice of Musical
Movement
This article explores the mechanisms of musical experience and

how they are revealed in the practice of plastic improvisation in
response to music. Musical movement creates conditions that
activate and organize the processes of the emotional perception
and experiencing of music in an outwardly expressed motoric
form. Musical motor activity not only reflects but also transforms
a person’s life experience and, thereby, initiates the complex
work of becoming aware of, and reinterpreting, one’s values
and motives and relating them to one’s capabilities and to the
restructuring of one’s self-image on a mental and corporal level.
Keywords: psychology of art, practice of musical movement, musical
experience, musical form, musical emotions, intonational hearing,
intoning, plastic intonation, plastic improvisation, personality,
semantic sphere, self-image
English translation © 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian
text, “Ot muzykal’nogo perezhivaniia k transformatsii lichnosti: opyt muzy-
kal’nogo dvizheniia.”
Translated by Steven Shabad.
Published with the author’s permission.
15
16 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
A characteristic feature of music therapy and, more broadly, of

psychological work with a person on the basis of musical activity
in Russia is the fact that these approaches rely on an abundance
of practice of pedagogical methods of esthetic education that has
accumulated over the history of Russian pedagogy and psychol-
ogy (Volkova 2002; Melik-Pashaev 1981; Raevskaia et al. 1969;
Iavorskii 1988). Academic psychology, which has studied the
laws of the development of musical perception, has also played
a major role (Beliaeva-Ekzempliarskaia 2014; Zaporozhets and
Lisina 1966; Ivanchenko 2001; Kirnarskaia 2004; Leont’ev
[Leontiev] and Gippenreiter 1959; Leont’ev and Ovchinnikova
1958; Nazaikinskii 1972; Tarasov 1979; Tarasova 1988; Teplov
2004). Russian musicology has also made a significant contribu-
tion to musical psychology and practice. The works of B.V.
Asaf’ev, V.V. Medushevskii, and others have formulated concepts
of the essence of music and musical language (Asaf’ev 1971;
Bonfel’d 2006; Medushevskii 1993; Kholopova 2014). The the-
oretical context of our study is the cultural-historical school of
psychology (Vygotskii [Vygotsky] 2005; Leont’ev 1981;
Gal’perin [Galperin] 2002).
The processes of artistic perception and esthetic experience
were explored in Vygotsky’s foundational work The Psychology
of Art [Psikhologiia iskusstva; Vygotskii 1986). His ideas regard-
ing the structure of an artistic work have influenced many psy-
chological practices and studies. According to Vygotsky, the
esthetic experience is based on work to “disembody” the artistic
form and to grasp the emotional content hidden within it.
Leont’ev, in his foreword to Vygotsky’s book, formulates the
crux of his approach: “Feelings, emotions, and passions are part
of the content of a work of art, but it transforms them. Similar to
how artistic technique creates a metamorphosis of the material of
a work, it also creates a metamorphosis of feeling. The purpose of
this metamorphosis of feelings is, in Vygotsky’s view, that they
are exalted over individual feelings, are generalized and become
social” (Leont’ev 1986, p. 8). Then, the catharsis, according to
Vygotsky, consists not merely of the elimination of repressed
affects, as it is interpreted in psychoanalysis, “but rather the
JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY 17
accomplishment of a certain personality-related task, the discov-

ery of a higher, more human truth of life relationships and
situations” (Leont’ev 1986, p. 10).
This article analyzes musical movement (MM) as a
psychological-pedagogical practice of personality
development. MM has a hundred-year history and arose as an
original trend in free dance (Rudneva 2007; Teider 1995). It was
then developed as a method of esthetic education and teaching of
improvisational dance or musical motor improvisation
(Ailamaz’ian 1997; Rudneva and Fish 1972). Finally, the ideas
and techniques of MM were adopted by psychologists and inter-
preted in the context of the tasks of personality development, the
formation of self-regulatory mechanisms, the shaping of a cor-
poral self-image, corrections to mental development, and so forth
(Ailamaz’ian 2013; Kniazeva 2015).
The MM method is based on the idea of plastic improvisation
in response to music. Therefore, movement is a means by which
the perception and experiencing of music are activated and orga-
nized. We will not discuss in detail in this article the technique of
conducting classes, the system of musical motor exercises or the
technique of expressive movement. The focus will be the musical
experience itself, its psychological structure and the internal
transformations that take place with the personalities
during MM classes.
***
What is unique about the practice of MM is that it provides us
with a “scan” of musical perception and experience in an out-
wardly expressed movement. Hence one can observe both the
process itself of musical experience and its development and
change over time. One can also reconstruct the mechanisms of
musical experience by analyzing the resultant musical motor
forms. Accounts by participants in classes and rehearsals about
their experiences serve as an additional source of information.
Two kinds of situations are used in MM practice: 1) situations
in which participants are given a model of a musical motor form
that they are asked to re-create on their own after it is shown to
them; and 2) situations of a completely independent response to
the music: the independent response may develop into a separate

project to create a musical motor form.
In both cases, movement is a mode of musical perception and
enables a researcher to reconstruct the processes of the experien-
cing and understanding of a musical work by specific partici-
pants. In situations of the first type, one can see whether a
participant is able to “take on” the proffered form as a whole,
that he “hears” and what he “does not hear” and does not
perceive in the music. In situations of the second type, the
capacity for an independent response (musical motor improvisa-
tion) is displayed most vividly; the stages of work on a musical
motor form are visible; and visible as well are the changes and
transformations that correspond to the changes and transforma-
tions in the perception, understanding, and experiencing of the
musical work by the particular person.
The facts and observations accumulated in MM practice, as
well as an analysis of the process of the creation of a musical
motor form, suggest that the process of a musical experience
consists of a complex activity to disobjectify musical meanings
and transform personal experiences into musical ones. Carrying it
out requires a set of basic psychological abilities and their com-
plex, systematic reconstruction.
1) This activity is based on the ability to “grasp” the expressive
aspect of a voice and, later, the expressive aspect of the sound of
a musical instrument.
The ability to grasp intonation1 may be categorized as one of the
basic human abilities that begin to take shape from the earliest age. It
is hard to overestimate the importance of a mother’s voice in a child’s
life, since the child first learns to understand the expressiveness of the
voice in interacting with his mother. The perception of the intonational
aspect of speech precedes the formation of the semiotic function of
speech (as pointed out by a number of authors; see, e.g., Bozhovich
2008; Isenina 1986; Lisina 1986; Stern 2001) and is the basis of the
child’s emotional development and regulates the child’s interaction
and relations with other people. Abnormalities in the development of
intonational or emotional hearing (Morozov, Kuznetsov, and
Safonova 1994) or its deficiency or “perverseness” lead to serious
defects in the structure of the personality and its relationships, which

subsequently may manifest themselves as a whole variety of person-
ality disorders and maladjustment phenomena.
What makes the MM method powerful is that by using it one
can unleash, activate, and develop a person’s ability to perceive
the intonational expressiveness of a voice and the concomitant
ability to sympathize, emotionally connect, and respond to
another’s person’s states, including those expressed through
music. Intonational hearing in MM practice is awakened by
means of a dual effect: music and movement. Music exerts an
emotional effect, while movement amplifies the effect of music,
unleashes an emotional response, and removes bodily inhibitions
and blockades of emotional reactions. Initially simple, elementary
musical intonations, reinforced by the movement of the whole
body, corporally “harmonized,” as it were, return to the primal
unity of the emotional and motor process that we observe in the
early stages of human development (both in ontogenesis and in
history).
One bit of evidence that there is a separate ability to perceive
and grasp intonation (the emotional expressiveness of music)
consists of the cases in which one possesses this ability (intona-
tional hearing) but does have, for example, pitch hearing (up to
the level of absolute pitch), a superb musical memory and other
abilities that are considered essential for engaging in professional
musical activity. Such cases are not rare in our practice, either.
Those that affect people with good musical training, students at
musical institutions, and professional musicians are especially
striking. A deficiency of emotional hearing, even with a knowl-
edge of the theory of music, is vividly manifested in MM classes:
such people cannot replicate a proposed musical motor form
unless they are able to formally break it down and “go through
it” and understand its emotional content. In assignments where it
is difficult to unequivocally relate a semantic accent to some
sound or beat, where one must feel a gradual, steady development
or, conversely, where there is a rapid swing, a drastic change in
mood and movement, they cannot handle the task. It is likewise
not hard to notice the trouble that they have interacting with other
people: the difficulty of “adjustment,” the avoidance of contact,

its imprecision, the inflexible position in interaction.
The ability to perceive and respond to the expressiveness of a
voice and an instrumental sound as a voice forms the basis of
musical perception, and without it the experiencing of music runs
the risk of becoming perfunctory and detached. By comprehend-
ing the connection of intonational hearing to the perception of a
person’s live voice, we attach great importance, especially in the
early and initial stages of working with children and adults, to
singing and to movement with singing. After all, the quality of
expressiveness belongs only to living things, and nonliving inter-
mediaries in interaction—its mediators and instruments—assume
an expressive quality only in the hands of an emissary-artist. To
perceive the attitude and mood expressed in a voice, to respond to
it, to co-attune oneself and respond with sympathy and action,
understanding and concern—this is the ability that thereafter will
make it possible to catch and respond as well to musical-
instrumental intonations, to feel the timbre and coloration of the
sound and sound combinations.
2) The mechanisms of musical experience are then revealed in
connection with an analysis of musical motor forms and the
complex relationships that we detect between the musical texture
and quality and the structure of movement.
The first thing that is discovered is the ambiguous character of
the relations between movement and the musical text; it is not
very susceptible to formal analysis and a purely rational descrip-
tion. A more customary understanding of these relations is that a
rhythmic congruity is established between the music and the
movement, and the connection is effectuated through the rhythm.
Is it not this approach that is realized above all in dancing, where
the number of steps corresponds to the meter and rhythm of the
musical accompaniment! Rhythmics as a special discipline of
musical education has elevated this relation to a principle. The
task of rhythmics boils down to cultivating a sense of duration; it
teaches one to subordinate movements to a specific meter and
rhythm. An accent may be irregular and shifted in relation to the
metric structure, but it is clearly predefined by the musical text.
The relationship between music and movement is different

and much more complex in MM, which from the outset is
aimed at uncovering musical experiences in the movements of
the body, and hence avoids rigorous didactics in instruction.
“Intonational music demands that whoever creates and per-
ceives it have an incessantly active ear. The functions that
are learned by rote by the intellect, on the other hand, demand
hearing that just passively “counts” chords and mechanically
compares and distributes them. There is no need to intone
them. Everything has been given, everything has been calcu-
lated” (Asaf’ev 1971, p. 245).
A musical motor form is not a perfunctory reflection but rather
an interpretation of a musical work, an active revelation of its
intonational characteristics, semantic transitions and dynamic
development. “Melody, rhythm, and harmony make up the musi-
cal texture. Normally the ear perceives this texture in an aggre-
gate of elements—as a movement formed by voice-leading and
disciplined by rhythm. <…> The intonational rather than the
abstract intellectual process of voice-leading: a method in which
polyphony, harmony, melos, and rhythm constitute a unity”
(Asaf’ev 1971, p. 247). The primary importance of melody and
its singing by the body, its incarnation in movement, is under-
scored in the practice of MM. The principle of integrity in the
perception of a musical work is also mentioned repeatedly
(Rudneva and Fish 1972). The relationship between a musical
text and the movement “expressing” it becomes devoid of clarity
and transparency. As a result, the musical text is revealed as a
multilevel system of musical and intonational meanings, often
paradoxical incongruities and multidirectional emotional apprai-
sals and experiences. The deepening of the interpretation leads to
the revelation of more and more new intonational shadings and
semantic twists in the musical work.
The problem of the relation between the music and the move-
ment “expressing” it was the subject of special research by S.D.
Rudneva and G.A. Il’ina (Il’ina 1961; Il’ina and Rudneva 1971).
The question posed by the authors was this: does the “answering”
movement match the temporal structure of the musical work the
way movements are synchronized with music? How is movement

related to the external sonic texture of a musical work? The
authors show in specific examples that as a motor adjustment is
worked out, a transformation of the sonic texture of the music
takes place: “Not everything that is heard is of equal importance
for identifying the meaning of the sounds” (Il’ina and Rudneva
1971, p. 69). The authors arrive at the following conclusions: “As
a result of the research studying body movements—the meaning
they express in accordance with the expression of the music that
engenders these movements—many new facts were established
from which it was clear that the body’s motor reactions to the
holistic content of the music do not mirror a single one of the
elements of the work as it is perceived. It became clear once and
for all that it is not merely the temporal rhythmic pattern of the
melody that is transformed, but the entire melodic structure—the
direction of its movement, the metric organization, etc.” (Il’ina
and Rudneva 1971, p. 68). In analyzing the musical motor form
for F. Schubert’s Waltz (Op. 9a, 12), the authors stress that “the
movement developed as the most comfortable adjustment of the
body to aid the inner experience and reveal the musical image in
the work. <…> It is clear just from this passage that the motor
adjustment does not match the contour of the melody and does
not reproduce the external sonic texture. This movement is a
result of ‘balancing’ all of the modes of expression operating
here and in this form reproduces the dynamic relation among the
sounds of this music” (Il’ina and Rudneva 1971, p. 69).
The first conclusion that follows from these facts that were
obtained in MM practice is that direct relations between modes of
musical expression and their emotional meaning and emotional
experience do not exist. The second conclusion, a no less impor-
tant one, concerns the active nature of musical perception, which
alters and transfigures the sonic texture of a musical work and, as
it were, extracts from it a musical image, a musical meaning, and
a musical intonation. Musical intonation is by no means always
on the surface; sometimes one must “dig down” to it.
Our conclusions are also fully consistent with the results of a
number of semiotic and musicological studies that show that
music cannot be regarded as a language that offers some fixed

system of meanings: “Musical works do not separate out semiotic
units that, without context, as words of a natural language, retain
an established unity as signifier and signified” (Bonfel’d 2006,
p. 17). Music is more comparable to live speech, which each time
generates from scratch a meaning and sense for its elemental
units. Asaf’ev also cited the intonational-semantic understanding
of music: “The most difficult but also the highest thing that one
must achieve in this work on a composer’s ear is to learn how to
hear (perceive with full consciousness and concentration) music
with a simultaneous embrace of all its ‘components’ that are
revealed to the ear; but in a way so as to perceive every moment
of sonic movement in its relation to the previous and following
ones and to instantly determine whether the relation is logical or
illogical—to determine by direct instinct, without resorting to
technical analysis. This kind of perception of musical meaning
marks the highest stage in the development of inner hearing and
has nothing in common with formal analysis. A good exercise on
the path to this point is to play for oneself pieces of several
unaccustomed forms, requiring the ear every moment to perceive
‘the logic of the unfolding of the flow of sound,’ or to be more
accurate, the intonational—semantic—discernment of the music
as live speech. It is very difficult to describe in words what kind
of aural perception the ‘narrative’ here is about; only a musician
who has risen above the purely mechanical or even above a
narrowly professional hearing that slavishly follows theoretical
stipulations can comprehend how this process of deeply assimi-
lated perception of music as meaning takes place, without looking
to its grammar and syntax” (Asaf’ev 1971, pp. 234 – 35).
The practice of MM graphically shows how a musical motor
form is gradually created in the process of active, close listening
to the music, how the understanding of a musical work deepens
and changes, and how intonational meanings originate or are
reinterpreted and transformed. Initially a movement may specifi-
cally reflect the metric-rhythmic features of a musical work or
specifically accentuate the melodic process; phrases may prove to
be too brief, and the melody “breaks up” in the movement, or the
movement is aimless and does not find a culminating point, and

finally, the process “implodes,” and the musical work or passage
is executed as a finished, sequentially unfolding movement
whose meaning is understandable and which has reflected not
the features of the musical texture but something whole that holds
the musical text together.
In order to draw attention to the relationships that exist
between the specific elements within a concrete musical work
(and perhaps accentuate and strengthen them), it is proposed
in MM practice that one listen to the contrast and respond to
the contrast with movement. The simplest forms of contract exist
between different kinds of parts of a musical piece that is fairly
small in scope. It is more difficult to hear it within a melody,
between phrases, between voices, and so forth.
The other techniques of organizing attention and intensifying
holistic, intonational listening to music in MM consist of the
following:
● the movement begins with the first sound of music and ends with the
last one;
● the search for a culminating point or points in the music;
● the juxtaposition of tone in music and tone in movement: tension and
relaxation, upswing and downswing, restraint and release;
● the juxtaposition of stability and instability in the musical sounds
with the dynamics of the center of gravity and the experiencing of
equilibrium in movement;
● the juxtaposition of breathing in music and one’s own breathing, the
subordination of one’s own breathing to the breathing in the music
(inhalations and exhalations in the music, the length of a breath, its
rhythm, accents, etc.);
● the juxtaposition of the overall character of the music and the type of
movement (walking, jumping, running, standing, etc.);
● the search for direction in the music or the orientation of the move-
ment through the spatial organization of the movement (movement
may be extremely fast, rushing toward a goal; it may be, in a sense,
meandering, calling for more reflection; it may retreat and advance,
run away and catch up, head upward or downward, it may overcome
obstacles or be expressed in a broad stream, and so forth);
● the experiencing of music as communication in movement: questions

and answers, dialog, struggle, interaction, a general circle dance, etc.
● a continuous process of movement, its progression, and the causation
of one movement by another correspond to the continuous flow of the
musical process, which overcomes the discreteness of an individual
sound.
3) In addition to the mechanism of insight and response to

musical intonations and meanings in musical perception, we
also find the mechanism of projection of one’s personal experi-
ences onto the musical sounds.
It is vividly displayed in musical motor work and is impelled
by the intonational processes embedded in the music. However,
under this orientation, movement is typified by a vivid emphasis
of certain modes of musical expression, certain components of
musical texture (and hence of specific meanings) and an equally
total disregard of other components of it (and hence of other
meanings). This lopsided listening and blocking of the perception
of a portion of the musical process enables the participant to
“merge” with the music in his personally significant inner experi-
ence. What finds expression above all are unexpressed feelings,
certain chronic emotional experiences or protective experiences, a
traumatic experience and a nagging inner conflict, controlled
impulses, and dreams.
Another typical feature of the mechanism of projection of
personal experiences is a lower level of awareness of one’s
actions and of what is happening. The mechanism of orientation
in the surrounding space and one’s body may be impaired (which
manifests itself in clumsiness, falls, lack of coordination, colli-
sions with other people and nearby objects, etc.). What is striking
is the incongruity of actions, of the expressive movements them-
selves, and the awareness of them, which sometimes is sharply at
odds with what is visible from the outside. For example, we see a
hunched-over posture, a tormented facial expression, but the
participant himself may say that he was expressing serenity, and
so forth.
One may encounter a denial or clear preference of certain inner

experiences. As a rule, this attitude is independent of the musical
material and is expressed in various musical works. For example,
one person might hear a threat or looming danger or alarm
everywhere, while someone else might tend to deny or avoid
such feelings and be ready everywhere to hear a lovely idyll
everywhere.
Music with “lachrymose” intonations may be expected to
provoke memories of one’s own sorrow, especially if it is
ongoing and has not faded away; music in which one can find
agitated, alarming intonations will stir up your personal anxiety;
turbulent music will result in raging passions, while in restrained
sounds and downward intonations you may recognize your own
depression.
Even though the person in his movements is clearly emotion-
ally involved and caught up with his feelings, in this state there is
a periodic loss of contact with the music (the connection with the
music is fragmentary). Occasionally the movements become con-
vulsive, and flexible regulation of muscle tone is lacking, so there
are no nuances or transitions in the movement, and the person’s
face often freezes in a certain expression (mask). All this resem-
bles the behavior a person who is possessed by affect, and really
creates an impression of exaltation.
4) Another mechanism that is displayed in work on the musical
motor form is that of the transformation of personal inner experi-
ences into musical ones.
It is quite evident to the other participants in the process what
is hidden from the “moving” person himself. Their feedback,
responses and comments guide and stimulate the work to create
a musical motor form. One way or another, the “inaudible” parts
of the music begin to be incorporated into the work. The attempts
to hear the music as a whole, to get closer to its intonational
content, involve distancing oneself from personal projective
experiences and identifications in favor of a dialog with the
musical work and the composer who wrote it.
A musical form, as a rule, carries the potential of a major
generalization of some feeling or state, its “enlargement,” which
makes it possible to reinterpret and modify recognizable everyday

emotions.
One can find in the musical form of a concrete work often
contradictory tendencies, and the intonational process consists of
their intertwining and mutual influence: intonations of sprightli-
ness and diminution, of weeping and rapture, of aggression and
restraint, of madness and tranquility are simultaneously present in
various layers of a musical text and create a new meaning, a new
inner experience, an elevating, multidimensional, ambiguous one
that overcomes the unidirectionality of affect.
It is interesting to observe how, during the work on the music,
various meanings and intonational shadings of it begin to reveal
themselves, how the indication of an expressed emotion and the
nature of the movement can sharply change. The search for the
needed movement that “grasps” what is already the divinable
(with a kind of premonition) content of the music is often accom-
panied by a sense of creative dissatisfaction that keeps demand-
ing new solutions that are more precise and nuanced.
Unlike the mechanism of projecting personal emotions onto
music and identifying oneself with the music (or the author of the
music), which is accompanied by a narrowing of consciousness,
the mechanism of transforming and expanding the perception and
reinterpretation of personal experiences leads to an awareness of
one’s personal emotions and reactions to the music. As a result,
active listening to the music and experiencing it in movement not
only brings one closer to the composer’s conceit and makes it
possible to enter into a dialog with the musical work, but also
provides abundant material for self-knowledge and self-
understanding.
5) Of particular interest are “peak” experiences—emotional
upheavals from music that are not forgotten for years and often
stay with a person for his whole life, revealing certain horizons of
life. They may be described as instantaneous restructurings of the
semantic domain of the personality. They may occur fairly sel-
dom, but one such experience is enough for a person’s life to
change, for previously unexplored spaces to reveal themselves,
for new motivations and activities to emerge.
Such event-states cannot be specifically planned or forecast,

but MM practice creates conditions that are conducive for them to
occur (Ailamaz’ian 2016b). The phenomenology of manifesta-
tions of such powerful experiences that “upend” a person is
characterized not only by a particularly vivid perception of the
music but also by their unusual content. People remark that they
hear something “beyond the sounds,” as if “another music” can
be heard, or the music is heard in “another space.” Sometimes it
is feelings that do not lend themselves to description—of rapture,
of merging, of unity. It could also be sensations of other, non-
sonic modalities—of light, of the wind. Another important factor
in these experiences is the sense of unexpectedness: “I never
thought that this music is so beautiful.” The problems with
memory are related to the fact that people do not recognize a
familiar melody in the given work and, conversely, do not
remember music that astonished them—they may not identify it
later. Experiences of this kind can cause an upheaval in a person’s
world view.
6) Music reveals itself through the practice of movement as a
stream, as a flow of time (Losev 1990; Ailamaz’ian 2016a).
Reaching this level of perception is the most difficult chal-
lenge, both for the teacher and for the participant in the classes.
The specific features of the emotional experiencing of music are
overcome at this level. “A soundless expressive continuum, or
musical time in the specific sense, exists throughout the entire
musical process and exists not passively but in a constant, tense
interaction with the intonational texture; the only pauses are the
‘gaps’ in the sonic intonational stream” (Arkad’ev 1993, p. 23).
The musical motor form reflects the images of continuity—both
in the body and in space. The ability to hear out and embody in
movement the length of a musical pause, to connect sounds in
movement, to respond to the musical stream with a spatial orien-
tation in movement, constitute the supreme meanings that reveal
themselves in the experience of musical movement.
***
The aforementioned mechanisms and processes of musical
experience may be observed in different participants in a class
during the process of perception of one musical work or in one

participant while perceiving different musical works. One can
also speak of stages in the personal changes or transformations
through which a participant passes as he masters musical motor
improvisation. Each stage reflects specific musical experiences
and the domination of certain mechanisms or types of musical
experiences that are expressed in the motor responses to the
music being heard. The transition from more perfunctory or
superficial reactions to the music to the experiencing of the
music as a process, a continuously unfolding logical sequence
of actions, as a rule, also signifies a series of personality changes
and is accompanied by crises, difficult choices and processes of
integration of the new life experience into the holistic structure of
the personality.
The motor response to music is not a peripheral reaction or a
particular, isolated manifestation by someone; it is an action in
which the personality reveals itself. Can the person hear a certain
intonation, is he able to identify it? Why do some inner experi-
ences expressed in music get a livelier response from a specific
person, while others leave him indifferent or irritate him?
Empirical studies that have been done enable us to describe the
phenomenology of the personality transformations that
accompany MM classes (Ailamaz’ian and Shuvalova 2012;
Ailamaz’ian and Kaminskaia 2012).
For example, in N.Iu. Shuvalova’s study, interviews were
conducted with class participants to explore their concepts of
their bodies, their attitudes toward their bodies and dancing
experience. Based on an analysis of the interviews with experi-
enced adult dancers in the MM groups, the dominant charac-
teristic of their conscious experience of body images was a
sense of the integrity of their own body, “the presence of a
strong connection with it”: the body was “buoyant,” “light,”
“mobile,” “obedient,” trim, “not too lazy to have a run, to
jump around,” “elastic, strong, well put together, a lot of
energy,” “you can feel everything,” “entirely.” The participants
also reported that during the class there is a “bodily involve-
ment,” and one’s self-image in space expands. Dancing
experience is described with an emphasis on the musical cate-

gory of fluidity: “to get into the flow,” “to connect with the
music,” and so forth. A state of emotional “involvement” with
the music would occur through movement—a state that was
characterized by the participants as full of personal meaning,
“precious,” related to creative activity and self-realization.
Changes affecting the “inner observer” took place: the partici-
pants stopped comparing themselves with others and began to
use more realistic criteria to assess their motor capabilities and
to accept their body with all of its idiosyncrasies (Ailamaz’ian
and Shuvalova 2012, pp. 145 – 47).
On the other hand, data were obtained that demonstrated the
whole complexity of the psychological changes and transforma-
tions that were taking place. One of the lines of these transforma-
tions involved recognition of the constraining attitudes or
psychological obstacles that prevent a person from becoming
wholly involved in musical motor activity. A person seems to
encounter an experience of “alienation” from oneself, from one’s
own body, from the meanings and values expressed in the music.
N.A. Kaminskaia’s study collected material that reflects the
psychological history of participants in MM classes. Each test
subject went through a structured interview process. Then the test
subjects were presented with the following series of techniques: a
test questionnaire on self-attitudes, the Taylor Manifest Anxiety
Scale, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the “I’m Dancing” and
“Draw a Person” projective drawing techniques, and the sentence
completion test (Ailamaz’ian and Kaminskaia 2012, p. 194).
In addition to describing the new experience of a harmonious
and vivid existence, of a realization of the fullness of life, the
participants report an emerging understanding of an absence of
wholeness, of alienation.
Here are some examples. A female test subject describes changes
that occurred in her perception of life and herself and a surge of
strength and energy (“My ears began to hear words in a different
way, my perception became different, something global sprang up”;
“My world view changed, you look at things differently, there is a
sense now that you are drawn to the world”; “I gained control over
my emotions, I feel that I am being re-educated spiritually, I have

fewer dark thoughts, it was much worse before”; “Musical move-
ment takes away all the inhibitions, and most importantly, the
inhibitions in my head, I have acquired a thirst for knowledge, a
desire to create and think in a different way”).
On the other hand, participants become aware of their real
capabilities, real state and relationships (“I can’t get the music
to pass through my body, it runs into obstacles there”; “I don’t
have any bodily freedom, any negative emotional state has a
depressive effect on my body and voice”; “I’m not bold enough.
I’m inhibited. I’m constantly evaluating myself as if I’m looking
in the mirror. I have a fear of feeling the state of the flight, of
letting myself go, it seems like something inside will break, but
that’s important for psychological release”; “The biggest problem
is to switch off my head”; “My body is the complete opposite of
my soul, my inner experiences, of what should happen in reality”;
“I’m completely different inside, it’s hard to bring things outside
from the inside”; “If my inner sensations were the same as my
external ones… It is hard to bring out what you are experien-
cing”; “My body does not meet my ideal, but what can you do
about that! I change, and my ideals change. It is what it is”).
The research results graphically show that the process of
personality changes is not simply linear in nature but is a com-
plex activity that includes a conflict among inner experiences, the
realization and choice of values, and one’s path in life. How does
a person acquire new values and a new self-image, and is he able
to give up the constraining attitudes and established patterns of
behavior that stand in the way of these changes? A person faces a
difficult choice, which he must make on his own.
Musical motor work reveals to an individual a world of
new feelings and an experience of integrated existence and
openness to other people. A need arises to implement this
experience in one’s life and to change it in accordance with
these values.
We will examine this with a concrete example.
O.U. joined an MM group while an undergraduate at one of
Moscow’s musical higher educational institutions. She was
having a hard time in Moscow, since she was not getting financial
assistance from her parents and her stipend was small. She took
any job she could get: she was a courier, she played the violin at a
restaurant, and so forth. She had come to Moscow from Crimea,
where she had graduated from music school in the violin class.
She had studied music since childhood; as she put it, “I knew
nothing in my life but the violin.” Her mother was a violin
teacher, preoccupied with her work, and she gave all her time
to the music school, the pupils, to contests and performances. Her
father was a graphic designer, a hot-tempered, unstable person.
O.U. remarked that when she was a child he was often unhappy
with her behavior.
At the time of the work on F. Chopin’s prelude, O.U. had been
engaged in MM for more than five years, periodically interrupt-
ing her classes, then coming back. Her instability was manifested
not only in regard to classes. Mood swings, extreme assessments
—either rapture or despair—were characteristic of O.U.
Extremely sociable, highly expressive in her behavior and emo-
tions, she likes to draw attention to herself, and easily strikes up
acquaintances, which rarely turn into deep connections and rela-
tionships. She tends to involve people around her into a discus-
sion of “lofty” subjects, the meaning of life, and to have
“philosophical” conversations that are more like moralizing.
Immature judgments are combined with practical smarts and a
lively mind. She has musical, artistic, and poetic abilities, but she
is unable to fully realize them. She easily grasps everything that
pertains to artistic activity, becomes quickly engaged, and
responds emotionally, but when she deals with routine and the
difficulties of learning a skill, she loses interest in work.
One can also say that her self-assessment is unstable: either it
is baselessly overstated, or it is equally baselessly understated
(after dealing with difficulties and criticism). Occasionally, O.U.
would harshly and negatively evaluate her own performance
despite fairly successful results, when she would “put on sack-
cloth and ashes” out of the blue, for no apparent reason, reducing
what she had accomplished to naught.
O.U. is a good teacher, she is able to make contact with fairly

difficult children and motivate them to take classes in music.
Even here, however, she is seized with doubts, “torment,” and
questions—is it worthwhile for her to do the work, what is it all
for? The grand, self-evident meaning of life is slipping away
somewhere, the ground is giving way beneath her feet. Her
body as well, despite her stockiness and short stature, feels a
lack of support and balance, as if her feet cannot bear the weight
of her body; it is hard for her to push off upward in order to soar
into a leap.
Now let us take a look at O.U.’s own writing. She provided a
detailed description of her work on Chopin’s Prelude No. 8 (fis-
moll) from the cycle “24 Preludes” at the request of E. Tashkeeva
for a psychological study. First, a few remarks about the text
itself. It is a fairly detailed and vivid description of the stages of
work on the prelude, and it reports on the changes that occurred
throughout the MM classes and the inner discoveries that O.U.
made, and on the results, disappointments, and hopes. Since the
text is lengthy, we will confine ourselves to some excerpts.
“When we started working on Chopin’s preludes, at first I was
very happy. Here, at last, is the music that I have understood,
loved, and adored since I was a young girl! <…> It has suffering,
forbidden elements, unrequitedness, and loneliness. The music is
romantic. I found all of this enjoyable…
“The most contradictory feelings, such as life-affirmation and
despair, weightlessness and heaviness, serenity and anxiety, as if
all of them merge into a Single Whole, and there are no indivi-
dual feelings anymore. And there is just one Higher Feeling! A
synthesis of Light and Darkness!…
“At the time we began working on the preludes, my life (both
my everyday life, and my spiritual one) was very unstable and
confused. There were a lot of unresolved issues. I couldn’t make
a choice, I couldn’t make up my mind and decide which way to
go from that point in my life. Something was keeping me firmly
in the past, and I was moving like I was in a funnel, in circles,
without seeing any way out of it, and feeling doomed and in
despair. These are the feelings that I heard in that provocative 8th
prelude of Chopin’s that was so dear to me in spirit…”
“Stage 1 of the work. The first thing I heard and did in my
movement was ‘Instability.’ I got up on my tiptoe and I began to
teeter and be spun around in a small circle. I felt that I could not
control myself here and a force unknown to me—the force of
Fate, of Destiny—was carrying me, and nothing could resist it.
Hence was born the second image of the ‘Circle’ and the impos-
sibility of breaking out of it. I was being spun around the circle,
and at some point it began to expand, and I no longer had enough
space in the room. I was bumping into walls—the actual walls of
the room. And this made me run in a circle and break out of it
upward… But something led me to the most powerful inner
experience! At some point it reached a peak, its limit, and I felt
the most powerful excitement and pain simultaneously…”
“Stage 2. When I reached this emotional peak, it became
practically unendurable for me to move… I abandoned the
work, since I had neither the strength nor the desire to repeat
that a second time. And then one night an image came to me that
I was sitting on the floor with my back to everyone, motionless.
My back and head were lowered a bit, I seemed to be turned
inward. Focused. I was concentrating, but I felt no agitation
inside. Behind my back was a fabric, or a lake was running
over, and driven by the wind, it was agitated for me. And after
this vision, those emotions that I had experienced earlier in the
music stopped disturbing me. As if I were rescuing myself, I, on
my own, minimized and downplayed their value and dissolved
them in the subject… So later a suitable piece of fabric was found
that was supposed to possess a crucial property: to convey wave
motion (‘agitation’).2 And the work began. … Now there were
two of us: ‘Little Rag’ and me… It was my partner, we were in a
dialog and my ‘Circle’ was no longer closed… The escape from
the ‘circle’ in the music also changed my consciousness in reality.
It was as though I had gained an ability to see. I was now hopeful
about resolving my problems in life…”
“Stage 3. Everything seemed to be great, I solved the problem.
But no! This is where the most interesting part happened. The
work started here. Aida Melikovna suggested to me, apparently

seeing that peace of mind was not coming, that I have a dialog
with my ‘Little Rag.’ And gradually she separated us from each
other. We began to exist as two autonomous units, but at the same
time we were a whole as well…”
“Stage 4. But then Aida Melikovna says: ‘You should take
“Little Rag” and play with it, treat all this like a game, with
humor. Play with it in the music; after all, it’s so simple!’ But for
me it wasn’t simple at all. It was even scary… As though I had to
bare everything in myself that I had so carefully hidden. And
what I’m hiding in myself is humor, joy of life, femininity,
vulnerability, tenderness…”
“Stage 5. The task was framed this way: avoid big movements,
refine everything, give it nuance. The task, to tell the truth, was
difficult both physically and psychologically. Because… here you
are confronting the task of setting boundaries. Incidentally, it’s
both pleasant and unpleasant… All this—the rapid, taut move-
ment—produced resentment in me… But after that work I
became lighter and more mobile…”
“Speaking of the concert… again, forgetting about the music, I
began to pose. I started working toward the audience, I wanted
them to like me, but I wasn’t presenting the light and beauty of
the music to the people watching. Which made me very unhappy
after the concert. And at that peak of the work it was painful to
realize that I had to leave Moscow. It was sad to leave the work
and all my friends…”
A year later O.U. returned to work on the prelude. Now she
was dancing to it in tandem with another studio participant:
“After that I began to move differently, and thanks to L. I
advanced to a new level in my own work… But now it was a
dialog not only with the music, not only with a fabric, but also
with L. the soul and with myself. At the end, after standing still, I
went after it, after my soul, and then, afraid of losing it, grabbed
the fabric again, and we merged, changed places, and became a
single whole. I think such a moment in music, such an instant,
may be called Key and Harmony.”
O.U.’s descriptions are filled with emotions and images, and

have a demonstrative flavor to them. But something new also
appears in them. The author seems to pull back, recognizing her
desire to draw attention and to evoke delight: “I have never lived
the way I wanted to. First I wanted to please my parents, then
teachers and classmates at the school, so I would play in noisy
hallways for hours, and this stimulated me to study music… I
now feel that this was one of the most important experiences and
discoveries that I made about myself. Even now I am not sure
that all my actions weren’t motivated by something like that.”
We can also point to O.U’s suggestibility. Much of what she
says is a reproduction of the conversations that were held during
the work. She especially repeats what was said by authoritative
people and the teacher. But in addition to this repetition, she
offers many of her own observations. We also find an awareness
of her own impressionability and dependency on the people
around her.
Her heightened reflectiveness was manifested especially
vividly in her descriptions of the actual work process. O.U. was
able to discern the projection of her inner experiences onto
Chopin’s music and even her resistance to the changes. She had
great difficulty getting away from the continual emotional over-
excitement that had become a habit and need for her. Equally
challenging for O.U. was the work process, which requires a
continuous deepening of one’s experience, prolonged tension,
willpower, and concentration. She felt like retreating and running
away. Yet, she stayed the course. Her discoveries, new feelings,
and experiences helped her continue the search for a form.
What emerged was not only a musical motor form of a specific
work, but ultimately a new self-image as well: “I learned to
identify some real things, qualities, in myself. But the reality
was so simple and therefore so painful.” It combined assessments
of her previous concepts of herself with a more realistic, true
perspective of her capabilities and motivations. The gap between
her ideal ambitions and real capabilities, real life, and actions
became more tangible and conscious, and demanded a resolution.
It was especially significant that, in describing the final stages

of the work, O.U. speaks about the dialog with her partner, about
the dialog with the other participants. I think the appearance of
the Other in her account may be regarded as an event. Always
focused on herself and her feelings, she tended not to notice the
feelings of others, not to see their assistance, their efforts. The
account of the dialog with another participant, who became her
partner in the work, points out a shift in her personality, in which
she overcame her egocentrism: “We showed the No. 8 prelude in
this version in a concert, it was my last performance, it was my
best, I was full of energy and peace of mind, confident in myself
and my abilities, I was in a dialog with the other participants.
This was the summing-up. A job completed (of course, for this
stage of life).”
Another example shows how complex the restructuring pro-
cess is that begins within the personality under the influence of
an MM experience. Here are excerpts from the descriptions of
participant L.S., who is restrained in outward manifestations of
emotions. Since she has psychological training, her reflection
takes a rigorous form and is in the nature of a professional self-
report.
“It is hard to say how this state began. But there are certain
reference points that you remember well, clearly and vividly. The
first of them was the emotional state that was experienced during
the summer rehearsal of C. von Weber’s ‘Invitation to the Dance.’
Specifically, when you are drawn to each other on the dance floor
with your arms spread out. I remember feeling a very powerful
rapture and excitement at that moment. And when I got home
after the rehearsal, everything suddenly struck me in some other
light, as if you took a look at your life, at everything around you
that worries and torments you, from above, as if it were a 3-D
picture…”
“For about two weeks I was disoriented, it seemed like you
had taken off somewhere, had finally broken through… At that
point I tried to ‘ground myself,’ to ‘grab hold of the ground,’ so
that I wouldn’t fly away to who knows where. And it worked! I
calmed down and returned to normal.”
“At that point, during the exercises, there appeared… the

sensation that my body was beginning somehow to operate
differently, not like before. Some subtle kind of work was
going on. A powerful force and energy sprang up in me…”
“The second point was the emergence of a sensation that my
body was operating along axes in an uncoordinated manner, and
it was sometimes impossible to keep my equilibrium. It emerged
about three months after the sensations that I experienced in the
summer. I don’t know what it looked like from the outside, but
inwardly it seemed to me that I couldn’t do a single exercise well.
My legs seemed to be working in one plane, and everything
above the waist in another plane. And as a result I had the
sensation of being completely clumsy…”
“I started experiencing fears and had trouble sleeping. But I didn’t
think any of it mattered. Maybe that was why a consequence was
severe exhaustion—both physical (in effect, an absence of normal
sleep) and mental (a constant, internal struggle). And this led to
abnormalities in various organs (although the doctors did not find
anything especially serious). That was the third point.”
“After this kind of ‘shake-up’ of my body, I did not feel like
studying anymore, I felt like leaving and never coming back to
the classes, to break free from them.”
“As soon as I realized this, everything became normal. All the
‘sores’ quieted down, I started sleeping better, and I gained some
kind of inner strength and resilience. And at the last lesson (even
though I was afraid of going to it) I felt that my body was
beginning to ‘come together,’ little by little, into a whole.”
L.S.’s text vividly depicts the stages of the internal personality
changes that occurred during the classes. The captivating musical
experiences initially caused shifts in the semantic domain of the
personality, but emotional and cognitive changes alone proved to
be insufficient. Restructuring must occur on the physical level as
well, and these are the processes that turn out to be the most
painful, the most resistant to changes.
***
As our study shows, the practice of MM creates conditions
for mastering the musical experience. The plastic
experiencing of music makes it possible to activate intona-

tional hearing and helps to perceive the semantic aspect of
music. It reflects music as a continuous flow of time, as a
flow of movement, of duration (Ailamaz’ian 2016a). Music,
therefore, offers the experience of the fullness of existence, of
soaring, of the unity of the world, of eternity.
This experience is part of a complex relationship and
engagement with the personal, relevant inner experiences of
the participants, with their constraining attitudes and affective
complexes. The difficult work of reinterpreting one’s values,
of becoming aware of one’s true impulses and motivations,
and relating them to one’s capabilities, begins inside the
personality. The processes of restructuring and resignification
occur at both the mental and the corporal levels, and encom-
pass the whole person. But what will the choice be? What life
experience will the changes opt for? Ultimately, the person
himself will make this decision. And only his good will and
individual freedom determine the direction of further move-
ment: whether he follows the path of uncovering his creative
core, of accepting the world and life, or he cannot part with
his neurotic defenses and egocentrism. Sometimes the force
of habit, of entrenched attitudes, is so great that it makes one
want to leave everything the way it was. Occasionally the
“desired” changes turn out to be not so desired when one runs
into the actual conditions of their realization: for example,
somewhat abstract dreams of creativity collide with the very
concrete demands of self-limitation, discipline, and the neces-
sity of giving up certain pleasures and needs.
The character of musical experience not only reflects but
also alters and transforms a person’s life experience and
expands his horizons and capabilities. Whether the person
makes use of these new capabilities is the realm of freedom
of personality, its internal choice and responsibility.
Notes
1. The Russian word intonatsiia and its adjective have a somewhat different,
broader meaning in Russian than “intonation” does in English. The Russian
term, which was popularized by the Soviet musicologist Boris Asaf’ev in a
theory he expounded in the 1920s, has been defined in a myriad of ways.
Broadly, it refers to all of the elements that go into the musical expression of
ideas, including tone, harmony, melody, and intervals, throughout the stages of
composing, performing, and listening. For simplicity’s sake, the Anglicized
form of the term, “intonational,” and the related verb “intone,” are used here.—
Trans.
2. The Russian word for wave [volna] derives from the same root as the
Russian word for “agitation” [volnenie]. The latter, depending on context, can
be translated in a myriad of ways, from “excitement” to “disturbance” to
“ferment.”—Trans.
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From Musical Experience To Personality Transformation: The Practice of Musical Movement

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Journal of Russian & East European Psychology

ISSN: 1061-0405 (Print) 1558-0415 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo20

From Musical Experience to Personality

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10610405.2018.1491238

Published online: 10 Oct 2018.

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From Musical Experience to Personality

This article explores the mechanisms of musical experience and

A characteristic feature of music therapy and, more broadly, of

accomplishment of a certain personality-related task, the discov-

the music: the independent response may develop into a separate

defects in the structure of the personality and its relationships, which

people: the difficulty of “adjustment,” the avoidance of contact,

The relationship between music and movement is different

way movements are synchronized with music? How is movement

music cannot be regarded as a language that offers some fixed

movement is aimless and does not find a culminating point, and

● the experiencing of music as communication in movement: questions

3) In addition to the mechanism of insight and response to

One may encounter a denial or clear preference of certain inner

makes it possible to reinterpret and modify recognizable everyday

Such event-states cannot be specifically planned or forecast,

during the process of perception of one musical work or in one

experience is described with an emphasis on the musical cate-

my emotions, I feel that I am being re-educated spiritually, I have

O.U. is a good teacher, she is able to make contact with fairly

work started here. Aida Melikovna suggested to me, apparently

O.U.’s descriptions are filled with emotions and images, and

It was especially significant that, in describing the final stages

“At that point, during the exercises, there appeared… the

experiencing of music makes it possible to activate intona-

Isenina, E.I. 1986. Doslovesnyi period razvitiia rechi u detei. Saratov.

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