Music As Communication: An Autoethnography On Rhetoric In Musical Composition And Performance

Abstract

I analyzed rhetoric through the confluence of performer-music-audience (ethos-logos-pathos) using performances comprising works of other artists and my original compositions viewed through autoethnographic lens. Data came from recollection and reflection on past musical performances alongside interviews with mentors, co-artists, and the audience. Results indicated that rhetoric patterns of meanings as energy forms are created and shared by an individual through entrainment, association, identity formation, feminism, silence, and spirituality in various connections formed consciously or unconsciously in communication practice as espoused in the proposed Constellation Rhetorical Theory. The concepts identified extend the persuasive character of classical rhetoric of Aristotle comprising ethos, logos, and pathos. In performer-music-audience analysis, individuals value meanings in communication as energy forms circulating in the environment that when absorbed, patterns develop and meanings seek new levels. When not absorbed, meanings remain suspended until they find themselves in consciousness and feelings of individuals. Because of the infinite power of music in communicating my emotions and thoughts through sound utterance or in music’s infinite power to elucidate musical nuances, these energy forms are everlasting themes guiding through my performance in unique ways. Indeed, musical performance is a perfect language in communicating profundities, in exhuming deep layers of meanings, in affecting others with clusters of understanding meanings or even beyond.