160061 UE Micro-phenomenology for Musicology (Methods Workshop) (2020W)

Since a couple of years, the microphenomenological method has been developed mainly in psychology, pedagogy, and therapy research. This method is promising to be applied for various purposes in musicology: through specific qualitative methods, microphenomenology enables to compare musical experience in intersubjective terms and thus to contribute to theorizing music. The method is based on an interview protocol that allows to access subjective experience in high detail. This kind of interview requires much preparation and experience from the interviewer. In this course we will – after some introductory reading and explanations given by the teacher – train and evaluate said interview method and discuss problems and caveats. Evaluating these interviews likewise requires familiarity with the kind of material gained in interviews, so the second part of the course is devoted to structuring and transcribing interview recordings, establishing categories, and extrapolating comparable intersubjective qualities of experience. Students will write a (short) paper about their progress in conducting at least one microphenomenological interview about a musical topic individually chosen, and analysing and interpreting the data obtained.