Whiting, Chris (2020) Models of Authorship in Songwriting. Songwriting Studies Journal, 1 (1). (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper proposes a model of authorship based on the observed practice of commercial songwriting. Developed from reduced abstract of authorship such as writer-text-reader or transmitter-text-receiver (Benjamin, 1970; Barthes, 1977; Foucault, 1979; Tagg, 1982; Nehmas, 1989; Westphal, 1994), this model reconceptualises the process with a songwriter’s perspective (unlike the reader/critic perspective of previous models). As with previous models, the songwriter is a construct within the song (as the author was a construct of the reader within the text), but here the songwriter is the voice of the writer (actual); therefore conceived, not perceived. Additionally, this model includes the Imagined Audience, as a conceived construct, which is the songwriter’s ideal listener (cf. Trivedi, 2015).
These theories were drawn from autoethnographic observations and interviews with other songwriters. The autoethnography was constructed on a Merleau-Pontian (1945) phenomenological ontology of observing the lived experience, and as Gestalt actions driven by a Bourdieusian Habitus (Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu, 1993; Bourdieu, 2005) (applied as a more developed alternative to Merleau-Ponty’s ‘sedimentation’). These observations are analysed in the context of Csikszentmihalyi’s Systems Model of Creativity, but the observations here are focused on the process from Individual to Field and how the Others contribute to and filter the song.
Understanding the process of writer to listener further supports how, in commercial songwriting, a criteria of effectiveness is constructed which guides and measures the song in creation. Such concept could aid songwriting students in writing effective songs, and assessors of songwriting students a less subjective approach to assessment.
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Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music M Music and Books on Music > MT Musical instruction and study M Music and Books on Music > MT Musical instruction and study > MT0040-67 Composition. Elements and techniques of music
School/Department:	Vice Chancellor's Office
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/8125

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