Mimetic Invitations

Audiences commonly respond to music as if they are responding to an invitation to sing along, play along, and/or dance along – whether actually exerting (mimetic motor action) or only imaging doing so (mimetic motor imagery, i.e., imagined actions). For many of us, such responses in the human motor system, consciously or not, are arguably integral to our emotional and conceptual responses, including the positive, negative, and/or neutral valuing of a given genre, work, or performance.

Among the pertinent implications for musicians are that: 1) composers, in effect, design mimetic invitations; 2) performers shape composed invitations; 3) improvisors create invitations in real time; and 4) recording engineers further shape invitations. Analogous roles play out in each of the other performing arts.

The practical implications of acknowledging the roles of mimetic motor action and imagery emerge from the aesthetic premise that people attend to the arts in order to be invited or compelled to feel and think things, and mimetic motor action and imagery are among the processes whereby this happens. This includes, to varying extents, feeling something of what it would be like, or might be like, to do and be what performers are doing and being. For musicians, treatment of the sonic details (duration, timbre, amplitude and pitch) affects not only what audiences will hear, but also what they will feel via both mimetic participation and non-mimetic perceptual processes. Awareness of this relationship can be empowering, not only in connection with sound production, but also in recognizing that listening to music is rarely if ever simply about listening.