Sofia Zapico

Professor Stack

Initial Research Proposal

6 February 2024

Initial research Proposal

Background

I am researching music literacy in choirs because I want to find out how music literacy is

used to influence and evoke emotions in their audiences in order to create awareness for all

audience about the true work that is put into making music by musicians. Ever since I was a

child, I have been completely invested in music. Whether it was performing, learning, or

listening, it has always been one of my favorite topics. As a singer, I believe it is important to

know how music literacy is used because it is my main form of expression. Many believe that all

of the emotion that you hear during a performance is coming fully from the performer and how

they feel, while that is true it is not complete. For example, you go to a concert and the performer

is performing a piece and it sounds energetic and full of emotion but is that really the case. This

performance probably had hours of rehearsal beforehand that consisted of them running through

the same pieces over and over again with all that energy and emotion. Do you really believe that

an artist can fully rely on having all that passion and energy during the actual performance? Of

course not, while they still love performing, they are tired and want to just relax. So, to make all

of this do-able, they rely on musical literacy to convey some of that energy and passion, so they

don’t get as rundown during a rehearsal. This is why I believe music literacy is so important, it

helps us as singers to understand and convey emotion.

Analysis

A big part of music literacy is being able to read the notes and symbols on a music score.

In fact, I believe it to be the base of music literacy, because without it, it would be what makes

adding emotion to a piece easy. As Paul Broomhead says, “As teachers spend less time pounding

out and correcting notes, they can spend more time attending to musical refinements such as

intonation, tone, expression, and so on” (Broomhead 38). I also believe that this branch if

musical literacy leads to the other, watching the conductor. Chorale members “…have the

challenge of interpreting exactly what the director (or someone else) is trying to portray in the

model and then of incorporating that aspect into their own performance” (Broomhead 38). The

combination of reading a music score and reading the director is what makes music literacy.

Not so much related to my research, but equally important is the fact that music literacy

can help literacy in almost any other sense. “Working on challenging musical tasks over

and over again, researchers say, strengthens the reading circuit dramatically, which in

turn delivers a robust academic boost” (Korbey). When going to apply time signatures

to a piece, you are passively doing division and using ratios to find out how many

beats are in a measure and how much of one beat a specific note should receive. On

top of that you are learning to read notes and words at the same exact time, and most

times words are in an unfamiliar language.

One hypotheses that I found was, “…emotional contagion hypothesis suggests that

the emotion perceived in music should tend to evoke the same or a similar emotion in the

listener, although not necessarily at the same intensity” (Hunter & Schellenberg). I did not

necessarily agree with this point of view, but I followed it. I believe that it is better said that

perceived emotion is always going to be similar to what is intended, but the emotion that is
evoked in the listener can be drastically different. “…some of our most powerful responses to

music come from expectation, tension, then resolution” (Jennings). We are constantly listening to

the music trying to figure out the meaning, our guesses might be right or wrong. But when we

finally find the meaning that is right for us, we experience the “resolution” as Jennings says. That

is when you can see people experience emotions.

Plan

I plan on using observation as my main form of research method. I also want to

supplement that with textual analysis of any papersI find online and music that I collect through

my observations. I will be able to observe multiple rehearsals and concerts that my choirs

perform in. I will also be using observation notes that I took during our recent MLK concert on

February 2nd. My data will be completely qualitative as it is based on descriptions of

performances and/or rehearsals. I will need to collect my own copies of all the music that I will

be observing in order to write down all the notes that directors give to different sections. The

stakeholders are the musicians and the audience.

Works Cited

Hunter, Patrick G., and E. Glenn Schellenberg. “Music and Emotion.” SpringerLink, Springer

New York, 1 Jan. 1970, link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-6114-3_5.

Accessed 06 Feb. 2024.

Korbey, Holly. “Music Training Can Be a Literacy Superpower.” Edutopia, George Lucas

Educational Foundation, 23 June 2022, www.edutopia.org/article/music-training-can-be-

literacy-superpower. Accessed 06 Feb. 2024.

Person, et al. “What Is Music Literacy?: Paul Broomhead: Taylor & Francis Ebooks,

RE.” Taylor & Francis, 2 July 2018,

www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315098135/music-literacy-paul-

broomhead. Accessed 06 Feb. 2024.

Jennings, Alistair. “Why Does Music Make Us Emotional?” Why Does Music Make Us

Emotional? | Inside Science, www.insidescience.org/video/why-does-music-make-us-

emotional. Accessed 06 Feb. 2024.