Peter A. Martens | Texas Tech University (original) (raw)
Papers by Peter A. Martens
Analyzing Performance
A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twi... more A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twice, keeping the same tempo in each performance but feeling and expressing a different main beat (tactus) in each performance. Two empirical studies were conducted to determine the degree to which the quartet’s intentions were communicated to study participants. In the initial study, participants viewed the full A/V performances and were asked to tap their dominant hand along with the main beat of the music. In a second study, the participants completed the same tapping task in response to either audio-only or video-only versions of the same performances. Finally, the audio and video of these performances were analyzed separately using the meter-finding computer model of Janata & Tomic (2008).Overall, the quartet’s intention significantly influenced participants’ choice of tactus under the A/V and video-only conditions, but not under the audio-only conditions. Thus visual information is k...
Music Theory Online
The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has alway... more The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has always played at least an implicit role in music theory, but has only been raised as a factor in music analysis relatively recently. In this essay I present a brief update of the body in music analysis via case studies, situated in the disciplines of music theory and music cognition, broadly construed. This current trajectory is part of a broader shift away from the musical score as the sole focus for analysis, which admittedly—though, in my view, delightfully—raises a host of challenging epistemological questions surrounding the interaction of performer (production) and listener (perception). While the concomitant research methodologies and technologies may be unfamiliar to scholars trained in humanities disciplines, I advocate for a full embrace of these approaches, either by individual researchers or in the form of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2011
the present study models listeners' tactus choices relative to the metric structure of fully ... more the present study models listeners' tactus choices relative to the metric structure of fully musical excerpts using data from a tapping experiment. Viewed from the standpoint of metric structure, tactus was ambiguous between individuals and within excerpts, providing no evidence that this behavior has a global basis in tempo or in a subdivision benefit. Tactus was more consistent within individuals, however, when viewed as following from one of three basic strategies: (1) tapping with a subdivided pulse, (2) tapping with the fastest consistent pulse in the music (a pulse with no consistent subdivision), or (3) using a mixture of these two strategies based on inconsistent rhythmic activity at the musical surface. Music training correlated positively with the first of these strategies. Since individual listeners engage with musical meter in different ways, ambiguity of tactus should be an expected feature of any audience's response to metrical music.
Analyzing Performance
While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforwar... more While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforward in several respects, its duple hypermeter defies simple and consistent continuation. In what is often regarded as an idiosyncratic interpretation of the piece, Glenn Gould grapples with this complex hypermeter and offers a carefully considered and compelling analysis. Through a comparison with performances by Samuel Feinberg, Wanda Landowska, and with Carl Czerny's performance edition, we argue that Gould reveals new tensions and structures within Bach’s score.
If the average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that... more If the average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that he was an eccentric performer as well as an eccentric human being. He disliked most of the common practice piano repertoire, he abruptly left the concert stage in 1964-only nine years after his successful international debut in New York-and for the remainder of his career he maintained an active but extremely buffered public persona as a recording artist, radio producer, essayist, and critic. If one knows anything further about his eccentricities in performance, it is that he relished unusual tempi. In his late 1960s recording of Mozart's K. 331 Piano Sonata, for instance, Gould begins at such a slow rate (= ca. 60 bpm) that it may difficult for some listeners to feel a pulse at all. [2] Were we to listen to the entire movement, however, we would find that the main beat of each of this movement's variations is slightly faster than the previous. This plan, which Gould explicitly acknowledged, mirrors the piece's increasing amount of beat division and subdivision, creating increasing rhythmic activity with each subsequent variation. (1) The surface rhythms and the tempo of the main beat reinforce one another, propelling the listener from the theme through the final
If an average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that ... more If an average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that he was an eccentric performer as well as an eccentric human being; he disliked most of the common-practice piano repertoire, he abruptly left the concert stage in 1964 (nine years after his successful international debut in New York), and for the remainder of his career he maintained an active, but extremely buffered, public persona as a recording artist, radio producer, essayist, and critic. If one knows any-thing further about his eccentricities in performance, it is that he relished seemingly odd tempi. In his late 1960s recording of Mozart’s K. 331 Piano Sonata, for instance, Gould begins at such a slow rate (quarter note = ca. 60 bpm) that it may difficult for some lis-teners to feel a pulse at all (Example 1).
A student string quartet was coached to perform a set of seven excerpts twice, keeping the same t... more A student string quartet was coached to perform a set of seven excerpts twice, keeping the same tempo in each performance but attempting to express different beat levels. Study participants viewed and heard these videorecorded performances, and expressed their beat preference (referent level) via a tapping task. Based on tapped responses, the quartet’s intended beat level did influence participants’ choice of referent level in six of the seven excerpts. These findings correlated to the quartet members’ own judgment of their success or failure in expressing a given beat level. Although performance tempo may be the single most important factor for influencing referent level choice in a given piece, there are clearly combinations of metric structure and performance tempo that allow other performance decisions to play a role in communicating a musical beat.
Empirical Musicology Review, 2017
Fernando Benadon (2016) shines a strong objective light onto slight but noticeable timing perturb... more Fernando Benadon (2016) shines a strong objective light onto slight but noticeable timing perturbations in Afro-Cuban drumming practice, coining the term near-unisons to describe non-simultaneous attacks that are perceived as such, but that are also perceived to correspond to the same point on an abstract isochronous grid. I speculate that these data uncover an aspect of the music that will most likely be perceived qualitatively rather than quantitatively—an element of style rather than one of structure—but that the quantitative approach taken here is a crucial first step toward the stylistic analysis of genre-specific microtiming that is generally painted over with the broad brushes of participatory discrepancy or groove.
The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has alway... more The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has always played at least an implicit role in music theory, but has only been raised as a factor in music analysis relatively recently. In this essay I present a brief update of the body in music analysis via case studies, situated in the disciplines of music theory and music cognition, broadly construed. This current trajectory is part of a broader shift away from the musical score as the sole focus for analysis, which admittedly—though, in my view, delightfully—raises a host of challenging epistemological questions surrounding the interaction of performer (production) and listener (perception). While the concomitant research methodologies and technologies may be unfamiliar to scholars trained in humanities disciplines, I advocate for a full embrace of these approaches, either by individual researchers or in the form of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 2014
Music often evokes spontaneous movements in listeners that are synchronized with the music, a phe... more Music often evokes spontaneous movements in listeners that are synchronized with the music, a phenomenon that has been characterized as being in "the groove." However, the musical factors that contribute to listeners' initiation of stimulus-coupled action remain unclear. Evidence suggests that newly appearing objects in auditory scenes orient listeners' attention, and that in multipart music, newly appearing instrument or voice parts can engage listeners' attention and elicit arousal. We posit that attentional engagement with music can influence listeners' spontaneous stimulus-coupled movement. Here, 2 experiments-involving participants with and without musical training-tested the effect of staggering instrument entrances across time and varying the number of concurrent instrument parts within novel multipart music on listeners' engagement with the music, as assessed by spontaneous sensorimotor behavior and self-reports. Experiment 1 assessed listeners&...
A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twi... more A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twice, keeping the same tempo in each performance but feeling and expressing a different main beat (tactus) in each performance. Two empirical studies were conducted to determine the degree to which the quartet’s intentions were communicated to study participants. In the initial study, participants viewed the full A/V performances and were asked to tap their dominant hand along with the main beat of the music. In a second study, the participants completed the same tapping task in response to either audio-only or video-only versions of the same performances. Finally, the audio and video of these performances were analyzed separately using the meter-finding computer model of Janata & Tomic (2008).
Overall, the quartet’s intention significantly influenced participants’ choice of tactus under the A/V and video-only conditions, but not under the audio-only conditions. Thus visual information is key to tactus communication even in an ostensibly sonic art form. In individual excerpts, however, aspects of metric structure appeared to constrain tactus choice, and objective visual and aural cues uncovered by computer analysis were not always matched by participant responses. Together, the results shed light on the extent to which this type of communication depends on the combination of tempo, a performance’s aural and visual components, and musical structure.
While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforwar... more While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforward in several respects, its duple hypermeter defies simple and consistent continuation. In what is often regarded as an idiosyncratic interpretation of the piece, Glenn Gould grapples with this complex hypermeter and offers a carefully considered and compelling analysis. Through a comparison with performances by Samuel Feinberg, Wanda Landowska, and with Carl Czerny's performance edition, we argue that Gould reveals new tensions and structures within Bach’s score.
Glenn Gould’s recording career is bookended by his 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Va... more Glenn Gould’s recording career is bookended by his 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Gould discussed these two performances at some length during interviews around the time of the 1981 release, and in these comments he expounded a loose theory of a “constant rhythmic reference point,” the organizing principle behind the time dimension of his 1981 recording. Gould maintained that this aspect of the latter recording made it superior to his earlier effort by giving unity to the set as a whole. Three excerpts from both recordings were included as part of an empirical study on tactus choice. To discover whether Gould was successful in communicating this unity to the average listener, these excerpts were taken from transitions between adjacent variations. While participants’ tactus choices across these transitions were not uniform in response to either recording, they were much less diverse in response to the 1981 performance. Further, participants’ tactus connections in response to the 1981 recording largely matched those that Gould explicitly sought to make. The results suggest individual and combined effects of Bach’s composed metric structure and Gould’s performance decisions relative to that structure, and indicate that Gould was (and is) able to control listeners’ perception of musical time via their tactus to a greater extent with his 1981 Goldberg Variations.
Analyzing Performance
A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twi... more A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twice, keeping the same tempo in each performance but feeling and expressing a different main beat (tactus) in each performance. Two empirical studies were conducted to determine the degree to which the quartet’s intentions were communicated to study participants. In the initial study, participants viewed the full A/V performances and were asked to tap their dominant hand along with the main beat of the music. In a second study, the participants completed the same tapping task in response to either audio-only or video-only versions of the same performances. Finally, the audio and video of these performances were analyzed separately using the meter-finding computer model of Janata & Tomic (2008).Overall, the quartet’s intention significantly influenced participants’ choice of tactus under the A/V and video-only conditions, but not under the audio-only conditions. Thus visual information is k...
Music Theory Online
The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has alway... more The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has always played at least an implicit role in music theory, but has only been raised as a factor in music analysis relatively recently. In this essay I present a brief update of the body in music analysis via case studies, situated in the disciplines of music theory and music cognition, broadly construed. This current trajectory is part of a broader shift away from the musical score as the sole focus for analysis, which admittedly—though, in my view, delightfully—raises a host of challenging epistemological questions surrounding the interaction of performer (production) and listener (perception). While the concomitant research methodologies and technologies may be unfamiliar to scholars trained in humanities disciplines, I advocate for a full embrace of these approaches, either by individual researchers or in the form of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2011
the present study models listeners' tactus choices relative to the metric structure of fully ... more the present study models listeners' tactus choices relative to the metric structure of fully musical excerpts using data from a tapping experiment. Viewed from the standpoint of metric structure, tactus was ambiguous between individuals and within excerpts, providing no evidence that this behavior has a global basis in tempo or in a subdivision benefit. Tactus was more consistent within individuals, however, when viewed as following from one of three basic strategies: (1) tapping with a subdivided pulse, (2) tapping with the fastest consistent pulse in the music (a pulse with no consistent subdivision), or (3) using a mixture of these two strategies based on inconsistent rhythmic activity at the musical surface. Music training correlated positively with the first of these strategies. Since individual listeners engage with musical meter in different ways, ambiguity of tactus should be an expected feature of any audience's response to metrical music.
Analyzing Performance
While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforwar... more While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforward in several respects, its duple hypermeter defies simple and consistent continuation. In what is often regarded as an idiosyncratic interpretation of the piece, Glenn Gould grapples with this complex hypermeter and offers a carefully considered and compelling analysis. Through a comparison with performances by Samuel Feinberg, Wanda Landowska, and with Carl Czerny's performance edition, we argue that Gould reveals new tensions and structures within Bach’s score.
If the average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that... more If the average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that he was an eccentric performer as well as an eccentric human being. He disliked most of the common practice piano repertoire, he abruptly left the concert stage in 1964-only nine years after his successful international debut in New York-and for the remainder of his career he maintained an active but extremely buffered public persona as a recording artist, radio producer, essayist, and critic. If one knows anything further about his eccentricities in performance, it is that he relished unusual tempi. In his late 1960s recording of Mozart's K. 331 Piano Sonata, for instance, Gould begins at such a slow rate (= ca. 60 bpm) that it may difficult for some listeners to feel a pulse at all. [2] Were we to listen to the entire movement, however, we would find that the main beat of each of this movement's variations is slightly faster than the previous. This plan, which Gould explicitly acknowledged, mirrors the piece's increasing amount of beat division and subdivision, creating increasing rhythmic activity with each subsequent variation. (1) The surface rhythms and the tempo of the main beat reinforce one another, propelling the listener from the theme through the final
If an average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that ... more If an average person knows anything about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82), it is that he was an eccentric performer as well as an eccentric human being; he disliked most of the common-practice piano repertoire, he abruptly left the concert stage in 1964 (nine years after his successful international debut in New York), and for the remainder of his career he maintained an active, but extremely buffered, public persona as a recording artist, radio producer, essayist, and critic. If one knows any-thing further about his eccentricities in performance, it is that he relished seemingly odd tempi. In his late 1960s recording of Mozart’s K. 331 Piano Sonata, for instance, Gould begins at such a slow rate (quarter note = ca. 60 bpm) that it may difficult for some lis-teners to feel a pulse at all (Example 1).
A student string quartet was coached to perform a set of seven excerpts twice, keeping the same t... more A student string quartet was coached to perform a set of seven excerpts twice, keeping the same tempo in each performance but attempting to express different beat levels. Study participants viewed and heard these videorecorded performances, and expressed their beat preference (referent level) via a tapping task. Based on tapped responses, the quartet’s intended beat level did influence participants’ choice of referent level in six of the seven excerpts. These findings correlated to the quartet members’ own judgment of their success or failure in expressing a given beat level. Although performance tempo may be the single most important factor for influencing referent level choice in a given piece, there are clearly combinations of metric structure and performance tempo that allow other performance decisions to play a role in communicating a musical beat.
Empirical Musicology Review, 2017
Fernando Benadon (2016) shines a strong objective light onto slight but noticeable timing perturb... more Fernando Benadon (2016) shines a strong objective light onto slight but noticeable timing perturbations in Afro-Cuban drumming practice, coining the term near-unisons to describe non-simultaneous attacks that are perceived as such, but that are also perceived to correspond to the same point on an abstract isochronous grid. I speculate that these data uncover an aspect of the music that will most likely be perceived qualitatively rather than quantitatively—an element of style rather than one of structure—but that the quantitative approach taken here is a crucial first step toward the stylistic analysis of genre-specific microtiming that is generally painted over with the broad brushes of participatory discrepancy or groove.
The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has alway... more The central role of the body in producing music is hardly debatable. Likewise, the body has always played at least an implicit role in music theory, but has only been raised as a factor in music analysis relatively recently. In this essay I present a brief update of the body in music analysis via case studies, situated in the disciplines of music theory and music cognition, broadly construed. This current trajectory is part of a broader shift away from the musical score as the sole focus for analysis, which admittedly—though, in my view, delightfully—raises a host of challenging epistemological questions surrounding the interaction of performer (production) and listener (perception). While the concomitant research methodologies and technologies may be unfamiliar to scholars trained in humanities disciplines, I advocate for a full embrace of these approaches, either by individual researchers or in the form of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 2014
Music often evokes spontaneous movements in listeners that are synchronized with the music, a phe... more Music often evokes spontaneous movements in listeners that are synchronized with the music, a phenomenon that has been characterized as being in "the groove." However, the musical factors that contribute to listeners' initiation of stimulus-coupled action remain unclear. Evidence suggests that newly appearing objects in auditory scenes orient listeners' attention, and that in multipart music, newly appearing instrument or voice parts can engage listeners' attention and elicit arousal. We posit that attentional engagement with music can influence listeners' spontaneous stimulus-coupled movement. Here, 2 experiments-involving participants with and without musical training-tested the effect of staggering instrument entrances across time and varying the number of concurrent instrument parts within novel multipart music on listeners' engagement with the music, as assessed by spontaneous sensorimotor behavior and self-reports. Experiment 1 assessed listeners&...
A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twi... more A student string quartet was coached by the author to perform a set of seven musical excerpts twice, keeping the same tempo in each performance but feeling and expressing a different main beat (tactus) in each performance. Two empirical studies were conducted to determine the degree to which the quartet’s intentions were communicated to study participants. In the initial study, participants viewed the full A/V performances and were asked to tap their dominant hand along with the main beat of the music. In a second study, the participants completed the same tapping task in response to either audio-only or video-only versions of the same performances. Finally, the audio and video of these performances were analyzed separately using the meter-finding computer model of Janata & Tomic (2008).
Overall, the quartet’s intention significantly influenced participants’ choice of tactus under the A/V and video-only conditions, but not under the audio-only conditions. Thus visual information is key to tactus communication even in an ostensibly sonic art form. In individual excerpts, however, aspects of metric structure appeared to constrain tactus choice, and objective visual and aural cues uncovered by computer analysis were not always matched by participant responses. Together, the results shed light on the extent to which this type of communication depends on the combination of tempo, a performance’s aural and visual components, and musical structure.
While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforwar... more While Bach’s Prelude in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (BWV 847) is straightforward in several respects, its duple hypermeter defies simple and consistent continuation. In what is often regarded as an idiosyncratic interpretation of the piece, Glenn Gould grapples with this complex hypermeter and offers a carefully considered and compelling analysis. Through a comparison with performances by Samuel Feinberg, Wanda Landowska, and with Carl Czerny's performance edition, we argue that Gould reveals new tensions and structures within Bach’s score.
Glenn Gould’s recording career is bookended by his 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Va... more Glenn Gould’s recording career is bookended by his 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Gould discussed these two performances at some length during interviews around the time of the 1981 release, and in these comments he expounded a loose theory of a “constant rhythmic reference point,” the organizing principle behind the time dimension of his 1981 recording. Gould maintained that this aspect of the latter recording made it superior to his earlier effort by giving unity to the set as a whole. Three excerpts from both recordings were included as part of an empirical study on tactus choice. To discover whether Gould was successful in communicating this unity to the average listener, these excerpts were taken from transitions between adjacent variations. While participants’ tactus choices across these transitions were not uniform in response to either recording, they were much less diverse in response to the 1981 performance. Further, participants’ tactus connections in response to the 1981 recording largely matched those that Gould explicitly sought to make. The results suggest individual and combined effects of Bach’s composed metric structure and Gould’s performance decisions relative to that structure, and indicate that Gould was (and is) able to control listeners’ perception of musical time via their tactus to a greater extent with his 1981 Goldberg Variations.