Book review of Expressiveness in Music Performance: Empirical Approaches across Styles and Cultures, D. Fabian, R. Timmers and E. Schubert (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2014. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 13/2 (2016), 335-340. (original) (raw)
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Expressiveness in music performance
Edited by Fabian, Timmers and Schubert. Oxford University Press 2014
What does it mean to be expressive in music performance in diverse historical and cultural domains? What are the means at the disposal of a performer in various time periods and musical practice conventions? And what are the conceptualisations of expression and the roles of performers that shape expressive performance? For the first time a wide variety of perspectives are assembled in one volume investigating expressiveness in performance in various styles and cultures, including in what ways the improvisations of Louis Armstrong, studio fashioned Electronic Dance music, and the songs of Bedzan Pygmies can be considered expressive. The volume is unique in combining historical, systematic, computational and phenomenological approaches to performance and in including empirical investigations of western and non-western classical music as well as western and non-western popular and folk music. The highlighted conceptualisations and materialisations of expressiveness in performance are as diverse as one would hope them to be. More awareness of and focus on oral traditions and player interaction is needed for performance research to break away from the dogma of notation. While this challenges existing methods, computational and empirical approaches are nevertheless not only crucial, but may become central to furthering our understanding of what makes music performance expressive. Keywords: expressivity, performance, traditions, computational methods, music history, contemporary culture, non-western cultures, empirical musicology, music psychology, philosophy.
Review of Expressiveness in music performance: Empirical approaches across styles and cultures
Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain, 2015
Dedicated to three of the founders of research on musical expression-Alf Gabrielsson, Bruno Repp, and John Rink-this book consists of 22 essays by 31 authors, both established and as yet lesser-known experts in their fields. The editors can all be described as empirical musicologists. Dorottya Fabian, wellknown for her research on performance practice, and Emery Schubert, who has published widely on music and emotion, are currently members of the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales in Australia; Renee Timmers is responsible for the "Music Mind Machine" research center in the Music Department at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom). In addition to the two chapters of which they are coauthors, the editors contribute an Introduction and an Afterthought. Part 1, "Reception and Aesthetics of Western Classical Music Performance," concerns the expressive performance of music; Part 2, "Expressiveness Across Styles," the ways in which performance is perceived by audiences as expressive; and Part 3, "Models and Quantifications of Expressive Performance of Western-Classical Music," the methods whereby expressiveness and its perception are measurable. Finally, five authors not otherwise represented, all key contributors to the field, were invited to read the manuscript and reflect on the implications of the research discussed in each chapter and its findings for music studies, cognitive psychology, ethnomusicology, music performance research, and education, respectively; their short essays form Part 4, "Prospectives," with which the main part of the book concludes. Expressiveness is a slippery concept; it is therefore worth noting the definitions and delineations of expressiveness that authors were asked to use. The term This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Cross-cultural Musical Expressiveness: Theory and the Empirical Programme
In sections I-VII of this chapter I outline the theoretical background for a research programme considering whether the expressiveness of a culture's music can be recognised by people from different musical cultures, that is, by people whose music is syntactically and structurally distinct from that of the target culture. In sections VIII-IX, I examine and assess the cross-cultural studies that have been undertaken by psychologists. Most of these studies are compromised by methodological inadequacies.
Appraisal or Arousal? Approaches to musical expression
This essay focuses on a particular question in music philosophy and music psychology: Is music’s expressivity a result of judgements we make concerning features of the music or its propensity to arouse emotion in the listener? Whilst concentrating on the way music philosophers approach this question, I will attempt, where appropriate, to situate certain philosophical theories in the context of empirical findings.
Do performers feel sad when they perform a sad piece of music, or do they perform sadness? Not much is known about the relationship between felt and performed emotions in musicians. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between performers' experienced emotions and the construction of an expressive performance. Eight performers completed an introductory interview, a monitoring period during which they filled out a Diary, and an in-depth interview based on the Diary. Four phases in the construction process of an expressive performance were identified. In Phase 1, performers focused on perceived and felt emotions. In Phase 2, practice-related emotions prevailed. In Phase 3, music-related emotions came to the fore. As learning proceeded, 'feeling' the musical emotions transformed into 'knowing what to do' to convey them. In Phase 4, performers focused on felt emotions again. These findings provide insight into an under-studied aspect of music performance as a creative practice. 1
An expressive approach to affect in musical experience
Annals of Cultural Psychology, 2018
My goal in this chapter is to explore the role of affect in musical phenomena. Although our emotional involvement in musical experience is well documented and generally taken for granted, the specific role of affect remains unclear, and is fairly underspecified with respect to the semiotic process of music. We shall attempt here to sketch a global perspective on affect in the framework of an expressive approach to musical experience, which per se is irreducible to mere affectivity. Indeed, it is the acknowledgement of the phenomenon of expression, and more generally of expressivity, that makes it possible to grasp the reciprocal implication in lived experience of perceptual, affective, motivational, axiological, and social dimensions. Lacking an appropriate notion of expressivity, cognitive theories proved unable to apprehend the functional unity of these dimensions of experience, and could only view them as a series of disparate phenomena.
Techniques of Expressivity in Music Performance
Cuadernos de Investigación Musical, 10 (2020), 120-129
Historically all performers had had the same difficulties in ‘making music’ because there is an innate variable in the act of performing: the expression. What do the performers do? The most basic requirement is that a performer should produce the correct notes, rhythms, dynamics, etc. of a musical idea’ (Clarke, 2002, p. 59). In this sense, we may define the interpretation as a mechanical process; nevertheless, an interpretation without expression is not musical. Thus, Erick Clarke clarified that it was also necessary ‘to go beyond’ due to the expert performers are obliged to transmit a musical idea and recreate expressively the score. This statement could be controlled and measured because, in an interpretation, one may observe whether the performer had played the exact musical symbols of the score or not, but the issue is more subjective when we value expressivity. Hence, it is not surprising that the psychology of performance has focused on the question of interpretation and expression with a substantial amount of research such as the GERMS Model (Juslin, 2003). Overall, it is hoped that this approach proposed here may contribute to a greater understanding of learning and teaching expressive skills in music performance.