Fencing and Music

Greetings,

There is no doubt that music has an effect on us all. Indeed that one odd body fact that I read somewhere, and have been meaning to fact-check, is that the human heart will beat alongside with the base of the music which is being played, or something similar. Music can inspire us toward different feelings and also emotional states, this particular effect is used in movies all of the time. So, I did some reading and had some thoughts and decided that it was time to look at it in relation to fencing.

Conveniently, not long after this little gem popped into my head I came across an article entitled, "Western Composers and Western Martial Arts" in  Encased in Steel Anthology I. Interestingly enough there were aspects of what was said in here which lined up quite well with what I was going toward. While Keith Farrel's article deals more with the comparison of the dates of music with the dates of treatises to understand their social context and also for a better understanding of their footwork and movement (Farrel, 2015:87), mine was more toward asking questions of how peoples bouts compare to music and what influences it can have on training.

Toward the avenue of my own thoughts I stumbled across an article in Australasian Scientist called "Turn Down the Volume?" which studied the effect of music on study and the performance of students. Needless to say, this article was more along my own lines of thinking as I was also wondering if the playing of music would enhance my students' training or detract from it. Some of it was most helpful with regard to this, as it stated with regard to gene expression and "changes also inferred potential benefits relating to memory, learning and general brain health." music possibly aids in protecting and improving the brain (Flavel, 2015:15).

Clearly there is evidence that music being played is a good thing and can be an aid toward the student's learning. The question next was what music should be played during the practice? Going back to the two useful sources of information there is an examination of the relationship between the manuals and the music in Farrel (2015) as indicated above, Medieval Music is reflected in style of fighting, rhyming method presented in manuals and in music as well (Farrel, 2015:89). This would make medieval music perfect for this kind of fighting. Similarly, Renaissance Music was more complicated also found in music, repetition found in manuals also found in music (Farrel, 2015:90). This meant that the first ...

The rest of this article can be found in Un-Blogged: A Fencer's Ramblings by Henry Walker, which is available in paperback from:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blogged-Ramblings-Henry-Leigh-Walker/dp/098764470X
Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/un-blogged-henry-leigh-walker/book/9780987644701.html
Among other places...

It is also available in electronic format (pdf) from: https://buy.stripe.com/fZecP419c7CB9VKeUV

... or direct from the author.

Bibliography

Farrel, K. (2015) "Western Composers and Western Martial Arts" in Farrel, K. (ed) (2015) Encased in Steel Anthology I, Fallen Rook Publishing, Triquetra Services (Scotland), Glasgow


Flavel, M. (2015) "Turn Down the Volume?" in Australasian Scientist (Vol. 36, No. 7, Sept. 2015) Central Publications Pty Ltd, Wattletree Rd, Australia, pp 14-15