[studies In Musical Performance As Creative Practice] John Rink, Helena Gaunt, Aaron Williamon - Musicians In The Making_ Pathways To Creative Performance (2017, Oxford University Press).pdf 6f1r2a

Musicians in the Making

Studies in Musical Performance as Creative Practice Series Editor John Rink Volume 1 Musicians in the Making: Pathways to Creative Performance Edited by John Rink, Helena Gaunt and Aaron Williamon Volume 2 Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music Edited by Eric F. Clarke and Mark Doffman Volume 3 Music and Shape Edited by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and Helen M. Prior Volume 4 Global Perspectives on Orchestras: Collective Creativity and Social Agency Edited by Tina K. Ramnarine Volume 5 Music as Creative Practice Nicholas Cook

STUDIES IN MUSICAL PERFORMANCE AS CREATIVE PRACTICE About the series Until recently, the notion of musical creativity was tied to composers and the works they produced, which later generations were taught to revere and to reproduce in performance. But the last few decades have witnessed a fundamental reassessment of the assumptions and values underlying musical and musicological thought and practice, thanks in part to the rise of musical performance studies. The five volumes in the series Studies in Musical Performance as Creative Practice embrace and expand the new understanding that has emerged. Internationally prominent researchers, performers, composers, music teachers and others explore a broad spectrum of topics including the creativity embodied in and projected through performance, how performances take shape over time, and how the understanding of musical performance as a creative practice varies across different global contexts, idioms and performance conditions. The series celebrates the diversity of musical performance studies, which has led to a rich and increasingly important literature while also providing the potential for further engagement and exploration in the future. These books have their origins in the work of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (www.cmp.ac.uk), which conducted an ambitious research programme from 2009 to 2014 focused on live musical performance and creative music-making. The Centre’s close interactions with musicians across a range of traditions and at varying levels of expertise ensured the musical vitality and viability of its activities and outputs. Studies in Musical Performance as Creative Practice was itself broadly conceived, and the five volumes encom a wealth of highly topical material. Musicians in the Making explores the creative development of musicians in formal and informal learning contexts, and it argues that creative learning is a complex, lifelong process. Distributed Creativity explores the ways in which collaboration and improvisation enable and constrain creative processes in contemporary music, focusing on the activities of composers, performers and improvisers. Music and Shape reveals why a spatial, gestural construct is so invaluable to work in sound, helping musicians in many genres to rehearse, teach and think about what they do. Global Perspectives on Orchestras considers large orchestral ensembles in diverse historical, intercultural and postcolonial contexts; in doing so, it generates enhanced appreciation of their creative, political and social dimensions. Finally, Music as Creative Practice describes music as a culture of the imagination and a real-time practice, and it reveals the critical insights that music affords into contemporary thinking about creativity.

Musicians in the Making PATHWAYS TO CREATIVE PERFORMANCE Edited by John Rink Helena Gaunt Aaron Williamon

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a ed trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Catag-in-Publication Data Names: Rink, John (John Scott) | Gaunt, Helena. | Williamon, Aaron. Title: Musicians in the making : pathways to creative performance / edited by John Rink, Helena Gaunt, Aaron Williamon. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017] | Series: Studies in musical performance as creative practice ; 1 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016039276 | ISBN 9780199346677 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780199346707 (oxford scholarly online) | ISBN 9780190657277 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Music—Performance—Psychological aspects. | Music—Instruction and study. Classification: LCC ML3838 .M98 2017 | DDC 781.4/3111—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039276 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

CONTENTS List of contributors ix List of illustrations xvii Preface xxi

JOHN RINK, HELENA GAUNT AND AARON WILLIAMON

Insight John Wallace: A musician’s journey 1

PART 1 Creative learning in context 1 Learning to perform: from ‘gifts’ and ‘talents’ to skills and creative engagement 7 JANE W. DAVIDSON AND GARY E. MHERSON

2 Apprenticeship and empowerment: the role of one-to-one lessons 28 HELENA GAUNT

3 Facilitating learning in small groups: interpersonal dynamics and task dimensions 57 ANDREA CREECH AND SUSAN HALLAM

4 The role and significance of masterclasses in creative learning 75 INGRID MARIA HANKEN

5 Evaluating progress and setting directions: examination and assessment 93 DON LEBLER AND SCOTT HARRISON

6 Informal learning and musical performance 108 TIM SMART AND LUCY GREEN

Insight Jane Manning: The creative voice in artistic performance 126 Insight Mine Doğantan-Dack: Expressive freedom in classical performance: insights from a pianist–researcher 131 Insight Ricardo Castro (with Helena Gaunt): Transformation through music 136

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PART 2 Creative processes 7 Performers in the practice room 143 KAREN WISE, MIRJAM JAMES AND JOHN RINK

8 Small ensembles in rehearsal 164 JANE GINSBORG

9 The creative work of large ensembles 186 STEPHEN COTTRELL

10 Learning in the spotlight: approaches to self-regulating and profiling performance 206 AARON WILLIAMON, TERRY CLARK AND MATS KÜSSNER

11 Incorporating improvisation into classical music performance 222 JUNIPER HILL

Insight Carlos Lopez-Real: Musical artistry and identity in balance 241 Insight Margaret Faultless: Ensemble music in the making: a matter of shared leadership 245 Insight Helen Reid: Making connections

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PART 3 Creative dialogue and reflection 12 Reflection and the classical musician: practice in cultural context 253 MARY HUNTER AND STEPHEN BROAD

13 Towards convergence: academic studies and the student performer 271 CELIA DUFFY AND JOE HARROP

14 Musical expression from conception to reception 288 DARLA CRISPIN AND STEFAN ÖSTERSJÖ

15 Dialogue and beyond: communication and interaction in ensemble performance 306 ELAINE KING AND ANTHONY GRITTEN

16 Responding to performers: listeners and audiences 322 SINÉAD O’NEILL AND JOHN SLOBODA

Insight Susanne van Els: On artistic adventures and connecting to audiences 341 Insight s-Marie Uitti: Beyond convention: listening to one’s inner voice 344 Insight Melvyn Tan (with John Rink): Learning to take time Notes 351 Index 361

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Stephen Broad is Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he pursues research interests across musicology, music education and practice-based research. His diverse publications reflect his wide research interests and include a translation of Olivier Messiaen’s early journalism (2012). Ricardo Castro is a Brazilian pianist and conductor. He is also the founder and director of an internationally acclaimed programme of youth orchestras, NEOJIBA, which was created in 2007. He was the first Latin American pianist to receive First Prize in the Leeds International Piano Competition, which he won in 1993. Castro is the only Brazilian Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society. He teaches at the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne, Switzerland. Terry Clark is Research Fellow in Performance Science at the Royal College of Music. His research interests include the assessment and development of performance skills and injury prevention for performing artists. Following a PhD in performance science at the RCM, he held postdoctoral appointments in dance science at Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance and in performing arts health in the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine. Stephen Cottrell is Professor of Music at City, University of London. His research interests encom three interrelated areas: ethnographic approaches to musicians and music-making, particularly within the western art music tradition; the study of musical instruments, especially the saxophone; and the study of musical performance. His publications include Professional Music-making in London (2004) and The Saxophone (2012). During a freelance career spanning nearly two decades he earned an international reputation as a saxophonist performing contemporary music, particularly as leader of the Delta Saxophone Quartet. Andrea Creech is Professeure en didactique instrumentale and Canada Research Chair in Music in Community at Université Laval. Following an international music performance career and then a PhD in Psychology in Education, she has published widely on musical development across the lifespan. She was co-investigator for the Music for Life Project and winner of the Royal Society for Public Health’s award for research in Arts and Health in 2014. She is a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is especially interested in ing professional development in instrumental and vocal teaching.

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Darla Crispin is Associate Professor in Musicology at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo. A Canadian pianist and scholar with a PhD in historical musicology from King’s College London, she specializes in the music of the Second Viennese School. Her work includes a collaborative volume with Kathleen Coessens and Anne Douglas, The Artistic Turn: A Manifesto (2009). She is currently working on a book entitled The Solo Piano Works of the Second Viennese School: Performance, Ethics and Understanding. Jane W. Davidson is Professor of Creative and Performing Arts (Music) at the University of Melbourne and Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her interests are in musical development, musical expression, voice, and music and wellbeing. She has published extensively and has secured a range of research grants in both Australia and the UK. She has also performed as a vocal soloist, has directed and devised music theatre pieces, and has choreographed dance works and operas. Mine Doğantan-Dack is a concert pianist and musicologist. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music (BM, MM) and received a PhD in music theory from Columbia University. She also holds a BA in philosophy. Her books include Mathis Lussy: A Pioneer in Studies of Expressive Performance (2002) and the edited volumes Recorded Music: Philosophical and Critical Reflections (2008) and Artistic Practice as Research in Music (2015). In 2008 she was awarded a professorship by the Turkish Ministry of Education. Celia Duffy was formerly part of the senior management of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she held institutional responsibilities including research and knowledge exchange and the implementation of a new undergraduate curriculum. As the first Head of Research at the Conservatoire, she led the team responsible for development of research, consultancy and knowledge exchange activities. She now works freelance, carries on with her research and chairs the board of Scotland’s leading contemporary music ensemble, Red Note. Margaret Faultless is a specialist in historical performance practice as both violinist and director. She has been concertmaster of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and a member of the London Haydn Quartet, and is co-leader of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She is Director of Performance at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Music, a bye-fellow of Girton College, and Musician in Residence at St John’s College. She is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music and Head of their Historical Performance Department.


Helena Gaunt is Vice Principal and Director of Guildhall Innovation at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she provides strategic leadership in academic development, research, enterprise and internationalization. An oboist and previously a member of Britten Sinfonia, she has published on one-toone tuition in conservatoires, orchestral musicians in the twenty-first century, and collaborative learning. Current interests include ensemble practices, creative entrepreneurship and the potential for the arts to contribute to education and development practices more widely. Following a successful career as a professional singer, Jane Ginsborg studied psychology with the Open University and gained her PhD at Keele University in 1999. She is now Professor of Music Psychology and Associate Director of Research at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK. Her research addresses aspects of musicians’ learning, expert performance and health. She is Managing Editor of Music Performance Research and was President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (2012–15). Lucy Green is Professor of Music Education at the UCL Institute of Education. Her research is in the sociology of music education, specializing in meaning, ideology, gender, popular music, informal learning and new pedagogies. She is the author of six books and numerous shorter works, has given keynotes in countries across the world, and serves on the editorial boards of thirteen journals. She created the ‘Informal Learning’ pathway within the ‘Musical Futures’ project and is currently taking this work forward into instrumental tuition. Anthony Gritten is Head of Undergraduate Programmes at the Royal Academy of Music. He has coedited two volumes on music and gesture and has published in visual artists’ catalogues and philosophy dictionaries, and on Stravinsky, Cage and Delius. His articles in the field of performance studies have discussed distraction, problem-solving, ethics, ergonomics and technology. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Organists. His performances have included several UK and Canadian premieres of Daniel Roth and complete cycles of Tunder, Buxtehude, Homilius, Mendelssohn and Brahms. Susan Hallam studied at the Royal Academy of Music before becoming Principal Second Violin in the BBC Midland Light Orchestra and Deputy Leader of Orchestra da Camera. Following further study in psychology leading to an MSc and a PhD, she became an academic. She is currently Emerita Professor of Education and Music Psychology at the UCL Institute of Education. Her research interests are learning and performance in music, issues relating to music education, and the wider impact of music on other skills.

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Ingrid Maria Hanken received her PhD in pedagogy from the University of Oslo. She is Emerita Professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she served as Vice Principal from 2006 to 2013. Her research interests are in higher music education with a special focus on quality enhancement, and she has given many presentations and published extensively on this subject. Scott Harrison is currently Director of Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. He has over twenty years of experience in the performance of opera and music theatre as both singer and musical director. He is a recipient of the Australian Award for University Teaching and a fellow of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. His recent grants and publications have focused on assessment in music, one-to-one pedagogy, higher degree education and musicians’ careers. Joe Harrop was among the first to graduate with a PhD from a British conservatoire. He has worked as a violinist and lecturer in the UK and New Zealand. With research specialisms in ensemble pedagogy and contemporary applications of rhetorical theory in music performance, he is the founding director of Sistema Aotearoa, a government-funded social development programme teaching over 300 children from low-income communities. Juniper Hill is an ethnomusicologist with interests in performance practice studies and music education. A recipient of Fulbright, Marie Curie and Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships, she is Professor and Chair in Ethnomusicology at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. Her specializations include improvisation, creativity, pedagogy, revival and intercultural exchange, on which topics she has conducted fieldwork in Finland, South Africa, the USA and Ecuador. Her books include The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival (2014) and Becoming Creative: Insights from Musicians in a Diverse World (in press). Mary Hunter is A. Leroy Greason Professor of Music at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She is the author of The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna (1999), and Mozart’s Operas: A Companion (2008), as well as two edited collections and many articles on eighteenth-century music. She is currently working on a project on the discourse of classical music performance. Mirjam James studied musicology, psychology and politics at the Technical University Berlin. After an MSc in music psychology at Keele University, she was awarded a PhD on audio-visual perception at TU Berlin. She has worked as an acting professor in Systematic Musicology at Bremen University and as a research associate in the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice, based at the University of Cambridge. She also founded the charity Music for Open Ears and is a cellist and a singer.


Elaine King (née Goodman) is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull, where she has been employed since 2000. She co-edited Music and Gesture (2006), New Perspectives on Music and Gesture (2011), Music and Familiarity (2013), and Music and Empathy (2017), and has published chapters and articles on aspects of ensemble performance, including rehearsal techniques, gestures and team roles. She is Associate Editor of Psychology of Music. She is an active cellist, pianist and conductor. Mats Küssner is Research Associate in the Department of Musicology and Media Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin. In 2014–15, he was Peter Sowerby Research Associate in Performance Science at the Royal College of Music. He completed his PhD under the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice at King’s College London, investigating embodied cross-modal mappings of sound and music. In 2013, he and Daniel Leech-Wilkinson co-edited a special issue of Empirical Musicology Review on ‘Music and Shape’. Don Lebler is an adjunct professor at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, where he has served in that institution’s directorate and led its innovative Popular Music degree programme. He has over fifty years’ experience as a drummer and programmer specializing in recording studio contexts. He is a recipient of an ALTC Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. His recent focus has been leadership of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching Assessment in Music project. Carlos Lopez-Real is a saxophonist, composer, improviser and educator. Since 2005 he has taught at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he is Programme Leader for the BA in Performance & Creative Enterprise and the PGCert in Performance Teaching, playing a key role in developing collaborative and transformative teaching and learning approaches. He has recorded and toured extensively, composed music for silent film, and curated several club venues, and in 2007 he founded the E17 Jazz Collective. His music is published by Spartan Press and Saxtet. Jane Manning OBE is known internationally as a singer of contemporary music. She has worked with many leading composers and conductors. She has been Visiting Professor at Mills College, and has taught at Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, Yale and Columbia. She has also published extensively. Her monograph Voicing Pierrot (2012) was short-listed for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. A third book, Vocal Repertoire for the 21st Century, is in preparation for OUP. She holds honorary doctorates from Durham, Keele, Kingston and York Universities.

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Gary E. Mherson is Ormond Professor and Director of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. His most important research examines the acquisition and development of musical competence, and the motivation to engage and participate in music from novice to expert levels. With a particular interest in the acquisition of visual, aural and creative performance skills, he has attempted to understand more precisely how music students become sufficiently motivated and self-regulated to achieve at the highest level. Sinéad O’Neill’s recent research investigates the responses and experiences of highly engaged audience at live opera. Her previous work includes exploration of site-specific opera performances and a dramaturgical analysis of Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s productions of Verdi’s Macbeth, which span seventy years. Her chapter in this volume was written as part of a postdoctoral fellowship with Creativeworks London at Queen Mary University of London. She is a trustee of English Touring Opera and the founder and director of Cambridge City Opera. Stefan Östersjö is a leading classical guitarist. He has recorded twenty CDs as a soloist, improviser and chamber musician and has toured Europe, the USA and Asia. As a soloist he has cooperated with conductors such as Lothar Zagrosek, Peter Eötvös, Mario Venzago and Andrew Manze. He received his doctorate in 2008 for a dissertation on interpretation and contemporary performance practice, and since then he has been engaged in artistic research at the Malmö Academy of Music and the Orpheus Institute. A former keyboard finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year and Royal Overseas League competitions, Helen Reid teaches at the University of Bristol and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She has given recitals in venues throughout England, including Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room. She has performed many concertos, including the world premiere of David Matthews’ Piano Concerto, which was written for her. She was an artist of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice. John Rink is Professor of Musical Performance Studies at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at St John’s College, Cambridge. He specializes in performance studies, theory and analysis, and nineteenth-century studies. He has produced seven books and has directed such projects as the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice, The Complete Chopin, Chopin’s First Editions Online and the Online Chopin Variorum Edition. He performs regularly as a pianist and lecture-recitalist.


John Sloboda is Research Professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he directs the Understanding Audiences research programme and is a contributing researcher to Creativeworks London. He is Emeritus Professor at Keele University and from 1974 to 2008 was based at Keele’s School of Psychology, where he directed the Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development. He is internationally known for his work on the psychology of music, ranging across listening and performing contexts. Tim Smart is a professional trombonist, with experience in a huge range of styles from contemporary classical and orchestral to musicals, salsa, ska and pop. Recent work includes playing for the West End musical The Book of Mormon and seminal British ska band The Specials. He holds a BMus (Hons) from the Royal Academy of Music and an MA in Music Education from the UCL Institute of Education, where he is currently studying for a PhD with Lucy Green. Melvyn Tan established his international reputation in the 1980s with pioneering performances on fortepiano, and he continues to cast fresh light on music conceived for the piano’s early and modern forms. Tan’s work as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist has been heard at many of the world’s leading concert halls and festivals. His large discography includes fortepiano recordings of concertos by Mozart and Beethoven and of Schubert’s Impromptus for EMI Classics, and releases on the Archiv, Deux-Elles, Harmonia Mundi, NMC, Onyx and Virgin Classics labels. s-Marie Uitti, composer and performer, pioneered a revolutionary dimension to the cello, transforming it into a polyphonic instrument by using two bows in the right hand. She tours as a soloist throughout the world and appears regularly in festivals and on radio and television. She has given lectures and masterclasses at most major European conservatories and many music schools in the USA. In 1997 she was named Regents Professor at the University of California San Diego and again in 2007 at UC Berkeley. She is the founder of the Bhutan Music Foundation. Susanne van Els has been active as a solo violist and chamber musician. She co-founded the Ives Ensemble and Sinfonietta Amsterdam, and from 1990 to 2009 she was the violist of the Schönberg Ensemble. She has premiered a large number of new works written for her, gave the Dutch premiere of Ligeti’s solo viola sonata and recorded it for harmonia mundi, and has performed in music theatre works. She was Head of Classical Music at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague before moving to Conservatorium Maastricht.

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John Wallace was a student at King’s College, Cambridge, prior to studying composition at the Royal Academy of Music and York University. A thirty-year performing career followed as a trumpet player with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia and the London Sinfonietta. In 1986 he formed a brass ensemble, The Wallace Collection. He also played many new concertos written for him, by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies among others. From 2002 to 2014 he was Principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He was made CBE in 2011. Aaron Williamon is Professor of Performance Science at the Royal College of Music and Director of the Centre for Performance Science, a partnership of the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London. His research focuses on skilled performance and applied scientific initiatives that inform music learning and teaching. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the UK’s Higher Education Academy, and in 2008 he was elected as an honorary member of the Royal College of Music. Karen Wise is Research Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and previously was a research associate at the University of Cambridge in the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMP). She studied at the University of York and as a singer at the Royal Northern College of Music, later attaining her PhD in psychology from Keele University. She has published on the psychology of singing (focusing on adult non-singers) and on creativity in performance.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Boxes 3.1

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A facilitator’s perspective, leading jazz students and professionals working together (from a personal communication invited by the authors from Shanti Jayasinha, freelance trumpeter, composer and educator, specializing in helping musicians from all backgrounds to ‘get into the groove’) 64 The facilitator’s perspective in a community opera context (from the chorus director of a community opera; Creech 2014) 66 A student perspective on chamber music coaching (from a year 4 undergraduate conservatoire student, via personal communication with the authors) 68

Figures 1.1

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1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 7.1

Differentiated model of musical giftedness and talent (adapted from Gagné 2009: 64; see also Mherson and Williamon 2016) 10 Mherson’s (1993) model of relationships between musical skills and conditions of study (with simplified arrows to demonstrate the strength of paths between the variables) 15 The Tripartite Model of Success (adapted from Burland and Davidson 2004: 241) 19 Stages for musical development (adapted from sports-related model by Abbott and Collins 2004) 24 The mentoring and coaching continuum (adapted from the School of Coaching and Linden Learning) 37 The dimensions of one-to-one lessons 46 Change in the significance of continua over time 47 Differing approaches of student and teacher to each continuum 49 Interactions between continua 50 Processes in forming one’s own interpretation and making it ‘your own’. The first-level themes represent reported practice strategies that operate as micro processes in of the macro processes expressed in the

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second-level themes, which in turn are incorporated in the overarching concept of ‘making it “your own”’. 151 Modelling Gunther Schuller’s implied relationships between musical score, conductor, ensemble and performance 192 A more equitable model of the relationship between musical score, conductor, ensemble and performance 193 A schematic diagram of the level of risk and contextual richness typically experienced in practice, rehearsal and performance, illustrating the experiential gap between those situations in which musicians learn and where they perform (adapted from Kneebone 2011; © Roger Kneebone, used by permission) 208 Example of a performance profile of (a) general musical skills and (b) specific artistic subskills. In each profile, black lines show the performers’ current skill levels (the ‘now’ state), and grey lines represent the performers’ ideal levels (the ‘ideal’ state), where 1 = very poor and 10 = skill mastery. Ultimately, each musician should identify general and specific skill sets that he or she considers essential for success in order to maximize the effectiveness of the individual performance profiling. 213 ‘Werktreue’ and ‘Virtuoso’ traditions (after Goehr [1998] 2004: 140–65) 292 A model of four main conceptual approaches to musical expression 295 Refining the expressive field for the musical work 301

Tables 2.1 3.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

Indicative sample of literature reviewed in the chapter relevant to specific dimensions of the framework 51 Practical strategies for facilitators 70 Participants 149 First-level themes and select participant comments 151 Characteristics of ‘two ways of working’ 152 Coding of utterances 172 Utterances in each practice and rehearsal session (by number and percentage) 173 Early-stage individual practice: goals and corresponding strategies and plans 177 Late-stage individual practice: goals and corresponding strategies and plans 177 First ensemble rehearsal: goals and corresponding strategies and plans 178

List of illustrations

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Last ensemble rehearsal: goals and corresponding strategies and plans 178 Idea units by category: goals (WQ1 = wind quintet; SQ1 = newly formed first-year string quartet; SQ3 = established third-year string quartet) 179 Idea units by category: strategies (WQ1 = wind quintet; SQ1 = newly formed first-year string quartet; SQ3 = established third-year string quartet) 180 Idea units by category: plans (WQ1 = wind quintet; SQ1 = newly formed first-year string quartet; SQ3 = established third-year string quartet) 180 Practice and rehearsal strategies rated highest by students 181 Definitions of key applied in the context of ensemble rehearsal and performance 307

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PREFACE This book has been in the making for over ten years. The volume was first conceived in December 2005, when John Rink designed a research project that would eventually take place under the aegis of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMP). The project—entitled ‘Creative learning and “original” music performance’—ran from 2011 to 2014, and its main aim was to investigate how the ‘creative voice’ of individual musicians develops over time, especially during late adolescence and early adulthood. Musicians in the Making was intended to be one of the principal outcomes of this study. Accordingly, several of the research questions at the heart of the project also informed the commissioning of this volume:

• • •

How can the knowledge and skill acquired in the teaching studio, practice room and classroom be used to maximum benefit in performance? What learning and teaching techniques are most conducive to transmitting the musical skills and knowledge required to sur the routine and predictable in musical performance? Should ‘creative performance’ necessarily be considered the main artistic goal for each and every performer?

Although such questions are both fascinating and important, it is far from easy to answer them. That is one reason we have produced this volume, which attempts to shed new light on musicians’ creative development. The constituent essays draw from and build upon past work on this topic, but the end result is unprecedented partly because of the distinctive aims of the volume and also because of the unusually collaborative approach that was taken during commissioning and as the material evolved. As the brief literature review that follows indicates, there are also differences from previous publications in of authorial perspective and the ‘tone’ of the material. Although richly informed by theory of various kinds, Musicians in the Making is not a predominantly theoretical study, nor, for that matter, is it a practical handbook, even though we hope that performers, music teachers and others will find it rewarding and enlightening in respect of practice, rehearsal and performance contexts alike. The three editors engaged a diverse authorship to investigate the manifold issues surrounding what we refer to as pathways to creative performance. To that end, twenty-nine contributors all told produced the book’s sixteen chapters,

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eleven of which are the result of collaboration between two or three people. In addition to the main chapters, the volume contains ten shorter ‘Insights’ written by practitioners, among them internationally prominent performers and performance teachers. Their articles, which are based on personal experiences across a broad musical spectrum and which tend to be more informal in character, are interspersed between the chapters, thereby generating not only an internal rhythm within the structure of the volume but also a dialogue between respective contributors. Such dialogue was started at the book development workshops in which the editorial team and many of the authors participated in April 2013 and January 2014. These sessions enabled contributors to outline initial responses to the briefs assigned to them by the editors, to compare notes with other authors and to define a set of common goals. The ensuing process involved unusually close interaction between the editors and individual authors or groups thereof. It is worth considering what the pathways to creative performance referred to in the book’s subtitle might entail. Musicians generally do not follow rigidly prescribed routes in developing as either amateur or professional performers, and even if they do so there is considerable scope for idiosyncrasy. In fact, the developmental ‘journey’ undertaken by each and every musician tends to be individually determined in respect of the location, nature and timing of the activities that contribute to it. Such journeys are usually anything but linear, and often they do not have fixed endpoints or even predetermined goals. Indeed, most if not all musicians are continually ‘in the making’: learning is an ongoing, lifelong process which involves not only oneself but the teachers, friends, family and listeners with whom one comes into along the way. It should be ed, of course, that the voices of these ‘others’ are often strong and pervasive, and while they can be instrumental in determining pathways to designated goals, musicians must also find sources of innovation from within, a challenge that can be daunting as well as inspiring, depending where one is along an individual developmental trajectory. In any case, the imperative to assess and reassess one’s musical insights and aspirations is a central feature of life as a performer, whether one is preparing a piece for the first time or performing it many times over, forging new partnerships or maintaining established ones, or addressing new challenges or persevering in familiar roles. Similar discussion of what ‘creative performance’ and creativity in general mean is also warranted here. The mystique of the artist as an intrinsically creative being has a long history, and even now a sense of awe can surround the work of performers among others. Seen from that (rather outmoded) perspective, creativity functions as an attribute within an individual, who may then transmit it into an artistic product. In recent years, however, this understanding of creativity has changed significantly, with a growing emphasis on its location within processes rather than understanding it as an innate quality. It follows

Preface

that creative processes may be learned and refined, and furthermore that collaboration and interaction within group contexts carry significant potential to inform and catalyse creative experiences and outcomes. A significant body of work from a practitioner perspective reflects on creativity and creative processes, including Green and Gallowey (1987) and Werner (1996). Such publications offer insights from experience and personal experiment, and many are compelling. Because they are framed in of self-help and based largely on anecdote, however, they often lack a systematic evidence base. Nevertheless, they share a focus on several important issues, among them the significance of enabling a musician’s creativity to inform and flow through processes of practising, rehearsing and performing; the holistic approach needed to achieve creative processes of this kind, ones which connect mind and body; the detrimental effects of an approach dominated by cerebral rather than embodied thinking; and/or the risk of overly self-critical inner dialogue and obsession with perfection resulting in the body seizing up, with a concomitant loss of flow and constraints on the musician’s ability to be present in the moment. With the exception of jazz improvisation, processes of creativity in musical performance have been little explored by researchers.1 From a research standpoint, the performance of western classical music seems to be viewed less in of the performer’s creative input and more as a matter of reproduction (see Cook 2001), whether of composers’ intentions or the dictates of given scores or performing traditions. Such constraints have the potential not to enhance but to hinder creative outcomes (Hennessey and Amabile 1988). Arguably, however, performers’ success also depends on their ability to produce something beyond the routine and predictable, at least in some contexts. As Lehmann, Sloboda and Woody have noted (2007b: 85), ‘it can become a matter of huge personal significance, even financial survival, that one way of playing a well-known repertoire piece is unique and recognisable as quite different from another way of playing it’. The development of an individual artistic voice in students is identified as a valued aim by some conservatoire teachers, although teachers sometimes believe that power imbalances in the one-to-one teaching relationship inhibit this development (Gaunt 2008). Furthermore, the pathways that students may take towards creative and original performance, however these may be defined, are not well understood. To date, when creativity has been considered in a musical context, it is mainly connected with improvisation or composition (e.g. see Deliège and Wiggins 2006, and Lehmann, Sloboda and Woody 2007a; cf. however Burnard 2012) and thus is defined in of fundamentally new musical material. Even though new material might not be generated within a performance from a preexisting score, however, the interpretation of the notated music in a way that is perceived as different, fresh or ‘inspired’ will reflect the creative skills of a performer (Lehmann et al. 2007b). In any case, the degree to which a product

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of any kind is recognized and evaluated as ‘creative’ depends on the values and judgements of the social and cultural system in which it was produced or is assessed (Boden 1994; Hennessey and Amabile 2010; Williamon et al. 2006). The problem for researchers is to define the broad term ‘creativity’ in a way that makes it amenable to investigation. One approach has been to delineate different components and determinants of creativity. A commonly used framework features the four categories of person, product, process and press (see e.g. Runco 2004), where ‘press’ concerns external influences such as cultural or social constraints (Glück, Ernst and Unger 2002; Hennessey and Amabile 1988), while ‘person’ refers to intra-individual factors such as self-efficacy (Beghetto and Kaufman 2007; Beghetto, Kaufman and Baxter 2011; Tierney and Farmer 2002, 2011) and intrinsic motivation (Amabile et al. 1994). With regard to product, researchers have delineated many types of creativity, depending on the level of novelty that a product or idea may have within a given culture. Boden (1992) distinguishes between historical creativity (‘h-creativity’), an idea that is totally new to a culture, and psychological creativity (‘p-creativity’), an idea which is new to the person in that moment. From a slightly different angle, Kaufmann (2003) distinguishes between ideas or products that are fundamentally new to a culture on the one hand (Big-C creativity) and those that are recognized as solving an everyday problem on the other (little-c creativity). With regard to the material presented in this volume, the ideas of p- and little-c creativity are clearly the more appropriate frames of reference for students, who by definition are still learning the cultural rules of their field and cannot be expected to produce outputs of culture-defining magnitude, which in any case could be identified only through a historical lens. However, less helpfully in respect of educational contexts, the focus of these varying definitions of creativity lies on the creative endpoint rather than on the means of achieving it. Recognizing this, Beghetto and Kaufman (2007) extended the notion of Big-C and little-c creativity by incorporating a developmental aspect. Their own concept refers to a creative process by which a person achieves new insights (see also Burnard 2012). Creative processes are by no means restricted to individuals: in recent years, research has also taken into the types of creativity achieved in collaboration with others. With regard to music, the main focus has been on improvisation in ensembles, but group creativity is also recognized as essential when interpreting notated music (Sawyer 2003, 2006). This reflects a more general approach in the wider literature that views creativity as a socially emergent phenomenon (Sawyer and DeZutter 2009). Teacher–student collaboration and the quality of interpersonal interactions in one-to-one lessons influence the achievements of young pupils (Creech and Hallam 2011) and must also be taken into for music students’ creative development. One arena which is essential to the evolution of pathways to creative performance in the development of professional practitioners is specialist

Preface

education and training in music. Research in the field of higher music education has grown considerably in recent years, but, perhaps surprisingly, here too creativity itself has been meagrely represented. Jørgensen’s (2009) comprehensive overview from a quality enhancement perspective devotes detailed discussion to the developmental processes offered in conservatoiretype contexts. It covers aspects of motivation; learning styles (including within the context of individual practising); reflective and metacognitive skills; teaching–learning relationships in one-to-one teaching and mentoring, group work and ensemble coaching; and assessment and processes. Creativity is barely mentioned, however, and when it is, the emphasis tends to be on issues of programming and selecting innovative repertoire to perform (see e.g. ibid.: 93). The Reflective Conservatoire (Odam and Bannan 2005)—an edited volume emerging from research studies and development projects in one specialist institution—tackles a creativity agenda more directly, considering ways in which specialist education embraces the potential of and tension between conserving musical traditions on the one hand and creating new work and performance practices on the other. In this context, improvisation becomes a central mechanism through which musical traditions may be explored by ‘playing’ with them, purposefully connecting individual performers’ musical instincts and imagination to the discipline of stylistic features of particular genres (see Dolan 2005 as well as Chapter 11 in this volume). Equally, interdisciplinary collaboration is shown to offer fruitful ground for innovation and the development of new work and insights (see Irwin, King and Parry 2005; Marwood, Boonham and Garland 2005). The social and interactive nature of the learning process in music is foregrounded in Gaunt and Westerlund’s (2013) edited volume, Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education. This is evidenced in of empirical research in relation to theoretical frameworks and through case studies of practice demonstrating ways in which teachers are evolving their work with students. In one of the constituent chapters, for example, Hakkarainen (2013) investigates the relationships between expertise development, collective creativity and shared knowledge practices in a range of discipline contexts, with consideration of the ways in which these may be applicable to music. The characteristics and possibilities for collaborative approaches in contexts ranging from interdisciplinary and intercultural projects to masterclasses, aural skills classes and one-to-one tuition are then explored. Overall, the potential of peer learning, communities of practice and a range of pedagogical strategies is more explicitly connected to creativity here than in Jørgensen’s (2009) book. Nevertheless, although creativity is broached in relation to innovation and generating new knowledge, including how this may be nurtured within the intersubjectivity of a one-to-one student–teacher relationship, as well as within networks dedicated to expertise development, the focus of Gaunt and Westerlund’s (2013) volume

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is on educational process, and performance itself and ongoing professional artistic practices receive less consideration. Educational process is also the overriding focus of the twenty-one chapters in Papageorgi and Welch’s Advanced Musical Performance (2014), which provides a wide range of material on the education and training of advanced musicians. The essays in this anthology consider learning and development among western classical, jazz, popular and folk musicians; they also explore the challenges of transitioning from educational environments into the music profession. Of the existing literature in this area, Papageorgi and Welch’s volume perhaps comes closest to Musicians in the Making, although one significant difference has to do with the predominantly educationalist perspective of the precursor volume—hence the statement in a recent review that Papageorgi and Welch’s book will be useful ‘for college and university curricular committees, teachers, and s responsible for the education and training of music students and future professional musicians’ (Woznicki 2015: 214). Nevertheless, areas of overlap do exist between Advanced Musical Performance and the present volume, concerning such issues as the learning and teaching of musical performance in higher education and beyond, ‘musical journeys and educational reflections’, and developing expertise and professionalism. Musicians in the Making itself is divided into three parts, focusing in turn on Creative learning in context (Part 1), Creative processes (Part 2) and Creative dialogue and reflection (Part 3). The first part investigates some of the qualities that inform the ways in which musicians employ and exploit creative processes, including intrapersonal and environmental catalysts (Chapter 1), empowerment (Chapter 2), interpersonal dynamics (Chapters 3 and 4), assessment and self-assessment (Chapter 5), and openness to new performance experiences (Chapter 6). Places and activities where such qualities are developed, refined and tested are then explored in Part 2, which in turn considers solo performers in the practice room (Chapter 7), small and large ensembles in rehearsal (Chapters 8 and 9), and diverse activities such as ‘self-regulated performing’ and improvisation (respectively Chapters 10 and 11). Finally, Part 3 looks at the types of dialogue and reflection in which musicians engage, whether in the context of culture in general (Chapter 12), through academic studies (Chapter 13), in respect of musical expression (Chapter 14), or through interactions with co-performers and audiences (respectively Chapters 15 and 16). As noted previously, the ten ‘Insights’ are relatively informal and accessible. Living up to their name, they offer pertinent observations about the individual authors’ experiences over many years of learning and, in some cases, relearning to perform. Apart from John Wallace’s ‘journey’, which serves as a springboard for the entire volume, the ‘Insights’ appear in groups of three at the end of each main part.

Preface

Although the list below is by no means exhaustive, some of the overarching conclusions to emerge from the successive chapters and ‘Insights’ in Musicians in the Making are that:

• •

•

•

• • • •

Creative learning is a lifelong process which tends to be complex and far from linear. The learning processes in which musicians engage involve convergences between thinking and doing, between musical and social aspects, between deliberate and nonconscious parts of learning, and between planned and spontaneous musical activities (e.g. formal and informal types of performance). Convergence also occurs between those involved in creative performance, namely in the relationships that develop between students and teachers, between performers and audiences, and among peers, including of course other performers. The fact that making music is an essentially social activity has implications both for the pathways to creative performance that individuals follow and for the communities of practice that may them. Creative performance involves and indeed requires a strong sense of identity—whether individual, collective or both. Creative processes engender risk, requiring individual musicians to move outside their ‘comfort zones’ into unknown, often unexpected territory. The fact that performance can take any number of forms requires consideration of where it is located, how it is motivated and fostered, and the meaning and value that derive from engaging in it. When investigating the processes undertaken or experienced by ‘musicians in the making’, it is important to determine who is doing the making—and how.

Despite the breadth of material on offer and the expertise and world-class excellence of the authorship, this volume ends up only scratching the surface of what the ‘making’ of musicians involves and of the creative pathways that they follow. This is by no means a shortcoming, however: it serves to indicate just how rich and complex the topic in question is. We nevertheless hope that the twenty-six essays here will add to the debate, shedding light on the theory and practice of music-making as well as on the art and science of performance more generally. It is pleasing to extend our gratitude to a number of individuals who have contributed to this project. Thanks are due first of all to the team at Oxford University Press, including Suzanne Ryan (who commissioned the book and significantly contributed to its conception and development), Adam Cohen,

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Andrew Maillet, Jessen O’Brien and Jamie Kim. Further credit is due to Cheryl Merritt and Thomas Finnegan for their expertise and input as the volume made its way through production. We also appreciate the contributions of Karen Wise and Mirjam James to the planning of the book, of the anonymous readers who made valuable comments on the proposal and the first draft alike, and of a number of colleagues at our respective institutions who offered suggestions as the material was taking shape or who assisted in the production of illustrative material. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the that the Arts and Humanities Research Council provided both directly and indirectly to CMP in general and to the ‘Creative learning’ project more specifically.

References Amabile, T. M., K. G. Hill, B. A. Hennessey and E. M. Tighe, 1994: ‘The Work Preference Inventory: assessing intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66/5: 950–67. Beghetto, R. A. and J. C. Kaufman, 2007: ‘Toward a broader conception of creativity: a case for “mini-c” creativity’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 1/2: 73–9. Beghetto, R. A., J. C. Kaufman and J. Baxter, 2011: ‘Answering the unexpected questions: exploring the relationship between students’ creative self-efficacy and teacher ratings of creativity’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 5/4: 342–9. Boden, M., 1992: ‘Understanding creativity’, Journal of Creative Behavior 26/3: 213–17. Boden, M., 1994: ‘What is creativity?’, in M. Boden, ed., Dimensions of Creativity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 75–117. Burnard, P., 2012: Musical Creativities in Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cook, N., 2001. ‘Between process and product: music and/as performance’, Music Theory Online, http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.01.7.2/mto.01.7.2.cook_frames.html (accessed 15 February 2017). Creech, A. and S. Hallam, 2011: ‘Learning a musical instrument: the influence of interpersonal interaction on outcomes for school-aged pupils’, Psychology of Music 39/1: 102. Deliège, I. and G. A. Wiggins, eds., 2006: Musical Creativity: Multidisciplinary Research in Theory and Practice (Hove: Psychology Press). Dolan, D., 2005: ‘Back to the future: towards the revival of extemporisation in classical music performance’, in G. Odam and N. Bannan, eds., The Reflective Conservatoire: Studies in Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 97–131. Gaunt, H., 2008: ‘One-to-one tuition in a conservatoire: the perceptions of instrumental and vocal teachers’, Psychology of Music 36/2: 215–45. Gaunt, H. and H. Westerlund, eds., 2013: Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Farnham: Ashgate). Glück, J., R. Ernst and F. Unger, 2002: ‘How creatives define creativity: definitions reflect different types of creativity’, Creativity Research Journal 14/1: 55–67. Green, B. and W. T. Gallowey, 1987: The Inner Game of Music (London: Pan).

Preface Hakkarainen, K., 2013: ‘Mapping the research ground: expertise, collective creativity and shared knowledge practices’, in H. Gaunt and H. Westerlund, eds., Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 13–26. Hennessey, B. A. and T. M. Amabile, 1988: ‘The conditions of creativity’, in R. J. Sternberg, ed., The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 11–38. Hennessey, B. A. and T. M. Amabile, 2010: ‘Creativity’, Annual Review of Psychology 61: 569–98. Irwin, M., M. King and N. Parry, 2005: ‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel: toward an industrial opera’, in G. Odam and N. Bannan, eds., The Reflective Conservatoire: Studies in Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 151–76. James, M., K. Wise and J. Rink, 2010: ‘Exploring creativity in musical performance through lesson observation with video-recall interviews’, Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis 47: 219–50. Jørgensen, H., 2009: Research into Higher Music Education: An Overview from a Quality Improvement Perspective (Oslo: Novus Press). Kaufmann, G., 2003: ‘What to measure? A new look at the concept of creativity’, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 47/3: 235–51. Lehmann, A. C., J. A. Sloboda and R. H. Woody, 2007a: ‘Composition and improvisation’, in A. C. Lehmann, J. A. Sloboda and R. H. Woody, eds., Psychology for Musicians: Understanding and Acquiring the Skills (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 127–44. Lehmann, A. C., J. A. Sloboda and R. H. Woody, 2007b: ‘Expression and interpretation’, in A. C. Lehmann, J. A. Sloboda and R. H. Woody, eds., Psychology for Musicians: Understanding and Acquiring the Skills (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 85–106. Marwood, A., M. Boonham and S. Garland, 2005: ‘Caprice: music and movement research and development project’, in G. Odam and N. Bannan, eds., The Reflective Conservatoire: Studies in Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 137–50. Odam, G. and N. Bannan, eds., 2005: The Reflective Conservatoire: Studies in Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate). Papageorgi, I. and G. Welch, eds., 2014: Advanced Musical Performance: Investigations in Higher Education Learning (Farnham: Ashgate). Runco, M. A., 2004: ‘Creativity’, Annual Review of Psychology 55: 657–87. Sawyer, R. K., 2003: Group Creativity: Music, Theater, Collaboration (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Sawyer, R. K., 2006: ‘Group creativity: musical performance and collaboration’, Psychology of Music 34/2: 148–65. Sawyer, R. K. and S. DeZutter, ‘Distributed creativity: how collective creations emerge from collaboration’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 3/2: 81–92. Tierney, P. and S. M. Farmer, 2002: ‘Creative self-efficacy: its potential antecedents and relationship to creative performance’, Academy of Management Journal 45/6: 1137–48. Tierney, P. and S. M. Farmer, 2011: ‘Creative self-efficacy development and creative performance over time’, Journal of Applied Psychology 96/2: 277–93. Werner, K., 1996: Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within (New Albany, IN: Jamey Aebersold Jazz).

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Preface Williamon, A., S. Thompson, T. Lisboa and C. Wiffen, 2006: ‘Creativity, originality, and value in music performance’, in I. Deliège and G. A. Wiggins, eds., Musical Creativity: Multidisciplinary Research in Theory and Practice (Hove: Psychology Press), pp. 161–80. Woznicki, L., 2015: Review of Papageorgi and Welch (2014), Music Reference Services Quarterly 18/3–4: 212–14.

Insight

A musician’s journey John Wallace

I am still a musician in the making. I the day learning musical performance started for me, when I was seven. Dad brought me home a cornet from the band. Pete Michie the ragman used to come round the housing scheme on his pony and trap, blowing his bugle to attract trade. I imitated him: toot-e-roote-root! Aural transmission in the raw. But when my dad came home from work, informal clashed with formal. He soon set me straight, showing me there was a right way as well as a wrong way. I then ed the Tullis Russell Mills Junior Band and, along with forty other kids, played music like the Balfegar March in big group lessons. The solo cornetist, Geordie Baxter, took the Juniors and used to go red in the face with his ion for music. We loved him, but he scared us too. Later on I went to the Band at the TR paper mill in Cadham two nights a week. I played rugby and football and hockey, ran the mile, threw the discus and did cross-country; even these activities were like music to me—all part of the big performance. Pulsating Weber threw me through the finishing tape. Music creates pulse, pulse creates tempo, and tempo motivates time. At that age, my time seemed limitless and brimmed over with school, sport and musical performance. There were 1,600 kids in our school. In my first year we did Gluck’s Orfeo. Then we did Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, Smetana’s Bartered Bride and Bizet’s Carmen. This was an ordinary Fife state school where Mr Ritchie, the woodwork teacher, played the fiddle and made the sets with his classes; Mr Brown, the art teacher, led the orchestra, and his students designed and painted the sets; and Mr McGillvray, the commercial teacher, designed and constructed the costumes with his classes. It was an underground arts factory filled with a powerhouse of inspired individuals who were catalysed by the music teacher Albert Cochrane, who is himself still a musician in the making at the age of ninety. Most schools are full of people like this to this day—if only you can unlock their collective potentials through the unifying purpose of a ion for the arts, or indeed a ion for anything.

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My only regret was that by my secondary school years I’d become typecast as a trumpet player and had to play in the orchestra instead of singing a main part or being in the chorus on stage. When I was eight back at the mill, I’d graduated from the Juniors to the Senior Band. I performed in my first brass band contest in the Usher Hall that year, playing Wuthering Heights in short pants on third cornet sitting next to Jock Campbell, who was sixty-five. In a band you learn by osmosis. You play music like you play sport. Brass bands stimulate a child’s natural competitiveness. I started on bottom third cornet, and by the age of ten I had graduated to top cornet, sitting next to John Miller, almost the same age as me and now Head of Brass at the Royal Northern College of Music. My two uncles, Dave and Charlie, played bass in the band, and my dad the horn. My mum kept her made-in-Czechoslovakia Stradivarius under the bed and played Scots songs on it. My granddad sang 104 ballads with all the verses. Music suffused everything: it was part of our family, it pulsated through the veins of our community. It wasn’t a polite, civilising add-on: it was the glue of society. It held us together. That’s where I came from, and that’s what made me who I am. This musician is a product of an instinctive, informal learning community of closely interacting humans with asymmetric age groupings. My early experiences of the effectiveness of multiplicity—playing the piano, the viola and the cello, and composing and conducting the choir and orchestra at school as well as playing the trumpet—added to the kaleidoscope of subjects that were thrown at me. This showed that, for me at least, diversity wins over convergence. Think of all those hundreds of millions of neurons languishing for lack of stimulus. Humans are essentially multitrack: it takes more than one furrow to plough the field of your life. And to be self-reliant, you cannot be a one-trick pony. I needed that self-reliance later in life. I went on to become a self-employed trumpet player working all over as a jobbing musician and doing everything under the sun. Eventually I gained a full-time salaried position in Glasgow at the age of fifty-two—and I learned that it is more challenging for a musician to work for an institution than it is to work for oneself. Salaries suck self-invention dry. Self-employment can give you better personal rewards and the consequent self-determination, as well as much more personally satisfying music-making. Now my job is to work for everybody else—and I make work and playmake in one of the most amazing working environments in the UK—that of one of our conservatoires.1 Making work and play-making in a conservatoire like Scotland’s means being surrounded by musicians, actors, dancers, technical designers, scenic artists and film makers every day, at every age and stage. Immersion in a conservatoire reminds me of the society I grew up in. We weave an artistic web that helps form the essential fabric of the UK and helps to differentiate us from the other seven billion people on the planet. I suppose you could say that my life in music—developing and refining my individual voice over time, and learning musical performance through

Insight: John Wallace

interaction with all sorts of inspiring human beings—has made me socially mobile, taking me from my beginnings in the working class to an artistically aware section of the middle classes. However, I find the concept of social mobility confusing and irrelevant. Where are we supposed to travel to? When forced to dwell on my own trajectory as a musician, looking over the horizon at what remains of my third age, I would dearly love to finish my journey in an informally formal learning environment similar to the one where I started learning musical performance all those years ago. Whether or not this ends up being possible depends on where the pathways ahead happen to take me.

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PART 1

Creative learning in context

1

Learning to perform FROM ‘GIFTS’ AND ‘TALENTS’ TO SKILLS AND CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT

Jane W. Davidson and Gary E. Mherson

This chapter focuses on the catalysts evident in learners who from a casual or partial interaction with music, through to the highly committed and intensely focused engagement stereotypically associated with the highly successful young classical musician. These catalysts include material provisions, milieu and key individuals; also intrapersonal factors such as traits, personal awareness, motivation and volition. In order to contextualize the discussion, an initial exploration of such as ‘gifts’ and ‘talents’ highlights the way in which blanket concepts have tended to be overemphasized to for the acquisition of musical abilities, especially those that are achieved quickly and that lead to high-level accomplishment. This analysis reveals that many of the ideas generally held about musical ability have, in part, been entwined in our western social and cultural operational and belief systems, with ‘gifts’ and ‘talents’ being at best vague and often poorly defined concepts adopted to overcome shortcomings in theoretical and reflective insights. With these social and cultural preconceptions highlighted, case-study examples are used to outline some of the complex and detailed ways in which learners progress to high-level competency by acquiring and refining performance skills.

Defining giftedness and talent In western societies, music is often characterized by a stark contrast between a very small cohort of exceptionally able young musicians and the 7

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masses of youngsters who either dabble in or typically fail to learn music to any degree of competency. When critically examined, the logic behind this bipartite characterization proves to be culturally determined and intellectually flimsy. First, and significantly, in these contexts exposure to learning opportunities and engagement with music performance are known to be piecemeal and variably ed within social groups, so that where high achievement is observed, it is reported as being exceptional. Second, those who do achieve very high standards in early childhood (often referred to as musical prodigies) are always well introduced to and nurtured through their music learning (Davidson and Faulkner 2013). Thus, there are environmental catalysts contributing to the learning processes that are highly influential on progression. Historically, the discourse on giftedness and talent shows three distinct trends: a theological perspective, in which children who displayed special abilities were regarded as ‘heavenly’ or a gift from God; a metaphysical phase that emphasized individual aptitudes but which also fostered many myths such as the stereotyped ‘crazed genius’ portrayed in films even today; and finally a contemporary empirical approach that attempts to focus on domain-specific training, the interaction of genetic and environmental factors, educational measures and individual differences, and how these differ between cultures (Stoeger 2009). However, even in the current empirical phase of enquiry, the ‘gifted’ and ‘talented’ are often used interchangeably or inconsistently. This is found not only in research studies but even more vividly in descriptions from education agencies such as Ofsted (2009) in the UK, where the term ‘gifted’ is used to describe learners with high ability or potential in the academic subjects, and ‘talented’ for those with high ability or potential in the expressive or creative arts or sports. ‘Giftedness’ is used by other educational authorities to indicate excellence of a higher order than talent (e.g. Ross et al. 1993). Because these usages of the do not adequately explain the difference between human potential and actual achievement, they lead to confusion and a number of misunderstandings within the public and even by researchers. Another problem is that conceptions of the two are inevitably culture-specific. Shin´ichi Suzuki’s (1898–1998) Talent Education method for training young violinists and pianists, for instance, is based on the principle that all children can develop requisite musical skills provided they are exposed to the ‘right’ education (Suzuki 1983), thereby representing a way of thinking that is solidly based on Japanese societal values, in which hard work is often respected above achievement. Our preference is to differentiate between the ‘giftedness’ and ‘talent’ according to how they are most commonly used in educational systems around the world. In line with Gagné’s (2013) view, we prefer to distinguish between

Learning to perform

domains of ability (gifts) and fields of performance (talent). ‘Giftedness’ therefore can be used to describe individuals who are endowed with natural potential to achieve that is distinctly above average for their age group in one or more aptitude domains. These aptitudes are natural abilities that have a genetic origin and that appear and develop more or less spontaneously in every individual. The mix of these aptitudes explains the major proportion of differences between individuals when the surrounding environment and practice are roughly comparable. It is important to note, however, that aptitudes do not develop through maturation alone: environmental stimulation through practice and learning is obviously essential. In contrast, ‘talent’ can be used to describe someone who demonstrates superior performance (or superior skills) as a result of some type of systematic training in a specific field. With reference to music, this can include a range of competencies that encom defined talents such as performing, improvising, composing, arranging, analysis, appraising, conducting and teaching (Gagné 2013). Gifts and talents have been clearly defined and modelled in the work of Gagné (2013) and elaborated in respect of music by Mherson and Williamon (2016). This work presents a differentiated model of the various forms of gifts and musical talents, which offer explanations of underpinning catalysts that shape talent. Figure 1.1 shows the model and outlines the physical and mental resources utilized in music-making (referred to as ‘natural abilities’) and the various forms of musical competencies necessary for this activity. The model also offers an of the developmental processes and the environmental and intrapersonal catalysts required for musical learning. It seems, then, that according to this approach, all elements need to be stimulated if musical skill is to be attained. This stimulation will happen in a differentiated manner, sometimes occurring as the product of chance; the abilities and competencies of some individuals will place them in the top 10 per cent of a cohort where they can be specifically labelled (for those who choose to do this) ‘gifted’ or ‘talented’. The plethora of factors interacting to produce different abilities and competencies seems logical enough, but it leaves ‘giftedness’ and ‘talent’ as rather crucial constructs without detailed explanation of causation. Gagné’s concept of chance might be more successfully ed for in recent work by Davidson and Faulkner (2013) on syzygies, which is explored in this chapter as a different theoretical explanation of the factors that move individuals from basic skills acquisition and competency through to very high-level achievement. With Davidson and Faulkner’s explanation, we are able to develop the argument that pathways to such achievement comprise resourceful and inventive alignments for productive learning outcomes; in other words, there are creative and typically highly motivating routes to achievement.

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CHANCE (C)

ENVIRONMENTAL (E)

MENTAL

INTELLECTUAL (GI) General intelligence (’g’ factor) Fluid, crystallized reasoning Verbal, numerical, spatial (RADEX) Memory: procedural, declarative

CREATIVE (GC) Inventiveness (problem-solving) Imagination, originality (arts) Carroll’s ‘retrieval fluency’

SOCIAL (GS) Perceptiveness (manipulation) Interacting: social ease, tact Influence: persuasion, eloquence, leadership, courting, parenting

CATALYSTS

DOMAINS

MILIEU (EM) Physical, cultural, social, familial INDIVIDUALS (EI) Parents, family, peers, teachers, mentors PROVISIONS (EP) Enrichment: curriculum, pedagogy (pacing) istrative: grouping, acceleration

GOAL TRAITS MANAGEMENT

NATURAL ABILITIES GIFTS (G) = top 10%

COMPETENCIES TALENTS (T) = top 10% MUSICAL TALENTS

INTRAPERSONAL (I)

Performing

PHYSICAL (IF) Appearance, handicaps, health MENTAL (IP) Temperament, personality, resilience

Improvising Composing

AWARENESS (IW) Self and others; strengths and weaknesses MOTIVATION (IM) Values, needs, interests, ions VOLITION (IV) Autonomy, effort, perseverance

PERCEPTUAL (GP)

Arranging Analysing Appraising

Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, proprioception

PHYSICAL

DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS (D) MUSCULAR (GM) Power, speed, strength, endurance

MOTOR CONTROL (GR) Speed (reflexes), agility, coordination, balance

ACTIVITIES (DA) PROGRESS (DP) Access Stages Content Place Formal Turning points INVESTMENT (DI) Time Money Energy

Conducting Music teaching

FIGURE 1.1 Differentiated model of musical giftedness and talent (adapted from Gagné 2009: 64; see also Mherson and Williamon 2016)

Learning to perform

Social and family perceptions of musical potential and ability A key point in the discussion so far is that the acquisition of musical talent, particularly in western learning contexts, results from a great deal of hard work by successful musicians who have practised for significant amounts of time using broadly similar, systematic strategies that encourage learning. Growing research in neurology shows that all humans have the capacity to perceive and generate musical information, with a hard-wired impulse for music-like interaction apparent in infancy (see Hodges 2016; Malloch and Trevarthen 2009). Also, evidence abounds in many other social contexts that high achievement in music is the norm. Making a cultural shift from the western classical music context, there are myriad cultures in which children are encouraged from birth to engage with music. Often, if the cultural conditions permit, expectations can be created that result in high levels of achievement being acquired. The Venda of Limpopo Province in South Africa present a useful example of a cultural group for whom daily life involves creative musical experience and practice, and with musical performance skills being represented in all of society at a high level of competency (Emberly and Davidson 2011). In this specific context, some people are regarded as possessing more or less individual skill, and this perception is recognized as being based as much on their investment and specialization as it is on any natural ‘gifts’ which might have shaped their potential to achieve. For example, from a very young age, children can be seen imitating adults and experimenting with music and dance outside the typical adult ‘circle’ of activity, and it is when these efforts have generated enough focus and basic familiarity with the artistic form that children are then moved inside the ‘circle’. While all will learn and perform as a matter of course, some will experiment more and for longer, creating their own variants on songs and dances; thus their creative effort distinguishes them from their colleagues. Other examples of the complexity of this issue pervading western social contexts include cases where public conceptions of ‘gifted’ and ‘talented’ result in self-fulfilling prophecies of both success and failure. For instance, Borthwick and Davidson (2002) investigated a family within which there were very strong ‘scripts’ about resemblances in physical appearance, temperament and abilities between children, parents and grandparents. These ‘family scripts’ have been shown to have powerful influences over the ways in which families treat one another and also how individuals within those families progress (Byng-Hall 1996). In the case study presented by Borthwick and Davidson, one child was strongly identified as the musician and given a script that linked him at many levels to his professional musician father—same physique, temperament, facility to make music and intellectual connection to music—while another child said to resemble the maternal grandmother was given her ‘visual artist’ identity. In this case, the script worked negatively against the second child in his efforts to learn a musical instrument, for ‘it just was not in his make-up’. In other

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words, he was perceived by his parents as possessing no natural gift for music and certainly no musical talent. To take further the discussion above, we need to understand how musical competency is attained, focusing on the evidence that embraces mental and physical abilities, environmental and personal catalysts, and developmental processes that stimulate the acquisition of musical skills. Such a detailed and argued case must , of course, for what stimulus pushes the individual beyond the threshold of competency towards eventual high-level attainment— that special 10 per cent to which Gagné (2013) alludes.

Musical competencies and their emergence During the early 1990s, the current authors conducted separate research projects that focused specifically on the biographical factors contributing to the emergence of musical skills. Davidson and her colleagues worked in the UK with young learners of different backgrounds, ranging from those with minimum and unsuccessful learning experiences to those who were considered to display prodigious abilities (see Davidson, Howe and Sloboda 1997 for a summary). The study revealed that children who became highly successful musicians had extremely similar biographical profiles that were very different from those whose engagement with music either was casual or ended in a failure to learn. The biographical ‘musical success’ factors included reports of early spontaneous singing activity occurring six months before the rest of the children studied; four times the amount of practice accumulated compared with other groups of children in the study; rapid progress through examinations (music grades); highly distinctive and stimulating family dynamics, with sibling in the form of either role models or forms of rivalry that were positively framed by the learner; distinctive and very high levels of parental/ caregiver involvement in lessons and practice; and inspirational role models, especially teachers. Several interpretations of these conclusions require discussion. First, the finding that parents reported their musical children as singing a good six months earlier than their counterparts could be explained in a number of ways. One is that these infants were truly self-engaging in their early musicrelated creative activities and did sing sooner than their peers and siblings. Alternatively, the parents consciously engaged with these specific children earlier through music than they did with other children. Another possibility is that since the interviews undertaken were inevitably retrospective, the parents—in the light of their children’s current musical successes—reconstructed their memories of early musical engagement, recalling these high-achieving musician children as being more precocious in singing than their siblings. This last explanation, though possible, was controlled for when collecting data by asking

Learning to perform

parents to match perceptual qualitative judgements against factual events and to look for as much hard evidence as possible. Second, these children amassed four times the amount of formal practice (scales, technical exercises, etc.) compared with peers who either sustained a ing interest in music or had given up playing after a minimum of one year of formal study. This specific finding has stood up in the literature over a number of decades, with the quantities of practice discovered as being consistent with some of the data collected in other studies of professional musicians (see Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Römer 1993). The figures include a daily average of thirty minutes in the first year of learning, with an exponential growth so that by the age of twenty-one years, these competent musicians have achieved more than 10,000 hours of accumulated practice. This quantitative ‘fact’ has been somewhat over-represented in the literature, with the popular press translating it into ‘practice makes perfect’; nevertheless, this was a robust finding, suggesting that this high quantity of practice had a positive impact on development of skill for high achievement. Indeed, when examination achievements were correlated with quantities of practice, a startling result was revealed: all the cohorts studied (highachieving musicians as well as those who had given up) progressed through their examination grades at a rate that was proportional to the amount of practice they had done. For instance, a child in the high-achieving musician group might have attained Grade 1 in one year if the average practice was thirty minutes a day. A child in the ‘given up playing’ cohort might also have achieved Grade 1 but after six years of playing, yet the total number of minutes of accumulated practice would be identical to that of the participant in the high-achieving group. The parents/caregivers of the high-achieving group were also much more engaged in practice and lesson activities. These parents typically kept practice diaries with their children and attended lessons, taking notes and then assisting the child with his or her practice. None of the other participants had anything like this level of engagement or involvement. But note that the musical backgrounds of this cohort of children were no more extensive than those of the other children studied: rather, these parents seemed to invest more time and effort in their child’s music-making. Often, the parents would become involved in activities such as the school band committee or assist on music trips and so on. The overarching family dynamics were consistent within this high-achieving group and very different from those relevant to the other participants. Even where a sibling was teased or bullied by another sibling, such was employed by the successful music learner to advantage. Negative comments or threats were used as a positive reinforcement towards practice, providing a motivation to prove the sibling wrong. There were also families where all siblings were learning music, and this generated a ive dynamic. Indeed, in

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one successful family studied, the children had been given instruments so that classical piano trio and string quartet repertoire could be played between them. was also garnered from other people such as teachers, who were seen as major inspirations for what could be achieved. The most successful students had on average 2.5 teachers over the period between eight and eighteen years of age, whereas those who ceased playing often had a rapid succession of teachers. Those who persisted with their music learning typically reported their first teacher as being warm and ive, seeing their parental qualities of care and nurturance to be much more important and relevant than musical expertise. As the child’s skill and interest persisted, however, personal qualities were superseded by a need for musical expertise and for the teacher to stretch the student. In addition to teachers, famous musicians also presented role models, their masterclasses and summer schools having a huge influence on the learner’s motivation to continue. Overall, the work by Davidson et al. highlighted the importance of the establishment of specific quantities of practice, and the role of other people and environmental catalysts to stimulate and sustain engagement. These findings to some degree for the role of physical and mental skills in the development of control of the musical work; for the role of milieu, individuals and provisions; and for the activities and investments required to achieve the skills. But the picture remains incomplete, for the research did not deal with the considerable variation in individual attainment, which was generally attributed to categories such as ‘chance’, ‘gift’ or ‘talent’ as described in Figure 1.1. The work also concentrated on student responses rather than educational inputs, and it did not engage in any depth with the opportunities afforded by the environments in which the children developed. Mherson’s work in Australia focused on how children developed musical skill efficacy, and this helped to demystify the study of the educational content required for musical competencies to develop. Mherson noted that all children receiving instruction developed better music skills when their lessons included a balance between visual, aural and creative forms of performance, and that this served as a foundation for successful learners who were more ready to understand notation, cope with memorizing music, play by ear or improvise (Mherson 1995a, 1995b). From his analysis, Mherson was able to model young instrumentalists’ ability to perform music creatively (improvise), aurally (play from memory and by ear) and visually (perform rehearsed music, sight-read). Using path analysis, he demonstrated that the ability to improvise was strongly related to the skill of playing by ear, and sight-reading related to the ability to perform rehearsed music. In other words, it was being allowed to trial and develop skills that encouraged inventiveness, thus stirring the musical imagination and in turn contributing to the development of skills relevant to the performance of notated music. As shown in the simplified version of the path relationships depicted in Figure 1.2, the ability to play by ear was

Learning to perform

Length of study

Quality of study

Enriching activities

Sight-read

Early exposure

Play by ear

Play from memory

Perform rehearsed music

Improvise

Re-creative performance

Creative performance

FIGURE 1.2 Mherson’s (1993) model of relationships between musical skills and conditions of study (with simplified arrows to demonstrate the strength of paths between the variables)

strongly related to sight-reading, while both playing by ear and sight-reading were related to the student’s ability to play from memory. This interrelationship of skills was a new finding that challenged many commonly held beliefs, even though it provided empirical evidence for what many music educators had been advocating. For example, for years teachers had maintained that playing by ear was a distinct skill unrelated to sight-reading, but the investigations revealed that those learners who played by ear and improvised were also among the best sight-readers. The reverse was also often the case. In fact, having a strong aural representational map provided an obvious foundation on which to translate this skill to the symbolic written and reading forms of music. This principle is certainly common practice in learning to write language: we develop high-level skills in speech before we develop skills in reading and writing. Allied to this, and perhaps not surprisingly, those who had been exposed to musical experience primarily through visually oriented (notation-based) learning were typically weak at the aural elements of music. Figure 1.2 also shows the precursor input underpinning the ability to use auditory and visual representations. Mherson found that early exposure to music had a relationship with creative experience and that it assisted with enriching activities such as musical games and exercises. Also, the quality of the study was found to be a prerequisite to both sight-reading and playing

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by ear, with specific kinds of detailed work within the practice assisting in these musical capacities. Like Davidson and her colleagues, Mherson also found that the length of study had a direct impact on the capacity to perform rehearsed music and an indirect effect on the other four skills, thus demonstrating that enhanced performance resulted from a balance between the development of creative, aural and visual skills. Mherson’s work revealed a series of interlocking subskills necessary for the development of musical knowledge and that these were most likely to impact positively on the acquisition of various music performance skills if learned in a specific order. In addition to the technical aspects of music-making such as the capacity to sight-read or play by ear, musical performance expression—long regarded as a matter of individual artistry and as the defining ‘natural gift’ at the heart of the overarching ‘talent’ myth—is also a systematic skill. To play with expression, musicians require clear knowledge based on the rules of expressivity (which relates to specific musical structures). These rules need to be systematically applied by the student in order to communicate structural features. And while the rules are stable and can be systematically reproduced over time, some flexibility is required in the case of expertise whereby experts are able to hold back or exaggerate the expressive profile of a work to highlight different features. Indeed, data from informal learners rather than formally taught musicians revealed that several biographical and environmental conditions led to expressive skill development. For instance, Sloboda and Davidson (1996) saw in the biographies of a range of musicians the virtually limitless opportunities afforded to these individuals for trial and error and for positive reinforcement, used in order to develop their musico-emotional links. Their own studies of children coupled with detail from the biographies of high-achieving musicians revealed that had these individuals not strongly engaged with these musico-emotional aspects of playing, their efforts to practise might well have diminished. Those who succeeded in their musical learning found it engaging, motivating and personally rewarding. They commented that basic practice was often tedious and boring, but that ‘messing around’ and ‘having fun with the rules of music’ through imaginative play gave them access to very positive experiences. Further to experiencing music’s emotional affect as a positive motivation for learning, those students in the study by Davidson et al. who gave up music often found the routine and the hard work of practice overwhelming, especially as for them it offered no personal rewards. It seems that they had not developed a connection to the emotional features of musical structures and had not learned how to manipulate these to self-rewarding ends. Indeed, these students did not engage in the sort of playful music-making where trial and error were permissible and motivating to learning. Over the last fifteen years, music educators have begun to realize the value in these sorts of informal learning spaces for musical development (see Green 2002, 2008;

Learning to perform

Folkestad 2006; Chapter 6 in this volume). Referring again to the example from Venda culture, being immersed in an appropriate nonthreatening and cultural milieu seems crucial to giving value to the musical activity of the participants. Thus far, we have established that there are some appropriate and necessary pathways required for musical competencies to flourish. But the studies outlined above do not in themselves pinpoint what specifically enables learners to cross the threshold from casual engagement to deep involvement, or conversely from initial casual engagement to a disinterest in continuing to study music. In the sections that follow, we pursue this idea of the threshold for immersion, engagement and progression, drawing on data from our more recent work and on theoretical insights developed from emergent research on academic homework and on school and study activities.

Attaining the threshold for musical engagement Detailed insight into the threshold necessary to engage in and develop musical competencies was achieved by undertaking a fourteen-year study of students from their very first school experience of learning a musical instrument through to achievement as young adults (Mherson, Davidson and Faulkner 2012). Of the 157 participants interviewed as seven-year-olds, 88 per cent were still learning at the age of twelve and 82 per cent at the age of thirteen, with a dramatic reduction to 37 per cent by the age of sixteen and 23 per cent by the age of eighteen (see Evans 2009). Of the 23 per cent still playing, only one went on to study music at tertiary level, whereas another who studied graphic design also worked on developing musical performance, eventually winning a highly esteemed national classical music solo competition and achieving a casual contract in the brass section of a symphony orchestra. The remaining seventeen players were actively engaged in performance, ranging from casual playing of a keyboard for personal reasons through community bands and choirs to university orchestras. Inevitably, the authors lost with a proportion of the participants over the years, and although this left a gap in the data it is interesting that after eleven years of study, was retained with 66 per cent of the original sample, which is a good statistic for longitudinal work. Of those who had given up playing, all were highly engaged music listeners, making up live music audiences and being active music consumers; their general regrets about giving up tended to focus on not having sufficient motivation to prioritize music in their lives, even those who had persisted to significant levels of competence. Self-determination theory was a powerful framework drawn upon by the researchers in analysing the motivation of this cohort to persist and engage with music (see Mherson et al. 2012 for an overview; see also Evans 2009). By applying this theory, which focuses on the fulfilment of psychological needs

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and thus s for motivation to continue learning (see Deci and Ryan 2002), the researchers found that of those who played musical instruments and performed during their high school years and beyond, some were involved in as many as fourteen categories of musical engagement, clearly demonstrating that music occupied the bulk of the time spent by these learners in school and out-of-school activities, and that it provided significant opportunity for artistic expression. Importantly, all of these activities were closely associated with strong peer ties. These activities also ranked highly in of personal enjoyment, which relates strongly to the musico-emotional link proposed by Sloboda and Davidson. In fact, it became apparent that for those who were progressing well in their learning, the musical activity was used as a self-regulating mechanism as well as for external connection. Along with self-enjoyment and social focus, there was an emergent picture of increasing independence as learners persisted and progressed in of works selected to play and approaches to practice. The students engaged in learning also received tuition from teachers who might be described as less authoritarian and more facilitative, thus encouraging students to be more creative and increasingly independent and reflective in their learning. Overall, these emergent data offered a more finely grained view of how learning was being motivated and developed than in previous work (see Evans, Mherson and Davidson 2013). The close relationship to positive opportunity, self-concept and strong connection to others fitted well with Deci and Ryan’s (2002) notion of self-determination as a crucial element in learning. According to this theory, in order for learning to be motivating and sustaining, three main psychological needs must be met: competence, i.e. a need to be effective in one’s efforts; relatedness, i.e. a need to be integrated into a social group; and autonomy, i.e. a need to feel that activities are self-governed and of one’s own free will. The logic of this approach for music learning is evident: if the learner feels in personal control of the learning environment, then engagement, enjoyment, progress and satisfaction are likely outcomes. Data from the fourteen-year study confirmed that the fulfilment of psychological needs was critical, for when it did not occur, the students were most likely to give up their music learning, even when they had as much as eight to ten years of successful experience behind them. For example, students felt least competent, ‘related’ and autonomous at the point at which they quit their instrumental playing. This is ed by qualitative material collected from the participants, including the following statement: ‘I quit the trombone in year 8 because the music we were playing was not challenging and crap, along with the fact that I wasn’t noticed for my skill, didn’t have many friends doing it, and the instrument wasn’t used in the music I listened to at my leisure’ (Mherson et al. 2012: 88). This single example reveals that music-making was considered by the participant not only to be socially irrelevant but to have impeded his social life; furthermore, his ability was not valued. In the light of this negative

Learning to perform

experience, it is no wonder this participant ceased playing. The statement also indicates how powerful and affecting these memories of the learning context were at the point of giving up. Self-determination theory has strong resonances with the tripartite model of experience and beliefs for ongoing learning and success proposed by Burland and Davidson (2004), whose work revisited the original cohort studied by Davidson et al. Burland and Davidson undertook detailed qualitative interviews with students who had crossed the threshold from serious school-student involvement in music into tertiary education and beyond, with their careers as young adults being developed as elite musicians. An emergent thematic analysis of transcript data revealed material identical in concept to relatedness (referred to as ‘positive experience with others’; Burland and Davidson 2004: 241) and autonomy (Burland and Davidson’s description was ‘music as a determinant of self-concept’; ibid.: 241). Although the concept of competence was not paralleled in Burland and Davidson’s data, there might be a common core. The third part of their interlocking model (see Figure 1.3) is ‘methods of coping’. This refers to the fact that all of those who turned the corner in of developing an increasingly positive motivation and then succeeded in their performance were also able to cope with many of the challenges raised by such a lifestyle. In some respects, having a sense of competency might have enabled them to cope. For instance, one participant interviewed by Burland and Davidson explained that although he was a competent pianist in his mid-teens who was making some progress, he realized that in order to be more competitive and find a personally positive and empowering niche, it would be better to change to the harpsichord. Having made that strategic decision, he then began to cope with the specifics of the harpsichord as well as issues surrounding baroque performance practices, and he began to conduct from the keyboard. He explained: ‘I was [then] on my own as a harpsichordist, so I got to do everything, I got to play things, I got to organise groups… So, I made some huge mistakes, but I had

Methods of coping

Music as determinant of self-concept

FIGURE 1.3

Positive experiences with others and within institutions

The Tripartite Model of Success (adapted from Burland and Davidson 2004: 241)

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some great successes’ (2004: 237). The theories in general and the specific data here indicate that high-achieving musicians typically result from nurturance that satisfies their psychological needs by building self-confidence, autonomy and relatedness. Such motivation s and encourages the development of psychological resources that enable a musician to invest in the long hours of practice required to attain technical skill and that provide a foundation for the musico-emotional resources required to engage with musical expression. Further to these ideas, Davidson and Faulkner (2013) have adopted the concept of ‘syzygies’—a construct from astronomy—to develop a model of how the components of abilities (including physical characteristics, personality traits, general intelligence and domain-specific abilities), catalysts, developmental phases and competencies align. As shown above, Gagné (2009) has used the concept of chance as a means of ing for differences in experience and outcome. Syzygies is a more complex concept, exploring and ing for permutations of personal, social, cultural and other environmental factors that lead to the emergence of achievements. Davidson and Faulkner’s theory postulates how multiple features become interrelated products of the worlds we inhabit. They propose that these products create gravitational systems that pull individuals towards motivated and positive achievement, not just in a particular discipline on the whole but in a particular area within that discipline. Referring to the biographies of significant musical achievers, they demonstrate how key life events align to help these artists first acquire skills in childhood and then attain exceptional levels of achievement across the lifespan. Like selfdetermination theory, syzygies acknowledge the key role of autonomy as well as relatedness. Let us pursue the case for syzygies more fully by drawing on the examples cited by Davidson and Faulkner. One of them was the jazz trumpeter, band leader, singer, composer and arranger Louis Armstrong, who moved the boundaries of what was possible in his day. Despite his humble beginnings, a remarkable series of pathways opened up to him, thanks to alignments, competencies and opportunities that enmeshed. In brief, Louis accompanied a junk cart on its round as a very young child, using a cheap tin horn to call for rags and bones. He also had ample musical opportunity during his very early childhood, singing at street corners in a vocal quartet while begging for money. In this milieu he was exposed to the gatekeepers of New Orleans jazz. Another aligning factor was that at seven years of age, Louis was taken into the home of a Jewish family who gave him money to buy his first real instrument, and although this arrangement did not work out and he ended up in the Waifs’ Home for Boys, he was then nurtured by the institution’s music instructor. In early teenage years, after hanging out with various bands and experienced musicians in the back streets of New Orleans, Armstrong was taken into the Kid Ory Band, where he learned the fundamentals of his craft, trialling and experimenting. A next key marker of his performance and

Learning to perform

creativity occurred when he ed the famous Marable Band on the Mississippi paddle steamers, where he not only improved his abilities in improvisation but was also forced to learn to read music and develop his skills in scat-singing to relieve his sore, tired lips from the high-pressure trumpet solos that he was developing. This brief and somewhat cursory exploration of the meetings, reinforcements and ers in Armstrong’s complex early life begins to show how alignments bring creative depth, focus and concentration to skill development and motivation in order to continue engaging and learning. While the alignments will never be identical for any two individuals, this example reveals how different yet interconnected experiences of relatedness can manifest and then possibly amass to become a critical determinant in how as well as how much an individual will feel motivated to continue with his or her focused musical endeavours. The study of syzygies first became relevant to the current authors when investigating their cohort of students over fourteen years, in particular when undertaking detailed case studies of some who persisted with musical engagement into their twenties, but who engaged in very different ways (Mherson et al. 2012). With the capacity to take soundings at frequent intervals, it was possible to generate detailed insights into the musical lives of many students. One particularly noteworthy case was Tristram. While his school reports revealed him to be creative and conscientious, the playing itself evinced no special qualities in the earliest days. Success would not necessarily have been predicted. But the niche in which Tristram grew up was favourable: his mother was a primary school teacher, whose caring and structuring influence facilitated her son’s musical engagement. Added to this, his brother and sister played in the school concert band. There was a family script that ed all the children’s participation in music: the brother played trumpet and the sister learned the flute, and Tristram diversified the script even further by learning timpani. A move to high school, an inspiring school music programme and a ive teacher offered Tristram the opportunity to learn bassoon—a further development of the script. Tristram was flexible, often experimenting with music and finding new musical opportunity for himself. He was positively charged and motivated by his relatively quick progress on bassoon, which was regarded as a difficult first woodwind instrument. The alignment that led to his playing an unusual instrument, coupled with praise of Tristram’s interaction with it, motivated him to practise with alacrity. Besides the orchestral opportunities afforded by learning both timpani and bassoon, his excellent school music programme also allowed further musical diversification and growth in his reputation as a student who could play many instruments. These configurations led to musical skill development within appropriate social networks in which Tristram flourished as a collaborative musician. It seems that his temperament led him to these social contexts. Indeed, given his characteristic ‘give

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it a go’ attitude, it was unthinkable that he would refuse an opportunity to learn the vibraphone and the school jazz band. So, by thirteen years of age, Tristram had a rich and constantly developing identity as a highly creative musician within the school context. By sixteen, this scope had expanded even further, when he was also performing as a singer/actor in school musicals. His investment was considerable, and the rewards were the unfurling successes as a musical learner, collaborator and ensemble performer. Many syzygies contributed to Tristram’s musical development. His teachers were particularly influential. When reminiscing about them, he was able to tease out the skills that each person had helped him to develop. There was particular focus on the creativity and stimulating intellect as well as personal warmth of each person. His parents were extremely influential—his mother in the primary school context and his father as a jazz aficionado. Each parent offered expertise that contributed to Tristram’s emergent musical self. There was even some transference of experience in that Tristram’s mother was so stimulated by her son’s musical life that she retrained as a music specialist to work in the primary school context. Tristram continued successfully through to age seventeen, hitting many of the markers of musical achievement, but within a very short period of time he decided to study architecture at university and gradually gave up playing. There seemed to be two principal alignments that resulted in his ceasing to invest in his musical learning. The first was meeting a student four years his junior who was at a much higher level of musical expertise. The result was a critical appraisal of his situation: ‘It just seemed like, oh my god, this is … ok … you can do it, but I can’t… Why am I doing this? Am I really good enough to do this, particularly with the bassoon[?]’ (Mherson et al. 2012: 163). The second alignment had a strong connection to this first one. In order to achieve a very high standard of bassoon performance, he was advised that he would not be able to persist with jazz, improvisation and music-making; rather, he would have to invest in more repertoire-focused practice on the bassoon. This trade-off was one that Tristram was not prepared to make. He had attained the core skills for fluency, enjoyment and artistic expression, but was not willing to put in the work required to ‘stay there’ at a level sufficient to achieve ongoing professional status limited to one instrument. Indeed, he had always resisted formalized assessments in his music-making or committing to a single instrument or a single musical style.

Developmental phases of musical attainment and excellence The discussion throughout this chapter has highlighted the positive environmental and intrapersonal factors to the engagement and discipline required to achieve musical competencies while also reflecting the theoretical

Learning to perform

ideas offered in self-determination theory and syzygies. Work from sports psychology has characterized the key phases through which the learner’s behaviour and beliefs in the progression towards high achievement. Because many of the findings in sports literature are similar to those in music learning, the framework shown in Figure 1.4 was adapted for music to depict the pathway along which many students proceed in order to attain and sustain high levels of musical engagement and achievement (Mherson et al. 2012). Consonant with both the findings of Davidson et al. (1997) and Louis Armstrong’s early biography, the representation in Figure 1.4 reveals that sampling in the earliest years is vital to aligning intrapersonal with environmental factors. This creative opportunity present in all our data is not perhaps sufficiently emphasized in this model. Also, although the model refers to a positive family, we know from the case of Armstrong that this ‘family’ might be an assumed one, such as the Jewish people who fostered him. Additionally, in some instances it could be that the family need not use direct encouragement but simply must not impede the young learner’s progress. It seems, however, that encouragement in a nonthreatening and ive environment is crucial for subsequent engagement; this is borne out by the overarching research findings and is consistent with our brief case study of Tristram. Once this musical identity is formed, it seems that a specialization focus is required, where more and more specific, musically focused activities are encouraged within a context in which the music learning is positively endorsed. These focused activities include understanding and engaging music’s expressive structures and functions in an ongoing manner. With all of these alignments in place, the learner is able to proceed to a transitional stage where music starts to be prioritized. Recall, for example, that in the fourteen-year study, those individuals who persisted across the entire study period were often engaging in as many as fourteen musical activities a week. In other words, for these individuals music was the highest priority in their lives. Once these sampling and specialization stages are attained, it seems that the learner then moves into an investment stage. Data from our fourteen-year study reveal that this investment is not just for the learner, in that parents often make significant adjustments in their own lives to accommodate and the child’s growing interest and specialization. The most extreme case that we have reported is of a musical prodigy whose mother moved with her from Hong Kong to New York so that she could study at a prestigious music school (Mherson and Lehmann 2012). It was also commonly reported by Davidson et al. (1997) that the parents in the study ed the school band committee or took on other significant, lifechanging routines in order to accommodate their child’s learning. In the case of Armstrong, who did not have this specific parental , many role-model teachers were nevertheless active, and his own early life changed so rapidly that music-making offered the single mechanism through which his identity was expressed, enabling him to work with highly ive teacher/role-model

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GETTING THERE FIGURE 1.4

Maintains best performance focus Develops an effective system for dealing with increasing demand (e.g. performance stress, public performances)

Macro Transition:

Maintenance Stage

STAYING THERE

Stages for musical development (adapted from sports-related model by Abbott and Collins 2004)

Consistent level of musical performance

Macro Transition:

Parents make lifestyle changes to learning High-quality experiences and training Collaborative (student–teacher) decision-making

Musical expertise at professional level

Musical prioritization

Technical and musical development Family Recognition of talent and achievement Increasing musicspecific experience Involved with similarly minded peers Forming identity as a musician

Investment Stage

Macro Transition:

Musical identity formation

Participation opportunities Positive family and encouragement Caring music teacher Emphasis on fun leading to skill development

Specialization Stage

Macro Transition:

Sampling Stage

Learning to perform

figures. The learners themselves certainly reap the benefits of high-quality experiences, such as attending music camps or specialized masterclasses, touring with their regional youth orchestras, or, again, as Armstrong’s case reveals, working with professional musicians from early on in contexts where high-level investment in music is achieved. For us, this is the most critical of the transitions, given that the vast majority of children who learn instruments cease instruction before reaching this investment stage. Figure 1.4 also s for Tristram and other cases in the research data of students who despite every positive early and midstage experience and competency in performance give up after only a short period in the more elevated area of expert performance, where the desire to maintain skill seems to diminish rapidly. In Tristram’s case, the requisite singularity of focus seemed to elicit concern, robbing him of the enjoyment associated with improvisation. According to the model of Abbott and Collins (2004), it appears that a mechanism needs to be in place to sustain and develop the increasing demands brought by professional life, and if this is not present, the learner will cease, sometimes in a rather dramatic way. As pointed out by Burland and Davidson (2004), the extremely talented young professionals in their study were acutely aware of this and developed personal strategies to cope with a range of factors affecting their lives. In the framework of self-determination theory, as mentioned earlier, this might be regarded as being able to keep a focus on competency and be ever flexible to deal with new and emergent circumstances demanded by the context of professional engagement.

Our musical lives Throughout this chapter, evidence has been triangulated from biographical case studies and large-scale longitudinal studies of young learners proceeding from first learning through to adult professional expertise, in addition to a number of other studies undertaken with highly engaged music learners, including one of a musical prodigy. Theoretical models from educational and sports psychology have assisted in showing the specific factors that are required to offer appropriate catalysts and the sustaining of investment to follow a pathway necessary to achieve musical excellence. By using these conceptions and drawing on research findings across the past twenty-five years, it is only now that a comprehensive picture can frame some of the even more complex questions that researchers will need to address in the decades ahead. In particular, it is suggested that new insights would be obtained by explaining creative expression in of the gravitational pull of a number of other circumstances and characteristics within a syzygistic model (which typically is micro-personal, factoring in social alignments) of an individual’s musical development. While these micro routes to achieving excellence will

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always be highly personalized in any domain, it is evident from the data encountered in this chapter that several fundamental psychological and developmental needs must be satisfied and underpin macro-level music learning and progression. Increasingly, we realize through our research that the key to an enjoyable and fulfilling musical life lies in the degree to which an individual’s psychological needs are fulfilled at every stage of his or her learning. The fact that much can be done to meet these needs has significant implications for the refinement and updating of educational systems that could be employed to musical development.

References Abbott, A. and D. Collins, 2004: ‘Eliminating the dichotomy between theory and practice in talent identification and development: considering the role of psychology’, Journal of Sports Science 22/5: 395–408. Borthwick, S. J. and J. W. Davidson, 2002: ‘Developing a child’s identity as a musician: a family “script” perspective’, in R. A. R. MacDonald, D. J. Hargreaves and D. Miell, eds., Musical Identities (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 60–78. Burland, K. and J. Davidson, 2004: ‘Tracing a musical life transition’, in J. Davidson, ed., The Music Practitioner: Research for the Music Performer, Teacher and Listener (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 225–50. Byng-Hall, J., 1996: Rewriting Family Scripts: Improvisation and Systems Change (New York: Guilford Press). Davidson, J. W. and R. Faulkner, 2013: ‘Music in our lives: syzygistic influences for achievement in music’, in S. B. Kaufmann, ed., Beyond ‘Talent or Practice?’: The Multiple Determinants of Greatness (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 367–89. Davidson, J. W., M. J. A. Howe and J. A. Sloboda, 1997: ‘Environmental factors in the development of musical performance skill in the first twenty years of life’, in D. J. Hargreaves and A. C. North, eds., The Social Psychology of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 188–203. Deci, E. L. and R. M. Ryan, eds., 2002: Handbook of Self-Determination Research (Rochester: University of Rochester Press). Emberly, A. and J. W. Davidson, 2011: ‘From the kraal to the classroom: shifting musical arts practice from the community to the school with special reference to learning tshigombela in Limpopo, South Africa’, International Journal of Music Education 29/3: 265–82. Ericsson, K. A., R. T. Krampe and C. Tesch-Römer, 1993: ‘The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance’, Psychological Review 100: 363–406. Evans, P., 2009: ‘Psychological needs and social-cognitive influences on participation in music activities’ (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Evans, P., G. E. Mherson and J. W. Davidson, 2013: ‘The role of psychological needs in ceasing music and music learning activities’, Psychology of Music 41/5: 598–617. Folkestad, G., 2006: ‘Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning’, British Journal of Music Education 23/2: 135–45.

Learning to perform Gagné, F., 2009: ‘Building gifts into talents: detailed overview of the DMGT 2.0’, in B. MacFarlane and T. Stambaugh, eds., Leading Change in Gifted Education: The Festschrift of Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska (Waco, TX: Prufrock Press), pp. 61–80. Gagné, F., 2013: ‘The DMGT: changes within, beneath, and beyond’, Talent Development and Excellence 5: 5–19. Green, L., 2002: How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate). Green, L., 2008: Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy (Aldershot: Ashgate). Hodges, D., 2016: ‘The child musician’s brain’, in G. E. Mherson ed., The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 52–80. Malloch, S. and C. Trevarthen, eds., 2009: Communicative Musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mherson, G. E., 1993: ‘Factors and abilities influencing the development of visual, aural and creative performance skills in music and their educational implications’ (PhD dissertation, University of Sydney). Mherson, G. E., 1995a: ‘The assessment of musical performance: development and validation of five new measures’, Psychology of Music 23/2: 142–61. Mherson, G. E., 1995b: ‘Redefining the teaching of musical performance’, The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning 1/2: 56–64. Mherson, G. E. and A. Lehmann, 2012: ‘Exceptional musical abilities—child prodigies’, in G. E. Mherson and G. F. Welch, eds., 2012: The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 2, pp. 31–50. Mherson, G. E. and A. Williamon, 2016: ‘Building gifts into musical talents’, in G. E. Mherson, ed., The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 340–60. Mherson, G. E., J. W. Davidson and R. Faulkner, 2012: Music in Our Lives: Rethinking Musical Ability, Development and Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Office of Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), 2009: Gifted and Talented Pupils in Schools (Manchester: Ofsted). Ross, P. O. et al., 1993: National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent (Washington, DC: US Department of Education). Sloboda, J. A. and J. W. Davidson, 1996: ‘The young performing musician’, in I. Deliège and J. A. Sloboda, eds., Musical Beginnings: Origins and Development of Musical Competence (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 171–90. Stoeger, H., 2009: ‘The history of giftedness research’, in L. V. Shavinina, ed., International Handbook of Giftedness (New York: Springer), pp. 17–38. Suzuki, S., 1983: Nurtured by Love (New York: Smithtown).

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Apprenticeship and empowerment THE ROLE OF ONE-TO- ONE LESSONS

Helena Gaunt The making of a performing musician in the West is the result of events that transpire between student and teacher in the privacy of the studio lesson… Teachers are the musical agents, the models, the motivating forces for their students. —Campbell (1991: 276)

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The development of expertise in western classical music almost always involves one-to-one interactions between a student and a teacher. Such interactions are highly prized, both by students and by teachers, and often they are characterized in of apprenticeship. There are prevailing expectations that pathways to creative performance will be embedded within them. It is essential to recognize, however, that individual learning processes typically draw on a rich array of experiences from numerous contexts, and development emerges through the ability to integrate these effectively. Furthermore, the nature of learning environments varies across cultures and musical genres, and one-to-one lessons are by no means universal, however prevalent they are in the western classical sphere. In many aural traditions, for example, people learn predominantly within ensemble contexts and start to take responsibility for creative decisions at an early stage as an inevitable part of learning to sing and play alongside more experienced musicians (Schippers 2010). In the field of popular music, the power of collective creativity within informal group contexts is now well established (Green 2002; Lebler 2007; Westerlund 2006; see also Chapter 6 in this volume). Focusing mainly on western classical music, this chapter considers the ways in which one-to-one lessons creative pathways to performance and may be conceptualized to reflect these. It begins by considering the relationship between one-to-one lessons and creative performance for classical musicians, examining in particular historical traditions of apprenticeship and more contemporary understanding of socially constructed creative

Apprenticeship and empowerment

processes, including collaboration in professional duo partnerships. This discussion concludes by identifying the need to develop a multifaceted and nuanced conceptual framework for one-to-one lessons to reflect evolving practices in the twenty-first century. The chapter then considers two theories that may contribute to such a framework, in addition to reviewing the research literature on one-to-one lessons. Finally, based on this analysis, a provisional model for understanding the collaborative process in one-to-one lessons is proposed, designed both to illuminate and to the potential to develop creative pathways to performance.

Apprenticeship in music performance THE IMPERATIVE OF CREATIVE PERFORMANCE FOR PERFORMERS The significance and nature of creative performance as a central part of professional practice for western classical musicians have been hotly debated, not least within contexts of evolving discourses and practices of ‘authenticity’. At the same time, empirical research into musical creativity has tended to be preoccupied with the domain of composition (Deliège and Wiggins 2006; Lehmann, Sloboda and Woody 2007). More recently, attention has been given to the many ways in which musicians may be creative (Burnard 2012), and interest has grown in the nature of performance and how instrumentalists and singers develop their practices. For performers themselves, there is little question that establishing a sense of creative engagement with performance is vital to sustaining a fulfilling career, and that this is becoming increasingly important in contexts where, for example, the recording industry has contributed to growing expectations of flawless technique and to greater homogeneity in perceptions of what constitutes excellent sound quality. This need for creative engagement has plenty of historical resonance. In his treatise On Playing the Flute, Johann Joachim Quantz was adamant about the need for instrumentalists to develop the characteristics of a composer, which he described in of ‘a lively and fiery spirit, united with a soul capable of tender feeling; a good mixture, without too much melancholy, of what scholars call the temperaments; much imagination, inventiveness, judgement, and discernment; a good memory; a good and delicate ear; a sharp and quick eye; and a receptive mind that grasps everything quickly and easily’ (Quantz [1752] 1966: 13). In our own era, the pianist Imogen Cooper has similarly connected performing and composing. Going further than Quantz, she underlines musicians’ own need for catharsis through creative performance as well as for producing satisfying performances for listeners: I suggest that the need to compose and the need to perform publicly are intertwined in their energies. It stems from the language of music having

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a quite extraordinary power to pinpoint and localise both the numinous and the dark shadow areas of the human soul, and to give them voice. Such voicing brings wonder, pain, relief, performing a role that is quite uniquely cathartic. Great composers have needed catharses no less than any of us, to survive solitude, poverty, ill health, professional humiliation, social injustices… What was their solution, apart from drinking, smoking, opium, and whoring? They worked. They went inside themselves and plucked sounds from their imagination to string together into magic and moving chains, chains which told stories, the stories that were relevant to them, and in turn speak to us. So what do we performers do, all these years later, when we feel destabilised, alienated, disenfranchised, uprooted, and alone? We work. We go inside ourselves and pick up these chains which tell our story in turn… (Cooper 2013) Ronan O’Hora, pianist and pedagogue, has drawn attention to the importance of ‘inner suggestion and imagination’ for performers, and of creative performance being released through ‘essential humanity’, connecting ‘what is genuinely true and authentic with what is true and authentic in an audience’ (O’Hora 2013). These perspectives unanimously locate dimensions of creative performance at the heart of what it is to be a performer, and go further to identify striking qualities required to achieve success: energy, sharp faculties, intense emotions and readiness to become immersed in transformative experiences. In contemporary contexts, an important counterpart to musicians’ personal motivations in developing creative performance lies in prevailing trends where some conventions of performance are being challenged by falling audience numbers, and diversifying tastes in experiencing music are foregrounding concepts of reciprocal exchange and co-creation between artists and audiences (Kenyon 2012). These issues are inevitably having a significant impact on how performers develop their practice (see Chapter 16 in this volume). While performers in western classical cultures have tended to think about creative performance in of the relationship between musician and score, with more marginal attention given to the performance context itself (for example, managing particular characteristics of venues or audiences), contemporary practices increasingly invite more balanced relationships between performer, score, context and audience. Such developments offer the potential to strengthen connections between artists and audiences, not least, perhaps, between their respective creative processes as performers and listeners, in ways that may enhance their experience as active or even collaborative participants in performance. What kinds of role, then, do one-to-one lessons play in developing pathways to creative performance for emerging musicians? Pianist and pedagogue Boris Berman suggests that with advanced students ‘the teacher’s main role is to help them find their own musical voice’ (2000: 198). He goes on to distinguish between young artists’ performances ‘containing faithfully memorized


directives from the teacher’, and those where an artist has been able to ‘digest and absorb those suggestions and make them his own’ (ibid.: 200). In the developmental process Berman is adamantly against students adopting a ive approach to their teacher, desiring to be spoon-fed; instead, he advocates that ‘the student needs to offer the result of his creative work, thoughts, and ideas for me to be able to respond’ (ibid.: 200). From a historical perspective, Quantz was equally at pains to highlight the importance of curiosity and imagination driving development rather than simple mimicry and repetition, concluding: ‘Anyone who only cares to devote himself to music haphazardly, as to a trade rather than an art, will remain a lifelong bungler’ ([1752] 1966: 19). In a contemporary context, O’Hora emphasizes that his own creative process demands acute attention to the discovery of musical detail as well as to the broad sweep of a score: I was a good sight-reader. I was very good at covering my tracks and covering up, sort of faking. And I went to a teacher, a serious Russian teacher when I was about 14. And finally I sort of encountered someone who’d say, ‘Again, I can’t hear what you’re doing, it’s not clear, that rhythm is not even.’ And at first it was a real year or 18 months of going nowhere because I didn’t bother practising. I would try to frantically get something in order the night before. Of course he would know and that would be bad luck for me. And then … at some moment I perceived the beauty of the details… The thing is that even though I was scared of him that wasn’t enough to make me… [T]he lure of reading through operas was still bigger than actually sitting down… [I]t was only when I got a sense of the absolute beauty of inner detail and the sort of beauty of detail that can’t even be heard except in relation to something else… (2013) These perspectives underline a central challenge in the developmental process: navigating the relationships between detailed honing of stylistic expression and technique on the one hand, and personal expression, spontaneity and risk-taking on the other, while also pursuing and exploiting possibilities for co-creation and experimenting with audience interactions. A key question concerns the ways in which musical apprenticeship may facilitate the exploration and development of these relationships.

CRAFT APPRENTICESHIP AND CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION The concept of apprenticeship to a master craftsman in developing music performance has a long tradition dating back at least to the medieval troubadours. The establishment of musical guilds in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in larger European towns led to the formalization of apprenticeships, with musicians typically spending six years apprenticed in such a guild (Loges and Lawson 2012). Equally, many leading musicians, including J. S.

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Bach and W. A. Mozart, developed through long apprenticeships across both social and religious contexts, in some cases within their own family and with musical training integrated with other subjects. Such apprenticeship provided an environment for instruction, personal practice and performance in which the requisite attention could be paid to the subtle detail of the craft. It also created an environment in which the whole approach to being a musician could be absorbed, including underlying principles and values, habits of mind, and elements of daily practice. Polanyi (1962) has noted the many tacit dimensions of craft transmission, some not even explicitly known by the master, and the dynamics of students imitating the master and seeking approval that underpin apprenticeship. More recently, Berman has also highlighted complexity in the relationship, emphasizing the commitment required and noting that ‘a teacher is much more than a provider of useful tips. To learn what a teacher can give, a student must be ready to subscribe to the teacher’s Weltanschauung [i.e. world view], his general musical and aesthetic principles’ (2000: 199). Within contemporary theories of education, apprenticeship has tended to be perceived as a process close to direct transmission of knowledge, with less concern for and engagement in empowering personal agency. For example, in the field of instrumental tuition, Hallam (1998) proposed a series of possible models of one-to-one teaching, derived from Pratt (1992): engineering (delivering content), apprenticeship (modelling ways of being), developmental (cultivating the intellect), nurturing (facilitating personal agency) and social reform (seeking a better society). Hallam emphasized that these models represented stages along a continuum from a teacherdominated (engineering) approach to a much more student-centred or socially transformative approach. She suggested, however, that apprenticeship reflected the most common practices of instrumental teaching. This positioning crystallizes potential tension between notions of apprenticeship and personal agency, as well as signalling the possibility for student–teacher interactions to extend right across the continuum rather than being limited to a particular area. Furthermore, in the last decades, higher education in particular has increasingly emphasized the importance of personal agency, creativity and resilience for all graduating students in order to meet new challenges and rapidly changing professional landscapes. Key dimensions involved in developing these qualities include critical reflection, collaboration and self-regulation (Bologna Employability Working Group 2009; QAA 2013; Butcher et al. 2011). In the field of music performance, this has led to a broader understanding of education and the ways in which students may be adequately prepared for professional life. Such understanding has often been accompanied by the addition of professional skills courses alongside the main instrumental or vocal discipline (dominated by one-to-one lessons), usually involving a


mixture of collaborative performance work, reflection and academic engagement, and work-based opportunities linked to professional integration. These developments have promoted exploration of a wide range of pedagogical approaches, including collaborative learning and reflective practice, which previously had rarely featured in formal curricula. The relationship between these approaches and the interactions of one-to-one lessons, however, has been complex and at times controversial, with concerns raised about how students’ best interests can really be served. While a broad range of experiences and learning interactions is clearly invaluable in some respects, anxiety has been expressed that the profound craft of a musician may be compromised if one-to-one lessons are reduced as a result of introducing new elements within curricula, or if individual practice time devoted to craft development is diluted. These issues raise powerful questions about the traditional characterization of one-to-one lessons in of apprenticeship, and the developmental environment that is needed in contemporary contexts. What are the ways in which lessons may offer ‘potential for transformational rather than reproductive learning—learning that equips the learners with critical, creative and self-regulatory skills’ (Creech and Gaunt 2012: 707)? How can students and teachers effectively navigate the need for intense personal practice to develop detailed craft and, through this or in addition to it, also to open up pathways to creative performance?

One-to-one lessons: developing theory While instrumental tuition has traditionally been conceptualized predominantly in of apprenticeship in order to model established practices (Hallam 1998; Jørgensen 2000), some studies have begun to reexamine the concept, emphasizing a creative collaboration between participants more akin to a mentoring relationship (Barrett and Gromko 2007; L’Hommidieu 1992; Presland 2005), and as an environment able to stimulate a creative and reflective practice that s students in taking ownership of their artistic voice (Burt and Mills 2006; Gaunt 2008, 2010; Kennell 2002; Purser 2005; Schmidt 1989). These findings have some resonance with Gholson’s (1998) study of Dorothy DeLay’s violin teaching of advanced conservatoire students. Extending beyond a traditional framework of apprenticeship, Gholson emphasized the reciprocity of the relationship and characterized interactions in lessons as conversational and holistic rather than didactic. She identified five key features of DeLay’s teaching that contributed to this one-to-one context: high levels of functioning in both teacher and student, reciprocity through mutual , developmental cycles, a protective and nurturing context, and the benefit of the relationship to both participants.

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CREATIVE PROCESSES IN COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS: DUOS, SMALL GROUPS AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE In many ways, DeLay’s approaches to one-to-one student–teacher interactions align with insights from Vera John-Steiner’s work on creative collaborations in established duo partnerships across a range of disciplines in the arts. JohnSteiner charted common features of successful artistic partnerships, which included shared vision, mutual trust, a profound respect for each other’s work, and the ability to engage in creative and critical dialogue about it. She noted that A fierce belief in the work of one’s ‘significant other’ as well as a willingness to criticize it characterizes most s of artistic and intellectual partnerships. Whether the two people actually paint, write, or choreograph together, or are engaged in each other’s work less directly, their t commitment and the ability to sustain a generative dialogue are crucial to successful partnerships. (2000: 16) John-Steiner identified complementarity as a frequent characteristic of generative dialogue, with different artistic styles providing ‘revealing mirrors for each partner … [and] a deeper view, [in]to their knowledge of themselves’ (ibid.: 63). She also suggested that generative dialogue opens up new options for each partner in both solo and t work. This combines with the power of collaboration to facilitate shared risk, with both partners taking more risks than when alone (ibid.: 20); this allows them to become more expansive in their exploration and to give freer rein to their creativity. John-Steiner also stressed the integrative collaboration possible in artistic partnerships such as Braque and Picasso or Stravinsky and Balanchine. These partnerships transformed both the field of collaboration (for example, through the development of cubism) and the people involved in them. She went on to identify some of the fragility in such partnerships, emerging from the profound emotional needs of the artists and their interdependence in sustaining selfbelief. Trust, for example, has to be nurtured and renewed over time: ‘it cannot be taken for granted. It needs nourishing. It may require honest confrontations of problems between the partners and a willingness to adjust a relationship that has lost its original intensity’ (ibid.: 83). As for music, O’Hora talks about the essential importance of collaboration between performing colleagues and, particularly for the solo performer, internally with themselves. He thus gives some clues about the ways in which experiences of important partnerships may become internalized to inform an individual musician’s practice and to influence his or her approach to performance. For O’Hora, a particular aspect of this internal collaboration relates to inner perception and dialogue about the nature of making music and the place of expecting and embracing ‘mistakes’ as a natural part of the creative process:


the psychological act of preparation is different … without that psychologically ive sense of collaboration [when playing chamber music]… [A]nd that’s why it’s so important to learn to collaborate with yourself in every sense. … [A]s a solo pianist you play chamber music with yourself. You yourself in the same way as in chamber music… We’re all human and nobody likes to be seen to make a mistake … but you have to learn that you will make mistakes… I say to students, people are obsessed with wrong notes if the pitch is wrong. They’re not bothered if the articulation is wrong or the colour is wrong or the character is wrong. Our definition is so limited, because you know it’s the easiest thing to identify. But in fact, … once you realize the innumerable ways … how many wrong notes you play when the pitch is right, then it loosens you up … particularly pianists, because there’s a particular demand… [E]verything is equally hard to do really really well, but for pianists there’s that demand of being alone, you know, when you’re playing solo. And there’s no doubt about it—that is a particular psychological demand. (2013) Although the partnerships and intrapersonal experiences discussed by JohnSteiner and O’Hora take place between professional artists as peer collaborators, they offer insights into key dimensions of a creative process within a duo that may be, and arguably need to be, nurtured in student–teacher relationships in order to emerging musicians as they develop pathways to creative performance. Another feature highlighted in John-Steiner’s work is that these duo partnerships benefited from porosity and from being situated within wider professional and developmental communities. She drew parallels between duo and small-group collaborations and alluded to the significance of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998; see also Chapter 4 in this volume). In the wider field of theories of creativity, innovation and expertise development, much recent work has moved away from concepts of individual genius and creative process towards formulations of cooperation, collaboration and interaction in groups as a source (Hakkarainen 2013; Sawyer 2007; Tidd and Bessant 2009; Kotter 2012). Within this literature, some attention has been given to ensemble practices in the arts as important models of sophisticated collaboration that open up pathways to creativity and innovation and provide insights for work in other disciplines where innovation is an explicit aim. Examples of such models include studies of how jazz groups, chamber ensembles and orchestras work (Sawyer 2003; Bennis and Biederman 1997; MacDonald and Wilson 2005). These developments in understanding how musicians acquire skills in creating pathways to expression make a compelling case for deeper consideration of communities of practice and group processes within formal educational environments, integrated alongside one-to-one lessons. The significance of collective engagement and collaborative learning is increasingly being recognized

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(Gaunt and Westerlund 2013). Consequently, many conservatoires and specialist training institutions are currently exploring ways to locate one-to-one lessons more explicitly within a rich environment of ensemble work, interactions with a wide range of professionals and a ed community of peer learning.

FRAMEWORKS FOR CONCEPTUALIZING ONE-TO- ONE LESSONS Some of the qualities and features identified by John-Steiner as well as by Gholson and others have distinct similarities with formal frameworks of mentoring and coaching. These merit further consideration in relation to oneto-one lessons, although they have not tended to be closely associated with musical development. From a theoretical perspective, definitions of mentoring and coaching vary, and there are differences between these activities on the one hand and counselling, advising and instructing on the other. A key issue, however, is that mentoring and coaching often involve consideration of an individual’s long-term as well as short-term development. Rather than paying attention to an immediate challenge and the skills needed to meet this, the whole person is taken into . A mentor thinks about a mentee in a broad context, recognizing the interdependence of personal and professional development (Brockbank and McGill 2009; Megginson and Clutterbuck 2009), and aiming to ‘assist the learner to integrate as a fully functioning person within the society they inhabit’ (Garvey, Stokes and Megginson 2009: 21). Interestingly, O’Hora emphasizes his concern with how students are going to play in ten to fifteen years’ time as much as how they develop from week to week. Equally, he talks about a musician being a learner throughout his or her life, and the amount of time it takes to find one’s voice: ‘it is only at about forty that you sort of begin to feel comfortable in your own skin as a pianist’ (2013). Mentors and coaches typically prioritize the creation of an environment of trust as the basis of their work. Mentors, for example, then seek out commitment and active involvement from their mentee and are concerned to remove fear of failure by building the person’s confidence and experience of making his or her own decisions. Mentors have credibility and experience in their particular field and also the ability to be self-reflective and self-aware, transcending their own ego and working with a wide repertoire of language to frame appropriate questions and interventions (Renshaw 2009: 66). Both mentoring and coaching interactions tend to be characterized by layers of dialogue, and they can move fluidly between social exchange, discussion of specialist craft skills, transformative exploration of artistry, consideration of both professional direction and development of self-insight, strategic career planning, and integrative illumination of personal and professional identity. Critical to the methodology behind these levels and layers of dialogue is that there is a significant shift


from an approach of transmission or ‘telling’ a mentee to one of facilitating the mentee’s own thought process and discovery, with interactions underpinned by the mentor’s open and nonjudgemental approach, empathy and listening skills (Megginson and Clutterbuck 2009). This shift can be modelled in the form of the framework shown in Figure 2.1. This framework1 is resonant with Gholson’s (1998) study, for example, and it provides a powerful way to begin to consider a more multidimensional and sophisticated conceptualization of one-to-one lessons. A second framework that sheds light on a more developed concept of apprenticeship identifies three types of approach that a teacher may take: ‘gatekeeper’, ‘midwife’ and ‘fellow traveller’ (Jones 2005). This model particularly opens up the potential for multimode interactions that move between the three approaches, thus embracing both the transmission of expertise and collaborative enquiry. In each of the approaches, a different alignment is generated between the three elements of teacher, learner and subject material. These are described in detail in Chapter 3. Essential to this framework is that one approach is not privileged above the others as being more desirable or effective. Rather, each needs to be appropriately matched to context in order to learners’ development, and a teacher’s success depends on the ability to flex between the approaches.

Listening for facts, feelings and what are the key drivers and barriers

Giving advice and telling

Summarizing what you’ve heard and sharing meaning

Modelling and demonstrating

Noticing and offering

Making suggestions

Asking questions to prompt new ideas and insights

FIGURE 2.1 The mentoring and coaching continuum (adapted from the School of Coaching and Linden Learning)

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Empirical research into one-to-one lessons Drawing on these theoretical concepts to help illuminate one-to-one developmental interactions, the following sections examine insights from empirical research into one-to-one lessons in more detail.

PERSONALIZED LEARNING OF MUSICAL CRAFT Research studies have more or less universally acknowledged the significance of the personalized learning that is possible in one-to-one lessons, including the intensity of close personal interactions and the continuity that can be achieved through a sustained relationship over time (Gholson 1998; Barrett and Gromko 2007; Presland 2005; Burt and Mills 2006; Purser 2005; Heikinheimo 2009). This context provides scope for detailed musical and technical expertise to be developed and refined, almost as it were by physical and mental osmosis, through teacher modelling and description, students’ repeated attempts with from their teachers, shared exploration and so on. One-to-one lessons provide direct access for the student to the embodied and partly tacit expertise of the teacher. Persson (1996) drew particular attention to intuitive approaches to interpretation that are made possible; the importance of nonverbal communication between students and teachers has also begun to be explored (Kurkul 2007; Burwell 2011). Seeking to develop theory in relation to effective one-to-one tuition, Kennell (1992) proposed a framework based on Vygotsky’s zone of proximal learning, which identifies six specific strategies used by teachers in scaffolding students’ work: recruitment to a task, reduction of degrees of freedom, direction maintenance, marking critical features, frustration control and demonstration. Although the relationship between these elements and the development of creative performance was not explicitly discussed, Kennell’s work clearly draws attention to a sophisticated mixture of playing and talking that characterizes this context.

BALANCING VERBAL AND MUSICAL INTERACTIONS Various studies have sought to quantify aspects of playing and talking in oneto-one lessons, and the results largely indicate that students tend to do the playing while teachers do the talking (Karlsson and Juslin 2008; Duke, Pricket and Jellison 1998; Hepler 1986). A few studies have gone further by specifically analysing the degree of focus in verbal interactions on technique and musical expression; whereas two studies found that c. 50 per cent of the time was dedicated to technique (Laukka 2004; Young, Burwell and Pickup 2003), an even greater focus on technique was observed in three others (Karlsson and Juslin 2008; Zhukov 2008b; Koopman et al. 2007).


In an interview study of undergraduate musicians, Woody discovered that the majority (61 per cent) felt that their teachers taught expressivity verbally, while 39 per cent believed that their teachers approached it through modelling (Woody 2000). Not surprisingly, then, Mills and Smith (2003) found that instrumental teachers regarded key attributes of effective teachers to be a combination of technical and musical understanding, wide knowledge of repertoire, and for developing an individual voice. These aspects were also evident in a study examining conservatoire student perceptions of their own development (Gaunt et al. 2012). Participants had high expectations of teachers being excellent musicians, able to open their expertise to their students. As one wind player suggested, an ideal teacher was ‘someone who demonstrates well what they want me to do and learn, someone who advises and is a great musician’ (ibid.: 37). In Gaunt et al.’s study, some participants clearly perceived a predominantly linear progression to their development, pinpointing acquisition of technical skills before going on to focus on musical and professional aspects. One string player suggested: ‘I prefer to have a teacher who really understands how to play the instrument and the physics behind it as well. … I think the main thing is to really ground yourself with technique, and then maybe at postgrad level go more into the music and the inspiration into that…’ (ibid.: 37). In contrast, James, Wise and Rink (2010) noted a more reciprocal relationship between technique and creative interpretation, with evidence of technical progress liberating interpretative possibilities and, equally, a focus on creative interpretation helping to solve technical issues. Relatively little research has been done into the subtleties of language use within student–teacher interactions, including, for example, the influence of metaphor and narrative in developing creative pathways to performance. A tendency for vocal teachers to use more metaphors than instrumental teachers do has nevertheless been noted (Burwell 2006). Nerland and Hanken (2002) have also drawn attention to the ways in which teachers’ diverse use of language reflects their own cultural practices and approaches to being a musician, for example evidencing a more pragmatic approach or one deeply involved in developing personal and professional identity. Overall, these insights tell us little of direct relevance to pathways to creative performance, but they do confirm that the one-to-one context offers myriad possibilities: playing together, teacher modelling, student performance or experimental playing, shared exploration of new material, and so on.

LEARNING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS A number of studies have looked at the nature of the relationship between students and teachers in one-to-one tuition and at its impact on learning. Several

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types of relationship have been observed, all of them having a profound impact on how learning takes place (Koopman et al. 2007; Gaunt 2011). Collens and Creech (2013: 151) suggest that ‘The “meeting of minds” (Aron 1996) between teacher and student can be experienced as creative, collaborative, inspiring and filled with possibility for both participants. Equally, one-to-one tuition can develop into a site of interpersonal conflict and high anxiety where the relationship itself can become an obstruction to learning.’ A critical element concerns the degree of trust that builds between student and teacher, providing the foundation for a learning space in which a student is able to take risks (Presland 2005; Gaunt 2006; Perkins 2010). In a study of 263 UK violin teachers and their pupils aged eight to eighteen, Creech and Hallam (2010) measured the impact on learning of grade results in examinations alongside self-reports of degrees of self-efficacy, satisfaction, enjoyment, motivation and self-esteem. They found that across all these ages, students’ relationships with their teachers had a significant impact, as did relationships between students, teachers and parents. They proposed a model of six interaction types between the latter three groups. The findings from their study showed that no single type of interaction consistently produced the best outcomes for teachers, pupils and parents alike; ‘harmonious trios’, however, appeared to produce some of the most effective learning. These relationships were underpinned by mutual respect, with participants demonstrating a sense of common purpose and reciprocity in their communication. They contrasted strongly with situations characterized by psychological remoteness in the student–teacher relationship, where detrimental effects on learning were observed (Creech 2009). This evidence has some clear connections to the framework of mentoring and coaching outlined earlier in the chapter, in particular the foundation of listening and empathy required by the teacher in establishing trust and mutuality in the relationship.

TENSION BETWEEN TRANSMISSION AND OWNERSHIP OF ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT An important issue that arises within the intimate context of one-to-one tuition concerns the relationship between a teacher’s responsibility to offer expertise and direct learning on the one hand and, on the other, students’ ability to make their own creative decisions, develop autonomy as learners and explore an individual or collective artistic voice (Carey, Lebler and Gall 2010). Berman quotes the Chinese proverb ‘Give a man a fish, that is dinner for the night. Teach the man how to fish, that is dinner for life’ (Berman 2000: 210). The issue relates both to discovering creative pathways to performance and to sustaining these practices over time. Koopman et al. (2007) found that while teachers often stated that one of their aims was for students to develop artistic independence,


students were not aware of this. In another conservatoire study, Gaunt (2008, 2010) observed that while teachers typically aspired to ing students in taking responsibility for learning, students showed less concern for this. As suggested earlier, several other studies have indicated that, perhaps unwittingly, teachers either dominated the activity in lessons, leaving little space for the students’ own emerging ideas and expression (James et al. 2010), or encouraged a ive approach to learning and overdependency on them as teachers, making it difficult for students to nurture their abilities to work creatively and autonomously (Jørgensen 2000; Persson 1994; Wirtanen and Littleton 2004). Burwell (2005) analysed video recordings of nine instrumental lessons in a university in the UK. She predominantly observed high proportions of teacher talk devoted to technique (thus echoing the results of other studies referred to above), and when teachers asked students questions, these were largely rhetorical, apparently used as an alternative form of instruction or to check agreement. There seemed to be little motivation to promote students’ own critical thinking. In addition, the most talented students in particular seemed to be engaged in a process of transmission from teacher to student rather than learning to take responsibility for their own interpretation. In contrast, James et al. (2010) found that students who appeared ive during parts of lessons were nevertheless proactive in building on what they had learned in the lessons and in taking responsibility by further developing their newly acquired insights in their own practice. This resonates with the findings of Koopman et al. (2007), who discovered that student participants in their study believed they had taken more initiative in their learning process than the researchers had observed from lesson interactions (ibid.). Creech and Hallam, however, demonstrated evidence of a small but positive impact on learning where students had some influence over setting objectives in lessons (2010). The different perspectives emerging from these studies confirm the need for further research in this area, and they also underline a critical relationship between one-to-one lessons and individual practice (see also, e.g., Nielsen 2009, 2010) and how the transition between them may serve or impede the development of pathways to creative performance (discussed further in Chapter 7 in this volume). A last consideration to do with these issues relates to students’ stage of development and learning, and perhaps even their personality preferences. The nature of responsibility that younger musicians are able to take in their learning changes over time, evolving along with their musical accomplishment. Musical identities are also fluid and may go through several transition periods (Juuti and Littleton 2010). It is clear, therefore, that individual responses are demanded according to the situation, and teachers need to be able to flex their approach accordingly and to prepare students carefully if they are to encounter new teaching methods. This point was reinforced by Brändström (1998), who researched the impact of giving conservatoire students considerable freedom

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in determining the timing and content of their one-to-one lessons. While the intervention had many positive outcomes, it also showed that some students felt uncomfortable and disempowered by the extent of responsibility suddenly offered to them. It was unclear, however, how the students had been prepared for this radically different approach. In addition, as indicated in the discussion of mentoring and coaching, ownership of the learning process and artistic development also relates to a longer-term perspective and career trajectory. When Mills (2002) analysed student responses to one-to-one tuition, three types of interaction were identified: transmission, collaboration and induction (the last of these relating to the process of learning how to be a musician). However, the frame of reference evidenced in the studies above was relatively narrow, focusing on the specific music in hand and apparently tending to ignore or take for granted an individual’s longer-term aims and engagement in society. This particular issue is increasingly important in contemporary contexts, given that what it is to be a classical musician and to sustain a career as such is changing rapidly and, in itself, is likely to require greater adaptability and ingenuity than previously. For example, Lebler (2007) has noted the importance of being able to engage with emergent creative and business practices that may well differ from current practices. In the context of one-to-one lessons, this depends in part on the nature of the reflective processes used, the degree to which they combine reflection-inaction and reflection-on-action (Schön 1987), and whether reflection-on-action over a longer time frame is also included (Gaunt 2006).

THE HALO EFFECT AND DIMENSIONS OF POWER That students ire and are even in awe of their teachers has been well documented (Maidlow 1998; Hanken 2011). There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence of this. Vengerov, for example, talking about Rostropovich, reported: He would say, ‘Drink with me’, as if we were buddies with no boundaries. I felt ashamed—I always addressed him as ‘maestro’. In Russian, as in German, there is a difference between the formal ‘you’ and the familiar ‘you’. Where I come from, the teacher is somewhere between a saint and a holy statue. (Clark 2012) Abeles (1975) saw this in of a ‘halo’ effect: students idealizing their teachers and therefore exaggerating the gap between them, or even becoming unable to discriminate about their teachers’ abilities as performers. Something of a halo effect was corroborated by Gaunt (2010). In this study, conservatoire students tended to be in awe of their current teacher while being more willing to be critical of previous teachers. Motivation to ‘do the right thing’ in relation to a teacher was also shown to be amplified in some cases when a teacher was either in a position to offer the student professional work or involved in formally assessing


the student. An additional issue emerged relating to the development of social relationships alongside formal student–teacher interactions: students tended to embrace the validity of the social boundaries suggested by their teacher, even though these varied considerably from no social to regular socializing. These perspectives provide initial evidence of differences in power between student and teacher, with the balance usually held by the teacher and often remaining implicit. The ways in which dynamics of power influence the learning process and the creative development of a musician have not been researched in this context. However, drawing on Lukes’ (2005) conceptualization of three dimensions of power, it is clear that teachers may be in a position to set agendas in the learning process in relation to both immediate and longer-term goals. In addition, there is the potential for power to operate invisibly, possibly in both positive and negative ways, for example through shaping students’ perceptions of their aspirations or best interests. The most problematic situations in this context arise when a student is completely unaware of invisible power dynamics, has no choice over their outcomes and ends up with misperceptions of his or her best interests. Collens and Creech (2013) have also suggested that mutuality in a student– teacher relationship may be affected by unconscious power relations initiated from either side, leading to a position of locked oppositional dynamics that then stifles freedom and risk-taking in learning. The potential for ‘collaboration, trust, and a mutually enhancing experience’ is jeopardized as a result (ibid.: 161). Most unfortunately, there is some evidence of wilful misuse of power, at extreme levels leading even to sexual abuse. This has been discussed by participants in one research study (Smilde 2009). In some notable instances, criminal charges and convictions for sexual abuse have demonstrated the imperative to review policy relating to one-to-one student–teacher interactions and to clarify the relationship and boundaries between appropriate confidentiality, privacy and secrecy.

EMPOWERMENT AND THE NATURE OF A related issue concerns the nature of in one-to-one lessons and how this affects students. Musicians inevitably need to be deeply attentive to and critical of all the details of their playing. There is a danger, however, that a highly critical stance can become paralysing, entrenched to a point where it overwhelms basic self-efficacy and self-esteem, and limits individuals’ ability to imagine themselves playing well or to allow their creative energies to flow. O’Hora mentions the potentially negative power of self-criticism and therefore the importance of being able to accept oneself within the developmental process: accepting yourself actually makes it, paradoxically, easier to demand more of yourself. Because it comes back to this point …, how do you

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encourage students to be creative[?] And encouragement is the right word. … [M]ost people treat themselves far worse than they would treat other people. They speak to themselves, as it were, in a way they would never dream of speaking to other people. (2013) This clearly offers teachers an important role in ing students to develop self-awareness of their internal dialogues and to nurture constructive ones, and the nature of that takes place within lessons is likely to have some influence. Some studies have revealed significant differences in how particular personality types and individuals receive and give (Schmidt 1989; Atlas, Taggart and Goodell 2004). Duke and Simmons (2006) found that lessons tended to be characterized by more negative than positive , but a smaller study in Australia found tendencies for greater approval compared with negative in lessons (Zhukov 2008a). Further research on within one-to-one music lessons is undoubtedly needed. Nevertheless, considerable literature is available on more generally (see e.g. Gibbs 2006, and Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick 2006), and a common theme within this is a move away from a simple opposition between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ towards more sophisticated principles of constructive . Finally, technological developments provide opportunities for learners to source unmediated , which they can engage with in their own time and use to self-assessment and increasing autonomy in learning. James et al. (2010), for example, discovered through their research methods that recording lessons on video and then using stimulated recall independently with students and teachers had a significant impact on both sets of participants. Teachers were able to analyse interactions and their teaching approach in relation to a student’s response in detail. Students reported the value of gaining a more objective understanding of their playing, ‘especially noticing when they did something well and better than they thought at the time of the lesson. [One student] explained how the video footage gave her a more holistic view, and her playing proved to have a better sound quality than she had perceived during the lesson’ (ibid.: 239). For both teachers and students, this process appeared to be motivating and to yield new insights. The interconnections between , taking ownership of learning, and nurturing intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, mastery and performance goals are becoming increasingly clear.

Towards a framework of collaboration in one-to-one lessons The evidence presented in this chapter has demonstrated the complexity of one-to-one music lessons, including potentially paradoxical relationships


between different demands, the multiple dimensions that may affect pathways to creative performance, and the need to work towards a more sophisticated conceptualization of this learning environment than that afforded by apprenticeship. Further research will be required to develop this systematically. As a starting point, however, a dynamic framework is provisionally proposed in Figure 2.2. This framework situates the context of a one-to-one lesson within the wider ecology of musical development experienced by student and teacher. It immediately acknowledges that the learning environment of one-to-one lessons connects, for example, to the individual practice that a student undertakes, rehearsal contexts and broader communities of practice. Within the one-to-one lesson itself, the framework proposes four domains: vision and purpose; artistic materials, focus and outputs; leadership roles and approaches to interactions; and interpersonal dynamics. Each of these domains contains several dimensions, articulated as continua, with a nuanced range of choices available along each continuum. An indicative sample of how the dimensions of the framework draw on the literature reviewed in the chapter is provided in the Appendix to the chapter. As shown in Figure 2.2, the student and the teacher may share some goals and perceptions of their work within a continuum, but equally they may hold some goals independently. These may not all be aligned: for example, the student and the teacher may have differing perspectives on the degree to which they are focusing on a developmental process or a specific performance outcome. An essential point is that neither end of a continuum provides a definitively more effective approach to interactions in lessons. Rather, varying positions within each one may be appropriate at different times, depending on an individual student’s stage of development, prior experience and learning preferences. Thus, there is potential for the significance of goals within any continuum to change over time, either within a single lesson or as part of a longer-term approach to lessons. This is shown in Figure 2.3. Teachers and students are constantly making choices (explicitly or implicitly) in how they approach a lesson, which in turn may have an impact on the process of enabling pathways to creative performance. For example, as suggested in Figure 2.3, over a period of time (either within a single lesson or over a series of lessons) a student’s preoccupation with a particular performance product may overtake a shared focus on development process. In ‘Lesson A’ in the figure, the student perceives product and process to be equally significant. Later, as shown in ‘Lesson B’, the student perceives product to be more significant than process. The shift from Lesson A to Lesson B also indicates that during this period short-term goals become foregrounded and long-term goals lose impetus. Thus, the significance of either end of a continuum (or any position within it) may change over time.

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FIGURE 2.2

The dimensions of one-to-one lessons

FIGURE 2.3

Change in the significance of continua over time

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The way in which goals within each continuum change over time may not always be the same for both the student and the teacher. This divergence is shown in Figure 2.4. Here, for example, in ‘Lesson A’ student and teacher begin by not being well aligned on either short- or long-term goals. The student has a stronger focus on short-term goals but has not really shared these with the teacher. The teacher is wanting to focus on long-term goals, but these are rather different from the student’s long-term goals, although the student perceives his or her long-term goals to be shared at least in part with the teacher. At a later stage (‘Lesson B’ in Figure 2.4), however, they have come to a position where their long-term goals are closely aligned and their short-term goals have been shared, even though not all of them are the same. Lastly, there may also be interconnections between the continua, such that shifting choices along any one continuum affect others. This may be the case with continua from different domains. For example, as shown in Figure 2.5, moving from realizing notated music to composing and playing one’s own music may stimulate greater collaborative discovery between the student and the teacher, or it may encourage greater risk-taking and exploration of new territories. Equally, progressing to open questions and a mentoring/coaching approach may invite a student to take more ownership of the learning environment and to be proactive in bringing his or her agenda to the lesson. Taking these elements of the framework together, a key issue that becomes evident is that the success of lessons depends on the teacher’s agility to respond appropriately to the context and the individual. It depends equally on both the student’s and the teacher’s awareness of where they are and are not aligned in their approach, and also on their ability to navigate the dynamic movement of the continua while working together. This framework—which is provisional in the sense that it results from previous research and has not yet been empirically tested—reflects ongoing attempts to enhance approaches to one-to-one lessons, and to enable curriculum development that promotes greater integration for students between their different learning experiences. It is hoped, therefore, that it can be tested in practice by teachers and their students and used as a stimulus for reflection in developing skills both as learners and as teachers, and also in developing approaches to one-to-one lessons. In particular, it is also hoped that the framework may enhance awareness of a range of pathways to creative performance. In addition, the framework immediately raises many questions that call for further research. Much remains to be discovered about each continuum, the part it can play in individual artistic development, and the impact that various approaches to learning and teaching along a continuum may have on the overall development process. Promising lines of enquiry have already been identified in the literature, for example exploring the interaction and

FIGURE 2.4

Differing approaches of student and teacher to each continuum

FIGURE 2.5

Interactions between continua


interdependence between nurturing imagination and fostering technical skills in classical musicians, or illuminating the impact of power dynamics on learning and how these may change over time in a student–teacher relationship. Further focused research will undoubtedly help to refine understanding of the continua identified in this framework and to investigate whether additional ones should be included. Moreover, research is also clearly needed to explore the interrelationships between the continua. It will be critical to generate insights into the ways in which inflections in the learning and teaching approaches along one continuum may stimulate other changes within the overall dynamic system of one-to-one lessons.

Appendix TABLE 2.1 Indicative sample of literature reviewed in the chapter relevant to specific dimensions of the framework

Dimension

Relevant literature

Short-term goals ↔ Long-term goals

Gaunt 2008; Nerland and Hanken 2002; QAA 2013; Smilde 2009

Focus on musical/performance values ↔ Focus on learning and human interaction values

Cooper 2013; Hallam 1998; Jørgensen 2000

Developing technique ↔ Exploring expression, interpretation and style

James et al. 2010; Laukka 2004; Koopman et al. 2007; Quantz [1752] 1966

Working from notation ↔ Exploring new territories, materials, contexts

Burnard 2012; Lebler 2007; MacDonald and Wilson 2005; Sawyer 2003; Woody 2000

Transmission of knowledge/skills ↔ Collaborative discovery/student-led enquiry

Barrett and Gromko 2007; Hallam 1998; Jones 2005; John-Steiner 2000; Jørgensen 2000; Mills 2002; Zhukov 2008a

Playing solo ↔ Playing together

Burwell 2006, 2011; Gaunt 2006; Heikinheimo 2009; O’Hora 2013

Instructing, closed questions ↔ Mentoring/ coaching, open questions

Garvey et al. 2009; Hallam 1998; Megginson and Clutterbuck 2009; Presland 2005; Purser 2005

Corrective ↔ Generative

Berman 2000; Duke and Simmons 2006; Gibbs 2006; Karlsson and Juslin 2008

Separation, distance, surface listening ↔ Embodied exchange, intimacy, mutuality, deep listening, interpersonal creative flow

Collens and Creech 2013; Gaunt 2006

Routine/predetermined expectations ↔ Encouragement to take risks, embrace the unexpected and learn from this

Presland 2005; Gaunt 2006; Perkins 2010

Power imbalance (‘power over’) ↔ Shared power (empowerment)

Collens and Creech 2013; Hanken 2011; Smilde 2009

Student dependent on teacher in decision-making ↔ Student autonomous in decision-making

Burwell 2005; Brändström 1998; Carey et al. 2010; Creech and Hallam 2010; Jørgensen 2000; Wirtanen and Littleton 2004

Avoiding conflict ↔ Embracing conflict and its creative possibilities

Collens and Creech 2013; Creech and Hallam 2010

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References Abeles, H. F., 1975: ‘Student perceptions of characteristics of effective applied music instructors’, Journal of Research in Music Education 23: 147–54. Aron, L., 1996: A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press). Atlas, G., T. Taggart and D. J. Goodell, 2004: ‘The effects of sensitivity to criticism on motivation and performance in music students’, British Journal of Music Education 21: 81–7. Barrett, M. S. and J. E. Gromko, 2007: ‘Provoking the muse: a case study of teaching and learning in music composition’, Psychology of Music 35: 213–30. Bennis, W. and P. W. Biederman, 1997: Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration (New York: Basic Books). Berman, B., 2000: Notes from the Pianist’s Bench (London: Yale University Press). Bologna Employability Working Group, 2009: Working Group on Employability Report to Ministers, http://media.ehea.info/file/2009_Leuven_Louvain-la-Neuve/91/5/2009_ employability_WG_report_594915.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Brändström, S., 1998: ‘Freedom to learn in music education’, in L. Reimers, ed., Proceedings of the European Association for Music in Schools (EAS) Conference, Stockholm (Stockholm: Kungliga Musikhögskolan), pp. 5–9. Brockbank, A. and I. McGill, 2009: Facilitating Reflective Learning in Higher Education (London: Kogan Page). Burnard, P., 2012: ‘Rethinking “musical creativity” and the notion of multiple creativities in music’, in O. Odena, ed., Musical Creativity: Insights from Music Education Research (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 5–28. Burt, R. and J. Mills, 2006: ‘Taking the plunge: the hopes and fears of students as they begin music college’, British Journal of Music Education 23: 51–73. Burwell, K., 2005: ‘A degree of independence: teachers’ approaches to instrumental tuition in a university college’, British Journal of Music Education 22/3: 199–215. Burwell, K., 2006: ‘On musicians and singers. An investigation of different approaches taken by vocal and instrumental teachers in higher education’, Music Education Research 8/3: 331–47. Burwell, K., 2011: Studio-based Instrumental Learning (Farnham: Ashgate). Butcher, V., J. Smith, J. Kettle and L. Burton, 2011: ‘Review of good practice in employability and enterprise development by Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning’ (York: Higher Education Academy for HEFCE). Available at https://www.heacademy. ac.uk/resource/review-good-practice-employability-and-enterprise-development-centres-excellence-teaching (accessed 15 February 2017). Campbell, P. S., 1991: Lessons from the World (New York: Schirmer). Carey, G., D. Lebler and S. Gall, 2010: ‘Investigating the one-to-one teaching model in higher music education: developing a collaborative model of inquiry’, Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis 47: 175–98. Clark, A., 2012: ‘Lunch with the FT: Maxim Vengerov’, Financial Times, 30 November 2012. Available at https://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6146b148-37b1-11e2-a97e-00144feabdc0. html#axzz3Fpk0pFEg (accessed 15 February 2017).

Apprenticeship and empowerment Collens, P. and A. Creech, 2013: ‘Intersubjectivity in collaborative learning in one-to-one contexts’, in H. Gaunt and H. Westerlund, eds., Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 151–64. Cooper, I., 2013: ‘The hidden power of the re-creative process in music’, Lecture, St John’s College, Oxford. Available at http://oxforddigital.tv/streaming/humanitas-imogen-cooper.html (accessed 15 February 2017). Creech, A., 2009: ‘Teacher–parent–pupil trios: a typology of interpersonal interaction in the context of learning a musical instrument’, Musicae Scientiae 13: 163–82. Creech, A. and H. Gaunt, 2012: ‘The changing face of individual instrumental tuition: value, purpose, and potential’, in G. E. Mherson and G. F. Welch, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 1, pp. 694–711. Creech, A. and S. Hallam, 2010: ‘Interpersonal interaction within the violin teaching studio: the influence of interpersonal dynamics on outcomes for teachers’, Psychology of Music 38: 403–21. Deliège, I. and G. A. Wiggins, eds., 2006: Musical Creativity: Multidisciplinary Research in Theory and Practice (Hove: Psychology Press). Duke, R. A., C. A. Pricket and J. A. Jellison, 1998: ‘Empirical description of the pace of music instruction’, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 46: 265–80. Duke, R. A. and A. L. Simmons, 2006: ‘The nature of expertise: narrative descriptions of 19 common elements observed in the lessons of three renowned artist-teachers’, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 170: 61–74. Garvey, R., P. Stokes and D. Megginson, 2009: Coaching and Mentoring: Theory and Practice (London: Sage). Gaunt, H., 2006: ‘Student and teacher perceptions of one-to-one instrumental and vocal tuition in a conservatoire’ (PhD dissertation, University of London). Gaunt, H., 2008: ‘One-to-one tuition in a conservatoire: the perceptions of instrumental and vocal teachers’, Psychology of Music 36/2: 215–45. Gaunt, H., 2010: ‘One-to-one tuition in a conservatoire: the perceptions of instrumental and vocal students’, Psychology of Music 38/2: 178–208. Gaunt, H., 2011: ‘Understanding the one-to-one relationship in instrumental/vocal tuition in Higher Education: comparing student and teacher perceptions’, British Journal of Music Education 28: 159–80. Gaunt, H., A. Creech, M. Long and S. Hallam, 2012: ‘ing conservatoire students towards professional integration: one-to-one tuition and the potential of mentoring’, Music Education Research 14/1: 25–43. Gaunt, H. and H. Westerlund, eds., 2013: Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Farnham: Ashgate). Gholson, S. A., 1998: ‘Proximal positioning: a strategy of practice in violin pedagogy’, Journal of Research in Music Education 46: 535–45. Gibbs, G., 2006: ‘Why assessment is changing’, in C. Bryan and K. Clegg, eds., Innovative Assessment in Higher Education (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 11–22. Green, L., 2002: How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate).

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Musicians in the Making Hakkarainen, K., 2013: ‘Mapping the research ground: expertise, collective creativity and shared knowledge practices’, in H. Gaunt and H. Westerlund, eds., Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 13–26. Hallam, S., 1998: Instrumental Teaching (Oxford: Heinemann). Hanken, I. M., 2011: ‘Student evaluation of teaching from the actors’ perspective’, Quality in Higher Education 2: 245–56. Heikinheimo, T., 2009: Intensity of Interaction in Instrumental Music Lessons (Helsinki: Sibelius Academy). Hepler, L. E., 1986: ‘The measurement of teacher/student interaction in private music lessons, and its relationship to teacher field dependence/field independence’ (PhD dissertation, Case Western Reserve University). James, M., K. Wise and J. Rink, 2010: ‘Exploring creativity in musical performance through lesson observation with video-recall interviews’, Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis 47: 219–50. John-Steiner, V., 2000: Creative Collaboration (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Jones, G., 2005: Gatekeepers, Midwives and Fellow Travellers: The Craft and Artistry of Adult Educators (London: Mary Ward Centre). Jørgensen, H., 2000: ‘Student learning in higher instrumental education: who is responsible?’, British Journal of Music Education 17: 67–77. Juuti, S. and K. Littleton, 2010: ‘Musical identities in transition: solo piano students’ s of entering the academy’, Psychology of Music 38: 481–97. Karlsson, J. and P. N. Juslin, 2008: ‘Musical expression: an observational study of instrumental teaching’, Psychology of Music 36: 309–34. Kennell, R., 1992: ‘Toward a theory of applied music instruction’, The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning 3: 5–16. Kennell, R., 2002: ‘Systematic research in studio instruction in music’, in R. Colwell and C. Richardson, eds., The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 243–56. Kenyon, N., 2012: ‘Performance today’, in C. Lawson and R. Stowell, eds., The Cambridge History of Musical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 3–34. Koopman, C., N. Smit, A. de Vugt, P. Deneer and J. Den Ouden, 2007: ‘Focus on practicerelationships between lessons on the primary instrument and individual practice in conservatoire education’, Music Education Research 9: 373–97. Kotter, J. P., 2012: ‘Accelerate!: how the most innovative companies capitalize on today’s rapid-fire strategic challenges—and still make their numbers’, Harvard Business Review 90: 43–58. Kurkul, W. W., 2007: ‘Nonverbal communication in one-to-one music performance instruction’, Psychology of Music 35: 327–62. Laukka, P., 2004: ‘Instrumental music teachers’ views on expressivity: a report from music conservatoires’, Music Education Research 6: 45–56. Lave, J. and E. Wenger, 1991: Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lebler, D., 2007: ‘Student-as-master? Reflections on a learning innovation in popular music pedagogy’, International Journal of Music Education 25/3: 205–21. Lehmann, A. C., J. A. Sloboda and R. H. Woody, 2007: Psychology for Musicians: Understanding and Acquiring the Skills (New York: Oxford University Press).

Apprenticeship and empowerment L’Hommidieu, R. L., 1992: ‘The management of selected educational variables by master studio teachers in music performance’ (PhD dissertation, Northwestern University). Loges, N. and C. Lawson, 2012: ‘The teaching of performance’, in C. Lawson and R. Stowell, eds., The Cambridge History of Musical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 135–68. Lukes, S., 2005: Power: A Radical View (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). MacDonald, R. A. R. and G. B. Wilson, 2005: ‘Musical identities of professional jazz musicians: a focus group investigation’, Psychology of Music 33: 395–417. Maidlow, S., 1998: ‘The experiences, attitudes and expectations of music students from a feminist perspective’, British Journal of Music Education 15: 37–49. Megginson, D. and D. Clutterbuck, 2009: Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring (London: Elsevier). Mills, J., 2002: ‘Conservatoire students’ perceptions of the characteristics of effective instrumental and vocal tuition’, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 153/4: 78–82. Mills, J. and J. Smith, 2003: ‘Teachers’ beliefs about effective instrumental teaching in schools and higher education’, British Journal of Music Education 20: 5–27. Nerland, M. and I. M. Hanken, 2002: ‘Academies of music as arenas for education: some reflections on the institutional construction of teacher–student relationship’, in I. M. Hanken, S. G. Nielsen and M. Nerland, eds., Research in and for Higher Music Education: Festschrift for Harald Jørgensen (Oslo: Norwegian Academy of Music), pp. 167–86. Nicol, D. and D. Macfarlane-Dick, 2006: ‘Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good practice’, Studies in Higher Education 31: 199–218. Nielsen, S. G., 2009: ‘Conceptions of practice and learning in one-to-one music learning situations in jazz’, paper presented at the Reflective Conservatoire Conference, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, UK, 29 February–3 March 2009. Nielsen, S. G., 2010: ‘Using stimulated recall methodologies in researching one-to-one instrumental education’, Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis 47: 199–217. O’Hora, R., 2013: ‘Reflections on one-to-one instrumental lessons’. Unpublished interview with Helena Gaunt in London on 6 June 2013. Perkins, R., 2010: ‘Exploring the one-to-one context of conservatoires through the lens of “learning cultures”: the role of student self-documentation’, Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis 47: 437–62. Persson, R., 1994: ‘Concert musicians as teachers: on good intentions coming short’, European Journal for High Ability 5: 79–91. Persson, R., 1996: ‘Brilliant performers as teachers: a case study of commonsense teaching in a conservatoire setting’, International Journal of Music Education 28/1: 25–36. Polanyi, M., 1962: Personal Knowledge: Towards Post-critical Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Pratt, D. D., 1992: ‘Conceptions of teaching’, Adult Education Quarterly 42: 203–20. Presland, C., 2005: ‘Conservatoire student and instrumental professor: the student perspective on a complex relationship’, British Journal of Music Education 22: 237–48. Purser, D., 2005: ‘Performers as teachers: exploring the teaching approaches of instrumental teachers in conservatoires’, British Journal of Music Education 22: 287–98.

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Musicians in the Making QAA [Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education], 2013: Enhancement Themes, http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/enhancement-themes (accessed 15 February 2017). Quantz, J. J., [1752] 1966: On Playing the Flute, trans. Edward R. Reilly (London: Faber and Faber). Renshaw, P., 2009: Lifelong Learning for Musicians: The Place of Mentoring (Groningen and The Hague: Lectorate Lifelong Learning in Music). Available at http://www.lifelonglearninginmusic.org (accessed 15 February 2017). Sawyer, R. K., 2003: Group Creativity: Music, Theater, Collaboration (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Sawyer, R. K., 2007: Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (New York: Basic Books). Schippers, H., 2010: Facing the Music: Shaping Music Education from a Global Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schmidt, C. P., 1989: ‘Individual differences in perception of applied music teaching ’, Psychology of Music 17: 110–22. Schön, D. A., 1987: Educating the Reflective Practitioner (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass). Smilde, R., 2009: Musicians as Lifelong Learners: Discovery Through Biography (Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers). Tidd, J. and J. Bessant, 2009: Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change (Chichester: Wiley). Wenger, E., 1998: Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Westerlund, H., 2006: ‘Garage rock bands: a future model for developing musical expertise?’, International Journal of Music Education 24/2: 119–25. Wirtanen, S. and K. Littleton, 2004: ‘Collaboration, conflict and the musical identity work of solo-piano students: the significance of the student–teacher relationship’, in D. Miell and K. Littleton, eds., Collaborative Creativity: Contemporary Perspectives (London: Free Association Books), pp. 26–39. Woody, R. H., 2000: ‘Learning expressivity in music performance: an exploratory study’, Research Studies in Music Education 14: 14–23. Young, V., K. Burwell and D. Pickup, 2003: ‘Areas of study and teaching strategies in instrumental teaching: a case study research project’, Music Education Research 5: 139–55. Zhukov, K., 2008a: ‘Exploratory study of approvals and disapprovals in Australian instrumental music teaching’, International Journal of Music Education 26: 302–14. Zhukov, K., 2008b: ‘Exploring the content of instrumental lessons and gender relations in Australian higher education’, British Journal of Music Education 25: 159–76.

3

Facilitating learning in small groups INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS AND TASK DIMENSIONS

Andrea Creech and Susan Hallam

In recent years there has been an increasing recognition that group work of various kinds provides a powerful context for learning and creativity in music with numerous benefits (Creech and Long 2012; Kamin, Richards and Collins 2007; Kokotsaki and Hallam 2007; Patrick et al. 1999). Collaborative group working, in particular, can lead to empathetic creativity where musicians take risks and develop novel musical interpretations challenging previously rehearsed ones (Sawyer 2006b; Seddon and Biasutti 2009). Although musical performance is an inherently social activity, groups nevertheless require in developing negotiation and collaboration skills, which are key aspects of a creative process that generates cohesive and convincing musical performances. Those facilitating group work need to understand the perceptual and social skills that underpin group music-making, the roles found in ensembles of varying types and sizes, and the ways in which essential skills, such as knowing when to lead and when to be led, are developed. This chapter considers how group work offers the potential for deep, creative engagement; peer learning; and social and emotional development. In particular, we focus on the role of the facilitator, looking at some principles and strategies for meeting the challenges associated with learning and creating in groups. Our definition of ‘group’ is wide-ranging. We draw upon guidance from Jaques and Salmon (2007: 6), who propose that clusters of people may be conceptualized as groups when they are ‘collectively conscious of their existence as a group’, and when they have shared needs and aims. Within this definition, groups are also characterized by shared and accepted perceptions of within-group social norms relating to roles and power relationships, as well as by interdependent and interactive within-group relationships. It is this interdependence, interaction and mutuality that undergird the creative potential of groups. Creative ensemble performance, according to Seddon (2012), involves

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collaborative verbal and nonverbal exchange. At the highest levels of ‘intersubjective engagement’ (ibid.: 134), groups adopt each other’s perspectives and are open to spontaneous musical variation and unpredictability in performance. An overall aim of the chapter is to enable the reader to develop a repertoire of practices that will enhance creative participation in and facilitation of groups. The chapter begins by setting out what we know from research about learning in and facilitating groups at a general level with reference to how this might be applied in musical contexts, moving on to research which has been undertaken specifically in a musical context.

Groups as a powerful context for learning Groups, and in particular small groups, have the potential to be a rich context for learning (Biggs 2003; Moore 2000) and for development through creative activity (Seddon and Biasutti 2009). They offer a space where group can explore new ideas and build upon each other’s insights, developing teamwork, leadership, confidence and social skills. According to Biggs (2003), formally structured and/or spontaneous interactions can enrich learning outcomes. When people learn together, working cooperatively and in dialogue with others, they can achieve elaborate and deeper understanding of the activities that they undertake. The words ‘collaborative’ and ‘cooperative’ are sometimes used interchangeably to describe the way in which groups function (Dolmans et al. 2003). Adams and Hamm (1996) used the term ‘cooperative learning’ to describe learning situations where individuals take personal responsibility for reaching group goals. From their perspective, cooperative learning occurs within a context of positive interdependence, requiring attention to the interpersonal process, time for reflection and a focus on developing interpersonal skills. Dolmans et al. (2003) referred to similar principles, describing ‘collaborative’ learning as involving mutuality in working towards a shared goal. They added that in collaborative learning, individuals articulate their own views but also take on the perspectives of other group , leading to new understandings and reframing of ideas. Other researchers (e.g. Springer, Stanne and Donovan 1999) distinguish between collaborative and cooperative learning, the key difference lying in the role of the teacher. From this perspective, cooperative learning is structured with goals set by teachers, while collaborative learning is relatively unstructured and characterized by groups negotiating their own goals and processes. Adopting a similar perspective for musical ensemble work, Seddon and Biasutti (2009) defined cooperation in of the structure of the interaction, involving discussion and planning of the organisation of rehearsal to achieve a cohesive performance, while collaboration involved the ongoing evaluation of performance to develop interpretation, the latter sometimes resulting in new

Facilitating learning in small groups

and creative musical variation. Similarly, Sawyer (2006a) highlighted collaborative group work as being characteristic of emergent creative phenomena. In practice, as will be explored later in this chapter, many of the practical and interpersonal issues arising in relation to group work are the same whether it is conceptualized as collaborative or cooperative. The learning that occurs in collaborative and cooperative groups alike can be understood as a process involving interaction among individuals, the social context and the content. One framework, offered by Illeris (2003), sets out three dimensions of learning: 1. the ‘incentive dimension’, which demonstrates how motivation to engage deeply with learning is integrally linked with the content as well as with the interpersonal, social context in which learning takes place 2. the ‘content dimension’, which offers insight into the importance of the design of small-group tasks (content, materials and activities need to be well structured and relevant, in order for small groups to learn together effectively; Dolmans et al. 2003) 3. the ‘interaction dimension’, comprising the social environment and the interpersonal dynamics among group and facilitators; these can or constrain personal engagement with learning These three dimensions of learning—incentive, content and interaction— provide a foundation for learning in groups, where individuals bring their own cognitive, practical and emotional experiences and interact with their peers in working towards shared goals. Musicians also communicate nonverbally with each other in what might be considered conventional ways, through eye and gestures but also musically. When musicians are playing, this communication can lead to their being ‘empathetically attuned’ (Seddon 2004) or in a state of ‘group flow’ (Sawyer 2006b), or ‘striking a groove’ together (e.g. Monson 1996). Promoting this level of musical communication is particularly difficult for facilitators: to some extent, it depends on the degree to which group participants have been provided with structured opportunities to become socialized into musical communities of practice (Sawyer 2006a).

Group dynamics, learning and creativity Theories of group dynamics help in understanding facets of the interaction dimension of learning (Illeris 2003). Groups can be thought of as having a personality of their own, one defined by but transcending those of individual . Similarly, the interactive and creative learning processes that occur within collaborative groups have been referred to as collective phenomena where ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ (Sawyer 2006a: 148).

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Interaction in small groups can be focused on the content, the task itself, or the interpersonal processes and maintenance of the social aspect of the group. In music, group cohesiveness is predominantly task-focused in that it centres around creative processes and performance. However, theories of group dynamics (e.g. Jaques and Salmon 2007) and learning (Illeris 2003) would suggest that musical processes and outcomes, even in the short term, may be integrally bound up with the interpersonal, social context, while in the long term musical ensembles must be based on strong social frameworks if they are to continue to work together (for a review see Davidson and King 2004). Broadly, group processes and interpersonal dynamics may be understood within psychodynamic or systems frameworks. Awareness of these perspectives can help group facilitators or coaches to understand and address problematic issues relating to group dynamics and to collaborative learning. The psychodynamic perspective is concerned with what has occurred in individual lives beforehand (Jaques and Salmon 2007). From this perspective, the earliest experiences within family groups are believed to have a profound effect on subsequent functioning in groups. For example, through a process of transference, whereby feelings are unconsciously redirected from one person to another, unresolved conflict with parents may be redirected to other group or facilitators. Angry or antagonistic feelings, for example, can be projected onto another group member or the facilitator and interpreted as emanating from those individuals. In music, where groups work together over long periods of time, such dynamics may lead to dysfunctionality and the breaking-up of the group, even when this may have spectacularly negative artistic and financial consequences for group . In contrast, systems theory explains group processes in of the here and now (Tubbs 2011). Groups are conceptualized as a fluid system, characterized by reciprocity. Circular communication processes develop which not only consist of behaviour but also influence behaviour (van Tartwijk et al. 1998). An individual’s interpersonal style within a small group can cause and result from a web of complex interaction. Systems theorists place emphasis on understanding the constituent parts of a system in relation to the dynamic properties of the whole unit (Pianta and Walsh 1996). This suggests that entrenched or unproductive patterns of group behaviour can be changed if one constituent in the system—a group member or facilitator—chooses to consciously reframe his or her own strategies or interpersonal responses.

Group processes According to Tuckman (1965), groups go through distinct stages starting with a ‘forming’ stage, followed by ‘storming’, ‘norming’ and ‘performing’. Tuckman proposed this as a sequential model, but others have suggested that in real-life


contexts groups may shift from one phase to another in a nonlinear fashion (Light, Cox and Calkin 2009; see also Chapter 7 in this volume). During the forming stage, group may be cautious, establishing ground rules, testing norms of behaviour and establishing a foundation for working together. This is a crucial stage, where the foundations of the group dynamic are defined (Cartney and Rouse 2006). Some participants may be anxious about whether they will be able to do what is asked of them and whether their input will be valued. Others may search for acceptance and approval. Fostering group cohesion is important at this initial stage, as this will influence the extent to which the group will be able to persevere and, in particular, will form the interpersonal climate where it can engage in creative processes that require divergent thinking and risk-taking. The storming phase may reveal interpersonal conflict more explicitly than at the forming stage. Participants may jostle for leadership roles within the group. There may be individual disagreements over the direction that the group should take, how tasks should be approached, and values that should be privileged. There may also be resistance to the task and to the structure, directed at other group or the facilitator. Commonly noted problems associated with the storming stage include ‘social loafing’, distraction from the task and dominance by one participant. Social loafing describes a group dynamic that lacks cohesion, where some participants stay unengaged and allow their peers to take the initiative and do all the work (Maiden and Perry 2009). Typically, when confronted with ‘freeriding peers’, other group lose motivation and the whole group loses a sense of purpose and shared commitment (ibid.). Distraction from the task occurs when group or the facilitator are side-tracked, engaging in dialogue that is not relevant to the task at hand. This can happen when the task is misunderstood or not clear, or when there is anxiety about the task, leading to engage in avoidance strategies. Similarly, dominance by one group member can be related to anxiety or to a lack of clear roles and shared purpose among the group. It may also be related to other group feeling intimidated, reinforcing beliefs about unequal ability or status differences (Micari and Drane 2011). While it is tempting to avoid conflict, avoidance is not generally an effective strategy in responding to these issues, as opportunities will be missed for collaborative problem-solving. Facilitators can groups during the storming stage by ensuring that everyone is heard, validating individual contributions, checking that there is clarity over objectives, framing any conflict as an opportunity for creative problem-solving, and at all times adhering to ground rules that should include trust and respect (Stetson 2003). Creative resolutions to conflict can be generated through dialogue that is characterized by listening together, respecting differing perspectives, suspending judgements and giving voice to individual messages (O’Neill and Peluso 2014). These four principles of dialogue,

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according to O’Neill and Peluso (ibid.: 117), serve as the basis of a ‘shared language for collaborative creativity and expansive learning opportunities’. At the norming phase of a group’s life cycle, the group will demonstrate some cohesiveness, working together towards shared goals and united by a common purpose. Implicit and explicit norms of behaviour are established. If a facilitator is working with a group, he or she can act as a resource when needed while allowing learners space in which they may take ownership of the learning process. Facilitators reflect back ideas and provide summaries of emerging themes or approaches to the task. Stetson (2003) suggests that facilitators can groups in the norming stage by modelling active listening, fostering an atmosphere of trust and facilitating groups in functioning as teams and in reaching consensus rather than compromise. Finally, at the performing stage the group flourishes. Morale is generally high, and groups work creatively and productively. Attention is focused on achieving goals and group performance. Individual take responsibility for the success of the group as a whole, and there is a sense of strong interdependence. Where temporary setbacks occur, the facilitator can offer by providing as well as interpersonal where needed (Stetson 2003). At this stage, the facilitator’s role might also include promoting and representing the group. Groups will have established clear, shared goals and a sense of purpose. Working towards these goals, they will, within an informal yet trusting atmosphere, engage in dialogue and active listening, taking on each other’s perspectives and respecting differences. Group will have reached some consensus with regard to norms and shared values, and there will be a sense of commitment and ability on the part of individual . Some researchers in group dynamics have added a final stage to Tuckman’s model of the life cycle of a group. This has been variously referred to as ‘mourning’ (Heron 1999) and ‘adjourning’ (Stetson 2003). As groups approach the end of their time together, individuals begin to think about how they will feel when they are no longer part of that group, typically experiencing sadness at the prospect of separation. Facilitators can their groups by signposting progression routes and allowing time for planning how group may take forward their learning from the group into new contexts.

Facilitator style Effective facilitators have a range of leadership strategies that they may adopt when appropriate, ranging on a continuum between facilitation (learnercentred) and transmission (directive, top-down, teacher-centred). One useful framework identifies three overarching styles: ‘gatekeeper’, ‘midwife’ and ‘fellow traveller’ (Jones 2005), with expert facilitators moving between these styles during sessions with a given group.


GATEKEEPER When adopting this transmission style, the teacher delivers content to learners. The leader is the gatekeeper to the material being learned. The participant, or learner, is expected to absorb this material and then be able to reproduce it. Although participation in music involves practical skills and active engagement, research has shown that ensemble leaders frequently adopt a gatekeeper approach, dictating the curriculum, selecting repertoire and making decisions as to how it will be played both technically and musically (Creech 2012). Music sessions led by gatekeepers tend to be dominated by teacher talk or modelling interspersed with group performance, with little variety. Essentially, the participants play and the facilitator talks or models the desired performance, with little evidence of fostering the shared language of collaborative creativity advocated by O’Neill and Peluso (2014).

MIDWIFE The midwife acts as a facilitator, enabling participants to discover the content and processes for themselves. Although this is to some extent a learnercentred approach, the midwife selects the material and constructs activities in order to maximize positive learning outcomes. This style of leader typically makes extensive use of ‘scaffolding’ (Creech et al. 2013), whereby participants are ed in appropriate ways to achieve challenging yet attainable goals. This approach requires the leader to take into the needs of the learners when choosing or creating the material and activities. The midwife style may be thought of as being related to an apprenticeship model of teaching,1 which focuses on the development of knowledge and ways of being. The apprentice is inculcated into the ways of thinking of the master craftsman. Skills are developed as the apprentice is drawn into increasingly more active challenges. Sawyer (2006a) points out that learners benefit particularly from scaffolds that guide the learner into collective musical practices. This perspective shifts the focus away from teacher towards a view of scaffolding as a structured collective activity through which learners are socialized into creative practice.

FELLOW TRAVELLER The ‘fellow traveller’ style sits within a conception of teaching as being the facilitation of learning. In this approach, teachers and students focus their energies on discovering new material together. The fellow traveller encourages egalitarian relationships between leader and participants. As a result, the latter may feel more able to contribute their own ideas and sometimes will take on leadership roles within the group. The group may become a learning community, characterized by collective exploration. The life experience and insights that

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all participants bring to the group are acknowledged and valued by the fellow traveller. Jones’s three facilitator styles resonate in some respects with another model proposed by Heron (1999). According to Heron, facilitators interact with their groups in either hierarchical, cooperative or autonomous modes. In hierarchical mode, the facilitator directs the learning process, doing things for the group such as setting objectives and providing structures for learning. The cooperative mode differs in that the facilitator guides the group but shares ownership of decisions relating to the learning process. Here, the facilitator prompts, demonstrates, models and provides scaffolds for learning. Finally, in the autonomous mode, the facilitator’s role is to create the conditions within which group participants can take full ownership and responsibility for self-directed learning. Group negotiate their own path, with minimum intervention from the facilitator. What people learn and how they learn it are influenced to a great extent by whether the facilitator adopts a hierarchical, cooperative or autonomous stance. Effective facilitators, according to Heron (1999), move from mode to mode in response to the changing characteristics, dynamics and stages of the group experience. Box 3.1, describing the facilitator’s perspective of leading a jazz group comprising conservatoire students working alongside professional musicians, demonstrates how the facilitator style moved from gatekeeper (choosing the repertoire, modelling specific musical points) through midwife (ing students in developing their own musical ideas) to fellow traveller (coconstructing musical interpretation and performance). BOX 3.1 A facilitator’s perspective, leading jazz students and professionals working together The group consisted of myself as leader on cajon, three other professionals (bass, guitars) and three conservatoire student musicians on saxophone, violin and piano. We had four rehearsals and a festival performance, over a period of a month. The input of the professional musicians was very strong, purely by the way they played and approached the material. They added a very authentic energy to the music, being expert in the styles we were playing. For the younger musicians, watching the professionals learning the tunes alongside them, asking pertinent questions and discussing approaches to playing them was a very valuable learning experience. My job was to choose music to bring to the group, and lead the rehearsals and performance. I tried to treat everyone as professionals equally, interacting with all the musicians in the same way, although I acknowledge that I may have talked in a slightly different way to younger, less experienced musicians. I ran all the rehearsals in as close to a circular seating pattern as possible. In this way all of the musicians could feel that they were fully participating, or alternatively having a leadership role. Initially, I introduced each piece of music, talked about its background and got the group to read through the


written ages. I suggested ways of approaching the piano parts, which were not written—I mainly brought lead sheets, so that we could develop our own interpretations and also suggested bass lines. At times I asked for suggestions of backing riffs from the ‘front line’, who were both young musicians, and gave them encouragement and advice on how to approach ‘soloing’, in of what scales could be used, and stylistic suggestions, when necessary. I also played cajon, which was the only percussion instrument in the group, which enabled me to lay down a foundation groove, and influence tempo and dynamics physically. After the group learned the basic tunes, we turned our attention to deciding forms, including who would solo where, and how ‘feels’ would change among the sections. To the students in getting used to playing the different patterns and chord sequences, I sang individual lines and demonstrated voicings on the keyboard. Apart from this instruction, I ran the rehearsals just like any rehearsals I might run with professionals, for example, playing patterns on the cajon and deciding together with the others how specific ages would be played. The young musicians didn’t yet have a great ability to follow the forms and play the right sections or get into the right ‘feels’ at the correct moment. That needed lots of repetition going through the transitions. At some points students participated with simple and low-risk tasks, for example playing backing riffs to a solo, playing an obbligato pattern behind a melody, or ‘comping’ behind a solo. However, the young musicians also took lead roles during their individual improvised solos. In fact, during the early stages of the rehearsals, they were immediately thrown in at the deep end, and were learning the music along with the rest of us. With a festival gig to prepare, this was a task-oriented group, but the social element was quickly present. We got straight down to rehearsing and getting to know each other’s sound and musical personality. Over time, all of the musicians became more comfortable with the music and with one another. In the final stages of rehearsal everyone (young and older) had internalized the music, playing the melodies, ‘soloing’ and getting around the forms. This happened (as it always seems to) just in time for the performance!

Interpersonal climate Whether the style adopted is that of gatekeeper, midwife or fellow traveller, certain facilitator characteristics can influence the ways in which students interact within their groups. Rogers and Freiberg (1993) suggested that the interpersonal conditions that characterize effective small-group teaching include warmth, trust and approachability. These characteristics are reminiscent of the underpinning principles of creative dialogue (O’Neill and Peluso 2014), where there is a focus on dialogic interpersonal conditions that privilege respect for contrasting perspectives, inclusivity, recognition of interdependence and encouragement for group participants to voice individual thoughts. Such

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interpersonal contexts are fostered when facilitators are honest with learners about who they are and what they know; when they listen carefully to learners, noting both verbal and nonverbal signals; when they empathize with learners; and when they believe in the possibility that all learners have the capacity to progress and to contribute to shared group goals (Cartney and Rouse 2006). An example from a community opera context demonstrates the importance of interpersonal style (Box 3.2). Here, the facilitator (chorus master) adopts a ‘gatekeeper’ approach, yet fosters an interpersonal climate where the group and their leader are united in overcoming the musical challenges. BOX 3.2 The facilitator’s perspective in a community opera context As the chorus master, my remit is to make sure that the chorus sings all the right notes in the right style, being sympathetic to everything that’s going on around them. So that’s what I was trying to achieve, in sort of cold calculated , for them to be singing it correctly. That’s the role of the chorus master. But, I’m the person that they’ve spent the most time with, so I knew that I also kind of had to set the tone for the way that the rehearsals would feel, for the project as a whole. CHALLENGES

It has been an enormous challenge for me, to work out a way of delivering to people, some of whom have never held a music score in their lives, who’ve got no idea of what the notation means, trying to deliver this very rhythmically complex music, and harmonies that don’t seem intuitive when you first sing them, and you think ‘no I’ve got to be doing this wrong’, and actually it’s right. It’s to get them singing accurately when the music is so far beyond what most people will have ever encountered before. OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

Working out a way of putting it into language that everybody will understand. So, you can’t use some , you can’t talk about legato or anything to do with technique in any jargon at all, you have to boil it right down to very straightforward, simple English instructions. And try and work at a speed which doesn’t go straight over the heads of the least experienced ones but doesn’t patronize the most experienced. Finding that balance is something that I hope I managed to do, and finding ever more creative ways of trying to do that, to engage everybody, regardless of how much assumed knowledge they already bring to the process. Almost everybody in the chorus … [has] just got such a deeply rooted wish for it to be right and to not rest until it is right, no matter how hard it is. And it just makes the job really easy, when you’re working with people who have that approach. You don’t have to settle, as I never settle, for ‘oh that will do—that’s probably good enough’. It’s really nice to have people who share that. It felt like ‘everybody versus the piece’, rather than ‘them versus me’. It was everybody all pushing in the same direction—‘us versus the music’. Everyone is united by the music.


A facilitator’s repertoire for ing learning in groups Light et al. (2009) highlight the important role that the facilitator plays with regard to influencing how learners engage with their learning. In some instances, the approach adopted by the facilitator is more important than the content itself. Light et al. suggest that expert facilitators have a well-developed repertoire of strategies and approaches and are able to reflect in the moment, in action (Schön 1983), adapting flexibly to the needs of individual groups in order to offer through phases of their development. A range of strategies relating to the task as well as the interpersonal dynamics may be required. These strategies might, for example, include validating individual input, reflecting back to the group, summarizing, using questioning to promote deep thinking, allocating roles to specific group , refining or adjusting the task, and setting appropriate assessment strategies that require involvement from all participants. According to Stetson (2003), facilitators can effective learning and creativity in small groups when they structure activities that include:

• • • • • • • • • • • •

a clear mission an informal atmosphere lots of discussion active listening trust and openness an understanding that disagreement is acceptable criticism that is issue-oriented, never personal consensus as a norm effective leadership clarity of task assignments shared values and norms of behaviour commitment

The perspective of one advanced conservatoire student reinforces the importance of Stetson’s twelve facets of learning in small groups and demonstrates the range of skills, interpersonal qualities and facilitation techniques required of ensemble coaches (Box 3.3). The student advocates a coaching style that is reminiscent of the ‘fellow traveller’ described by Jones (2005), yet also privileges the importance of guidance and inspiration. Research undertaken at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and the International Centre for Music Studies (ICMuS) at Newcastle University (Ginsborg and Wistreich 2010) explored students’ perceptions of coaching and tutoring and demonstrated a range of practices that could be interpreted within Jones’s (2005) framework. For example, students at RNCM were strongly aligned with the material, as in ‘midwife mode’, whereby ensembles arranged their own rehearsals and requested coaching when they felt that they needed it. Similarly, at

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BOX 3.3 A student perspective on chamber music coaching Musically, I would want and expect that a chamber music coach would:

•

•

Teach the group as a whole and not focus on one player. For example, I have had many experiences when bringing a piano group to a piano teacher where they just talk to the pianist the whole time, and it is a complete waste of time for the string players. … Talk about musical points and not offer any technical advice, except maybe in how to achieve a particular musical idea. I mean, they don’t take over the job of your personal teacher in the coaching. In one coaching session, the coach started giving me tips on bow posture which was completely irrelevant to the Beethoven quartet we were playing, completely irrelevant to the other players, and completely irrelevant to me as she was not my teacher and after the session was over I was going to disregard what she had to say.

I can barely think of an example of a coach giving a piece of technical advice that was relevant. One exception was being coached on a Tchaikovsky piano trio where we were told that we had to do vibrato on every note in one section until the very end. And telling me to use fourth fingers and do vibrato on them and things like sustaining notes. I guess these are all technical tips, but [they are] totally relevant to the music and they all helped to achieve a particular musical idea. I always go into a coaching session expecting in some way to be inspired. Chamber coaching has a sort of freedom about it—unlike private lessons and study. It is often arranged out of choice, with a teacher of choice, playing a piece of music of choice, and this combination means that it is something outside your regular study that you really look forward to and you really want to be there. So I expect that the teacher will give me something, musically. And I can definitely say that in the coaching that I have had where the teacher has been a member of the ensemble, this have always given me much more inspiration than when they sit on the side. This was probably because the teacher was able to give more ideas through playing than through words… Anyway, I expect an inspiration of some kind, and when I come out of a chamber coaching having gained NOTHING I feel a huge sense of loss, sad, angry, disappointed. Of course I would always expect the coach to know the piece! I have been disappointed in this and not just this, but to know the editions, know the history and the story, know the chords—the harmony. What can they teach us if they don’t?! Having said that, I would expect them to always be open to new ideas, not stuck in THEIR way which might be old-fashioned. They should give us what they know and we can take what we want, and they should respect that we also have ideas. Nonmusically I would expect:

• •

that they are HAPPY and EXCITED and WILLING to coach us! I hate the feeling that we have cornered them into doing the coaching and they are checking their watch every two minutes. that they more or less treat us as equals. Especially at conservatoire level. I can’t stand teacher superiority. Of course we have to respect them, and there is a certain code of politeness, but they shouldn’t make us feel like ‘stupid


students’. We are all musicians here, and definitely the best coaching I have had is where there is a whole mix of ideas coming from everyone and the teacher listens to us as much as we listen to them. Then it is fun for everybody. I love it when a teacher asks me what I think! Generally lots of questions from the teacher are great—loads of questions so lots of discussion, lots of sharing ideas, coming up with different things…

ICMuS, the bands had timetabled rehearsal slots when tutors might visit. Some groups asked for coaching when they were approaching a performance, some asked for help earlier in the process, and others took advantage of opportunities for coaching when they arose. There was a sense that within the coaching sessions a gatekeeper approach may have prevailed. The groups commented that the coaches provided specific guidance relating to the music being prepared; the students perceived advantages and disadvantages of having the same coach consistently (which may have reinforced a teacher-directed approach) or having a variety of coaches with different perspectives (which may have required students to take a higher degree of responsibility for their own creative decisions).

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR FACILITATORS OF SMALL MUSICAL GROUPS While successful groups require responsive facilitation that comprises a number of approaches, some broad principles underlying really effective practice can be identified. If a fundamental goal of small-group work is to encourage learners to engage in deep learning, to collaborate, to debate, to explore together, and to construct new interpretations, knowledge and understanding, then a shift is required from a teacher-centred approach (didactic and controlling, geared to transmission) to a learner-centred approach, where learners take ownership and responsibility for their learning and creativity. In this model, the learner’s prior knowledge, skills and individual needs are built upon through democratic active collaboration. This shift may necessitate a fundamental change in the values that the facilitator holds. For facilitators to function effectively and to do more than didactically transmit information, they must reconsider and in some cases even relinquish the power that accompanies the role of fact-giver, information provider and judge of product. In this vein, Moore (2000: 19) stressed the importance of encouraging ‘dialogue rather than monologue’, a view elucidated in detail by O’Neill and Peluso (2014) in their model of dialogue that s collaborative creativity. A learner-centred approach requires facilitators to recognize the central tenet of student ownership of their own learning. It also requires facilitators to remain flexible enough to learning in a variety of ways. For example, first-year music conservatoire groups may require more structure and direction than groups of postgraduates, who may benefit most from being encouraged to develop their

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own practices and to reflect upon group processes as they work together. Similarly, within the lifetime of any group, there may be times when either hierarchical or, alternatively, cooperative or collaborative approaches are more effective. Small groups provide a forum where learners can together lessen dependency on the facilitator, take ownership of learning and develop metacognitive skills. This is particularly so when learners have the opportunity to assume different roles within the group, recognizing the challenges that other group may be experiencing and collectively taking responsibility for overcoming those challenges (Light et al. 2009). Table 3.1 sets out some practical strategies that can be adopted by facilitators of small musical groups to scaffold deep learning and creativity. There is also a role for musical modelling which may be adopted in conjunction with any of the strategies set out below. TABLE 3.1

Practical strategies for facilitators

Task-based strategies

Set the agenda

• Convene a group if not already formed • Suggest or provide repertoire or stimulus for creative activities if necessary

(if the activities involve improvisation, instigate a discussion about the basis for it) • Ask exploratory questions (knowledge of composition, interpretation, ideas for the basis of improvisation) • Suggest a starting strategy (playing, discussion) • Discuss what role you will be taking ( facilitator, participant) Promote the development of deep learning

Clarify ideas

Refocus attention Challenge Evaluate

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Draw out students’ ideas Encourage contributions based on previous experiences Bounce questions back Make links with other music and musical activities Listen carefully to ideas being proposed Check for understanding Summarize emerging outcomes Ask questions Identify differences of opinion Reiterate aims Draw attention to time constraints (session length, performance deadlines) Question the approach being adopted Disagree Be constructively critical Encourage self and group evaluation Allow time for reflection Suggest alternatives

Strategies for ing the group

Encourage inclusive participation Release tension

• • • • •

Encourage Approve, agree with ideas Praise Provide the guidance and structure for dialogue Ensure that all group have the opportunity to contribute to discussions • Value all contributions • Describe individual contributions

• Use humour to defuse tense situations


REFLECTION Learning how to monitor progress, reflect on and draw conclusions from experience is essential for musical ensemble and facilitators. Two key elements have been identified in relation to reflecting on learning: reflectionin-action and reflection-on-action. Reflection-in-action can be described as ‘thinking on your feet’. It relates to situations that are unfolding, connecting with feelings and building new understandings of situations to inform actions (Schön 1983). Reflection-on-action is carried out after the event and enables exploration of particular actions that were undertaken, what was happening in the situation and how things might be changed for the future. Musicians typically use both types of reflection as a matter of course in their work. Such reflective processes are especially important in ensemble playing, where individuals need to respond to one another in the moment, adjusting their own actions in relation to what they hear, see and feel. There may also be discussion during rehearsals or post-performance to evaluate what has happened and to consider how to develop further. The facilitator of small groups can provide a stimulus for this in order to develop these skills. What are referred to as ‘critical incidents’ (i.e. significant events) can provide an important focus for reflection (Tripp 2012). These are events that raise questions and can lead to change in beliefs, values, attitudes or behaviours. For musicians working in small groups, critical incidents might be related to aspects of performance that went particularly well or badly, or to incidents within the group involving conflict or criticism. To learn from a critical incident requires asking questions about it; examining perceptions, assumptions and feelings; considering whether events could have been interpreted in another way or behaviours changed; and evaluating what might be changed for the future. For reflection to be effective, it has to change behaviour. Kolb (1984) developed the Experiential Learning Cycle, which can be used as a model for acquiring evaluative skills. The cycle comprises four stages and can be accessed through any of them, although the stages must be followed in sequence for successful learning to take place. It is not sufficient to have an experience in order to learn: instead, it is necessary to reflect on the experience, to make generalizations from this, and to formulate ideas which can then be applied in the future. Such learning must then be tested out in new situations. The key elements of the cycle are ‘concrete musical experience’, ‘reflective observation’, ‘abstract conceptualization’ and ‘active musical experimentation’. For musicians, ‘concrete experience’ might include practising, rehearsing with others, performing, teaching and so on. ‘Reflective observation’ (reviewing or reflecting on the experience) involves analysing and making judgements about the experience; these reflections need to be sufficiently systematic so that what has been learned is ed for future use. ‘Abstract conceptualization’ (concluding or learning from the experience) involves drawing some general conclusions about what

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has been learned. Finally, ‘active experimentation’ (planning and trying out what one has learned) involves acting on the conclusions that have been drawn, and planning and implementing strategies, techniques or approaches that will change and improve on previous practice. This active experimentation then feeds into new experiences, and the whole cycle begins again.

Conclusion Small groups have been shown to be a powerful context for learning and creativity. Within this context, the role of the facilitator is vital in ensuring that the potential for deep learning and creative intersubjective engagement is realized within groups. In order to meet the challenges of group work, teachers need a wide repertoire of strategies in order to students in truly collaborative and cooperative practices. At various stages in group work, effective facilitators will need to position themselves on the continuum from hierarchical to collaborative, although this is always likely to be most effective within a student-centred rather than teacher-centred paradigm. Awareness of group dynamics and interpersonal processes can empower facilitators, offering valuable ways of fostering an interdependent and collective commitment to shared goals. Much of the research drawn on in this chapter has not been directly concerned with facilitation in developing creativity in small musical groups. There is a dearth of research about how best to facilitate small musical ensembles, and even less is focused on promoting creativity and collaborative approaches in such groups. Issues such as how to interdependent peer learning in creative music-making remain underresearched. There is clearly a need for research which explores the perspectives of facilitators and learners on what approaches are most effective for enhancing performance, creativity and the skills required for working in small musical groups.

References Adams, D. and M. Hamm, 1996: Cooperative Learning: Critical Thinking and Collaboration Across the Curriculum, 2nd edn (Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas). Biggs, J., 2003: Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 2nd edn (Maidenhead: Open University Press). Cartney, P. and A. Rouse, 2006: ‘The emotional impact of learning in small groups: highlighting the impact on student progression and retention’, Teaching in Higher Education 11/1: 79–91. Creech, A., 2012: ‘Interpersonal behaviour in one to one instrumental lessons: an observational analysis’, British Journal of Music Education 29/3: 387–407.

Facilitating learning in small groups Creech, A. and M. Long, 2012: ‘Self-directed and interdependent learning in musical contexts’, paper presented at the Twenty-fourth International Seminar on Research in Music Education, Thessaloniki, Greece, 8–13 July 2012. Creech, A., M. Varvarigou, S. Hallam, H. McQueen and H. Gaunt, 2013: ‘Scaffolding, organisational structure and interpersonal interaction in musical activities with older people’, Psychology of Music 42/3: 430–47. Davidson, J. W. and E. C. King, 2004: ‘Strategies for ensemble practice’, in A. Williamon, ed., Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 105–22. Dolmans, D., H. Wolfhagen, A. Scherpbier and C. van der Vleuten, 2003: ‘Development of an instrument to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers in guiding small groups’, Higher Education 46/4: 431–46. Ginsborg, J. and R. Wistreich, 2010: ‘Promoting excellence in small group music performance: teaching, learning and assessment’, Higher Education Academy report, https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resource/promoting-excellence-small-group-music-performance-teaching-learning-and-assessment (accessed 15 February 2017). Heron, J., 1999: The Complete Facilitator’s Handbook (London: Kogan Page). Illeris, K., 2003: ‘Towards a contemporary and comprehensive theory of learning’, International Journal of Lifelong Education 22/4: 396–406. Jaques, D. and G. Salmon, 2007: Learning in Groups: A Handbook for Face-to-Face and Online Environments, 4th edn (Abingdon and New York: Routledge). Jones, G., 2005: Gatekeepers, Midwives and Fellow Travellers: The Craft and Artistry of Adult Educators (London: Mary Ward Centre). Kamin, S., H. Richards and D. Collins, 2007: ‘Influences on the talent development process of non-classical musicians: psychological, social and environmental influences’, Music Education Research 9/3: 449–68. Kokotsaki, D. and S. Hallam, 2007: ‘Higher education music students’ perceptions of the benefits of participative music making’, Music Education Research 9/1: 93–109. Kolb, D. A., 1984: Experiential Learning: Experience as a Source of Learning and Development (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall). Light, G., R. Cox and S. Calkins, 2009: ‘Facilitating: small group teaching’, in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education: The Reflective Professional, 2nd edn (London: Sage), pp. 127–53. Maiden, B. and B. Perry, 2009: ‘Dealing with free-riders in assessed group work: results from a study at a UK university’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 36/4: 451–64. Micari, M. and D. Drane, 2011: ‘Intimidation in small learning groups: the roles of socialcomparison concern, comfort, and individual characteristics in student academic outcomes’, Active Learning in Higher Education 12/3: 175–87. Monson, I., 1996: Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Moore, A., 2000: Teaching and Learning: Pedagogy, Curriculum and Culture (Abingdon and New York: Routledge). O’Neill, S. A. and D. C. C. Peluso, 2014: ‘Using dialogue and digital media composing to enhance and develop artistic creativity, creative collaborations and multimodal practices’, in P. Burnard, ed., Developing Creativities in Higher Music Education (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 115–26.

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Musicians in the Making Patrick, H., A. M. Ryan, C. Alfred-Liro, J. A. Fredricks, L. Z. Hruda and J. S. Eccles, 1999: ‘Adolescents’ commitment to developing talent: the role of peers in continuing motivation for sports and the arts’, Journal of Youth and Adolescence 28/6: 741–63. Pianta, R. and D. Walsh, 1996: High-Risk Children in Schools (Abingdon and New York: Routledge). Rogers, C. and H. J. Freiberg, 1993: Freedom to Learn, 3rd edn (New York: Merrill). Sawyer, K., 2006a: ‘Group creativity: musical performance and collaboration’, Psychology of Music 34/2: 148–65. Sawyer, K., 2006b: ‘Music and conversation’, in D. Miell, R. MacDonald and D. J. Hargreaves, eds., Musical Communication (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 45–60. Schön, D., 1983: The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books). Seddon, F. A., 2004: ‘Empathetic creativity: the product of empathetic attunement’, in D. Miell and K. Littleton, eds., Collaborative Creativity (London: Free Association Books), pp. 56–78. Seddon, F. A., 2012: ‘Empathetic creativity in music-making’, in O. Odena, ed., Musical Creativity: Insights from Music Education Research (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 133–48. Seddon, F. and M. Biasutti, 2009: ‘A comparison of modes of communication between of a string quartet and a jazz sextet’, Psychology of Music 37/4: 395–415. Springer, L., M. E. Stanne and S. S. Donovan, 1999: ‘Effects of small-group learning on undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology: a meta-analysis’, Review of Educational Research 69/1: 21–51. Stetson, N. E., 2003: ‘Using small-group development to facilitate cooperative learning base groups’, in J. L. Cooper, P. Robinson and D. Ball, eds., Small Group Instruction in Higher Education: Lessons from the Past, Visions of the Future (Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press). Tripp, D., 2012: Critical Incidents in Teaching: Developing Professional Judgement, Classic Edition (Abingdon and New York: Routledge). Tubbs, S. L., 2011: A Systems Approach to Small Group Interaction, 11th edn (New York: Random House). Tuckman, B., 1965: ‘Developmental sequence in small groups’, Psychological Bulletin 63/6: 384–99. van Tartwijk, J., M. Brekelmans, T. Wubbels, D. L. Fisher and B. J. Fraser, 1998: ‘Students’ perceptions of teacher interpersonal style: the front of the classroom as the teacher’s stage’, Teaching and Teacher Education 14/6: 607–17.

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The role and significance of masterclasses in creative learning Ingrid Maria Hanken

Students aiming to become professional musicians in the western classical tradition typically follow a core study programme comprising weekly one-to-one lessons with a regular instrumental or singing teacher. In addition to these ‘private’ lessons behind closed doors, students also often take part in masterclasses in a more ‘public’ context, in which learning and teaching take place in full view of an audience. In some cases, masterclasses taught by renowned musicians are even broadcast on television. But how useful are masterclasses in helping young musicians in their musical development? On the basis of his experiences of masterclasses, Lalli (2004: 24) states, ‘For better or for worse, masterclasses can be life-changing events.’ Anecdotal evidence confirms that masterclasses can provide important learning opportunities, but they can also be of little use to students or, even worse, prove detrimental. Given that masterclasses play such a significant role in the education of future musicians, it is somewhat surprising that the music education research community has shown only limited interest in investigating this particular method of learning and teaching. There is, for example, no reference to ‘masterclasses’ in the index of either volume of The Oxford Handbook of Music Education (Mherson and Welch 2012). Recently, however, interest in investigating and exploring masterclasses has been growing, and this chapter highlights some of the findings and discussions in the literature. It also draws on demonstrations, reflections and discussions by participants at an international symposium on masterclass learning and teaching (reported in Hanken and Long 2012). The focus of this chapter is on how masterclasses might benefit music students, and on how master teachers and students can make the most of them.

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What is a masterclass? The term ‘masterclass’ is used rather broadly and is traditionally employed both to describe public events at which a renowned musician coaches advanced-level students in front of a (paying) audience, and regular classes at a conservatoire where invited musicians and/or of staff teach students in front of other students. The term is also commonly used to describe performance classes where a principal study teacher’s students play and are taught in front of the other students. Masterclasses may be instrument-specific or style-specific. In a research study by Long and colleagues (2011), a typological mapping of masterclasses revealed that they may also vary in of content, ranging from what the authors call artistic-based classes, where the focus is primarily on the realization of the music, to work-based ones, which concentrate on developing work skills, such as mastering auditions or orchestral excerpts. The study also revealed some new approaches to masterclasses, such as when two master teachers with different specialisms co-teach. This mapping study shows that while the term ‘masterclass’ is used to describe many forms and formats of learning and teaching, there is a common denominator in that it involves teaching a student or an ensemble in front of an audience, large or small. The presence of an audience will in itself offer learning opportunities both for the student performing and for the audience, but it also poses some challenges which are not present in one-to-one tuition.

Styles of interaction There are obviously many approaches to teaching a masterclass, and these will result in differing patterns of interaction. Schön (1987) made a classic distinction between two contrasting approaches based on case studies. One is characterized by mutual experimenting and problem-solving. Master teacher and student discuss and try out solutions together—for example, different fingerings or phrasing—and work together as what Schön labels ‘partners in inquiry’ (ibid.: 176). The master teacher’s role is primarily to ask the questions needed to frame and focus the problem, rather than to present solutions and give instructions. The other approach (ibid.: 182) is labelled ‘follow me’. This implies a more teacher-directed approach, where the master teacher gives clear models through instructions and demonstrations. The teaching is concentrated on helping the student approach this model through imitation. Interestingly, Long et al. (2011) made a similar distinction almost twenty-five years later based on observations of twenty masterclasses at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. They found a type of masterclass characterized by a more collaborative style of interaction which they labelled ‘collaborative student-centred’ masterclasses. This style of teaching was more common in

Masterclasses in creative learning

nontraditional, work-oriented masterclasses. In contrast, traditional, artisticbased masterclasses were characterized to a larger extent by what they labelled a ‘master-dominant’ approach, which is similar to Schön’s ‘follow me’. They concluded that the two approaches can be viewed as complementary, as ‘both offer the students important arenas for musical and professional development’ (ibid.: 15). However, according to Long et al. (ibid.), the learning outcomes seem to differ in accordance with the style of teaching. A student-centred approach appears to be particularly conducive to developing self-reflective and cooperative skills. A master-dominant approach, on the other hand, will provide the student with a powerful model of artistry, especially when the master is a well-respected authority in his or her field. It is fair to say that the master- or teacher-dominant approach has come into discredit in general pedagogy, with a typical argument being that it ‘stifles creativity and encourages ivity on part of the student’ (Long et al. 2011: 18). The frequent use of demonstration and imitation in masterclasses has been questioned in particular. It is certainly relevant to ask whether a process designed to lead to artistic originality can be prompted by such powerful teacher-directedness. Schön (1987: 119ff.) claims that in the beginning of the process, the students themselves often do not understand what they need to learn, and they can begin to learn only by doing what they do not yet understand. The master teacher must therefore ask the students to relinquish their autonomy and temporarily submit to becoming dependent. It is not always easy for the master teacher to ask the students to put aside all their doubts and accept being led, says Schön (ibid.: 93ff.). Nor can it be easy for the students to postpone their assessment of the teaching and put aside any doubts that they might have of its effectiveness. But the students must trust the master teacher to lead the way, in addition to trying out the teacher’s suggestions even if they do not as yet understand them (ibid.: 120ff.). In the research literature on the education of performing musicians (see e.g. Nielsen 1998: 129ff.; Nerland 2004: 219ff.), such trust in the principal study teacher is described as a fundamental prerequisite: the student must trust his or her teacher if the teaching is to be successful. It can therefore be argued that an implicit contract exists between the (master) teacher and the student: one will lead and the other will be led. This means that a deliberate choice has been made to teach and to learn, through demonstration and imitation respectively. Schön (1987: 119ff.) emphasizes, however, that imitation is only the first step in the process: the student gives up his or her freedom in order to gain the freedom that new insight and control can provide. The psychologist Albert Bandura (1977, 1986), who has studied learning through observing and imitating models, warns against conceptualizing modelling as ‘simply response mimicry’ (1986: 48). He claims that the learning that takes place through demonstrations and instructions from models encomes much more than imitating the model’s concrete behaviour; the learner

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also learns concepts and rules for what behaviour suits which aims and circumstances. One also learns standards for assessment and problem-solving strategies. The model’s informative function therefore extends much further than the specific example, and the knowledge can be applied to new situations and for new aims. Bandura (ibid.: 104ff.) emphasizes that imitation must not be seen as the antithesis of innovation. Rather, imitation can aid in the development of the cognitive and behavioural tools needed to become innovative. He also points to the potential for creative synthesis and development when combining observations and modelling from different models, such as various master teachers in this case. From these discussions, it is clear that traditional, master-dominant masterclasses can themselves contribute greatly to developing the student’s creativity, although this might not be obvious at the time.

The benefits of masterclasses The widespread use of masterclasses in educational programmes for performance students indicates that masterclasses can provide some benefits not obtained to the same degree through one-to-one teaching. Research studies among students (Creech et al. 2009; Stabell 2010; Long et al. 2011, 2014) and experienced master teachers (Hanken 2010; Long et al. 2011) give some indication as to what masterclasses can offer. Here, the focus is mainly on the benefits for the students performing during masterclasses; possible benefits for those in the audience are addressed in a later section.

NEW PERSPECTIVES The masterclass implies that the students performing are being taught by someone other than their regular instrumental or singing teacher. This might be beneficial in itself. First, the master teacher can assess the student’s potential with a fresh and unbiased eye and ear, and for that reason several of the master teachers in Hanken’s (2010) study stated that they prefer not to know very much about the student in advance. Some of them compared their role in giving masterclasses to the one that they have when teaching their regular students in one-to-one lessons, commenting on how refreshing and motivating it can be for both master teacher and student to be able to focus on the performance and the situation in that moment, and not be influenced by a shared history. Secondly, a different teacher can provide new perspectives and ideas on interpretation or technical solutions. Judging by the responses to the survey among students at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (Creech et al. 2009), this is an explicit expectation from students: when asked what they wanted to learn from masterclasses, twenty-one of the thirty-seven students responded that they hoped to gain new ideas and ways of thinking about


the piece. However, new ideas need not be restricted to the specific piece of music studied in the class. Long et al. (2011) found that master teachers also modelled new ideas as to how the students could think when practising, planning and improving their performances. Especially collaborative, student-centred masterclasses appeared to be associated with broader learning outcomes, whereas master-dominant masterclasses primarily contributed to the performance of the specific piece of music studied in the class. Because the relationship between the principal study teacher and the student tends to be long-term in nature, it could be beneficial to students to be confronted with alternative perspectives during their studies, as this would stimulate their curiosity and enable them to become reflective practitioners, making independent, deliberate and well-informed choices. One of the students in Stabell’s study (2010: 42) expresses this view: one thing that I think is very good with masterclasses is that you get to play for other teachers and have the experience that there are other ways to play than just what your principal instrument teacher says. It is very good for us to get different views on things, and I think you learn a lot by trying out different ways of playing. By attending a number of masterclasses, both the students performing and those in the audience will be confronted with ideas that might challenge, complement or confirm what is learned through regular one-to-one tuition. Thirdly, another teacher/master might be able to ‘get through’ to a student where the regular teacher has difficulty in providing help. One of the master teachers in Hanken’s study (2010: 152) exemplified this when she said: ‘during a long life I have gathered information and experience, and I can often trigger something which the regular teacher has tried to explain many times, and with my “accent” or my approach I somehow manage to get through to this student’. No matter how skilled the principal study teacher is, there will be a limit to the methodological, musical and technical perspectives and suggestions that he or she can put forward. Gaunt’s study (2006) illustrates this point. Meeting a new teacher, with an unbiased mind and with other ideas and solutions to technical or musical problems that the student is facing, can therefore promote both inspiration and understanding. In the many cases where masterclasses are taught by highly respected invited musicians, there is very good reason to believe that the quality of the demonstrations, coaching, and instruction, and not merely the novelty of the perspectives, will play a role in the student’s learning. This is ed by the findings from the student survey by Creech et al. (2009): receiving relevant advice from an expert on their own instrument was the reason most frequently cited by the students (thirty-one out of thirty-seven respondents) as to why the masterclass was beneficial.

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PREPARING FOR CONCERTS The beginning of a masterclass for each student participant is usually staged as a ‘concert’ where the student performs his or her piece in front of a live audience which responds as an audience tends to—with applause. One of the main benefits observed by the musicians in studies by Stabell (2010), Creech et al. (2009) and Long et al. (2011, 2014) stems from precisely the concert-like nature of the event. Some even see the concert practice as the main reason for performing in masterclasses and are less concerned with what can be learned from the master teacher. The students represented in these studies perceive masterclasses as a very useful arena for developing coping strategies needed to perform under stressful conditions. The master teachers in Hanken’s study (2010) also acknowledged the learning effect of the performance part in itself for the students. They point out that the concert-like nature of the masterclass is constructive in that it provides a realistic framework which mimics an authentic work situation for a musician: knowing that one will be playing for an audience triggers a better focus and direction for the students’ practice and preparation than a regular one-to-one lesson. Moreover, it generates more intensity and energy in the performance itself. The student will therefore reveal more of his or her actual potential in this situation. The master teachers also underline that the ‘concert’ and the resulting on how the ‘concert’ situation is handled provide a learning opportunity that cannot be achieved in one-toone tuition. This includes learning how to deal with performance anxiety, how to communicate with the audience and how to project in a large concert hall. One of the master teachers interviewed by Hanken (2010: 153) puts it as follows: ‘What is also very valuable is how [the masterclass] can train the student to become tough, but also to think about projection: “Do you think the audience in the very back could hear that detail? Maybe we should…”.’ We can therefore conclude that the concert-like nature of the masterclass creates a unique possibility for the student to test his or her mettle and to obtain and coaching on the performance in what is the authentic work situation for a musician: playing for an audience.

INITIATION INTO THE PROFESSION Another benefit of masterclasses is that they serve as an arena for gradually initiating students into the profession. Drawing on Lave and Wenger (1991), one can view the music profession as a community of practice. From this perspective, the education of a musician can be understood as a gradual initiation into the community of professional music practice. To become a member of the community, one has to take part in the social practices of that community, such as concerts, rehearsals and individual practice. Through participation in these practices, the apprentice musician gradually learns what is needed to become a full


member of the community (Hanken 2008; Long et al. 2012a; see also Chapter 2 in this volume). The masterclass is an arena where the apprentice musician, through a concert-like performance, is confronted with the standards of the community. These standards are personalized through the master teacher, an acknowledged member of the profession, with high legitimacy. One of the master teachers in Hanken’s study (2010: 155) was very clear that she sees her role as being a representative of the profession: ‘you have to be all right as a human being, but you also have the right to be demanding in your role as a guardian of the standards that are there’. Aspiring musicians need to understand what it takes to be acknowledged as a professional musician. In the masterclass, these standards are demonstrated through the demands and expectations the master teachers communicate when assessing and coaching the students. It is therefore the master teacher’s position as a highly respected musician that gives legitimacy, rather than his or her role and ability as a teacher. As Nerland (2004) points out, principal study teachers in conservatoires teach by virtue of their positions as musicians and artists; how good they are as teachers is secondary in this context. Their authority and legitimacy stem from their central position within the profession; they can give the student access to the traditions and standards of the profession. The same can be said about masterclass teachers. Arenas such as masterclasses also offer students the opportunity to participate in the community of practice with differing degrees of responsibility and exposure. Lave and Wenger (1991) demonstrate how newcomers and apprentices first participate in the periphery. Gradually apprentices are given more demanding tasks, such as, in our case, performing in masterclasses of increasing status and importance. Lave and Wenger (ibid.) underline that even a peripheral position is a legitimate position in the community; it is where all start. It is also a protected position: the students are protected from the demands placed on full . This saves the apprentice musician, the audience and the community of practice from embarrassment caused by lack of proficiency. At the same time, a peripheral position also gives vital access to the learning resources in the practice; masterclasses offer the student a possibility to observe and listen to those who know more. Viewing the masterclass as an arena for initiation might also shed light on a phenomenon that is sometimes observed in masterclasses, i.e. the rather rough treatment that some students receive. From this perspective, the masterclass is a way of testing whether the student is on his or her way to becoming a worthy member of the community of practice. Upholding the standards of the profession is vital, and this can necessitate some ‘brutality’. Long et al. (2011: 136) claim that ‘Many musicians regard this ruthless form of cultural selection to be entirely justified’. This is also ed by Kingsbury (1988: 105), who comments on his observations of life at a conservatory: ‘The fact is that the culling of students perceived as less talented, less accomplished, or less “musical” is generally accepted as necessary and inevitable in conservatory

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life, even if this is accomplished in an unpleasant fashion’. Both students and the teachers in Kingsbury’s study (ibid.) said ‘It has to be done’ when commenting on this rather brutal ‘winnowing’ of the less successful students. Such merciless demands and selection mechanisms become more understandable if the masterclass is perceived as an initiation into the community of professional music practice. It demonstrates the conventional standards in a profession where the public concert represents the moment of truth. Students who cannot do justice to the music and meet the expectations of the audience must be told that they do not measure up to standards. One of the functions of the masterclass is therefore to test whether the student has the potential to become a full-fledged member of the community of music practitioners. Successful students who are given the opportunity to play in prestigious masterclasses with prominent masters will build up their ‘cultural capital’, to use Bourdieu’s (1977) term, by mentioning it on their résumés. One of the younger master teachers in Hanken’s study (2010: 156) had used this strategy himself: ‘This is only about status, it has nothing to do with knowledge. I also write on my CV that I have had masterclasses with [a world-famous musician], but I have actually learned more from a lot of other people… But he is such a big name that I signal that I would like to be associated with him.’ It is also well known that ambitious students use masterclasses with prestigious musicians as a means of advertising themselves and advancing their careers: if a student is perceived as very talented, the master teacher might ask him or her to come and study. The masterclass then serves as a way to gain access to a high-ranking teacher who consequently might open many doors to the profession for the student. Masterclasses thus serve as a useful means not only for initiation into the profession but also for gaining status—for the students who succeed.

Challenges in masterclass learning and teaching A masterclass can be very demanding for the student on stage because it is part concert and part tuition. He or she has to perform in front of an audience, which in itself can be challenging, especially since fellow musicians are often present. There are indications that performing for an audience of fellow students is particularly stressful. Several of the informants in Stabell’s (2010) study claim that this is a much more difficult situation than playing a regular concert with a ‘normal’ audience. One of the students explains why: ‘Playing for fellow students is the worst, because they are the least sympathetic. Fellow students are rarely tolerant of the fact that you are in the process of developing’ (ibid.: 43). The stress is amplified by having to subject oneself to corrections and even criticism in public and by having to try to change well-rehearsed ways of playing then and there, in full view of an audience assessing the progress.


A study by Raeder (2000) demonstrates how performance anxiety in music students can be triggered by playing for an audience, but even more so by having to deal with instructions and corrections in front of others. In a masterclass context the effects of performance anxiety can clearly be devastating: in her research review, Hallam (2002) concludes that performance anxiety causes physical changes such as stiffness and muscle tension. It also leads to cognitive changes, such as lack of concentration, memory lapses and lack of sensitivity in the performance. It is obvious that such reactions will have a negative impact on the ability to perceive and understand instructions and demonstrations, as well as on the ability to perform accordingly. Students react differently to this type of pressure, and the master teacher must therefore be able to regulate the demands made on individual students in keeping with their ability to cope with the situation. The challenges facing the master teacher are equally demanding when trying to assist the student in handling interwoven cognitive, psychomotor and affective learning tasks in front of an audience. It is challenging because he or she must make assessments and decisions on the spot and ‘plan’ the lesson in the moment. The master teacher often has no indication beforehand as to what kind of problems the student will need help solving. Furthermore, in the course of a masterclass session, the master teacher is expected to have helped the student improve the performance to such a degree that it is noticeable to both the student and the audience. The master teacher must first be able to diagnose quickly the cause of a specific problem, such as lack of expressivity in the performance, and to determine whether it is caused by too little musical imagination, by inadequate attention to performance markings in the score, or by lack of technical control. Once the problem has been framed, the master teacher must quickly devise methods for solving it. He or she must also assess on the spot which aspects should be dealt with in the masterclass, and which should instead be deferred to other arenas such as the practice room or individual tuition. In their research into masterclasses, Ruhleder and Stoltzfus (2000) conclude that a master teacher requires a well-developed ability to improvise methodically because the students’ problems are so unpredictable. On the same note, Schön (1987) underlines the need to be proficient in what he calls ‘reflection-in-action’ (see Chapter 3 in this volume): the master teacher must be able to decide how to frame a problem that is revealed and how to address it methodically, while at the same time continuing with the instructions, demonstrations and so on. The master teacher cannot stop and ask for ‘time out’: instead, he or she must continuously plan and adjust his or her teaching while teaching. One of the key factors in achieving a fruitful learning environment in a masterclass is the ability to establish mutual trust between the master teacher and the student performing. This was apparent during the demonstration masterclasses and the discussions that followed at an international symposium in 2011 on masterclass learning and teaching (see Hanken and Long 2012). The

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renowned singer and master teacher Håkan Hagegård stressed how establishing a trusting relationship with the student is fundamental in his approach to masterclass teaching: ‘The technique is to make the student safe, of course, not putting myself in the centre, but [indicating that] I am here, I’m your friend’ (ibid.: 13). During the demonstration masterclasses, the master teachers and student performers endeavoured to appraise each other initially, relying on a heightened awareness of body language, tone of voice and facial expression. The trust between them was established in these first few moments but was also strengthened by the integrity of the master teacher’s professional judgement and intuition. As highly experienced and successful master teachers, they were able to ‘read’ the student performers’ levels of composure, competence, responsiveness and self-confidence, and tailor their approach to the needs of individual students. When such trust was established, the students also became more willing and able to move out of their ‘comfort zones’ and be challenged. As one of the students performing in Hagegård’s class expressed her experience: ‘He shows you very early on that you can trust him. So you don’t have to be afraid. And he sees you, so you have to be honest. You cannot hide. And then it is okay that he pushes you’ (ibid.: 15). Unfortunately, as indicated by anecdotal evidence as well as a survey among students at a UK conservatoire reported by Long et al. (2014), not all master teachers manage to establish such a trusting and safe environment. If one has a reputation as a respected ‘master’, a masterclass is obviously a very challenging teaching arena, and the stakes are high. It can be argued that teaching masterclasses is an especially complex and demanding task, much more so than one-to-one tuition. The master teachers interviewed in Hanken’s study (2010) stated that it had taken them a long time to learn the skills they needed to become adept in the masterclass format and that they had learned these the hard way.

Learning opportunities for the audience In conservatoires, masterclasses are commonly viewed as a learning arena not only for the students performing but also for those in the audience. Attendance at masterclasses is therefore also expected, if not compulsory, for students who themselves are not performing. The latter students do not always agree, however, that they learn much from being in the audience; research by Creech et al. (2009) and Stabell (2010) indicates that students sometimes do not see the point of attending masterclasses if they are not going to perform, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence indicating that students might not prioritize attending masterclasses (only) to listen to their fellow students being taught. This raises some issues about how fruitful masterclasses actually are for students in the audience and about what can be done to ensure their effectiveness.


LEARNING BY OBSERVATION Bandura (1977, 1986, 1997) has written extensively about observational learning, which he describes in of modelling. He also defines preconditions that facilitate learning (1986: 51). The first is that the observer is motivated to learn from the master teacher (in Bandura’s , the model) and focuses his or her attention on what is being modelled. Research reported by Bandura (ibid.: 53) indicates that motivation is most easily achieved when the model is known to be competent and to produce good results. This is also illustrated by results from the research studies by Creech et al. (2009) and Stabell (2010), who found that students were more motivated to attend masterclasses where the teacher was well respected and when the students performing were advanced. The focus and motivation will also be strongest when the teacher is perceived as interesting and holds the attention of the observer. According to Bandura, focus and motivation alone are not enough for learning by observation. A second precondition is that the observer must and be able to execute what is being taught (1986: 55). Of course, receiving corrective will enhance the memory of student participants as well as their ability to execute the music effectively. While those students in the audience do not receive , since they themselves are not performing, Bandura (ibid.: 12) claims that observers will receive what he calls ‘vicarious reinforcement’. Students in the audience will observe the provided to the performing student and consequently learn from it, reinforcing many of the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic representations necessary for performance itself. This is substantiated by Latukefu’s study (2009) of group teaching of tertiary voice students. Those in her study reported that they learned from listening to the given to the student performing; Latukefu explains this effect by referring to Bandura’s theory on vicarious reinforcement. How much the audience will be able to learn is clearly dependent on the way in which the masterclass is being taught. Research by Long et al. (2012b) indicates that some master teachers might not sufficiently consider the needs of the audience. The authors report that students have criticized master teachers for speaking too long or too softly, or for turning their backs on the audience. Learning is also dependent on the students’ own levels of proficiency as performers. The higher their level, the more they will be able to perceive and hence learn from subtle nuances in the demonstrations, instructions and performances. Having prior experience as a performer in a masterclass might also subsequently enhance the ability to learn from observation as an audience member (ibid.).

PEER LEARNING AND PEER ASSESSMENT It is not only the master teacher who can serve as a model: in some ways the student performing can potentially be a more effective model than the

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master teacher, because he or she has more in common with the students in the audience. According to Bandura (1997), such student models will have an even greater influence on fellow students’ perceived self-efficacy. Bandura (ibid.: 95) claims that perceived self-efficacy is ‘uniformly a good predictor of subsequent performance attainments. The higher the perceived self-efficacy, the greater are the performance accomplishments.’ It is therefore vital that students develop not only their musical skills, but also their sense of self-efficacy. Comparisons of one’s own attainments with those of others play an important role in this process, but according to Bandura (ibid.: 87), beliefs of personal self-efficacy will not be much influenced if the model is perceived as very different from oneself. In that respect, observing a fellow student might be more effective than observing a master teacher, who is presumably on a much higher level. This is also ed by Latukefu’s study (2009) on group teaching of voice students. The students taking part reported that listening to others being taught gave them a sense of their own level within the group. Bandura (1997: 90) warns, however, that simply exposing people to models does not necessarily improve their beliefs in their own efficacy. It is important to structure modelling in ways that enhance a sense of personal efficacy while avoiding negative and unfavourable effects of comparisons with the model. This can be achieved by focusing on the instructive function of the model and minimizing the comparative evaluative function. Translated to the context of a masterclass, this means that the class should be framed as a learning opportunity for the students in the audience, where the focus is on developing their knowledge and skills through observing proficient models, rather than on comparative evaluation. This way of understanding masterclasses is expressed clearly by one of the master teachers interviewed by Hanken (2010: 155): ‘I wish to maintain the aspect of competition among the students, but I differentiate between what I consider competition as a positive challenge (“Oh, I want to be able to do that too”) and the negative aspect which involves envy… So I definitely try to maintain the positive aspect.’ Framing the masterclass as a learning opportunity in which students in the audience can be inspired and motivated by their more proficient peers enables students to interpret their present level of proficiency as ‘work in progress’ rather than as an indication of their basic capability or ‘talent’ (Bandura 1997: 92). This effect can be enhanced if the modelling being observed is what Bandura (ibid.: 99) labels ‘coping modelling’. This means that the student can observe the model while working his or her way through difficulties, gradually overcoming them through determined effort. Observing how perseverance and focused effort can lead to improvement in musical performance during the course of the masterclass can demonstrate to the students in the audience that hard work is the key to success. Drawing on Bandura’s theory, we can conclude that masterclasses have the potential to enhance students’ perceived self-efficacy when they observe their fellow students’ coping efforts.


It might be assumed on the basis of Latukefu’s research on group teaching that audiences gain a better awareness of assessment criteria by observing masterclasses. The students in her study (2010) reported that they developed an understanding of assessment criteria through listening to how the teacher assessed their fellow students’ performances. However, it is not only the master teachers who are carrying out assessment during masterclasses: the students in the audience will implicitly assess the performance and will also do so explicitly if invited to participate. from fellow students can prove useful for those asked to assess as well as for the students performing. On the basis of a research review, Falchikov (2007: 133) concludes that both students who have participated in peer assessment and those who have been assessed by peers tend to achieve better results at exams than those who lacked this experience. Although the studies reviewed by Falchikov did not involve musicians, the results have been substantiated for music students: in Latukefu’s study (2010), tertiary voice students reported that taking part in peer assessment helped improve their own performance. The students could subsequently use these criteria when monitoring and assessing their own performances. This is also ed by Hunter and Russ (1996: 77), who emphasize that students learn to listen more critically to the performance of their fellow students when asked to assess, and as a result, they will listen more critically to their own playing. Lebler (2007: 207) underlines that it is vital for music students to learn how to monitor their own progress and develop self-evaluation skills, since ‘the ability to be self monitoring [is] a characteristic of professional practice’. Several researchers point out that peer assessment can also contribute to more generic, lifelong learning skills. Daniel (2004), Falchikov (2007), Lebler (2007) and Latukefu (2010) all emphasize that being involved in peer assessment, and consequently improving the capacity for self-assessment, can help students to develop a sense of ownership of learning and a feeling of control over the learning process. Vocal and instrumental tuition is often characterized as a type of master–apprentice relationship (Nielsen 1998; Burwell 2005; Nerland 2004, 2007; Gaunt 2008; Gaunt et al. 2012; see also Chapter 2 in this volume). The apprenticeship tradition certainly has many dynamic aspects, but there are also potential limitations, such as teacher dominance and student dependence both being excessive (Persson 1994; Jørgensen 2000; Burwell 2005; Gaunt 2010). Taking part in peer assessment helps students to internalize assessment criteria that they later can apply effectively to themselves. This enables them to take responsibility for their own learning and to become self-directed and independent of their teacher. Furthermore, other generic skills can be developed through peer assessment, such as an ability to negotiate (Hunter and Russ 1996) and diplomatic skills (Falchikov 2007: 133). Wöllner and Ginsborg (2011: 302) point to the fact that because most music students will not end up as soloists, they therefore need to learn to communicate with colleagues from diverse backgrounds with different

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opinions. They also need to acquire collaborative skills and learn to engage in a critical dialogue (ibid.). Giving musicians the opportunity to communicate and provide constructive to their fellow students during masterclasses could help to build these necessary lifelong skills. Blom and Poole (2004: 123) also point out that being engaged in peer assessment will prepare students for other roles in musical life, such as those of examiner or music critic. Students in the audiences of many masterclasses are not explicitly asked to give to those who are performing. Consequently some of the skills described above might not be fostered. However, one should not underestimate the potential of masterclasses for developing peer and self-assessment skills in students who are physically somewhat detached but who nevertheless might be quietly observing the proceedings. The learning potential of masterclasses for the students in the audience is pointedly summarized by one of the master teachers interviewed in Hanken’s study (2010: 154), who is responsible for arranging weekly masterclasses for all the string players in his institution: I see them [masterclasses] as an arena for creating a learning environment, for developing a spirit of cooperation, for learning what kind of you don’t give, absolutely! … The fundamental realisation [is] that you learn from each other, that you are all in the same boat, that everyone is struggling with something.

Conclusions and implications for practice Judging from the research on masterclasses described here, as well as a vast body of anecdotal evidence, we can see that masterclasses have an important role to play in preparing musicians for their future careers. There are many benefits to be gained by both the students performing and those in the audience, benefits that are unique to this particular learning and teaching arena. The students performing can gain new perspectives through the master teachers’ guidance; moreover, the concert-like situation mimics life as a performing musician. The masterclass can thus give the aspiring musician access to a community of professional practice, where he or she can participate with varying degrees of responsibility and exposure. There is also a great learning potential for students in the audience, since learning by observation is a very effective strategy which itself also can enhance the students’ sense of self-efficacy. Furthermore, when observing their peers perform, those in the audience can gain a better understanding of assessment criteria and, consequently, develop their ability to assess themselves. These findings underline how important it is that institutions of higher music education provide masterclasses on a regular basis and that these classes


offer a range of challenges to meet the needs of students at different levels of proficiency. Considering the benefits of masterclasses, all students should be given the opportunity to perform because this experience will also enable them to learn more from such classes when they are not on stage themselves. The principal study teacher has an important role to play in enabling students to get the most out of a masterclass. First of all, advice can be given to the student who will perform about selecting repertoire that reflects the master teacher’s expertise. The principal teacher can also help the student prepare for the class during regular lessons. In addition to working on the repertoire, this could include guiding the student on how to handle the stress of the situation as well as providing tips on taking notes and/or recording the session. The principal study teacher can also the student’s learning outcomes from the masterclass afterwards by discussing what was learned and helping the student follow up issues that arose during the class, whether in the studio or in the practice room. In this way the teacher can assist the student in making sense of the masterclass experience and establish a connection between learning arenas. The masterclass will then not be an isolated event but will function as an integral part of the study programme. The principal study teacher also plays an important role when it comes to enabling students who will not be performing to become aware of the learning opportunities inherent in masterclasses. Highlighting forthcoming classes and the merits of the master teacher can motivate such students to attend. Advising them to bring scores, take notes and ask questions will help improve their focus during the masterclass. As Hatton (2014) underlines, principal study teachers can enable students to focus better by discussing with them how and what to observe during a masterclass. The skills of the master teacher, however, will obviously be the key factor as to the benefits for students performing or attending as audience . It is taken as given that the musical quality of the teaching must be of an excellent standard if the masterclass is to be maximally helpful for students. If the teaching is at the highest artistic level, one would expect students to benefit no matter how inadequate it might be from a pedagogical perspective. Being in the presence of and able to observe and listen to a great musician can be informative and inspiring in itself. Nevertheless, teaching masterclasses is challenging, and there is always a risk that the student performing might leave feeling confused, dispirited or humiliated. Ideally, the master teacher should therefore also have the pedagogical skills needed to adapt his or her teaching to the situation at hand. This includes creating a trusting relationship for the student performing; choosing which, and how many, issues to address in order to help and not overwhelm the student; appraising the student’s reactions and responding to them; and creating the proper balance between challenge and . The pedagogical skills also encom the ability to include and involve the audience by acknowledging and communicating with them, choosing issues to

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address in the performance that can be of more general interest, and presenting them in that are more broadly relevant. There is reason to believe that the full potential of peer learning and peer assessment is not always realized in masterclasses. Involving audience by asking them for comments and can benefit both the audience and the student who is performing in many ways. The masterclass teacher, therefore, needs to have the requisite skills for conducting and monitoring such processes to ensure that they are positive and constructive. A majority of the masterclasses offered in conservatoires can be categorized as master-dominant and artistic in nature. The mapping study by Long et al. (2011) illustrates that other types, formats and styles offer further learning opportunities compared with this more traditional approach and that each approach has its own merits. This should be taken into consideration when programming masterclasses in conservatoires, or indeed elsewhere. Further exploration and documentation of such innovative approaches could help realize the full range of benefits that the masterclass can offer musicians in the making.

References Bandura, A., 1977: Social Learning Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall). Bandura, A., 1986: Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall). Bandura, A., 1997: Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control (New York: W. H. Freeman). Blom, D. and K. Poole, 2004: ‘Peer assessment of tertiary music performance: opportunities for understanding performance assessment and performing through experience and self-reflection’, British Journal of Music Education 21/1: 111–25. Bourdieu, P., 1977: ‘Cultural reproduction and social reproduction’, in J. Karabel and A. H. Halsey, eds., Power and Ideology in Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 137–53. Burwell, K., 2005: ‘A degree of independence: teachers’ approaches to instrumental tuition in a university college’, British Journal of Music Education 22/3: 199–215. Creech, A., H. Gaunt, S. Hallam and L. Robertson, 2009: ‘Conservatoire students’ perceptions of master classes’, British Journal of Music Education 26/3: 315–31. Daniel, R., 2004: ‘Peer assessment in musical performance: the development, trial and evaluation of a methodology for the Australian tertiary environment’, British Journal of Music Education 21/1: 89–110. Falchikov, N., 2007: ‘The place of peers in learning and assessment’, in D. Boud and N. Falchikov, eds., Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 128–43. Gaunt, H., 2006: ‘Student and teacher perceptions of one-to-one instrumental and vocal tuition in a conservatoire’ (PhD dissertation, University of London). Gaunt, H., 2008: ‘One-to-one tuition in a conservatoire: the perceptions of instrumental and vocal teachers’, Psychology of Music 36/2: 215–45.

Masterclasses in creative learning Gaunt, H., 2010: ‘One-to-one tuition in a conservatoire: the perceptions of instrumental and vocal students’, Psychology of Music 38/2: 178–208. Gaunt, H., A. Creech, M. Long and S. Hallam, 2012: ‘ing conservatoire students towards professional integration: one-to-one tuition and the potential of mentoring’, Music Education Research 14/1: 25–43. Hallam, S., 2002: ‘ing students in learning to perform’, in I. M. Hanken, S. G. Nielsen and M. Nerland, eds., Research in and for Higher Music Education: Festschrift for Harald Jørgensen (Oslo: Norwegian Academy of Music), pp. 23–44. Hanken, I. M., 2008: ‘Teaching and learning music performance: the master class’, Finnish Journal of Music Education 11/1: 26–36. Hanken, I. M., 2010: ‘The benefits of the master class’, Nordic Research in Music Education Yearbook 12: 149–60. Hanken, I. M. and M. Long, 2012: Master Classes—What Do They Offer? (Oslo: Norwegian Academy of Music). Hatton, E., 2014: ‘Observational learning in the music masterclass’, British Journal of Music Education 31/1: 55–68. Hunter, D. and M. Russ, 1996: ‘Peer assessment in performance studies’, British Journal of Music Education 13/1: 67–78. Jørgensen, H., 2000: ‘Student learning in higher instrumental education: who is responsible?’, British Journal of Music Education 17/1: 67–77. Kingsbury, H., 1988: Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Lalli, R., 2004: ‘Master plan: how to get the most out of a master class’, Opera News 69/1: 24–6. Latukefu, L., 2009: ‘Peer learning and reflection: strategies developed by vocal students in a transforming tertiary setting’, International Journal of Music Education 27/2: 124–37. Latukefu, L., 2010: ‘Peer assessment in tertiary level singing: changing and shaping culture through social interaction’, Research Studies in Music Education 32/1: 61–73. Lave, J. and E. Wenger, 1991: Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lebler, D., 2007: ‘Student-as-master? Reflections on a learning innovation in popular music pedagogy’, International Journal of Music Education 25/3: 205–21. Long, M., A. Creech, H. Gaunt and S. Hallam, 2014: ‘Conservatoire students’ experiences and perceptions of instrument-specific master classes’, Music Education Research 16/2: 176–92. Long, M., H. Gaunt, S. Hallam and A. Creech, 2011: ‘Mapping master classes: format, content and style’, http://www.academia.edu/2848688/Mapping_Master_classes (accessed 15 February 2017). Long, M., A. Creech, H. Gaunt, S. Hallam and L. Robertson, 2012a: ‘Blast from the past: conservatoire students’ experiences and perceptions of public master classes’, Musicae Scientiae 16/3: 286–306. Long, M., S. Hallam, A. Creech, H. Gaunt and L. Robertson, 2012b: ‘Do prior experience, gender, or level of study influence music students’ perspectives on master classes?’, Psychology of Music 40/6: 683–99.

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Musicians in the Making Mherson, G. E. and G. F. Welch, 2012: The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Nerland, M., 2004: ‘Instrumentalundervisning som kulturell praksis. En diskursorientert studie av hovedinstrumentundervisning i høyere musikkutdanning’ (PhD dissertation, University of Oslo). Nerland, M., 2007: ‘One-to-one teaching as cultural practice: two case studies from an academy of music’, Music Education Research 9/3: 399–416. Nielsen, K., 1998: ‘Musical apprenticeship: learning at the academy of music as socially situated’ (PhD dissertation, Aarhus University). Persson, R., 1994: ‘Concert musicians as teachers: on good intentions coming short’, European Journal for High Ability 5/1: 79–91. Raeder, K., 2000: ‘Faglig selvoppfatning som motivasjonsfaktor. En intervjuundersøkelse av utøverstudenters faglige selvoppfatning i forhold til det å delta i utøvende aktiviteter’ (Master’s thesis, Norwegian Academy of Music). Ruhleder, K. and F. Stoltzfus, 2000: ‘The etiquette of the master class: improvisation on a theme by Howard Becker’, Mind, Culture, and Activity 7/3: 186–96. Schön, D. A., 1987: Educating the Reflective Practitioner (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass). Stabell, E. M., 2010: ‘Mesterklassen. Læringspotensiale og funksjon i musikkutdanningen (Master’s thesis, Norwegian Academy of Music). Wöllner, C. and J. Ginsborg, 2011: ‘Team teaching in the conservatoire: the views of music performance staff and students’, British Journal of Music Education 28/3: 301–23.

5

Evaluating progress and setting directions EXAMINATION AND ASSESSMENT

Don Lebler and Scott Harrison

The role of examinations and assessment in music learning The words ‘examination’ and ‘assessment’ are often used interchangeably. In common usage, ‘examination’ would more likely refer to a process designed to make summative judgements about the degree to which the predetermined learning objectives of a course of study have been achieved. The term ‘assessment’ is frequently employed with regard to a wider range of activities, including formal processes designed to provide to learners that are often referred to as ‘formative assessment’. The testing of a student’s declarative knowledge where there is only one correct answer for each question would probably be called an examination, and assessing the quality of open responses that require the exercise of judgement on the part of the examiner is likely to be described as an assessment. Even though performances for assessment might be referred to as ‘performance exams’, they would logically fall more comfortably towards the assessment end of this continuum, demanding the exercise of expert judgement to assess the standard of the work in a more holistic manner than simply counting the number of correct elements. The focus of this chapter is on how assessment processes can enhance the making of musicians, and we cite a number of practices that provide examples of positive assessment practices that strive to achieve these goals. Formal assessment is often undertaken to measure the achievement of learning objectives at various stages of a learning process, such as at the end of a period of study, to certify the student as being ready to progress to the next stage of the learning programme or to exit the programme with a particular qualification. Less formal processes occur frequently in music learning, particularly in performance tuition when the provision of highly customized is one of the central 93

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features of learning. This is perhaps most evident in the dominant mode of learning, the one-to-one lesson (see Chapter 2 in this volume). Assessments also occur as one of the aspects of the communications among the of music ensembles as described in Chapters 8 and 15. Rather than being thought of as separate from learning, informal assessments of various kinds are embedded in the learning of music in many ways. When the primary or sole purpose of an assessment is to provide rather than make a judgement about the level of attainment demonstrated, that process is described as being formative (as noted earlier), but when the assessment is primarily a measure of the student’s achievements, it is referred to as being summative, even if is also given. Summative assessment tasks often provide goals for learners to aim for and milestones to record their achievements, thereby acting as important motivators. Students will usually have to engage in systematic learning processes to achieve success in their performance assessments, identifying those aspects of the performance that need particular attention and finding a means to develop the required skills and abilities, typically in collaboration with their teacher. As discussed later in this chapter, performance examinations are often conducted at the end of each learning period, usually one semester long with two semesters being undertaken every year. However, there is increasing adoption of the trimester model in higher education in some parts of the world, which may mean three performance exams every calendar year. Some question the usefulness of even the commonplace two major assessments per year, arguing that this limits opportunity for the slow learning that is beneficial for music performance,1 so the frequency of summative assessment will need to be taken into as institutions consider variations to their delivery models. Formative assessment and the provision of through less formal means have widespread in the literature, but some caution is needed even here. As is evident in the work of the eminent scholars cited in this chapter, the development of effective self-assessment abilities has many benefits—including the ability to monitor the quality of work in progress independently—and therefore should be a core goal. Frequent transmissive consisting primarily of the evaluative comments of the teacher might create dependency on external judgements in the learner, which would be problematic for continuing independent learning. The provision of through processes such as those described below (Boud 1995b; Lerman and Borstel 2003; Partti, Westerlund and Lebler 2015) avoids any risk of creating dependency in the learner, and develops abilities in self-assessment that will be useful in an inevitably complex creative career.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ASSESSMENT IN MUSIC A written report is common in performance assessment processes, and this can be of value as a means of recording different stages of a music student’s

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development; it is also a requirement at many institutions to fulfil regulatory and compliance expectations. Aside from offering a degree of permanency, written reports also enable students to reflect on their performances and thereby to enhance their understandings of the strengths and weaknesses that were demonstrated in the performance assessment; this is particularly valuable if students have access to a recording of the examination performance, as it enables them to cross-reference their recollections with the views of the examiners and the evidence of the recording. This kind of formal assessment will not usually be available after students graduate, so they need to develop the ability to reflect effectively on their own work if they are to continue to learn and progress along a pathway to creative performance. There are also benefits in a verbal process, such as Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process2 (Lerman and Borstel 2003), because it is carried out in person and demands the active engagement of both the assessor and the student. Verbal can be an important feature of performance assessment; in the Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy, for example, on performances takes a dialogic form and is considered to be an important contributor to the development of the learning community, which is highly valued in this context (Partti et al. 2015). Participatory assessment (ibid.) involves the active participation of students; one example is peer assessment, in which students assess each other, often in highly structured processes. These assessments sometimes contribute to the grades or marks awarded to the student and might involve a mark or grade for those conducting the assessment. Self-assessment is another kind of participatory assessment and is arguably the most important of all assessment types, whether or not it is included as part of an official process, because it is the form of assessment that will serve the student for life (for more details, see Boud 1995a, 2000; Boud and Associates 2010). The ability to make well-founded judgements about work while it is in progress is a core skill for the kinds of continuing development inherent in the lifelong learning that is claimed by many places of higher education as a characteristic of their graduates (Sadler 2013). Considering that musicians typically practise alone, they must be able to selfassess as they progress towards their creative performance goals, and they must be able to respond in constructive ways to any weaknesses that they identify. The assessment landscape for higher music education also includes assessments that occur in an ensemble setting; these are not uncommon. Ensemble assessment takes many forms, as reported by Ginsborg and Wistreich (2010) in their study of twenty-six higher education institutions in the UK: ‘assessment practices vary insofar as ensembles are assessed at different stages of their degree courses, process may or may not be assessed alongside product and while more than half the respondents reported that students are assessed as a group as well as individually—sometimes by themselves—it is not always clear how this is achieved’ (ibid.: 4).

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Harrison et al. (2013a; see also Harrison, O’Bryan and Lebler 2013b) draw attention to the complexities of assessing ensemble work, particularly the issues around the degree to which the process should be assessed along with the product. In these studies, students and teachers shared a range of views about such assessment activities as self- and peer assessment, and the degree to which peer processes should be formalized. A sense of tension was evident between assessing for compliance with institutional regulations and assessing as preparation for future professional music-making. Nevertheless, there was a strong affirmation by both students and teachers of the value of ensemble participation in the making of musicians. Many undergraduate performers will be active as ensemble performers outside their programmes of study, and ensemble work will be a common outcome for graduates, so ensemble performance is an important aspect of students’ progression along the pathway to creative performance.

QUESTIONS OF ASSESSMENT: A CASE STUDY Any discussion about assessment begs four questions: assessment of what, by whom, for what purpose, and how? The authors of this chapter are located in an Australian conservatoire, part of a large multidiscipline university, and so this case study and other practical examples embedded in each section of this chapter draw primarily from the Australian context. In times of increasing regulation of higher education (Lebler et al. 2015), the ‘what’ that should be assessed has been defined by the regulatory authorities, and thus students’ achievement of predetermined learning outcomes is mandated in the Australian Qualifications Framework (2013). Educational institutions must also be able to demonstrate the rigour of these processes and the validity of the grades awarded to the satisfaction of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011), which is charged with the regulation and monitoring of all higher education in Australia, including both private and public providers in all contexts. The answer to the ‘by whom’ question is that each Australian higher education institution is able to conduct assessment itself, with no requirement for examiners to come from outside the institution although the use of external examiners is not uncommon. This does not relieve the individual institutions of the obligation to ensure that the grades they award are comparable with those awarded by other similar Australian and international institutions, and a number of national projects have been funded to develop processes and protocols for ensuring comparability of grades between institutions. The ‘how’ of assessment in the Australian context has been clarified by a sequence of federal government reviews and the development of a strengthened regulations framework. The Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education (Bradley et al. 2008) recommended the development of a set of indicators and instruments to directly assess and compare learning outcomes


and the development of a set of formal statements of academic standards by discipline along with processes for applying those standards. The Australian Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching (formerly the Australian Learning and Teaching Council) then funded a process through which discipline sectors developed statements as to the characteristics of threshold learning outcomes for graduates of various levels of qualification, including Threshold Learning Outcome statements for Bachelor’s and Master’s by coursework programmes in the creative and performing arts (Holmes and Fountain 2010). The means by which these learning outcomes can be assessed has become the focus of a number of discipline-specific projects to ensure that assessment processes in common usage in each discipline are able to assess validly and reliably the achievement of these discipline cluster outcomes. In the Australian context, norm-referenced assessments (where predetermined proportions of submissions are assigned predetermined grades) are no longer acceptable practice. Assessments are now required to be made against predetermined standards regardless of the proportion of the student body achieving a particular standard.

THE ROLE OF ASSESSMENT IN MUSIC LEARNING In addition to meeting any regulatory requirements, the ultimate purpose of assessment in music should be not just to certify students’ achievement of learning outcomes, but also to contribute directly to their learning. This can be effected through the provision of constructive that will inform and direct the future learning of the student, but it can also be achieved by providing assessment tasks that are sufficiently complex and authentic (i.e. not contrived but realistic in nature) to produce learning as a consequence of the assessment tasks themselves. Musical performances are authentic assessment activities for students of musical performance because they replicate the kinds of musical activities that most students would hope for as an outcome of their studies. The preparation needed for a recital assessment is essentially the same as that required for any other recital, so these assessments are important developmental steps. While recitals or other performance activities are commonly used as assessment tasks in musical performance courses, the incidence of participatory assessment is less common, and this is one area in which higher music education might serve its students better. Tasks that involve the students as assessors of their own work or that of others will develop students’ abilities to make valid and systematic judgements about the quality of their work while it is in progress, which is a core skill for autonomous professionals in all fields. The question of what to assess frequently includes considerations of whether craft or artistry should be the focus of assessment. For example, performance course profiles at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University in

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Australia routinely include a statement indicating that in early years greater weight is given to ‘Basic Craft’, whereas in later years musicality and artistry are accorded increasing importance. Here, the focus of assessment gradually moves from technique and execution to more artistic considerations, including matters of expression and interpretation, as students develop their creative skills. In this instance, the teachers who conduct the assessment discuss these considerations in advance of each round of assessments, to reach a consensus as to what the focus of their judgements will be.

Criteria and standards References to criteria and standards in assessment are common in the education literature, and as noted elsewhere in this chapter, major research projects have been undertaken in Europe and Australia that have focused on these aspects of assessment.3 The Oxford English Dictionary (OED online) includes ‘standard’ in its definition of ‘criteria’ and ‘criterion’ in its definition of ‘standard’, which is hardly elucidatory. For the purposes of this chapter, criteria are defined as the characteristics of an assessment item that will be assessed, while standards are measures of the degree to which students are able to demonstrate their mastery of those characteristics (Sadler 1985). Communicating standards has been a challenge for those interested in maintaining consistency in assessment, and various approaches have been used, sometimes in combination. The method in widespread use in the higher music education context is the construction of quite detailed verbal descriptions of the characteristics of various standards of achievement, usually resulting in at least several sentences being employed to describe how each category of achievement differs from the others. Sadler (2007) points out some of the difficulties with this method, and he suggests that it alone is not likely to serve us well. When this approach is taken to the degree that the learning objectives are atomized, i.e. broken down into their constituent parts, the result is a list of micro-competencies that are sometimes assessed as being either present or absent. This approach is used widely in the vocational education sector, for example. Sadler’s view is that holistic judgements of assessments where ‘the appraiser … makes a qualitative judgment as to its overall quality’ are more effective than those where ‘the teacher makes separate qualitative judgements on each of the preset criteria’ (2009a: 161). Sadler (2010a) also recommended the process of consensus moderation as an appropriate strategy when multiple assessors are involved in marking student responses to a single assessment task. Consensus moderation would have all assessors grade a representative sample piece of work, compare marks, and engage in focused discussion on what constitutes quality and on the standards to be used to assess the work of the remaining students in the course. Only elements that relate directly to achievement are relevant, not extraneous factors


such as attendance or participation. The meaning of various levels of student achievement can be communicated among examiners through collections of examples of responses to assessment tasks that have been judged to be of particular standards, and this is more likely to produce a consensus as to standards than written descriptors alone (Sadler 2010b, 2010c).

Indicative practices ASSESSMENT OF INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE While a range of assessment activities is available in most higher music education contexts for aspects of programmes that are not musical performances (such as exams in theory or musicology), the assessment of musical performances tends to be based on a much narrower range of practices. Such forms of assessment, which are largely limited to music programmes, arguably present the greatest challenge to the sector. The intensive study of performance is the defining characteristic of conservatoire education, and assessment in this area is often of particular interest to researchers. It is also an increasingly important part of undergraduate and postgraduate curricula in university music departments around the world, many of which offer practice-led research opportunities in performance at Master’s and doctoral levels. Various summative assessment practices of individual performance are present in higher music education, sometimes undertaken every term or semester, sometimes annually, and sometimes only at the point of graduation from a degree programme. For example, in the thirteen higher music education institutions included in Monkhouse’s (2010) study, formal performance assessments took place during all semesters of study, whereas at some institutions, performance courses are two semesters in length, with a major performance recital assessment occurring at the end of the year of study, supplemented by technical assessments and reflective writing assignments at other stages of the year. This mix of assessment activities is common to all of the institutions included in the Monkhouse study. A variety of processes are employed in higher music education institutions to ensure valid and reliable assessment of musical performances. In some locations, external examiners are used (as noted above), and the EU’s Polifonia Working Group on Assessment and Standards found that ‘external examiners help institutions reflect on their assessment procedures and standards in addition to making assessment more reliable and providing external measures against which to measure standards of student achievement’ (Polifonia 2014: 30–31). While this would seem logical, Bloxham and her colleagues have found that in their UK study, ‘the potential of experienced peers in a subject discipline to provide the assurance of standards is limited’ (Bloxham et al. 2015: 1). The Polifonia Working Group recognized in their final report

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‘the potential of the consensus moderation approach in working towards the goal of inter-institutional consensus on standards in European HME [higher music education]’ (Polifonia 2014: 19). Consensus moderation has been found to be effective at our own institution, where performances are assessed by at least two or three teachers, not always including the teacher of the student being assessed, and sometimes including a teacher who is not a specialist in the instrument being assessed. All markers will typically be familiar with the standards that are applied through the consensus moderation process described above, and although each marker works independently, the will discuss their views before finalizing the assessment, ensuring the maintenance of consensus as to the standards represented by the grades awarded. A bank of videorecorded exemplars has been developed as reference points for assessment, and these are available to students as well as teachers from all departments so that consensus occurs across departmental boundaries (Lebler 2013a).

ASSESSMENT OF ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCES According to Ginsborg and Wistreich (2010: 6), ‘the development of music curricula in university music departments and conservatoires has been dogged by the inability to address the assessment of group performance’. They note that while musical process can be assessed by a variety of means (including self- and peer evaluation), a musical product is usually assessed by tutors using criteria prepared for individual principal study assessments. This type of assessment model is noted as being particularly inappropriate for jazz musicians. Citing Barratt and Moore’s (2005) work, they observe that an emphasis on individual marking has been shown to inhibit students’ musical expression ‘such that they are less likely to interact freely and spontaneously, and to take risks in performance’ (Ginsborg and Wistreich 2010: 6). If assessment practices are intended to assist students as they develop, anything that might stifle creative processes should be discouraged, particularly when assessing performances in jazz or other improvisational forms of music. Alternatives to the assessment of ensemble performance by teachers themselves have been reported for some time, including in the work of Hunter (1999), Blom and Poole (2004), Daniel (2004) and others (for example, Lebler 2006, 2010, 2012; McWilliam, Lebler and Taylor 2007; Harrison et al. 2013a; Denson and Nulty [n.d.]), though the established mode of the individual assessment of individual performers in ensembles by teachers remains firmly entrenched. One interesting alternative approach to the assessment of individuals in an ensemble setting has been explored at our workplace, in which jazz instrumental students were assessed while playing with an ensemble of their teachers rather than an ensemble of their peers. This enabled the immediate provision of verbal from the teachers which closely resembled the kinds of discussions that often occur among players in jazz ensembles, where among


colleagues is not at all unusual. While this process had considerable value in of offering authoritative in a manner that emulates the informal common in jazz ensembles, it was unsustainably expensive and has been discontinued.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS TO PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS Monkhouse reports that in the Australian context, ‘technical exams, teacher’s [sic] reports, recital exams, concert practice performance/s, ensemble activities, and reflective journals’ (2010: 5) all contributed to a student’s overall results in performance courses, though not all tasks contributed to his or her grade. All of these are included in one form or another at our workplace, and even the recitals associated with performance courses now include a Performance Studies Portfolio (PSP) worth 15 per cent of the overall mark, including such material as reviews of concerts that students have attended and reflections on workshops and individual lesson activities. PSPs are marked by teachers whose assessments are subjected to intra- and interdepartmental consensus moderation processes.

CONSEQUENCES OF ASSESSMENT The most obvious consequence of assessment, and certainly summative assessment in particular, is the impact that it will have on a student’s grades, which in turn will potentially affect future study options and possibly future employment options. It has to be said that while excellent conservatoire results might influence a person’s likelihood of getting to the stage of a professional audition, the presence or absence of a qualification will not necessarily have any influence on his or her employability as a performer; for example, neither of the authors has ever been asked about his education when being considered for a performance position. This does not imply that assessment is benign, however. Just as well-framed constructive can inspire students to greater focus and application, poorly framed can sour the learning experience and even alienate learners from future engagement with the formal learning process. Clearly this can have a potentially negative effect on their development as creative musicians. Boud (1995b) provides effective guidelines on how to construct (and receive) , and anybody interested in providing in ways that will enhance the likelihood of its being acted on would benefit from reading them. In brief, his advice is to be realistic, specific, sensitive to the goals of the person for whom is being given, timely, descriptive, consciously nonjudgemental, noncomparative, diligent, direct, positive and aware of one’s own perspectives (ibid.: 204–5). If having a positive effect is the goal in providing , it follows that the should be constructed so as to maximize the chances of the recipient acting on it. These guidelines

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have proven particularly helpful in inducting students into the act of giving to their peers. In turn, this will enable graduates to interact with their colleagues constructively because much music-making is done collaboratively, and providing constructive to colleagues is an important aspect of developing creative skills as a musician.

Assessment narratives ASSESSMENT IN POPULAR MUSIC AND FINNISH FOLK MUSIC PROGRAMMES As noted above, there are convincing arguments for the development of selfassessment abilities in students as a means of enhancing continuing progression towards creative performance outcomes. While such developments are not exclusive to these examples, it is instructive to compare the approaches to participatory assessment in two particular contexts: the Bachelor of Popular Music (BPM) programme at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, and the Folk Music programme at the Sibelius Academy at the University of the Arts Helsinki in Finland. In both cases, the assessment processes are intended to involve the students as active participants, thereby adding learning value to what might otherwise be purely summative assessments. There are differences in the methods employed, however. For instance, BPM students conduct a criteria-referenced self-assessment of their recorded creative works, which they submit online at the same time as the recordings. Although each student submits a portfolio of recordings as an individual, the work in question is often created collaboratively, with students contributing in multiple ways including songwriting, performance, and audio engineering and production. The selfassessment informs discussions that take place in assessment meetings, where seven or eight students and a teacher meet to discuss their responses to the submissions they have each been assigned and have provisionally assessed through an online system in advance of the meetings. In this instance, the process uses online technologies at all stages of the assessment process, accommodated in a sophisticated bespoke online application called the Bachelor of Popular Music Assessment Tool (BoPMAT);4 this is especially appropriate in the popular music context, where technology is prevalent. In the case of the Sibelius Folk Music programme, the assessment occurs in authentic public concert situations before an audience including fellow students, teachers and others from the Academy as well as of the general public. Students explain their musical choices in a written statement that is provided to the jury charged with conducting the assessment. The statement is the result of a semester-long process during which students reflect on their learning as they work towards achieving the goals that they have set in consultation with their teachers. Following each performance, the student’s teacher


provides his or her perspective on how the learning process has unfolded during the semester, and the student also has an opportunity to talk about the performance. Finally, the jury ask questions of the student to encourage further selfreflection, without pre-empting what the student might say by expressing his or her opinions first (Partti et al. 2015). Despite the differences in musical genre and procedures, both of these assessment processes are intended to serve the making of musicians by developing students’ abilities to monitor their own work while it is in production, which is vital for their future and continuing development (Sadler 2007, 2010b). In neither case are the responsibilities of teachers abandoned: instead, their actions are focused more on the development of assessment abilities in students than on the expression of their own evaluative judgements.

CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT IN MUSICAL THEATRE Harrison, Sabey and O’Bryan (2014) implemented and evaluated a process of continuous assessment in musical theatre in which staff provide detailed about student progress on a weekly basis. Marks are awarded for up to twenty subactivities within the broad areas of acting, dance (with jazz, tap and ballet subcategories), performance project, singing and speech. This assessment process is embedded in a degree structure that has adopted a sliding scale of formative and summative assessment across the three-year programme: the first year is marked almost entirely on progress, and the final year almost entirely on performance. The notion behind this system is to help ensure ‘industry-ready’ graduates in an effort to embrace ‘the kinds of evaluations we would like our students to be able to employ after graduation’ (Lebler 2008: 196). Through focus-group interviews with participants, the efficacy of this assessment process has been documented. Assessment is only part of the process through which this occurs, but the findings from the project indicate that continuous assessment offers the motivation, consistency and levels of required to provide students with authentic learning experiences that stand them in good stead for life beyond the institution.

ASSESSMENT BY S IN CLASSICAL AND JAZZ The assessment of performance has been a topic of interest to researchers for some time. For example, Wrigley ‘investigated ways to improve the quality of musical performance evaluation in an effort to address the ability imperative in tertiary music education’ (2005: i). He developed ‘an instrument-specific, criterion-referenced rating scale for empirically measuring music performance outcomes that demonstrated levels of standards in music performance’ (ibid.: i). Even though most of the performance faculty had been actively involved in the development of this method, their preference was for more

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holistic assessment, and therefore the model was not adopted. This preference is still current at the site of Wrigley’s research, and there are no predetermined criteria sheets in use for performance assessment at the time of writing. The absence of predetermined criteria aligns with Sadler’s most recent thinking (2015), which s the forming of a holistic judgement and then expressing that judgement using criteria that are derived from the strengths and weaknesses of the assessment item as it was presented, commenting on the noteworthy aspects of the performance. The approach advocated by Sadler is not uncommon in the assessment of performance, and provided that assessments are referenced to appropriate predetermined standards, it appears to be unproblematic in practice.

The importance of alignment It is known that assessment not only directs students’ learning to what it is that will be assessed, but also shapes the way in which students undertake and customize their learning to be effective in the context of the assessments they will experience (Biggs 1999, 2016). Consequently, assessments should be designed so that they are capable of measuring the achievement of the learning objectives of the course of study, and assessment tasks should be sufficiently authentic to encourage the attributes and abilities that we intend our students to develop. In the instance of higher music education, a primary consideration should be the efficacy of assessment processes for the preparation of students to progress effectively and efficiently along the various pathways to creative performance that they will encounter on their musical journeys. Many would argue that the ability to be self-monitoring after graduation should be one of these abilities (see e.g. Sadler 2009b, 2010b, 2013). The current international context provides teachers with an opportunity to review assessment practices to ensure that they are likely to produce the outcomes they intend for their students, in ways that are academically defensible and able to achieve the goals of their educational programmes as well as satisfying external regulations. For example, the importance of assessment and standards in the European context is demonstrated by the Polifonia Assessment and Standards project. Generic learning outcomes are also mandated in the Australian context, as is the obligation to ensure that assessment processes are rigorous. Comparability between various higher music education institutions and consistency of standards within and between courses and programmes of study are no longer optional. As noted above, the making of musicians is a lifelong process: good results in a training institution might enhance the audition capabilities of a performer, but with the laws of supply and demand heavily weighted to the former, many other factors come into play. This is not to imply that assessment and examination are unimportant or that assessing for compliance and assessing as


preparation for future professional music-making are incompatible. On the contrary, investigations into examination and assessment can only enhance our ability to assist our musicians-in-the-making to be as well prepared as possible to take their place in the world.

References Australian Qualifications Framework, 2013: Australian Qualifications Framework Council, http://www.aqf.edu.au (accessed 15 February 2017). Barratt, E. and H. Moore, 2005: ‘Researching group assessment: jazz in the conservatoire’, British Journal of Music Education 22: 299–314. Biggs, J. B., 1999: Teaching for Quality Learning at University (Buckingham: Open University Press). Biggs, J. B., 2016: ‘Constructive alignment’, http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/constructive-alignment (accessed 15 February 2017). Blom, D. and K. Poole, 2004: ‘Peer assessment of tertiary music performance: opportunities for understanding performance assessment and performing through experience and self-reflection’, British Journal of Music Education 21/1: 111–25. Bloxham, S., J. Hudson, B. d. Outer and M. Price, 2015: ‘External peer review of assessment: an effective approach to ing standards?’, Higher Education Research & Development 34/6: 1–14. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2015.1024629 (accessed 15 February 2017). Boud, D., 1995a: ‘Assessment and learning: contradictory or complementary?’, in P. Knight, ed., Assessment for Learning in Higher Education (London: Kogan Page), pp. 35–48. Boud, D., 1995b: Enhancing Learning through Self Assessment (London: Kogan Page). Boud, D., 2000: ‘Sustainable assessment: rethinking assessment for the learning society’, Studies in Continuing Education 22: 151–67. Boud, D. and Associates, 2010: ‘Assessment 2020: seven propositions for assessment reform in higher education’ (Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council), http://www.uts.edu. au/sites/default/files/Assessment-2020_propositions_final.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Bradley, D., P. Noonan, H. Nugent and B. Scales, 2008: Review of Australian Higher Education (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia). Daniel, R., 2004: ‘Peer assessment in musical performance: the development, trial and evaluation of a methodology for the Australian tertiary environment’, British Journal of Music Education 21/1: 89–110. Denson, L. and D. Nulty, [n.d.]: ‘Peer and self-assessment in music ensembles’, http://www. griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/134349/MusicEnsembles.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Ginsborg, J. and R. Wistreich, 2010: ‘Promoting excellence in small group music performance: teaching, learning and assessment’, Higher Education Academy report, http:// www.heacademy.ac.uk/resource/promoting-excellence-small-group-music-performanceteaching-learning-and-assessment (accessed 15 February 2017). Harrison, S., D. Lebler, G. Carey, M. Hitchcock and J. O’Bryan, 2013a: ‘Making music or gaining grades? Assessment practices in tertiary music ensembles’, British Journal of Music Education 30: 27–42.

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Musicians in the Making Harrison, S., J. O’Bryan and D. Lebler, 2013b: ‘ “Playing it like a professional”: approaches to ensemble direction in tertiary institutions’, International Journal of Music Education 31: 173–89. Harrison, S., P. Sabey and J. O’Bryan, 2014: ‘Are we there yet? The role of continuous assessment in musical theatre training’, Studies in Musical Theatre 8/2: 159–75. Holmes, J. and W. Fountain, 2010: Creative and Performing Arts Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement (Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council). Hunter, D., 1999: ‘Developing peer-learning programmes in music: group presentations and peer assessment’, British Journal of Music Education 16/1: 51–63. Lebler, D., 2006: ‘The masterless studio: an autonomous education community’, Journal of Learning Design 1: 41–50. Lebler, D., 2007: ‘Student-as-master? Reflections on a learning innovation in popular music pedagogy’, International Journal of Music Education 25/3: 205–21. Lebler, D., 2008: ‘Popular music pedagogy: peer-learning in practice’, Music Education Research 10/2: 193–213. Lebler, D., 2010: ‘Informal learning in formal learning: Web 2 to the rescue’, in M. Hannan, ed., The Musician in Creative and Educational Spaces of the 21st Century: Proceedings from the International Society for Music Education (ISME) 18th International Seminar of the Commission for the Education of the Professional Musician (Malvern: International Society for Music Education), pp. 69–72. Lebler, D., 2012: ‘Technology and students’ musicking: enhancing the learning experience’, Theory Into Practice 51: 204–11. Lebler, D., 2013a: ‘Performance standards exemplars’, http://assessmentinmusic.com.au/ reference-bank/performance-standards (accessed 15 February 2017). Lebler, D., 2013b: ‘Using formal self- and peer-assessment as proactive tools in building collaborative learning environments: theory into practice’, in H. Gaunt and H. Westerlund, eds., Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 111–22. Lebler, D., J. Holmes, S. Harrison, G. Carey, and M. Cain, 2015: ‘Assessment in music in the Australian context: the AiM project’, in D. Lebler, G. Carey and S. Harrison, eds., Assessment in Music Education: from Policy to Practice (London: Springer), pp. 39–54. Lerman, L. and J. Borstel, 2003: Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process: A Method for Getting Useful on Anything You Make, from Dance to Dessert (New York: Dance Exchange). McWilliam, E., D. Lebler and P. G. Taylor, 2007: ‘From ive consumers to active producers: students as co-teachers in a popular music program’, paper presented at the 13th International Conference on Thinking—Curious Minds Think and Learn by Exploring the Unknown, Norrköping, Sweden, 17–21 June 2007, http://www.ep.liu.se/e_article/ index.en.aspx?issue=021;vol=1;article=016 (accessed 15 February 2017). Monkhouse, H., 2010: ‘Developing effective learning environment for tertiary music students and staff’, Australian Learning and Teaching Council, http://www.altcexchange. edu.au/ content/ developing- effective- learning- environment- tertiary- music- studentsand-staff (accessed 15 February 2017). Partti, H., H. Westerlund and D. Lebler, 2015: ‘Participatory assessment and the construction of professional identity in folk and popular music programmes in Finnish and Australian music universities’, International Journal of Music Education 33/4: 476–90.

Examination and assessment Polifonia, 2014: Polifonia Working Group on Assessment and Standards, http://www.aecmusic.eu/ polifonia/working- groups/assessment–standards (accessed 15 February 2017). Sadler, D. R., 1985: ‘The origins and functions of evaluative criteria’, Educational Theory 35: 285–97. Sadler, D. R., 2007: ‘Perils in the meticulous specification of goals and assessment criteria’, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 14: 387–92. Sadler, D. R., 2009a: ‘Indeterminacy in the use of preset criteria for assessment and grading’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 34: 159–79. Sadler, D. R., 2009b: ‘Transforming holistic assessment and grading into a vehicle for complex learning’, in G. Joughin, ed., Assessment, Learning and Judgement in Higher Education (Houten: Springer), pp. 45–64. Sadler, D. R., 2010a: ‘Assuring academic achievement standards at Griffith University’, http:// app.griffith.edu.au/ assessment- matters/ pdfs/ assuring- academic- achievement-standards-second-edition.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Sadler, D. R., 2010b: ‘Beyond : developing student capability in complex appraisal’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 35: 535–50. Sadler, D. R., 2010c: ‘Fidelity as a precondition for integrity in grading academic achievement’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 35: 727–43. Sadler, D. R., 2013: ‘Opening up : teaching learners to see’, in S. Merry, M. Price, D. Carless and M. Taras, eds., Reconceptualising in Higher Education: Developing Dialogue with Students (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 54–63. Sadler, D. R., 2015: ‘Backwards assessment explanations: implications for teaching and assessment practice’, in D. Lebler, G. Carey and S. Harrison, eds., Assessment in Music Education: From Policy to Practice (London: Springer), pp. 9–20. Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act, 2011: Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act, http://www.teqsa.gov.au/about (accessed 15 February 2017). Wrigley, B., 2005: ‘Improving music performance assessment’ (PhD dissertation, Griffith University).

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Informal learning and musical performance Tim Smart and Lucy Green

Introduction: the formal-nonformal-informal continuum

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The concept of informal learning in music tends to be largely associated with the practices of popular and other vernacular musicians.1 Yet as we hope to show in this chapter, it may be beneficial to widen the scope to include informal learning in relation to the experiences and perspectives of musicians working also in various aspects of western classical music. We analyse research on a cross-section of professional and amateur musicians across popular, jazz, traditional and classical music, concerning how they acquired those aspects of their skills and knowledge that they value the most. Through the discussion, it becomes clear that many, indeed perhaps most, of those skills and much of that knowledge have been acquired informally, rather than as a focused or conscious part of formal education. A further thread running through the chapter is the notion that many of these areas relate in various ways to creativity—through, for example, musical expression, spontaneity, and individuality or originality in performance. People learn everywhere, all the time, as is neatly expressed in the adage ‘you live and learn’. Werquin (2010: 14), writing outside the field of music, recently noted that there is growing interest among educationalists and others in learning that takes place outside the formal arena. Attention has been directed to the recognition of this learning, the ways in which the learning takes place, and how it is or could be valued both at a macro level in society and at a micro level by the individuals who are engaged in it (ibid.: 17–19). Werquin summarizes the current position whereby forms of learning are conceptualized as occupying areas on a continuum, with formal and informal learning at the poles and nonformal learning between the two (see also, in the field of music education, Green 2002, Folkestad 2006, Smilde 2012 and Veblen 2012).

Informal learning and musical performance

Briefly and in general , ‘formal’ learning tends to be defined as the kind of learning that takes place in institutions such as schools and universities, as a direct result of teaching. It is largely intentional, and learners are consciously aware of learning or attempting to learn. It occurs under the tutelage of a recognized and usually accredited teacher and is often guided by an approved and structured curriculum or syllabus. In music, this would also encom private or institutionally provided instrumental or vocal tuition, especially when linked to graded examinations or other accredited assessment (Green 2002: 3–5; Finnegan 1989: 133ff.; Smilde 2009: 74). ‘Nonformal’ learning is a staple term in the wider educational literature. It usually refers to learning that happens as a result of intentional and structured provision taking place outside institutions offering accredited qualifications (Schugurensky 2000). In the music literature, the term refers to a range of community and youth music programmes as well as some practices that occur in school classrooms (see e.g. Green 2002; Renshaw 2005; Mak et al. 2007; Higgins 2012; Smilde 2012; Veblen 2012). Some instrumental tuition, particularly where it is not linked to a syllabus or exam accreditation, and possibly where the teacher has no related qualifications, may in this sense be regarded as nonformal. ‘Informal’ learning finds its fullest expression outside both of these contexts, although it may take place within them. Most especially, informal learning refers to learning that occurs at an individual or group level in contexts unrelated to institutional provision, such as the proverbial bedroom or garage of the young rock musician. It also includes many aspects of the unsupervised practice of a young classical learner. Informal learning is usually defined as spanning the conscious, intentional and structured, as well as the nonconscious, unintentional and unstructured (see e.g. Finnegan 1989; Green 2002, 2008a; Folkestad 2006; Smilde 2012). By ‘conscious’, we mean here the extent to which learners intend to learn, structure their learning or are aware of their learning; by ‘nonconscious’, we mean the extent to which they either learn without intending to learn or without realizing at the time that they are learning, or learn in a chaotic or haphazard manner rather than a planned route. The former, conscious type of informal learning would include various self-teaching methods such as playing along with a recording, studying online media, inventing technical exercises, or going to a music library and sifting through scores. The latter, nonconscious type would include learning by ‘osmosis’ or enculturation, by listening to music and by watching other musicians, as an ongoing process that informs the ‘rhythms, tonal patterns and combinations, preferred timbres and performance modes’ of a culture (Mans 2009: 84). Despite these broad definitions, there is little general agreement about how the ‘formal’, ‘nonformal’ and ‘informal’ are differentiated at a more detailed level, or about the nature of the interactions and overlaps between them. However, as Werquin (2010: 24) suggests, defining too rigidly is

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likely to be of limited value. Instead, he proposes flexibility so that key can be determined locally. We agree with this stance. As such, differentiating the can be seen as involving an interaction of multiple elements along the continuum. Factors in this differentiation include perceived levels of control, oversight and quality assurance on the part of educators or state; perceptions of ownership of knowledge; explicit structure within the learning; awareness of degrees of intentionality to learn; conscious awareness when learning has taken or is taking place; and nonconscious learning which may or may not be brought to consciousness at a later time. In order to consider how learning can include several of these factors at any one time, it may be useful to posit a hypothetical example of a rehearsal in a garage, where a band of young musicians is learning a new song. The band have differing levels of skill, and the abler are sharing competencies with their band mates. In general , this scenario would be categorized as involving informal learning, but the activities that take place are likely to encom many subtle and overlapping elements. In the music education literature, Green (2002) distinguishes between ‘group learning’ and ‘peerdirected learning’. The former concerns largely unintentional or nonconscious, co-operative learning, whereas the latter includes one or more peers explicitly teaching, sharing knowledge or demonstrating to others. In relation to a setting such as this, Schugurensky (2000: 3) defines ‘self-teaching’ as learning that is intentional and aware, in which help may be provided from what he calls a ‘resource person’ (possibly a peer or older sibling) who has greater skills or knowledge but, critically, does not see himself or herself, and is not seen by others, as an ‘educator’. The learning that is taking place may become more structured as the processes of learning are sequenced, but there is no overarching syllabus or curriculum in play other than those supplied by other musicians and the material itself. Other differentials as listed above can also be applied to this environment, for example, elements of perceived control and ownership over the activities. In addition, a number of types of learning may occur in quick succession or simultaneously (Green 2002; Werquin 2010). An individual from the band just described may be sitting in a school classroom and seem to be learning by listening to what the teacher is saying, though in fact she is not listening at all but is instead thinking through some pitch relations pertaining to the song on which the band is working. In this sense, the learning is still going on ‘outside’ the formal education context, but ‘outside’ is to be taken metaphorically rather than literally. The same individual may, in the informal comfort of her bedroom, consciously decide to prepare for the band rehearsal by learning her part for the song using an audio or video recording, or indeed applying some techniques that she has learned in her lessons. After trying things out and playing along, she feels that she has learned the song to her own satisfaction and then puts the instrument away. However, alongside the process of learning the


song consciously and intentionally, she may have also unconsciously and unintentionally developed her aural discrimination, aural memory, output transfer from the sound she hears to the sound that she plays, and knowledge and feel of style and form, along with myriad other developments that may be difficult to articulate, even if she was aware of them at the time. After engaging in such activities, it is possible that progress may become retrospectively apparent, for example with the realization that she has developed skills and abilities that are valued by her friends, audiences or fellow musicians. Overall, usage and conceptualization of the ‘formal’, ‘nonformal’ and ‘informal’ require that they reflect awareness of the complex nature of the differentials relating to learning; how, where and why learning is taking place; the people and institutions involved; and how all of these factors are perceived by the individuals who are learning. We have briefly considered how increased attention to the range of factors that differentiate learning types may be helpful; how informal learning—our focus in this chapter—can be broadly and flexibly defined; and how it may take place across a range of musical styles and contexts. We have also considered how the level of conscious intention cuts across the formal-nonformal-informal continuum. In a nutshell, by informal learning we largely mean learning that can be either conscious or nonconscious, but that takes place autonomously from any intended effect or context of formal provision as outlined above, and with the provisos that we have suggested. The literature on informal learning in music has, as in other subject areas, highlighted and recognized a range of learning outcomes, as well as environments and learning practices that have led to these outcomes. This has also raised the visibility of learning in these ways, as well as the value systems attached to them. As noted earlier, informal learning in music has been associated mainly with the practices of popular and other vernacular musicians. This is indeed a highly relevant population to study, since their learning has tended, at least until very recently, to fall entirely or almost entirely within the clearly informal arena, and to some extent the nonformal one. Many important insights have come from the area, including issues related to outcomes, learning practices and motivational aspects (for some early examples, see Becker 1963; A. Bennett 1997; H. S. Bennett 1980; Berkaak 1999; Berliner 1994; Björnberg 1993; Cohen 1991; Finnegan 1989; Green 2002; Lilliestam 1996; McCarthy 1999). The value systems associated with informal learning in music also mirror wider issues in the field, in that knowledge, skills and abilities learned in the informal realm by popular musicians across many substyles have often been undervalued relative to those associated with formal learning. However, this is not to presuppose that the impact of informal learning ends with this population or these musical styles. The concept of lifelong learning is strongly linked with the impact of informal learning, through ‘living and learning’, and as such it seems that informal learning serves as the basis of much

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learning in music over the lifespan, irrespective of context or musical style (see Veblen 2012; Smilde 2012), even if it is not necessarily universally valued by stakeholders and the public (Werquin 2010: 18). An inclusive grasp of the range of skills relevant for musicians is crucial for the visibility and recognition of the environments and the learning practices that their development. Thus, we present below a brief overview of the range of musical skills that are required and most highly valued in the eyes of musicians themselves, with regard to both their own abilities and those of others, as individuals and as a sociomusical group working across various musical styles. What, in musicians’ eyes, makes a ‘good’ musician? That is the anchor of our discussion in the next section. This is followed by a consideration of the extent to which these highly valued skills seem to have been acquired informally, including both conscious and nonconscious learning in various contexts. In this process, we also note the links and that this skill set provides, or is seen to provide, in proceeding along one or more pathways towards creative performance. There is an increasing body of research into musicians’ self-perceived approaches to informal learning. Here we review a small selection of the literature and also add new data from interviews with twenty-eight professional musicians in London.2 Among the musicians cited, both from previous studies and from new data, most are professional freelancers who regularly work in a number of musical contexts, styles and genres, in many cases fluidly moving between major symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, the recording studio, the theatre pit, the big band stage, the small jazz ensemble and other settings. We have also at times added the perspectives of younger or amateur musicians which have many synergies with those of their more experienced counterparts. Thus, our discussion ranges across musicians involved in diverse styles of music, across amateur and professional arenas, and across experienced and novice players, although with most emphasis on professionals.3

Skills valued by musicians Unsurprisingly, many musicians highlight technical mastery over an instrument (including voice) as a crucial element in musical performance. However, extensive technical ability alone is rarely regarded as sufficient to ensure musical success. For example: If you play it technically well, with all the dots and dashes where they should be, but don’t actually engage your audience then you haven’t done anything very musical. (Professional musician, cited in Cottrell 2004: 35) You can get to a massively high technical standard and be useless. (Composer/arranger/trumpeter/pianist, cited in Smart n.d.)


Instead, tallying with Green’s findings in relation to popular musicians (2002: 107ff.), many classical musicians also point to the need for a balance of technical and other attributes which may be difficult to name or pin down, but which are often labelled ‘musical’ or have something to do with ‘spirit’, ‘meaning’ or other nebulous : ‘They can come and play a concerto and they might be superficially very efficient players, great facility. I think there’s a great concentration on facility, on notes in other words, rather than the musical aspects’ (professional musician, cited in Cottrell 2004: 35). We would argue that the skills of being ‘musical’ referred to here are guided in significant ways by what can be conceived as the ‘internal workings’ of the individual musician. A good ‘internal musician’ possesses the ability to take in a wide range of information, make sense of the musical world around him or her (especially as it is audiated internally), and then make decisions to react in ways that are musically appropriate within the context. The internal aspects of being a musician, and the development of these aspects through a variety of learning experiences, are highlighted as a central focus by many musicians in their ongoing development. For example: ‘I think that most of the work I would like to do with my instrument and my musicality is internal, definitely, at this stage, 100 per cent’ (guitarist/composer/producer, cited in Smart n.d.). Internal skills are reported to underpin aspects such as tuning, time and subdivision; blending and ensemble tightness; stylistically relevant playing; interpretative choices; and the like. The good ‘internal musician’ is also one who is fully aware of both the musical demands of the situation and the other musicians with whom he or she is playing, in the pursuit of a meaningful, creative performance which, at best, can add something new and original: If I can sum it up, it’s about striving for musical awareness; a profound awareness of the room and an ingrained connection with the people around you; the people you are making music with, those who are leading, those you are leading; constantly listening to, and feeling the presence of, their contributions. There is an eye on the material at the same time as an ear on all these elements, and at any point in time an ability and willingness to react and adapt your own contribution in order to create something articulate, perhaps beautiful, and if you’re lucky, maybe even discover a new and wonderful musical experience. (Conductor/orchestrator/arranger, cited in Smart n.d.) The emotional output of a musician is also highly valued: I don’t know what it is but [with] certain players, when they do things, you get that—all I can call it is a tingle factor. And there are certain people who’ve got that, and other people who are brilliant musicians, have a great sound, but, we could say, no soul. There’s no tingle factor, there’s no magic there. (Professional musician, cited in Cottrell 2004: 37)

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In addition to specifically musical skills, the more global human element of empathizing with the people around one is recognized as an important element and a positive effect on the quality of the music itself and is thus connected with creativity. This is echoed both by a classical musician at a professional level and by a seventeen-year-old amateur pop drummer: There is a huge human element to being a musician, and it’s absolutely crucial to me, and something that is very important as I get older, and it is that you want to be playing music and surrounded by people that you feel a close affinity to. I really feel that takes the music on to an extra level. (Pianist/composer, cited in Smart n.d.) The most important thing to me in, well, in pop music certainly is empathy with the rest of the band. And my band I play in we’re very empathetic. … Having played with the guitarist for five years of course it helps that. Like occasionally from time to time I’ll think, ‘Triplet run coming up here’, and I’ll play a triplet run and the guitarist will also play a triplet run without having communicated beforehand, and that—I think that’s absolutely excellent when that happens … because we feel that there needs to be a triplet run or a bit of syncopation there and we all do it together and I, I love it when that happens—that’s really great. (Drummer, cited in Green 2002: 116) The relevance of particular skills is also strongly linked to the context in which a musician is operating. Certain contexts require the musician to behave or react in particular ways, both musical and extramusical, demanding in turn relatively specific constellations of skills. For example, when an Irish traditional musician enters a pub as a stranger and picks up his fiddle to in a session, there are certain behaviours that would be deemed inappropriate—such as playing too loud, too fast or too slow; starting up a new tune of his own accord as a newcomer; and so on. On the one hand, some of these behaviours may relate to musical skill: if he plays too slowly, perhaps it is because he finds it beyond his technique to keep up with the speed, for example. On the other hand, the very same issue may have more to do with interpersonal skills: he thinks the tune should go slower because of simple preference, so he purposefully tries to slow everyone else down, without sensitivity to the convention that as a newcomer he should perhaps take more of a back seat. Similar issues would apply to a string player turning up for his or her first rehearsal in an established quartet, or to a member of a small ensemble improvising jazz, a symphony orchestra, a musical theatre show, a pop/rock gig, a brass band, a wedding covers band, a big band or a similar ensemble, even if many of the skills used in these differing contexts may overlap (see e.g. Cottrell 2004; Becker 1963; H. S. Bennett 1980; Green 2002; D. Bennett 2008; O’Flynn 2009). Also, the contrasting contexts of a live studio recording and a recording of a performance highlight the different skill sets that are required:


It’s context-dependent… [T]aking a few examples, if it’s studio work, then more often than not the context will dictate that time is money, money is a factor, you need the environment to be at a pace where things are done quickly, so that the pace of the session is kept alive. Subsequently, technical ability, reading skills, quite quantifiable ‘chops’,4 let’s say, to me are essential at that point. They come to the forefront, because somebody not having those but oodles of energy, that energy can be lost, because nothing ever gets done in that environment. So for me in that scenario, for example, those quantifiable, tangible skills are what I look for in a musician, where are the reading, chops, blah blah, because we need to get ten tracks down. [By contrast, if it were a] live gig in front of 500,000 people, they could be the same musicians but not have any body language or aura on stage, and then the performance would be a failure, potentially. (Composer/arranger/pianist, cited in Smart n.d.) Of course, some musicians are and wish to remain specialists, developing skills which are finely honed to a limited range of specific contexts, but they may not necessarily have the skills to operate outside these contexts. The nature of the professional music industry, however, generally requires that professional musicians are as employable as possible, meaning that they usually have to be capable of operating in multiple contexts (see e.g. Bennett 2008). Also, to craft an enduring career as a professional performer requires an additional host of nonmusical skills, including personal organization and social abilities. Indeed, social skills can sometimes be the differentiating factor between being booked to perform or not. This area includes diverse aspects such as a musician’s friendship base, buying a round in the bar, conversational topics or volunteering petrol money when sharing lifts. But, more than that: beyond the actual skills of what you need to do, if you are going to be working you have to have all the social stuff right as well, and that is a huge part of it now. There’s not enough work around, and even if you are completely brilliant there are so many completely brilliant people around that they are going to choose the completely brilliant person who is nice. (Oboist, cited in Smart n.d.) Among amateur performers too, similar issues apply. As a fifteen-year-old developing popular musician observes: ‘With my friends [what I value is] not being amazingly good—they’ve got to be, you know, good enough to play, but with them it’s listening to your ideas; and that’s not just the musical side of it but that you’ve got to be part of the band’ (guitarist, cited in Green 2002: 114). These constellations of skills, and indeed many more suggested by other contexts, form some of the foundations for music-making in ways that musicians themselves consider the most valuable. It will already be apparent that many of these are linkable to concepts of creativity. For example, the ability

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to play or sing ‘musically’, above and beyond getting all the notes right, can be seen as an important aspect of creative output; the ability to express oneself emotionally through music and to engage an audience also transcends ‘mere’ skill and necessitates a more creative approach; bringing something new and original to a performance connects with the concept of creativity as originality; and the ability to respond appropriately to the demands of the context is one that will rest on fine judgement demanding a spontaneous response and in that sense requiring creativity on the spot. Yet, many of these skills are not addressed explicitly in formal educational settings, nor do they appear in the syllabuses or assessment criteria of music exams. Despite this, they may have a crucial implicit influence (see in particular Kingsbury 1988 and Nettl 1995). Other studies of professional musicians and of music education provision have also found that the range of knowledge, abilities and skills required is inadequately addressed by formal education (see e.g. Green 2002; Rogers 2002; Odam and Bannan 2005; Bennett 2008; Smilde 2012). How, then, are such skills developed? We now turn to that question.

Learning and developing these highly prized skills Musicians across the pop-rock-jazz-classical-traditional spectrum recognize, accept and value both the processes and products of informal learning, and informal learning settings themselves, without necessarily applying those directly. Many believe that early informal experiences shaped their development in crucial ways, from a very young age right through adolescence.5 Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, such informal learning does not necessarily take place outside school or other institutions, but instead can occur alongside, or in the interstices of, the formal setting: It’s just doing it, I think, and experimenting. I mean, all the piano playing in breaks and lunchtime at school, I swear that was where I learnt most of the stuff, that’s how I learnt about chords and harmony and what works with what, and how to do cheesy key changes. (Composer/arranger/trumpeter/pianist, cited in Smart n.d.) For many musicians, particularly in vernacular styles and traditions, disaffection with the formal education on offer leads to seeking alternatives elsewhere: ‘I didn’t come across any teacher who inspired me. I was never given the chance because, at that age, I knew that I was good at percussion. Then, I started to separate myself from the music lessons; I started approaching Indian society and playing those kind[s] of instruments’ (Indian traditional musician, cited in Baker and Green 2017: 63). Some musicians feel that there is no institution which would accept them on the one hand, or which would meet their particular needs on the other: ‘Nobody


had ever taken me by the hand, because there was no conservatoire where I could study. I had to teach myself what I needed…’ (jazz singer and teacher, cited in Smilde 2012: 183). Other aspects of informal learning that takes place alongside formal studies highlight that the environment and the influence of the people within it are more important than the formal learning of skills and knowledge itself: Doing a degree to me was pretty much worthless. It was more the environment that you were in, and you were exposed to people and different types of music and different people’s opinions on music. (Guitarist/composer/producer, cited in Smart n.d.) My formal training meant training my ear, [my] eyes, or my hands to do what you had to do to get by when jumping through hoops. I am pleased that I did it. It has been a gateway into other things. … [But] the important framework for me was that I could be creative and was encouraged. There were always one or two people who were good for me and who were pushing me in the right direction… (Professional musician, cited in Smilde 2009: 196) It is worth noting in the citation just above how the musician casts ‘jumping through hoops’ as different from ‘being creative’. After leaving formal education, musicians adopt a range of conscious, focused practices which largely lie beyond the realm of formal education. One of these concerns the maintenance of technique. It falls upon the individual to do this through conscious self-teaching and self-evaluation, which can happen in various informal environments: What most people do as a warm-up I do when I get home from my gig, because it’s the sort of stuff I can do unconsciously while I watch TV, and do the chops stuff, and it makes sense. I’m nice and loose, I don’t really have to concentrate, I have a metronome going and I can spend an hour watching something and doing the chops thing, technique development. (Guitarist, cited in Smart n.d.) It is well known that popular, jazz and, nowadays, other vernacular musicians habitually use recordings as the main means of ‘getting notes’ (Bennett 1980; Finnegan 1989; Green 2002). However, as we mentioned earlier, increasing numbers of classical musicians also report playing along with and copying recordings (Smart n.d.). This can be a considerable learning experience in the formative years, but it is also used as a strategy for ongoing musical development informing musicians’ current work base. It seems realistic to surmise that such practices provide a strong basis for skill development in relation not only to pitch, rhythm and harmony but also to other more ephemeral aspects of music-making. Through these practices, musicians play better by being able

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to ‘feel’ where the notes sit on the instrument, not necessarily through ‘knowing’ in the sense of having propositional or analytic knowledge or being able to name the notes. Yet, as expressed below, engaging in this practice while at school can be accompanied by a feeling that it is ‘not approved of’ by formal education: ‘Well, I did a fair bit of [playing along with CDs], as I used to like mucking about with the instrument. I think I tended to conceptualize it as “mucking about” because of the educational crap in the background’ (flautist, cited in Smart n.d.). This notion that ‘playing along’ is a type of ‘mucking about’ stems from longstanding educational attitudes (for discussions see Green 2002: 187ff., Mills 2007 and Hallam 1998; see also the teachers’ attitudes reported in Green 2008a and Vulliamy 1977). As Green points out (2002: 187), many classical instrumental teachers even at the end of the twentieth century argued that listening to recordings or even live performances can spoil individuality in interpretation and should be avoided—and such attitudes may still be prevalent. Yet for many musicians, copying others in the first instance is the very path to developing their ‘own voice’ and, through that, to creativity and individuality. Many feel that listening to music and playing along with it can provide an essential bank of knowledge needed to make musical decisions regarding stylistic performance, for example. This body of knowledge is then used not merely to ‘slavishly’ copy other musicians, but as the basis for internalizing the music, ‘making it your own’ and then using it in the process of creative performance. (See Chapter 7 in this volume.) For example: ‘There is listening and [copying] it and there is listening and genuinely understanding why that person has done that in a phrase, by feeling it, and it’s the feeling of it that separates people who can genuinely play from people who simply copy’ (trumpeter/arranger, cited in Smart n.d.). Many musicians also further this practice by transcribing from recorded performances, developing a close and internalized connection with the musical material, as well as informing creative output, particularly in relation to improvisation: ‘So hearing a solo that I am really enthusiastic about, and then transcribing it and learning it and being able to take a little bit and putting it through the keys, and then hopefully in the process it becomes part of you and you find it coming out in your solos’ (violinist/pianist, cited in Smart n.d.). Additionally, simply listening to a range of music is valued as having a positive effect; as one guitarist put it (Smart n.d.), it is a way of ‘widening your experiences, like travelling to a different country’. At an amateur level, one large area of activity where recordings are increasingly being used as learning resources is choral singing. A number of websites6 provide audio learning materials for standard choral works, usually played electronically rather than sung. They highlight individual parts within the


texture by making them louder, so singers can hear their part clearly while singing along in the comfort of their home. Many conductors of such choirs now habitually send out links to such internet sites for their to use. Some companies also provide a service of creating vocal parts for singers to learn, and in the amateur field these are used by soloists too. It is generally agreed in the literature (e.g. Bennett 2008; Burnard 2012; Smilde 2012; Cottrell 2004) that most musicians have a strong, shared dedication to ongoing improvement as musicians. For professionals, this is not an option since there are always others waiting to get work if one’s own technical or musical standards decline. But it is about more than just staying in work, for it involves conceptualizing progress as a lifelong process and often describing this drive as the basis of their love and appreciation of music, not only furthering their career. Here again, the desire to constantly improve is shared by many amateur musicians. Learning by experience is a major part of any musician’s development. Some experiential learning is forged in the musical environment of the professional workplace or in amateur activities in which individuals ‘learn on the job’, as it were. However, experiential learning in this way also requires that musicians are aware enough to take advantage of the learning on offer in these situations, for experience can also lead to learning not just specifically musical skills and knowledge, but such attitudes and attributes as how to be confident and how to handle a range of situations. Much of this can come from interaction with other musicians, as this trombonist describes: I doing this very high-profile gig a few years ago and sitting next to this fantastic trumpet player, and I can going to the gig thinking that ‘Oh my God I have to sit next to this guy’, and he came and didn’t play that well at all, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. And then we did the same thing the next night and he was absolutely fantastic. And it made me realize that those players aren’t perfect, they make mistakes, and that gives you confidence, the confidence that if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. (Trombonist, cited in Smart n.d.) Although we have noted that musicians value conscious practices and learning environments that fall predominantly within the realm of music-making itself, many of them—including professionals above all—also recognize and highly value learning that takes place away from music altogether, through ‘life in general’. This may be termed ‘learning by experience’, but experience that goes beyond that of ‘the musician’ to embrace more general experience as a ‘human being’. Sometimes it is difficult to articulate exactly what it is that can improve musically along such paths or how it improves, yet many musicians strongly believe that improvement can happen simply as a consequence of ongoing engagement, experience and maturation as a person, without any

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particular structure, sequence or awareness of what is being learned at any moment. For example: I got to music college and I just found that I actually couldn’t get any further without stopping, putting the cello away, ignoring music and going around London drinking coffee, as part of a learning process. But it was that whole wider experience and how does it all fit in with everything, which is still going on. That’s a good thing and I’m really glad that I do that. (Cellist/bass player, cited in Smart n.d.)

Conclusions In line with the general interest in raising the visibility and profile of informal as well as nonformal practices, this chapter has considered musical knowledge, skills and abilities that have been described as important by musicians. The range of these is potentially huge, as shown through the examples reported here, going beyond what is normally conceived as part of formal musical education. The knowledge, skill and ability base is developed partly with the aid of formal education, but musicians also highlight a range of environments and ways in which these are learned in the informal realm. Jaffurs (2006: 2) wonders whether the two systems of formal and informal may one day consolidate into one. Our discussion here suggests that the interface may be more closely aligned than is sometimes suggested in the literature, and this situation is rapidly changing even as we write. Many of the informal practices commonly associated with vernacular musicians, such as playing along with recordings and thereby copying and making musical material ‘their own’, may be seen as informing practice across a range of formal educational contexts and musical styles. Professional and amateur musicians accept and highly value these informal and nonformal learning practices, including unintentional and nonconscious practices alongside those that are intentional and conscious, and they actively recognize and seek out situations in which these processes can occur. Listening to music and transcribing it are both seen as important practices in the process of ‘making music your own’ to be drawn upon in process of creative performance. There is also an acceptance that merely by ‘doing it lots’, improvement of some sort will follow, and that by growing as a person one grows as a musician. The recognition of the importance of creativity for musicians in performance, interpretation and improvisation is ed through informal learning in a number of ways. A crucial element concerns the value systems associated with the learning that takes place in the informal arena—not only the values of the individuals and the sociomusical groups involved themselves, but also through the media, the education system and audiences. That there is now extensive research on both informal learning in music and the adaptation of a variety of informal


learning practices within formal music education settings is a testament to their increasing recognition.7 In and beyond these contexts, current researchers are well placed to look more closely at the fine grains of informal learning. The existing literature often makes polarized usage, by default, of the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’, referring to learning, teaching, education or all of these. This polarized usage also applies to definitions of ‘formally trained’ musicians and those who have no accredited training or qualifications (see e.g. Vitale 2011: 3), and also to conceptions of ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ musicians (see Keene 2015). Such usage has occurred not usually because the authors in question regard learning practices as polarized or simple, but as a default function of the themselves. The inclusion of the middle ground of nonformal learning, an awareness of the range of differentials that are in play along a continuum that is flexibly and locally applied to each situation, increased recognition of the degree to which learning is either conscious and intentional or nonconscious and unintentional, and the extent to which it is acquired individually or as part of a group are all valuable aids to researchers in using sensitively. This field will undoubtedly require further development to probe how all musicians learn informally and nonformally alongside, and beyond, formal musical education across different musical styles. The wider range implied by this may seek to encom lifelong learning elements and an inclusive conception of the knowledge, skills and abilities relevant to musicians and musical performance irrespective of the context, or contexts, in which they operate. Importantly, greater awareness of informal learning practices, and recognition of them, could be of use to amateur musicians who may not realize that their professional counterparts place such emphasis on this kind of learning. By the same token, providers of formal and nonformal music-making opportunities, community music leaders, the conductors of amateur choirs and orchestras, and other musical leaders or animateurs may benefit from the process of making such knowledge more explicit, and more valued, for musicians and learners in all fields.

References Abrahams, F., D. Abrahams, A. Rafaniello, J. Vodicka, D. Westawski and J. Wilson, 2011: ‘Going green: the application of informal music learning strategies in high school choral and instrumental ensembles’, http://www.rider.edu/sites/default/files/docs/wcc_wc_ abrahams_goinggreen.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Andrews, K., 2013: ‘Standing “on our own two feet”: a comparison of teacher-directed and group learning in an extra-curricular instrumental group’, British Journal of Music Education 30/1: 125–48. Baker, D. and L. Green, 2017: Insights in Sound: Visually Impaired Musicians’ Lives and Learning (Abingdon and New York: Routledge).

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Musicians in the Making Becker, H., 1963: Outsiders (New York: Free Press of Glencoe). Bennett, A., 1997: ‘ “Going down the pub!”: the pub rock scene as a resource for the consumption of popular music’, Popular Music 16/1: 97–108. Bennett, D., 2008: Understanding the Classical Music Profession: The Past, the Present and Strategies for the Future (Aldershot: Ashgate). Bennett, H. S., 1980: On Becoming a Rock Musician (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press). Berkaak, O. A., 1999: ‘Entangled dreams and twisted memories: order and disruption in local music making’, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 7/2: 25–42. Berliner, P., 1994: Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Björnberg, A., 1993: ‘ “Teach you to rock?” Popular music in the university music department’, Popular Music 12/1: 69–77. Burnard, P., 2012: Musical Creativities in Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cayari, C., 2013: ‘Using informal education through music video creation’, General Music Today, http://gmt.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/10/1048371313492537 (accessed 15 February 2017). Chen-Hafteck, L., 1997: ‘Music and language development in early childhood: integrating past research in the two domains’, Early Child Development and Care 130/1: 85–97. Chua, S. L. and H. P. Ho, eds., 2013: Connecting the Stars: Essays on Student-centric Music Education (Singapore: Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the Arts), pp. 87–97. Cohen, S., 1991: Rock Culture in Liverpool (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cottrell, S., 2004: Professional Music-Making in London: Ethnography and Experience (Aldershot: Ashgate). Creech, A., S. Hallam, H. McQueen and M. Varvarigou, 2013a: ‘The power of music in the lives of older adults’, Research Studies in Music Education 35/1: 87–102. Creech, A., S. Hallam, M. Varvarigou, H. McQueen and H. Gaunt, 2013b: ‘Active music making: a route to enhanced subjective well-being among older people’, Perspectives in Public Health 133/1: 36–43. D’Amore, A., ed., 2011: Musical Futures: An Approach to Teaching and Learning. Resource Pack, 2nd edn (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation). Davis, S. G., 2005: ‘ “That thing you do!” Compositional processes of a rock band’, International Journal of Education and the Arts 6/16: 189–200. Feichas, H., 2010: ‘Informal music learning practices as a pedagogy of integration in Brazilian higher education’, British Journal of Music Education 27/1: 47–58. Finnegan, R., 1989: The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Finney, J. and C. Philpott, 2010: ‘Student teachers appropriating informal pedagogy’, British Journal of Music Education 27/1: 7–19. Folkestad, G., 2006: ‘Formal and informal learning situations or practices versus formal and informal ways of hearing’, British Journal of Music Education 23/2: 135–45. Green, L., 2002: How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate). Green, L., 2008a: Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy (Aldershot: Ashgate).

Informal learning and musical performance Green, L., 2008b: Music on Deaf Ears: Musical Meaning, Ideology and Education, 2nd edn (Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: Arima). Green, L., 2008c: ‘Group co-operation, inclusion and disaffected students: some responses to informal learning in the music classroom’, Music Education Research 10/2: 177–92. Green, L., 2014: Hear, Listen, Play: How to Free Your Students’ Aural, Improvisation and Performance Skills (New York: Oxford University Press). Hallam, S., 1998: Instrumental Teaching (Oxford: Heinemann). Hallam, S., A. Creech, C. Sandford, T. Rinta and K. Shave, 2008: Survey of Musical Futures: A Report from Institute of Education University of London (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation). Higgins, L., 2012: Community Music in Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press). Jaffurs, S., 2004: ‘The impact of informal music learning practices in the classroom, or how I learned how to teach from a garage band’, International Journal of Music Education 22/3: 189–200. Jaffurs, S., 2006: ‘The intersection of informal and formal music learning practices’, International Journal of Community Music, http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/ MediaManager/Archive/IJCM/Volume%20D/04%20Jaffurs.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Jeanneret, N., R. McLennan and J. Stevens-Ballenger, 2011: Musical Futures: An Australian Perspective: Findings from a Victorian Pilot Study (Melbourne: University of Melbourne). Karlsen, S., 2010: ‘BoomTown music education/authenticity: informal music learning in Swedish post-compulsory music education’, British Journal of Music Education 27/1: 5–46. Keene, H., 2015: ‘ “Swooping in to save the day?”: investigating the effects on musical identity of a choral collaboration between amateur and professional singers’, Visions of Research in Music Education 26, http://www.rider.edu/~vrme (accessed 15 February 2017). Kingsbury, H., 1988: Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Lebler, D., 2007: ‘Student-as-master? Reflections on a learning innovation in popular music pedagogy’, International Journal of Music Education 25/3: 205–21. Lebler, D., 2008: ‘Popular music pedagogy: peer learning in practice’, Music Education Research 10/2: 193–213. Lilliestam, L., 1996: ‘On playing by ear’, Popular Music 15/2: 195–216. Lines, D., 2009: ‘Exploring the contexts of informal learning’, Action, Criticism and Theory in Music Education 8/2: 1–7. Mak, P., N. Kors and P. Renshaw, eds., 2007: Formal, Non-Formal and Informal Learning in Music (Groningen and The Hague: Lectorate Lifelong Learning in Music). Mans, M., 2009: ‘Informal learning and values’, Action, Criticism and Theory in Music Education 8/2: 80–94. McCarthy, M., 1999: ing it On: The Transmission of Music in Irish Culture (Cork: Cork University Press). Mhail, G., 2013: ‘Developing student autonomy in the one-to-one music lesson’, International Journal of Music Education 31/2: 160–72. Mills, J., 2007: Instrumental Teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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Musicians in the Making Monson, I., 1996: Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Nettl, B., 1995: Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press). Nielsen, K., 2006: ‘Apprenticeship at the Academy of Music’, International Journal of Music Education 7/4: 1–15. Odam, G. and N. Bannan, eds., 2005: The Reflective Conservatoire: Studies in Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate). O’Flynn, J., 2006: ‘Vernacular music-making and education’, International Journal of Music Education 24/2: 140–47. O’Flynn, J., 2009: The Irishness of Irish Music (Farnham: Ashgate). Renshaw, P., 2005: Simply Connect: Best Musical Practice in Non- formal Learning Contexts (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation). Rodriguez, C., 2004: ‘Popular music in music education: towards a new conception of musicality’, in C. Rodriguez, ed., Bridging the Gap (Reston, VA: National Association for Music Education), pp. 13–27. Rodriguez, C., 2009: ‘Informal learning in music: emerging roles of teachers and students’, Action, Criticism and Theory in Music Education 8/2: 36–47. Rogers, R., 2002: Creating a Land with Music: The Work, Education and Training of Professional Musicians in the 21st Century (London: Youth Music). Schugurensky, D., 2000: The Forms of Informal Learning: Towards a Conceptualization of the Field (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto). Seifried, S., 2006: ‘Exploring the outcomes of rock and popular music instruction in high school guitar class: a case study’, International Journal of Music Education 24/2: 168–77. Smart, T., n.d.: ‘What makes a “good” musician? Values, practices and motivations of professional musicians in London’ (PhD dissertation in progress, University of London). Smilde, R., 2009: Musicians as Lifelong Learners: Discovery Through Biography (Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers). Smilde, R., 2012: ‘Lifelong learning for professional musicians’, in G. E. Mherson and G. F. Welch, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 2, pp. 289–302. Väkevä, L., 2006: ‘Teaching popular music in Finland: what’s up, what’s ahead?’, International Journal of Music Education 24/2: 126–31. Väkevä, L., 2009: ‘The world well lost, found: reality and authenticity in Green’s “New Classroom Pedagogy” ’, Action, Criticism and Theory in Music Education 8/2: 8–35. Väkevä, L., 2010: ‘Garage band or GarageBand®? Remixing musical futures’, British Journal of Music Education 27/1: 59–70. Veblen, K., 2012: ‘Adult music learning in formal, non-formal and informal contexts’, in G. E. Mherson and G. F. Welch, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 2, pp. 243–56. Vitale, J., 2011: ‘Formal and informal music learning: attitudes and perspectives of secondary school non-music majors’, Teachers International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 1/5: 1–14.

Informal learning and musical performance Vulliamy, G., 1977: ‘Music as a case study in the “new sociology of education” ’, in J. Shepherd, P. Virden, T. Wishart and G. Vulliamy, eds., Whose Music: A Sociology of Musical Language (London: Latimer New Dimension). Welch, G. F., 2002: ‘Early childhood musical development’, in L. Bresler and C. M. Thompson, eds., The Arts in Children’s Lives: Context, Culture and Curriculum (New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London and Moscow: Kluwer Academic), pp. 113–28. Werquin, P., 2010: Recognising Non-Formal and Informal Learning (Paris: OECD). Westerlund, H., 2006: ‘Garage rock bands: a future model for developing musical expertise?’, International Journal of Music Education 24/2: 119–25. Woody, R. H. and A. C. Lehmann, 2010: ‘Student musicians’ ear-playing ability as a function of vernacular music experiences’, Journal of Research in Music Education 58/2: 101–15. Wright, R., 2011: ‘Musical futures: a new approach to music education’, Canadian Music Educator 53/2: 19–21. Wright, R. and P. Kanellopoulos, 2010: ‘Informal music learning, improvisation and teacher education’, British Journal of Music Education 27/1: 71–87.

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The creative voice in artistic performance Jane Manning

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Singers, uniquely, carry their instrument with them wherever they go. The classical singer, trained to refine and amplify the sound without artificial means, has to be constantly aware of both the dangers of wear and tear caused by overuse of the voice in everyday situations, and the physical and psychological dilemmas arising from this. It is the voice, of all instruments, that undergoes the most spectacular transformation in the course of training. A sound that in teenage years seems unpromising can develop out of all recognition under expert tutelage. The vocal teacher helps the singer to utilize the frame of the body for maximum resonance, and to activate and strengthen muscles in order to cope with long phrases. Smaller muscles of the tongue and palate, even the larynx itself, can be trained to react quickly and flexibly. As technical hurdles are surmounted, the physical sensations change, and these must be recognized. The ultimate goal is to acquire habits that are so deeply ingrained that they become automatic and can be applied to all musical styles and gestures, including use of the speaking voice. A reliable technique breeds confidence; without it, hoped-for interpretative subtleties are destined to remain in the imagination. The singer’s special task is to articulate a text while simultaneously producing a musical sound. Fifty years of performing Schoenberg’s Sprechstimme masterpiece Pierrot lunaire (1912) has given me heightened awareness of the micro rhythms and inflections of syllables, and how these influence a musical line. If one were to notate exactly the trajectories of ‘normal’ speech, the result would be extremely complex. This is reflected in singing, where for example ‘liquid’ consonants (‘mm’, ‘nn’, ‘ll’, ‘zz’ and so on) can be vocalized to achieve a seamless legato, whereas percussive syllables (‘p’, ‘t’, ‘k’ and ‘ch’) can have the opposite effect. Control of these minute details within the vocal flow is a feat for which credit is rarely given, although it makes a crucial contribution to rhythmic accuracy, precision of intonation and expressive potential.

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The voice responds well to being used to full capacity, and stamina can be built up by spanning long phrases. Pierrot lunaire contains many strenuous examples. It was some while before my voice had developed sufficiently to surmount the instrumental texture, and this was frustrating. But cutting my teeth on such a multilayered work was invaluable. I was entirely on my own as far as the vocal aspect was concerned (the experienced instrumentalists lacked the relevant expertise), and I therefore had to adopt a detailed analytical approach myself. Even now, the piece yields new insights every time I perform it: the music takes on fresh life according to the individual circumstances of each occasion. The audience’s response is an integral part of the experience. An analytical approach, engendered initially by the challenges of Pierrot, has proved vital in tackling a vast array of contemporary works over my career. Plunging into the uncharted waters of a brand new piece, rather than an established classic, can be daunting and stimulating by turn. I have found that the freedom of being a pioneer is liberating, but also that responsibility to a living composer can weigh heavily. It may lead to rewarding future collaborations, however: composers, especially those who have no experience of singing themselves, may welcome some inside knowledge of the voice’s capabilities. The relationship that develops between the living composer and the singer is often highly sensitive, not least where the vocal demands are unusual. In the 1960s, some influential works featured the female voice in extremes of ecstasy or suffering, and there is still a fondness for writing very high soprano parts. This approach can render a text inaudible, and the singer may unfairly be blamed. I have occasionally asked for a age to be transposed down: Edward Harper, for example, had set the phrase ‘With all the policemen in the world’ as a series of high Cs. This was for the premiere of an orchestral setting of an e e cummings cycle. Once he heard how shrill it sounded, he immediately agreed to put it down a perfect fourth. Less sympathetic composers have occasionally asserted that a ‘strained’ quality was what they had in mind. Faced with an unfamiliar score, I have discovered that a great deal of valuable work can be done in advance without using full voice. Matters of ambiguous notation, misleading glossaries and badly aligned syllabic underlay must all be identified and addressed as soon as possible. At the start, I mark in beats and highlight special expressive nuances. I also isolate problem ages to work on in detail: there is no point in continually running through without stopping if the same stumbles occur every time. And I take the opportunity to plan phrasing at an early stage. It is not necessary to take a breath at every rest or punctuation mark. Too many short breaths encourage gustiness, and indeed one poorly chosen intake can result in a whole sequence of phrases collapsing in turn like a pack of cards. When I was asked to perform Peter Maxwell Davies’ large-scale monodrama The Medium (1981), I knew that this would be something of a marathon. Vocal capacity, musicianship, dramatic ability and staying power would all be put

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under the closest scrutiny. The work lasts almost an hour, and the singer is given virtually no props. Despite obvious theatrical elements, it is the music that carries the work. Only a few movements distract the audience from the extremes of vocal display required, which range from low growling (including the Ds and Es below middle C) to high screaming, alongside many variants of Sprechstimme as well as ‘normal’ lyrical singing, religious chanting and coloratura. The singer impersonates a prodigious parade of characters, from deranged clairvoyant, genteel lady and Cockney maid, to rabid dog and poisonous crab, as well as a menacing male priest. These roles alternate with dizzying rapidity, yet vocal and musical discipline have to be kept throughout. When singing unaccompanied, I found that it was critical to preserve a sense of pulse and momentum, and that the gaps between bouts of frenzied activity had to be timed carefully. Too much freedom would create an amorphous, formless impression, and a constant barrage of crazed expressionism would have diminishing returns. Written for the late, deeply ired Mary Thomas, the piece had not been heard for a number of years. For this new production I was to work with the director Robert Shaw, happily a trained musician, with whom I enjoyed an excellent rapport. The composer, tactful and of long experience, left us to it. Perhaps there was a little more movement than he had originally envisaged, but he seemed well pleased by the result. First, I set to work on the score. I divided it into small sections, gradually expanding them into larger chunks, recording myself all the time, to avoid becoming fatigued by repetition. It swiftly became clear that some ages were likely to be especially troublesome and elusive, and I marked these in coloured ink. Very gradually, over a period of several weeks, I was able to concentrate more acutely on the few sequences that still felt insecure. I realized that I needed to be extremely well prepared and to give myself a large safety net. Everything would have to be so deeply embedded in my physical as well as my musical and verbal memory that it would all spring into mind in performance, in spite of nerves, tiredness or untoward distractions. The rigorous technical work that I have always made a priority stood me in good stead for the exceptional vocal and dramatic demands of the piece. I did not attempt to rehearse from memory until all details had been thoroughly absorbed. After such intensive study, it was good to have time to stand back and let the piece seep into my unconscious. One should be wary of teasing out so many details that the overall essence is lost. Leaving it for a while, and then returning to it afresh, was often revelatory. I realized that I had begun to identify with the protagonist in her many guises, sensing her touching vulnerability. (It was helpful to have performed Maxwell Davies’ Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, which displays many similarities on a smaller scale.) It would have been all too easy to project a cruel caricature, based around twin poles of nun or harlot. As a female performer, however, I sought to promote a more

Insight: Jane Manning

rounded, sympathetic portrayal of femininity and to dig a little deeper, allowing something of myself into the characterization. Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle and Pierre Boulez have all proved agreeably pragmatic about their own works, without imposing personal agendas that make performers feel intimidated by their presence. I have discovered, unfortunately, that other composers can be difficult to work with, particularly if they find it hard to stand back and allow performers some space for creativity. In my experience, presenting a wad of critical notes at the final rehearsal is unlikely to prove productive. Pieces written specifically for particular artists, especially ‘iconic’ ones, can be a little off-putting to future performers. Cathy Berberian, the wife of Luciano Berio, was the instigator of a number of works, conceived for her exceptional abilities; for example, the graphic score of Cage’s ARIA gives details of her particular interpretation. As a different performer, one has then to choose between using her ideas or being deliberately different. Judith Weir’s one-woman mini-opera King Harald’s Saga, for solo voice, written for me in 1979, has deservedly found its way into the repertoire of singers worldwide. This is an ideal situation. The composer’s instructions are so clear that, when the score arrived, I had hardly any questions for her. The flexibility of the concept means that every singer is able to make a highly distinctive interpretation, and the piece can be enjoyed by diverse audiences. By contrast, I worked closely with Birtwistle on Nenia: The Death of Orpheus (1971) while he was still writing it. Not only was the notation innovative (it is written on two staves), but he wished me to try out certain timbres for special effects, including trills. His ear for colour and dynamic is exceptionally acute, and it was an enjoyable and fruitful collaboration. The work has subsequently been performed by other singers who have come to me for advice. Since the composer’s notation does not cover all subtleties of timbre or nuance, especially those involving trills and Sprechstimme, I have been able to help with a few practicalities. However, I believe individuality to be the vocal performer’s most precious asset. Every artist’s distinctive vocal and dramatic attributes can contribute to a fresh interpretation. Singers should cherish their idiosyncrasies and retain self-belief in gradually forging a personal style. Early in a career, there may be a temptation to emulate ired artists. The ready availability of recordings, now amplified mightily by the material to be found on the internet, militates against finding one’s own niche. Listening to different performances can be valuable in gaining an overview of a piece, but I feel they should never be used to acquire a ready-made performance based on someone else’s ideas. I have always resisted providing younger singers with such instant short cuts to pieces that I have premiered. I find it much more constructive for them to have the chance to work things out on their own. Singers are, by the personal nature of the instrument, particularly vulnerable to criticism. It is hurtful to know that one’s timbre, manner or even

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appearance has not appealed. Unfortunately it is inevitable that some people will react emotionally to a particular voice and come up with judgements that are highly personal and have little to do with technical knowledge. The direct communication afforded by texts can even divert attention from musical and vocal aspects of a performance, and I wonder whether superficialities of ‘presentation’ have perhaps come to assume more importance than they merit. Transcending all such considerations, the best-loved artists are those who are able to allow a glimpse of their inner selves in performance, filtered through the music, and to keep enough control to put into practice what they have rehearsed. This tussle between detachment and involvement is especially relevant to singers, who have to face their audiences full on, unprotected by an instrument. Exceptional singers are able to transmit such compelling intensity and concentration that the audience is caught up in the physical and mental effort involved. They seem to illuminate and create each work anew, no matter how well known it might be. This is true artistry, something to which every musician surely should aspire.

Insight

Expressive freedom in classical performance: insights from a pianist–researcher Mine Doğantan-Dack

The profession of the classical performer is one of the most demanding cultural practices. Born of a ion for making music and a love for the artistic possibilities, challenges and pleasures of one’s instrument, a lifetime commitment to it involves a rigorous routine to maintain high-level technical expertise; continuous emotional engagement with the music and with audiences when one is performing; a meticulous discipline to widen one’s repertoire; and social skills to be able to forge a career within the confines of a highly competitive professional environment. More recently, the sustainability of the profession itself has become an issue of concern as audience numbers for classical music continue to shrink within an ever-diversifying multiplicity of musical genres and practices. In no other period have musicians seeking to establish themselves faced such a variety of challenges and pressures; overcoming these will no doubt require new institutional, pedagogical and even individual visions and approaches. In this Insight, I wish to emphasize the importance of one aspect of being a classical musician that has become particularly challenging in our contemporary culture: this is the development of a personal artistic voice, the most vital aspect of which is the cultivation of expressive freedom. As suggested elsewhere in this volume, a personal artistic voice is the highest aspiration for any performer who desires to express and communicate an artistic experience, understanding, vision or truth through music-making. In what follows, I highlight some of the pathways leading to expressive freedom and artistic voice that I have encountered through the various twists and turns of my musical journey, both as a pianist and as an artist–researcher. If I have attained any wisdom during this journey, it is that there is no quick and easy formula for achieving a personal artistic voice, and that, on the contrary, this is a gradual process, a long-term pursuit requiring curiosity, patience and ion. 131

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Cultivation of expressive freedom is grounded in an ever-widening awareness and understanding of possibilities for artistic interpretation and expression. It requires the recognition that art-making—that is, the shaping of artistic materials in form and content—is culturally and historically contingent, and that a performer can arrive at aesthetically satisfying results through many interpretative and expressive means. There are complex factors that pose impediments to the cultivation of expressive freedom in this sense, and that are responsible for the decreasing artistic individuality among contemporary classical musicians. In this connection, many have noted the impact of recording technologies in creating an increasingly homogeneous performing style. There is also the ideology of loyalty to the composer’s intentions, which still looms large and reduces the performer’s role to that of a transmitter of a predetermined artistic message. A less frequently recognized issue in this context concerns the model of learning in western classical performance (and indeed in most other musical genres and cultures), dominated at least in its early stages—and arguably by necessity—by processes of imitation and repetition, neither of which seems ideally conducive to encouraging a plurality of interpretative approaches. I frequently find in masterclass settings that when I ask student pianists to think of alternative interpretative or expressive options regarding a piece they already know, they struggle to entertain artistically compelling possibilities. A certain learned interpretation and performing style becomes their norm and sets aesthetic limits to their creative skills. Although pedagogical discourses do value individuality and creativity, there has been no systematic approach to determining either the stage during the learning process when the student is supposed to move from imitating to expressing a personal artistic view, or the means by which this might be done. More often than not, the aspiring performer is expected to feel his or her way towards a personal artistic voice; as pedagogues, we have yet to rigorously address the question of how best to guide them in this process, possibly by implementing alternative, and multiple, methods of teaching and learning. In addition to these hindrances, I should also like to mention the ongoing (negative) impact on our educational institutions of neoliberal socioeconomic policies that pose further challenges for the classical performer who aims to cultivate expressive freedom. Music schools currently face fierce competition for ever-decreasing funds for arts and music education, and they are required to demonstrate how they have an impact on society not only culturally but also economically by delivering ‘value for money’. Since music education institutions are now regarded as part of the ‘creative industries’, many university music departments and conservatoires are under pressure to make the providing of entrepreneurial, market(able) skills for purposes of competitive economic advantage one of their explicitly articulated core aims. I am not the first to note that behind a surface of highly individualized or innovative services, the creative industries tend to favour growing standardization and compliance to models that bring immediate, short-term commercial success and satisfaction.

Insight: Mine Doğantan-Dack

There is, consequently, a real danger that the cultivation of a personal artistic voice could be given lower priority in institutional agendas. Within such a climate, further reinforced in our daily lives by the increasing influence of digital communication technologies that impel and accustom us to a hasty and often mechanized style of social interaction, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a willingness to engage in a long-term, patient cultivation of an artistic voice through attentive engagement with the rich diversity of cultural and artistic phenomena. During my pianistic career over several decades, I have constantly turned to two resources in trying to deepen my understanding of possibilities for artistic expression and motivating expressive freedom. One of these concerns nurturing aesthetic sensibility; the other is related to advancing critical thinking. I was very fortunate to grow up in a family environment in which participation in the arts was highly valued, giving me the opportunity to engage with and develop an enthusiasm for a number of art forms from an early age onwards. My intense interest in the arts continued to receive during my studies at the Juilliard School, where I had the privilege of experiencing old-school Russian piano pedagogy which emphasized not only pianistic development but also an all-round artistic approach by drawing from other art forms in interpreting music. I recall a conversation that I had with my piano teacher during one lesson about the poetic images of the snow-covered, desolate Russian landscapes in Andrei Tarkovsky’s films, which I came to know while I was learning Rachmaninoff’s Moment Musical Op. 16 No. 3 and which became an inspirational source for my developing interpretation of the piece. Engaging perceptively and attentively with the sensuous and formal aspects of nonmusical works of art provides an invaluable wealth of ideas, images and new perspectives on the infinite variety of human experience and values, widening the aesthetic sensibility of the classical musician. A sense of wonder and awe in the face of the marvellous diversity of the expressive means that artists have employed throughout the ages in communicating their personal vision of human experience can become a powerful motivation to move beyond what has been learned through imitation and repetition, and to play creatively with the learned rules and traditions of the art of musical performance. During my musical journey, a second resource that has been just as vital as my continuing fascination with the arts in nurturing expressive freedom and a personal artistic voice has been critical thinking, driven by a deep curiosity about why and how things are the way they are in nature and culture—and a love for ‘the questions themselves’, as the poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet. Critical thinking concerns the connection between the perceptual, sensual content of experience and the more abstract understanding of the relationship between the constituents of that experience, achieved through interpretation and conceptualization. In our daily lives, we constantly engage in this kind of movement between the perceptual and the

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conceptual as we attempt to make sense of our experiences. In the process, we typically rely on culturally learned concepts and discourses. Critical thinking emerges when we start questioning these received ways of interpreting the world and entertain alternative means of connecting perception to conception. This requires the realization that no single perspective can provide a complete view of any phenomenon. An ever-widening awareness and understanding of possibilities for artistic interpretation and expression, which I mentioned earlier as the condition for developing expressive freedom, is very much related to the cultivation of this capacity to move between the perceptual and the conceptual by widening one’s repertoire of concepts and terminology. Critical skills in this sense can lead the performer to become aware of hitherto unnoticed, novel relationships between the elements of a piece of music and to find ways of interpreting these in a personal, potentially original manner. The two areas that have provided me with the tools to develop this kind of critical approach have been philosophy and music theory. Exploring different philosophical traditions has taught me the importance and value of striving to think about phenomena clearly, while providing exposure to the great variety and diversity of human thought. I have also come to appreciate the patient and, at times, painstaking care that is needed to communicate one’s ideas and conceptualizations clearly. I find much in common between this ability and the process of relating the details of a piece of music to a unified artistic conception in performance. Discursive clarity and accuracy, and a sharpness of artistic vision that simultaneously beholds the fine experiential details of the artistic materials and a personal image of their unity, grow from similar processes, engaging critical thinking. There is, in my view, a wonderful continuity rather than an opposition between theory and practice. It is on the basis of this continuity that music theory has become part of my pianistic journey, providing me with terminological and conceptual tools to move beyond relying only on intuitive appreciation of musical parameters. As one example, I would like to note here the inspiration that a clear understanding of the music-theoretical differences between the phenomena of rhythm and metre has offered me in opening up unforeseen possibilities in interpreting the extraordinarily rich and complex temporal aspects of the music of Brahms. I hasten to add that music-theoretical and analytical concepts and knowledge become useful, and inspirational, for the performer only if and as they are given personally meaningful practical applications; merely possessing such knowledge is inconsequential unless musicians entertain personal ways of exploring their interpretative implications in practical contexts. In the twenty-first century, as humanity faces unprecedented challenges brought on by wars, global terrorism, diseases and a threatened environment, is it sufficient for classical musicians to learn how to shape phrases beautifully or to stun audiences with technical wizardry? Each aspiring performer needs to find his or her own answer to this question. My own view is that a

Insight: Mine Doğantan-Dack

personal artistic voice is not something that develops in isolation from one’s ‘voice’ in other areas of life: to be able to attain a personal artistic voice, one first needs to have something personal to say and the means to say it with conviction. This requires, in my experience, developing personal stances in relation to a wide variety of cultural phenomena, and involves a process of growing self-awareness of one’s place and role in our contemporary culture and society as a classical performer. Music education institutions can greatly aid this process by making their priority the training of widely cultured classical musicians with the critical skills and broader awareness and curiosity that they will need to sustain them throughout both their professional careers and their personal lives.

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Transformation through music Ricardo Castro (with Helena Gaunt)

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Normally performers are not considered to be creative.1 We are supposed to reproduce scores as well as possible: we are supposed to follow the rules. This can kill your creativity, even though it is important to have some knowledge about what’s going on before trying to be creative. What kind of language are you expressing, what kind of emphasis does a composer have? There is no sense in being creative with nothing. You have to consider the tradition and then work with it. This takes time. It is essential to give children and young musicians the feeling that they have the right to be creative. Otherwise they become robots, repeating other people’s work. And if they are only copying others, it becomes almost impossible for them to feel necessary or relevant to the community. Music offers a unique tool that enables us to say something personal. It is clear there is a two-way flow of information that we need to open, from the score to a performer, and then from the performer’s personal character to the music. The possibility to make this happen lies in the way we teach and interact with other musicians. It is our creativity that brings these interactions between people alive and makes them interesting. As a teacher one has to have a sufficiently broad set of approaches to engage everybody. There is no one method that works for all students. I try to work in a manner that honours the fact that all of my students are different. They all have to understand specific musical styles, but they do not have to understand them in exactly the same way. They can perform differently. So with each of them I have to change the way I teach. The students in my class all play quite differently. At the same time they develop a shared kind of behaviour as musicians: generosity towards one another and curiosity about music and its potential. It doesn’t always start like this. Often young musicians seem to have difficulty in sharing what they know because they are scared to give it away and perceive a risk that they will lose it. Living in an atmosphere of competition, they hide what they know from their colleagues. Unfortunately, without realizing it, this becomes an embedded

Insight: Ricardo Castro (with Helena Gaunt)

artistic attitude. The problem is that if you decide not to be generous as a person in general, without knowing it you begin to do this on stage too. Consequently, one of the basic principles in my class is that we rely on peerto-peer exchange, on genuine collaboration. I want the students to learn that the flow of information is utterly essential when you are an artist—flow between you, the other musicians and the audience; flow between you and the music. It all goes together. You cannot build your personality on the basis of holding information locked away, hiding the secrets that you heard from teachers. Keeping things to yourself means that you make no room for creativity. So I try to change the way my students behave in their environment as professional—or pre-professional—musicians. My experience is that in doing so, I have much happier people in my class, whether or not they succeed as musicians. It creates a different feeling about what it means to succeed. You learn that you can help as well as be helped yourself. I do not believe in theories without practice. First and foremost, I have to be an example of what I am talking about. For instance, I show the students that I am not working with them simply to earn money. As a first-prize winner of the Leeds Piano Competition, I do not need to teach: I could invest all my energy in performing and earning my living that way. But the truth is that I started to teach before winning this competition, and I haven’t stopped since. I am happier working in this way. I don’t need to say anything explicit about this to my students. The facts speak for themselves and young people pick this up. The students are constantly watching, seeing their teacher set an example. A second issue relates to helping students develop independence and entrepreneurship as musicians, provoking them to take charge of what comes next. The fact that I am not there all the time is part of this: it shows the students that you have to be the owner of your life. I also give students more freedom around repertoire; I guide them, but they have to choose their specific pieces. This is very important, because essentially it obliges them to carry out some research. They cannot just come and say ‘I would like to play the Liszt piano sonata’ without having explored the difficulty of the piece. They have to research and be able to make the case to me about why they should play the piece. This process opens their minds, not only in how they approach repertoire and performing, but also in the way they organize their agenda and their future. Planning your life as a musician requires research. We need to show young musicians that they must take the initiative to do this. On a daily basis, research becomes a starting point: Why are you practising today? What for? It is important that musicians never take a musical instrument and start practising without having an idea about what they are looking for. Nobody ever told me about this; I don’t know why. The message was to just practise eight hours a day and prepare a piece. This is not enough, because you have to have more direction.

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As a pianist I am no longer so interested only in preparing myself for a concert, thinking only about who is listening and about not making mistakes, or if it’s a recording about who the critics will be. When I stopped focusing my life only on performing, I had to become much more efficient in my practice. Instead of practising eight hours a day, I found I had only one-and-a-half hours but I still needed to stay in shape: I would never accept letting my level slip. So I needed special skills and concentration to be in the moment, to be acutely focused on what I am doing at any time. I didn’t have this before. It was very complicated for me to concentrate. In many ways, it’s very difficult to concentrate on anything in our world now. You zap from your mobile to meetings and then on to playing. So I have become much more disciplined, and I’ve found that I can prepare myself for a concert much better. Previously a concert would start for me only after the first twenty minutes. Now I have realized that I can, if I so choose, turn things on as soon as I go on stage: I can play with full attention from the start. The fact that I don’t need massive preparation time for a concert doesn’t mean that I give less importance to performing; far from it. I just have more of the skills to be present in each thing I’m doing. I strongly believe that music is a human necessity—for everybody. I don’t believe I have more talent than anyone: I have simply had more opportunities. So in my work in Brazil with the State Centre of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Bahia (NEOJIBA),2 I know that I can take any young person and enable him or her to play on stage at a high level. Anyone, including those with special needs, can play music well if they have the right opportunities. It’s like talking: everybody can talk in music. Then it’s a personal decision whether they want to do this as a professional musician. It’s clear to me that musicians are not superhuman, and I feel sorry for musicians who don’t believe this, who think they are very special or have a gift from God. My experience with NEOJIBA has changed my perspective on why we play music in the first place: it is not about a ‘profession’—it’s a tool to allow people to communicate at a different level. This affects the way you communicate in any situation, whether with a conductor or with the person who cleans the concert hall. There should be no difference. Some people believe that the most creative people are those who have nothing and can make something from it. One example is the Landfill Harmonic in Paraguay.3 They put together an entire orchestra using instruments made from recycled rubbish, with results that people found amazing. These instruments are now in a museum in Arizona;4 the founders of the museum argued that these young people deserved real instruments instead. This orchestra shows how creative humans can be, but imagine how much more you can achieve if you have the right tools. So I have developed a perspective on education, seeing it as a means of creating freedom by providing the right tools and information without

Insight: Ricardo Castro (with Helena Gaunt)

discrimination. As teachers we have the power to change things—and as I suggested before, our job is to detect the potential in each person and build on it. You first need to detect the real potential in each person and invest in this. You must value each person independently of the level they have reached, and this enables them to become someone who can create. Then you can start to focus on weak points also. Once you do this, you begin to see that creativity involves respecting and empowering everybody with appropriate tools. The process is risky, and of course you make mistakes. At NEOJIBA we recognize that we constantly need to adapt and allow young musicians to change. For example, we experience some people switching instruments, moving from playing to singing, or from singing to instrument-making and instrument repair, as they explore where they feel most comfortable. It’s so important to allow movement, to give opportunities, and to avoid creating barriers by defining steps that have to be followed rigidly. Each person has to follow his or her own journey. In this sense we don’t need to ‘teach creativity’: we simply need to enable creativity by providing the right tools. What is equally important is to be able to share ideas within a network of people. Every day you can pick up ideas and exchange them with others in ways that can change your life. Sharing good ideas rather than keeping them to yourself is essential to creativity. Normally we sell ideas and we sell time: I will give you a report only if you pay me. But what I see is that if you give a fantastic idea away to someone, it will come back to you in another form. With NEOJIBA, what I want to show people is that it’s not so difficult to make this kind of transformation possible. We therefore try to open doors all the time. We don’t wait for perfect performances to happen: everything is open. This is a risk too: there are always things that do not quite work yet, or where you haven’t yet seen that your approach is wrong. Sadly, some people come along with a preconceived intention to criticize. They look for the flaws rather than at the totality of what is going on, how the journey is evolving, where the potential is leading. When you decide to open up your knowledge, you take risks, because you will inevitably make mistakes and some people will want to attack them. You have to accept that you are not perfect, that people will criticize you—but also that this will not kill you. In the end, your reputation will not depend on it. It’s interesting to compare this with my experience in teaching Japanese students. They can be so scared to make a mistake! One wrong note and they start to cry. So my first aim is to change this, to help them find a place where mistakes are a normal and creative part of the process of learning. NEOJIBA is also great in that it gives an opportunity for people, often for the first time, to work intensively with others from different social classes with a means of interacting in a place of equality. We have discovered that the rich children are often very disciplined and organized but not ready to allow themselves to fail. They cannot stand mistakes: they are filled with fear of doing something wrong. Children from poorer backgrounds are absolutely the

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opposite. They may have no discipline, but they also have no fear: their attitude is, ‘Let’s go! Play in London, perform in the Festival Hall? Okay, let’s do it!’ When you mix these two attitudes, you get a really creative soup and you can do some great cooking. You establish a discipline of communicating without fear and with trust between people, and then creativity can really spark.

PART 2

Creative processes

7

Performers in the practice room Karen Wise, Mirjam James and John Rink

Classical musicians generally spend long hours in practice rooms preparing for performances. The fact that they tend to do this in solitude distinguishes the practising of classical musicians not only from genres in which it is more common to learn music and to prepare for performance by playing with others rather than on one’s own, but also from activities such as sports, where individuals typically train with coaches and/or in groups. Here we focus in particular on the more isolated practice experiences of classical musicians,1 with a view to challenging current definitions of practice and seeking new ways of understanding how it occurs and with what outcomes. The private space of the practice room has a number of ambivalent associations. On the one hand, many of the activities that musicians carry out in the practice room are necessarily repetitive and can be dull—seemingly the antithesis to creativity. On the other hand, practice rooms offer space for experimentation, reflection and the development of interpretational ideas. Although practice can be viewed and approached as a creative process (Klickstein 2009), little is known about its role and significance in the development of the creative musician, and how the activities in practice rooms might lead to performances with creative qualities—whether the latter are defined in of their originality, interpretational insight, freshness, spontaneity, communication or other aspects. This chapter explores the creative processes that take place in the practice room; although the focus is on classical musicians, the discussion is likely to be relevant to any musician undertaking individual practice as part of performance preparation. We begin by investigating perspectives on practice and creativity in the scholarly research literature and in writing focused on practical advice and pedagogy. Although the literature on practice from both practical and scholarly standpoints is extensive (thus requiring a selective approach here), relatively little direct attention has been given to creativity in relation to individual practice.

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In fact, creativity has rarely been the explicit focus of either research studies or pedagogical advice, and the insights that do emerge are largely tangential. We argue furthermore that the way in which practice has often been represented and understood gives limited scope for creative dimensions to emerge. At the same time, the solitary nature of classical musicians’ practice means that the processes involved can remain opaque. In order to illuminate the creative dimensions of solitary practice, this chapter goes on to describe a research project which investigated advanced student musicians in the practice room as they prepared a piece for public performance. A key feature of the project was that it engaged the musicians themselves in identifying aspects of their practice that they considered important to the creative development of their performance.2 The project therefore explored creativity in classical music practice through the lens of musicians’ experiences, mental processes and the meaning that they attach to their activities, rather than imposing a predefined set of criteria for what counts as creative. Drawing on primary data from this project, we describe the creative processes that are in operation on a local level (momentby-moment practice strategies) and on a broader level (creative development of an interpretation and a sense of ownership). We then explore a set of further key insights, which have implications for our understanding not only of the nature of creativity in classical music practice, but also of what practice itself entails. These insights relate to:

• • • •

Individual differences in musicians’ creative ways of working The interrelationship and integration of technical and expressive elements The nonlinear characteristics of creative processes The social dimensions of solitary practice, and a wider view of what counts as practising.

The data yield a rich picture of individual practice as a creative process. We argue that in order to understand how practice is related to the development of musicians’ creative agency, both broader and deeper understanding of what practice entails is required. As we demonstrate in what follows, a broader understanding entails widening existing concepts of practice to include activities that are not necessarily seen by students, teachers and/or researchers as ‘proper’ practice, while a deeper understanding involves exploring how individuals’ creative aims and outcomes are developed and realized in actual activities, strategies and thought processes as practice unfolds.

Practice in scholarly research The seminal work of the psychologists Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Römer (1993) has shaped current understanding of practice and its role in the

Performers in the practice room

development of expertise. They articulated the notion of deliberate practice as a ‘highly structured activity, the explicit goal of which is to improve performance. Specific tasks are invented to overcome weakness, and performance is carefully monitored to provide cues for ways to improve it further. … Individuals are motivated to practice because practice improves performance’ (ibid.: 368). The three main features of deliberate practice—setting goals, developing effective practice strategies and being motivated—have been the focus of practice research and literature ever since, and they can be seen as essential for successful expert performances in music (Platz et al. 2014). Evidence has been adduced to show that experts differ from novices not only in the age when they started to learn an instrument or the sheer amount of time they have devoted to deliberate practice, but also in the strategies that they employ. Such strategies have been investigated by Hallam et al. (2012), who asked 3,325 musicians ranging from beginners to professionals about their practising strategies, the organization of their practice and their motivation. The results indicated that the key to success is not necessarily the development of a wide variety of effective practice strategies; rather, it is more important to avoid ineffective strategies such as only playing through entire pieces or returning to the beginning of a piece after making a mistake. In an observation and interview study including expert performers and novices, Gruson (1988) too showed that practice strategies changed with increasing levels of expertise. For example, the greater the players’ level of experience, the more they tended to focus on repeating small sections as opposed to playing through the music, and the shorter their repeated sections became in average number of notes. Experience also resulted in the ability to conceptualize practice behaviour and to use a larger number of practice strategies of increased cognitive complexity.

General advice on practice Notions such as deliberate practice and developing practice strategies feature not only in academic research but also in the form of more general guidelines issued by musicians for musicians. These can be found in an array of literature ranging from philosophical treatises and blogs to step-by-step guides and practice diary templates for individual use. In one sense, musicians looking for advice on how to practise are spoiled for choice. While the exact content and tone vary according to the intended audience, practice advice usually centres on the core issues of structuring and regulating one’s time and of practising efficiently. Guidance is readily available on strategies such as setting goals, breaking down tasks, establishing routines, practising mindfully and motivating oneself to put in the time and carry out sometimes dull, repetitive tasks. One online source, for example, advises young singers that ‘effective practice is

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often boring and repetitive, so it is important that you remain mindful of your actions’.3 A age from the blog of Noa Kageyama4—taken from just one of many thought-provoking and well-informed articles on the site—typifies much of the prevalent discourse around practice: ‘It doesn’t matter if we are talking about perfecting technique, or experimenting with different musical ideas. Any model which encourages smarter, more systematic, active thought and clearly articulated goals will help cut down on wasted, ineffective practice time. After all, who wants to spend all day in the practice room? Get in, get stuff done, and get out!’ While it cannot be denied that an essential function of practice is to develop the core technical and musical skills necessary for performance, it is striking that many of these descriptions of practice do not move much beyond the notion that its primary purpose is to give musicians the building blocks. That is, the focus is generally on strategies to improve technical skills and fluency and to increase the reliability of one’s musical output, with the relevance and application of such strategies to creative aspects more or less tacitly implied rather than explicitly articulated.

Creativity in existing practice literature In the sources described so far, there is little explicit information about how one might go about practising in order to become a more creative musician or to maximize one’s chance of producing a performance perceived by audiences as exciting and novel. It is therefore far from clear which practice strategies might enable more creative aspects of performance, such as developing one’s own interpretation of a piece, or how strategies in the practice phase might relate to creative processes during performance, such as risk-taking and adjusting to unforeseen circumstances. In order to better understand the link between practice and creativity, we need a broader conception of what practice entails and how that feeds into the development of the ‘creative musician’. Some authors have explored practice along these lines, and examples can be found in practical pedagogical literature as well as empirical research (e.g. Klickstein 2009; Sloboda 1985; Hallam 1995; Prior and Ginsborg 2011; Jørgensen 2004). What all of these contributions share is a view of practice as the process of preparing for a performance. On the one hand, this seems unremarkable, given that one of the main activities of musicians in the western classical tradition is to perform pieces they have practised to an audience, and practice strategies are therefore used to improve the next performance. On the other hand, research and general practice advice often isolate the two. Sloboda (1985) distinguishes between the acquisition of instrument-specific skills and performance skills. With regard to the former, he refers to the three


phases of skill acquisition proposed by Fitts (1964): cognitive stage, associative stage and autonomous stage. For example, the first steps in holding a bow in the right hand in order to produce a sound on a stringed instrument must be taken consciously, whereas such actions are executed almost automatically after a certain amount of practice even as the left hand carries out difficult moves on the fingerboard. Sloboda regards performance as a continuum from sight reading to expert performance, with rehearsal in between these extremes. Noting that the rehearsal stage involves practice strategies such as those studied by Gruson (1988), Sloboda observes that more is needed to perform music than the ability simply to play through a piece. Performers must develop and internalize their mental representation of a piece on multiple levels: musical phrasing, dynamics, understanding of harmonic progressions and musical structure, and so forth. While Sloboda’s discussion of rehearsal is similar to that in some of the practice literature, the fact that he contextualizes practice differently and sees it as one stage of developing a performance helps to reconceptualize it. A similar view of practice underpinned Hallam’s (1995) investigation of musicians’ approaches to the learning and interpretation of music, in which she interviewed twenty-two freelance professional musicians about their individual approaches. Applying Pask’s (1976) model of learning styles, Hallam found that some of the musicians adopted a holistic strategy by initially undertaking an overview of the entire piece, whereas others adopted a serial strategy by looking at a smaller section first before moving on to the next. In addition, some musicians took an analytical approach to interpretation, while others preferred an intuitive method. The majority of the musicians in the study combined a preference for an intuitive approach with the serial strategy. Using a theoretical framework by Perry (1970), Hallam argued that the intuitive/serialist approach was likely to be associated with lower levels of musical intellectual development (such as being concerned only with playing correct notes). By contrast, musicians using an analytic/holistic approach or a combination of approaches were more likely to achieve a higher level of intellectual development (the highest level being represented by those musicians who develop their own personal style of performance). Individuals also differed in their preferences for the extent to which interpretative decisions were made in advance or left to spontaneity during the performance. Thus, Hallam’s study points to a combination of factors connecting the process of practice with an individual’s performance creativity and artistic development. While Hallam investigated what musicians said they did in general in their practice, Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford (Chaffin and Imreh 2001; Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford 2002; Chaffin et al. 2003) took a detailed case-study approach to examine how an expert musician actually prepared for a recording. Focusing on the work of the pianist Gabriela Imreh, Chaffin et al. outlined four stages of

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practice, from the first encounter to a ‘maintenance stage’: (1) establishing an aural idea of the piece by playing through the music, analysing it or listening to recordings; (2) developing an interpretation while working through the piece in sections; (3) polishing sections, ing them together and refining interpretative details; and (4) maintaining the interpretation, which might involve making slight modifications over an extended period of time. In his research into instrumental practice and music education, Jørgensen (2004) characterized four types of strategies: planning strategies, strategies for the conduct (execution) of practice, strategies to evaluate practice, and meta-strategies (Jørgensen and Hallam 2009). One important aspect of planning strategies is the musician’s plan for how to develop the interpretation. According to Jørgensen, a number of approaches are possible, e.g. developing the interpretation alongside mastering the technical challenges, or mastering the technical side first before developing interpretational ideas for a performance. Practice execution strategies discussed include mental versus actual playing strategies, practising smaller parts versus the whole piece, and facing and combatting performance anxiety during the preparation period. Jørgensen’s evaluation strategies focused strongly on correcting errors, but he also suggested working with aural or visual models, preferably combined with evaluating recordings of one’s own performances. The last group—meta-strategies—deals with the knowledge of oneself, the process of practising or the effectiveness of strategies. While the strategies in themselves are not explicitly described as creative (and indeed are not necessarily so), it is easy to see how they could be employed as such, with a creative approach or intention. The examples presented later in this chapter illustrate how the types of strategies to which Jørgensen refers can be extended to accommodate more creative approaches. These holistic views of practice and musical advancement are not confined to the scientific-empirical literature: they can also be found in a handful of publications aimed at aspiring professional musicians. One such publication is Madeleine Br’s The Art of Practicing (1999), which combines physiological and meditative principles (the latter deriving from mindfulness meditation). Br’s book was one of the inspirations for Klickstein’s The Musician’s Way, which argues that practising does more than develop technical and musical mastery: ‘the decisive aim of practice is to prepare performances because, as an art form, music centers on the interaction between performer and listener. In a few words[,] then, practice is the deliberate, creative process of improving musical ability and of mastering music for performance’ (Klickstein 2009: 4; italics added). This introduces the notion that practice itself can be a creative process. Moreover, Klickstein asserts that performances reflect the manner of practice: only by engaging with practice as a creative activity can one bring a sense of that creativity into performance, however one defines it.


Creative processes in practice It seems evident that multiple approaches, strategies and pathways can be adopted in developing a creative performance, but much work remains to be done to explore, identify and clearly articulate these. In the next sections, we draw on some of the findings from our own work to develop a view of practising which potentially has theoretical validity, reflects what musicians actually do (even if they do not always realize it), and might shed light on what creative music-making entails and indeed requires. In the study from which much of the following material in this chapter is drawn,5 we explored advanced students’ experience of creativity in the development of an individual interpretation of a solo piece. Through this we were seeking a better understanding of the relationship between creative processes in practice and in performance, and the link between the two. Details of the five participants can be seen in Table 7.1. These students kept practice diaries over a period of up to five months and made audiovisual recordings of three consecutive practice sessions at three stages during that process, i.e. at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the preparation period. This yielded a total of nine recorded practice sessions for each participant. After performing their chosen piece in a public performance, the individual participants reviewed the videos of these practice sessions and of the filmed performance, and they identified ages that they considered important to their creative development of the piece; these ages were then discussed in an interview with one of the researchers.6 This allowed us to identify ‘creative episodes’7 in the students’ practice sessions and to analyse the interview data alongside the video content, in order to characterize creative processes in their practice. The thematic analysis of interview data took an inductive approach (following Braun and Clarke 2006); this involved systematically coding similar statements and recurrent ideas throughout the interviews and forming first-level themes, which are the scaffolding for more interpretative second-level themes. The aim in forming first-level themes is to stay close to the semantic content of participants’ s, and in this case the themes represent moment-tomoment strategies and processes described by the participants. The secondlevel themes were arrived at by focusing the analysis on the broader functions TABLE 7.1

Participants

Gender

Instrument

Stage of study

1

Male

Horn

Postgraduate (MMus)

2

Female

Violin

Postgraduate (MMus)

3

Male

Percussion (vibraphone)

Postgraduate (MMus)

4

Male

Organ

Postgraduate (MMus)

5

Female

Double bass

Undergraduate (BMus year 3 of 4)

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served by those strategies in participants’ development of their own interpretation of their piece.8 This particular focus on one’s own interpretation was chosen because a sense of ownership9 emerged as a key part of students’ experiences of creativity in our earlier observations of one-to-one lessons (James et al. 2010). In the following discussion, second-level themes are described first. For all participants in our project, developing their own interpretation seemed to involve making decisions about what they wanted to communicate, deciding explicitly what their ideas were, and having a sense of that over the whole piece as well as in shorter ages and sections. Three interactive processes, expressed in the second-level themes in Figure 7.1, were fundamental to the overall process: 1. Developing an overarching concept of the piece that makes sense at different levels of structure, i.e. holistically as well as in shorter ages and sections; 2. Establishing focused intentions which guide both the performer’s aims at any one moment as well as for the whole piece, and the performer’s conscious attention; 3. Making it ‘feel right’ in two respects, i.e. physical comfort (or at least control) and making musical sense to the performer. These elements, which can be understood as interactive processes, are underpinned by a number of smaller-scale processes represented by the first-level themes, which were present across all participants’ interview data (see Figure 7.1). The most important themes are listed in Table 7.2 with illustrative quotations from the interview data. The majority of creative episodes identified by our participants involved problem-solving on multiple levels, including integrating and negotiating elements of musical intention, emotional expression and technical realization. In relation to the last example shown in Table 7.2, the participant later articulated the technical and attention strategies that he eventually used to find a creative solution to the problem: focusing on the top note and treating the downward notes like a string ‘ricochet’ which, according to the student, was both novel (‘most people don’t do it that way’) and satisfying (‘the ricochet makes it cool’). This involved deliberate effort to find and revise solutions rather than resorting to mere intuition. Although the literature on musical practice has noted the importance of problem-solving (see e.g. Chaffin and Imreh 1997), its role in creative processes has not been explicitly acknowledged or systematically investigated. This is remarkable, given that problem-solving has elsewhere been called the ‘most obvious function’ of creativity (Runco 2004: 658); without problem-solving, solutions to challenges cannot be found (Mumford et al. 1991; Torrance 1988; Wallas 1926). Equally important are locating and identifying problems, i.e. the ability to notice a problem and then frame it in a way that makes it approachable.

Making it ‘your own’ Second-level themes Developing a concept

Making it ‘feel right’

Establishing intentions

First-level themes Looking for and/or naming different characters in a piece Finding and emphasizing contrast and variety Experimenting and exploring Clarifying own ideas and opinions Identifying and solving problems Revising ideas over time

FIGURE 7.1 Processes in forming one’s own interpretation and making it ‘your own’. The first-level themes represent reported practice strategies that operate as micro processes in of the macro processes expressed in the second-level themes, which in turn are incorporated in the overarching concept of ‘making it “your own” ’.

TABLE 7.2

First-level themes and select participant comments

Theme

Participant comments

Looking for and/or naming different characters in a piece

… then you’ve got other things you can work on in the bottom line, and kind of giving them characters like ‘I’m not in a rush’, ‘cheeky’… (Vibraphonist)

The need to emphasize or to find contrast and variety in the piece

I started working on … how to make it more interesting by emphasizing the accents and the difference, because the music, as it’s written[,] … actually does have different accents… (Horn player)

Experimenting with and exploring ideas

… experimenting with different points and attacks of the bow to achieve different characters… (Violinist)

Clarifying one’s own ideas and opinions

… the way I viewed it was … I thought that’s the melody and this right-hand thing is just something that’s kind of going along like a machine… (Vibraphonist)

Revising ideas and decisions over time

I had kind of a very focused sound which I ended up changing later on… (Violinist)

Identifying and solving problems

I started to realize that the arpeggios were very cool but … there needed to be an emphasis on some, and, whether the beginning or the end, there needed to be an emphasis on one of the points of each one in order for it to make a musical phrase. I was thinking … how you can link from one, I could link from that to the next with the next one with the repeated notes, so that then the arpeggio … [is] no longer … vertical but horizontal… (Horn player)

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MORE THAN ONE APPROACH While the key elements of the creative process in forming an individual interpretation—developing a concept, establishing intentions and making it feel right—were common to all of our participants, we gained further insight into their individual creative pathways by considering their specific ideas and intentions, the language in which these were articulated, and how participants talked about their interpretative decisions in relation to the sense of ‘feeling right’. Taking all of this into , we discerned initial themes related to individual differences that we have broadly characterized as two ways of working, termed ‘musical parameters-led’ and ‘emotion/narrative-led’ (summarized in Table 7.3). Participants whose predominant way of working was ‘musical parametersled’ tended to express their evolving ideas in of the musical structure as gleaned from the score. Their intentions were characterized in of seeking balance between, and an effective understanding of, different musical elements in relation to the whole. In making interpretative decisions, these musicians were also concerned with the immediate sound of a given feature, such as whether a particular line or musical element might be perceived clearly. The vibraphonist and the organist in our study showed the strongest tendency to work in this way. In this interview excerpt, the organist describes a creative episode in his practice when he experimented with registrations for the piece by Bach that he was playing, and making an interpretative decision about which to use: Before, I was using a different sort of trio sonata registration having the right hand on an eight-foot on the lower manual and the left hand transposing down an octave on the other manual at a four-foot—the four-foot stop, so that the sound is very very similar, which is fun but … if there isn’t enough interest in … both sounds, you can’t tell what part’s doing what… [The different registration allowed me] to hear all the parts more clearly. The vibraphonist also talked about developing a concept of the piece in of the relationship between small structural details and the whole: ‘It’s just like these s of music that go on for quite a long time and then they just [clicks fingers] change, and within those there are certain micro details that are quite

TABLE 7.3

Characteristics of ‘two ways of working’ Musical parameters-led

Emotion/narrative-led

Concepts

Expressed in musical structural

Expressed in emotional , stories, expressive images

Intentions

Seeking/communicating clarity, form, balance of elements in relation to whole

Seeking/communicating emotional narrative or effect

Focus

Immediate sound (what can be perceived)

Emotional impact (what can be felt)


important but … it feels like there’s a big picture which is the most important thing not to mess up’. Participants whose predominant way of working was ‘emotion/narrative-led’ expressed their intentions in of seeking emotional meaning or effect. They devised stories and conjured up expressive images to characterize a number of musical elements as well as the whole piece, and their aim in doing so was to heighten the emotional impact of the piece. The violinist, the double bassist and the horn player typified this way of working. For example, this comment of the horn player refers to a age in his rehearsal footage where he is experimenting with types of singing while conducting himself, using a specific cultural reference: ‘I thought, this was the kind of singing that you would do … in, um, like a night time with a guitar—very … Spanish …, guitar and the moon’. Similarly, the double bass player describes her evolving concept of the piece as an emotional narrative: ‘What’s going on now [is] something incredibly weird and mad, and then it starts slowly, slowly picking up a lot of tension growing somewhere, somewhere really … intensively, but … with this steady pulse … it’s a scary piece. The whole piece I felt was … very … scary and mad and … mentally not stable’. These two ways of working reflect the participants’ tendencies rather than mutually exclusive approaches. For example, emotional or narrative ideas were sometimes used as part of a learning process primarily characterized by a musical parameters-led way of working; this can be seen in the explanation of the organist in our study as to why he plays the opening of the piece as he does: ‘It is a happy piece!’ Equally, analytical work sometimes formed an important part of an otherwise emotion/narrative-led way of working. For instance, the double bass player was able to engage with her challenging contemporary piece only after she had discovered a key feature of the piece’s melodic structure: suddenly I realized that the whole piece is build up on the intervallic motive of BACH. A semitone down followed by a minor third up and a semitone down again. This motive is hidden behind almost every age or element but taken from all other pitches. I feel that this is a great stepping stone, although I’m not sure how it will benefit my playing that I’ve at least found a key foundation to this piece. She then gradually developed her concept of the piece as an emotional narrative, drawing on some powerfully resonant aspects of her personal history. These two ways of working recall the styles—analytical and intuitive—to which Hallam (1995) referred in her study of musicians’ approaches to interpretation. They are also reminiscent of Bahle’s (1939) analysis of creative developments and principles in respect of composers. Bahle described two approaches to recognizing and resolving musical problems, which he regarded as a key means of generating new musical material. He referred to these in of ‘working’ (Arbeitstypus, literally ‘working-type’) and ‘inspiration’ (Inspirationstypus,

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i.e. ‘inspiration-type’), characterizing the handling of musical problems differently for each type. For the ‘working-type’, the musical problems emerge while one is working with musical material, whether actively studying one’s own or others’ compositions or experimenting with existing material. Conversely, for the ‘inspiration-type’, the musical problems arise indirectly, e.g. through conversation or listening to other compositions, amounting to a less deliberate form of ‘conception’ which might seem like sudden inspiration. The nature of the problems is also described differently for each type: the working-type focuses initially on the form and content of compositions, whereas the inspiration-type is more concerned with the emotional content or impact of a piece. In these respects too, the parallels with our ‘two ways of working’ are striking. Bahle showed how the two types serve to resolve compositional problems. Although both involve experimentation, improvisation and building possibilities, the working-type approach seems to feature a conscious, deliberate process while composing a piece, whereas with the inspiration-type, material tends to develop less directly (e.g. through improvising, drawing analogies and reproducing existing material, whether one’s own or others’) and away from the drawing board, which makes putting ideas on paper seem relatively effortless. Both of Bahle’s types involve hard work, but the activities leading to specific outcomes are different in each case. The similarity between Bahle’s analysis of how composers work and the pathways of developing individual interpretations as identified in our study is obvious, suggesting that the creative processes involved in composing on the one hand and developing a performance interpretation on the other might be closely related. Of course, there might be other ‘ways of working’ in addition to the two that we identified. What we cannot tell from our study is how far these ways of working reflected individual preferences (consider in this respect Hallam’s 1995 identification of individual differences in learning styles) and how they were related to other factors such as instrument, piece, musical style or participants’ unique backgrounds, knowledge and training. All of this needs further investigation, as does the critical relationship between practising approach and the quality of performance produced. What we do know is that our participants followed a number of pathways to reach a common goal: an individual and engaging performance.

CHALLENGING POLARITIES BETWEEN TECHNICAL AND EXPRESSIVE ELEMENTS The relationship between technical and expressive elements is of particular interest when considering creativity and performance, not least because in everyday discourse, as well as in the research literature, these are often pitted against one another as competing priorities. In our own research, conservatoire teachers were ambivalent about the status of technical excellence in relation


to expressivity—and indeed creativity—in performance.10 Some observed that technique was fundamental, conferring on the performer the freedom and flexibility to express his or her vision of a piece. From this standpoint, technical fluency is a necessary condition for expressivity; it might even have to be established before a performer can be expressive. However, a more cautionary view was also articulated, namely that musical expression and creativity could be ‘hampered by the millstone of technical excellence’ (James and Wise n.d.) such that the relentless pursuit of technical perfection could stifle musical exploration and ideas. Both of these viewpoints position technical aspects as being rather separate from expressivity, and this dichotomy is also seen in existing research literature. Observational studies of instrumental teaching (e.g. Zhukov 2008; Young et al. 2003; Mhee 2011) tend to interpret and categorize activities or verbal exchanges in a way that separates the technical from the expressive. Seen in this light, one-to-one teaching often appears to focus on technical aspects and notation, with relatively little attention to expressive performance (Karlsson and Juslin 2008). Looking through a creativity lens, by contrast, reveals the ways in which technical and expressive elements are interconnected. In our own research on one-to-one lessons (James et al. 2010), videorecall interviews with students and teachers illustrated the constant interplay among technical issues, creative problem-solving, and interpretational shaping and reshaping. Commenting on important moments during one-to-one lessons, participants explained how overcoming a technical problem, such as stiff shoulders, enabled musical expression. Conversely, examples also showed how working on musical understanding or generating a particular interpretational intention helped overcome a technical problem. We were able to see the continuation of this interplay in the practice studio as students developed their interpretations. The horn player’s goals for his practice, noted at the start of each of his recorded practice weeks, suggest a linear progression from technique through interpretation to consolidation:

• • •

Week 1: Technical issues—‘I am looking to begin solving some of the technical issues (stopped ports, trills, and fingerings)’. Week 2: Finalize technical issues and define musical intentions— ‘Resolve finally all technical issues and define my musical intentions’. Week 3: Resolve last technical issues and make sure not to lose the musical side of things—‘I want to avoid a complete separation of the two’.

However, his detailed diary entries and his interview commentary on creative episodes tell another story, much like the expert performer in Chaffin et al.’s studies, who was concerned with interpretational decisions from the start but was not aware of the extent of this while concentrating on (as she thought) more technical issues. Right from the first session, according to his diary,

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the horn player in our study was aware of, and was exploring, the ‘contrast of lyricism vs. percussive music’ in the piece, and this had interpretative and technical ramifications. At the start of the first practice session, he was working on the twenty-nine-bar opening section of the piece. His diary entry for this section of the work refers to aiming for ‘a clear beginning that impacts the listener’ and wanting the whole opening section to ‘make sense as a unity’. He also wanted to attain a rhythm precisely as it was notated and to portray the bell-like nature of the opening. There is no direction in the score that the opening should be ‘bell-like’, however, and it is not clear whether the horn player formed that image from his own interpretation of the score, from other written or recorded sources, or from previously hearing others’ ideas about the piece. But his diary states: ‘Bells from a church in my mind. I try to sing first to get an idea of what I may strive to sing with my instrument. I try to bring my inner Spanish musical feelings into the piece’. At the same time, he reports working on technical execution in of breath and trills. His first creative episode emerged approximately five minutes into this section of his practice, and it involved carrying out a breathing exercise without the horn. The significance of this was that he had realized he was not ing notes musically but instead was thinking of them as too separate, and this was causing fatigue which in turn resulted in a technical problem towards the end of the section (‘I know how to play trills, but every time when I will get to here, I wasn’t capable of doing it’). He also realized that his visualization of the expressive image (‘it’s supposed to be someone hitting the bells of a church in Spain’) was contributing to this lack of phrasing. So the task became one of determining how to achieve this expressive element (‘pgong, pgong, very percussive’) without wearing himself out—and the solution was and connected phrasing between notes. As with many of the creative episodes that we identified, it is clear that the process described here involved problem-solving in which the goal is the balancing and integration of technical and expressive aspects. Furthermore, closer examination reveals that this process of balancing and integration often encomed psychological dimensions too: attentional focus, emotions, self-efficacy, confidence and integrity are all important in finding one’s own way to play a piece. The horn player’s reports of the local problem-solving exhibited in his first creative episode—how to produce a percussive sound without losing the line and getting tired—contained the seeds of his eventual conceptualization of his ‘own’ piece. First, it was the start of an ongoing concern with managing the expenditure of energy through the piece for the sake of stamina. This meant that issues of breathing, pacing and articulation had to be connected and integrated with the horn player’s navigation through the whole piece, which is to say, his mental representation of the piece’s structure and how its sections were related to


each other. Secondly, his ‘inner Spanish musical feelings’ were expanded from the initial bells into a range of expressive images, such as a bullfighter (a suggestion from his teacher) and a lover singing a serenade with a guitar by the light of the moon. These enabled him both to feel a strong sense of personal ownership and to find ways of uniting the percussive and lyrical aspects of the piece that he identified in the diary record of his first practice session.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS IS NOT LINEAR The processes of problem-solving and the interplay and integration of multiple elements described above involve—and indeed require—cycling between practice strategies and structural levels of a musical work. Other literature, by contrast, suggests a progression in practice from ‘start’ to ‘finish’ (i.e. performance)—e.g. Chaffin et al.’s four stages (see discussion above). While these stages might be represented in other dimensions of music learning, such as familiarization, memorization and reliability of execution, the creative processes that we describe are much less linear. A number of examples in our data show that when solutions to a problem are reached, they are for the moment and not final. For instance, the violinist commented, ‘I had kind of a very focused sound which I ended up changing later on’. The horn player, too, after describing a series of interpretative changes in one section of his piece, observed, ‘That’s how I wanted to do it back then and … now we change, it’s fine’. He also recorded ways in which his interpretation evolved between the first performance of his piece in his end-of-year examination recital and a later public performance recorded for the research project. This challenges any notion that a given performance is an end point or that an interpretation is ‘finished’ and final at this point. In another study that we carried out (James and Wise n.d.) to investigate conservatoire teachers’ concepts of creativity, one teacher talked about how students could be paralysed by the thought that they had to establish ‘their’ version of a famous piece, and how as a teacher she attempted to foster a more provisional approach—that an interpretation is ‘for now’. She tried to encourage students to take the view that ‘this is how I’m looking at it at the moment and in this particular context, and I will change, my ideas will change, and then the production and the other people I'm working with, … so [I am] not fixing things down as if it has to be my permanent opinion on these pieces’. The modelling of the nonlinear aspects of creative practice therefore has the potential to help free students from this kind of restrictive thinking. Indeed, the horn player found that through recording and reflecting on how his interpretation changed, he became more aware of the possibility of different versions: ‘watching these videos now I realize that [there are] so many things you can do, … why not change things up a little bit maybe next time’.

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THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF SOLITARY PRACTICE Throughout the period of practising given works, individual ideas are influenced by a musician’s environment. One important influence that our participants mentioned during their interviews and in their diaries was other people who had directly or indirectly shaped their decisions about how to develop an interpretation of a piece. Given that we were working with conservatoire students in our research, it is not surprising that ‘teachers’ were cited most often in this respect, and indeed by all participants. Three of them referred to the ‘composer’ at various times of the recorded practice period, whereas only two students described the influence of a ‘friend’, although these references were nevertheless interesting. Teachers were described as someone who either had given advice (e.g. ‘my teacher’s few suggestions have definitely helped me to unfold the piece in my head’) or could be approached for guidance (e.g. ‘I will ask my professor what he thinks about the role of the grace notes’). They were seen as trustworthy authorities, and when teachers suggested a particular solution students tended to change their way of playing accordingly (e.g. ‘[I took a] consciously slower performance speed, based on what my teacher had said to me in my lesson’). The rejection of teachers’ suggestions was rare and in one case was even described as ‘betraying the teacher’. The second group of people referred to by participants as giving guidelines was composers. Although they were really referring to the score, participants’ comments indicate that they invoke a sense of the composer’s presence and intentionality when making interpretative decisions. For example, one participant talked about ‘making a decision as to what the composer meant by lento’, and another commented, ‘I am trying to reconcile the way [the composer] intended this part with my own feeling’. In this respect, one participant’s decision to ‘follow my own musicality’ in interpreting a age in a manner different from its appearance on the page felt to him like a violation of the composer’s wishes. This chimes with our observation in previous research (James and Wise n.d.) that there is a tension between, on the one hand, the respect that performers often feel they must have for performance traditions and the score—as somehow enshrining the composer’s intentions—and, on the other hand, their own personality and individuality, factors which can be seen as essential to creative performing. Friends were mentioned in a working relationship, as pianist or as a consultant, and they served as what might be called a ‘mirror’ or ‘witness’ (James and Wise n.d.) to these students’ artistic communication. In that way, the other person acts as a substitute audience and is used to test ideas. A similar function was described by Gabriela Imreh when playing ages to a friend during her own practice period (Chaffin et al. 2002). Despite the fact that most decisions are made by musicians during solitary practice, whether or not their solutions work might be easier to establish when someone else is present, which


makes the practice session more like playing in front of an audience than playing in isolation. Only one student in our project reported that he had actively looked for someone other than his teacher to play to in order to gain on an interpretational idea. Seeking multiple performance opportunities in order to build confidence for performances is suggested by Hallam and Gaunt (2012: 66); however, playing to friends or in other informal situations was not a practice tool effectively used by the students in our study. The benefits of such a tool can only be surmised, as there is no current research indicating the extent to which regular, informal performances help musicians form interpretational ideas and learn to respond to performance situations.11

Widening concepts of practising The last part of this chapter looks at specific types of practice or practice activities that are considered important for establishing an individual interpretation and to prepare for creative performances. The practice diaries and video-recall interviews used in our study shed light on specific practice activities undertaken by participants to develop an individual interpretation. The most telling example is again the horn player. During his video-recall interview, he discussed thirty-five creative episodes in total, of which only twelve involved playing the instrument. Otherwise, he engaged in a range of activities but without actually playing: most of these episodes featured singing either the piece or other material, including improvising words to the music. Other activities included playing the piano, conducting, tapping, snapping fingers and self-talk. When comparing these creative episodes as revealed in the video-recall interviews with the entries in the student’s practice diaries, it is noticeable that singing is mentioned in only six out of forty diary entries, whether as an image (six occasions) or as a practice activity (three occasions). In three other ages, the student uses the phrase ‘singing on the instrument’. The prevalence of practice ‘away from the instrument’ in the horn player’s creative episodes suggests that this was very important in developing his own interpretation. He recorded more of these nonplaying activities than any other participant, yet it is interesting that he himself was apologetic about work that might not be seen as ‘proper practice’. This suggests that time spent away from the instrument is not a common or accepted practice feature. However, experimenting with ideas away from the instrument was also seen in the case of the two string players, albeit to a lesser extent. The double bassist, who recorded the fewest creative episodes, reported undertaking much of her creative work outside the practice room altogether: I’m not incredibly creative when I practise… I feel more creative when I’m not playing … like actually thinking of the piece and then thinking,

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oh what I would like to achieve here, walking home and thinking, thinking of the melody and then trying … by just singing it in my head … what might work … or at home before going to sleep or coming before my practice for example before going to the practice room. … [N]ow I do it more in my playing as well… She realized that her practice had the potential to be more interesting and valuable if she brought that kind of work into the practice room instead of regarding practice as necessarily dull and routine. Whereas most participants chose an unaccompanied piece for the study, the violinist worked with an accompanist,12 and some of her most significant activities ‘away from the instrument’ occurred through this collaboration: we decided to come up with a story to help make it more fluid and give each section kind of a very specific character, and all of a sudden it was so much more fun to play and even though it was still hard and challenging and frightening to play some of those double stop bits, it didn’t really matter because I’d kind of given them the character being really angry and crazy, so if I messed something up or didn’t quite play it the way I wanted, it didn’t seem to matter as much. Practising away from the instrument is not a new idea: for example, Jørgenson (2004: 88) recommends that ‘playing practice’ should be balanced with ‘nonplaying practice’ ‘in a single session or over a period of time’. He continues: ‘Focused, nonplaying practice will give more time for mental rehearsal and reflection and prevent overuse of muscles’ (ibid.). Hallam et al. (2012) also include in their inventory of practice strategies activities that can be carried out away from the instrument, although most involve reading the score (with no particular aims being specified). Hallam and Gaunt (2012: 50) do mention ‘improvisation’ as one route to enhancing aural skills, but in their ‘musical practice checklist’—the focus of which is on setting goals, planning, mental rehearsal and thinking about the interpretation of a piece (ibid.: 55)—there is no mention of trying things out or of experimenting with different ideas or ways of playing, either with or without the instrument. The idea of practising away from the instrument raises the question of how our findings fit with prevailing concepts of mental practice. In so far as mental practice has been defined as ‘cognitive or imaginary rehearsal of a physical skill without overt muscular movement’ (Connolly and Williamon 2004: 224), mental practice might easily be seen as just mentally rehearsing aspects of technique and execution. However, many researchers agree that mental practice involves several types of imagery (Clark, Williamon and Aksentijevic 2012; Lehmann 1997; Holmes 2005), including auditory imagery, visualization (of the score or performance situation) and emotional imagery (of the expressive aspects of performance), as well as motor and kinaesthetic imagery.


One recent study of performing musicians’ concepts of mental practice found that as well as including all of these types of imagery, mental practice was characterized by real-time imagining of both the music and the process of performing it (Fine et al. 2015); the aims associated with mental practice nevertheless seemed to be focused on execution and realization according to the demands of the score. Like physical practice, mental practice is not necessarily ‘creative’. What our students reported perhaps broadens the notion of mental practice, since in their away-from-the-instrument practice they were accessing a number of routes to engaging with the music in order to develop aesthetic ideas, personal integrity and fluency of execution. The integration of those elements into a whole might in itself become a creative process, as Klickstein (2009) has proposed.

Conclusions This chapter has explored evidence for the ways in which creative processes are manifested in musicians’ solitary practice, revealing insights that can challenge some of the more restrictive received notions about practice and its purpose. We suggest that practice—at least, practice that musicians identify as in some sense serving creative aspects of their work—involves the dynamic and purposeful integration of technical, musical, expressive, interpretative and psychological dimensions, all of which are part and parcel of achieving a personal concept of a piece and a sense of ownership. Performers, researchers and teachers alike might benefit from thinking outside current dominant notions of practice to include this broader notion. There are some practical implications in adopting this view. Musicians might want to experiment with various issues raised in this chapter while practising: these include integrating an analytical approach as suggested by Hallam (1995), allowing time for experimenting with the piece in various ways away from instrument, and using friends and colleagues as a ‘witness’ or practice audience during the preparation period to test and reflect ideas. Teachers might find that when helping students to access new pieces, different approaches and a change of language would enable them to connect with a student’s preferred way of working for a specific piece or at a particular time in their musical development. Given students’ tendency to defer to their teachers, they might need active encouragement to experiment with and develop their musical ideas through a range of strategies and to explore new ideas when coming back to a piece at a later stage. In order to gain a better understanding of how these activities are linked to performances that are individual and engaging, collaboration between performers, teachers and researchers needs to be intensified so that the process of practising—the mainstay of classical musicians’ development—is not primarily

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perceived as boring and repetitive, but instead is seen as purposeful, enjoyable and constructive.

References Bahle, J., 1939: Eingebung und Tat im musikalischen Schaffen (Leipzig: S. Hirzel). Barab, S. A., K. E. Hay and L. C. Yamagata-Lynch, 2001: ‘Constructing networks of action-relevant episodes: an in situ research methodology’, Journal of the Learning Sciences 10/1: 63–112. Braun, V. and V. Clarke, 2006: ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology 3: 77–101. Br, M., 1999: The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart (New York: Three Rivers Press). Chaffin, R. and G. Imreh, 1997: ‘ “Pulling teeth and torture”: musical memory and problem solving’, Thinking and Reasoning 3/4: 315–36. Chaffin, R. and G. Imreh, 2001: ‘A comparison of practice and self-report as sources of information about the goals of expert practice’, Psychology of Music 29/1: 39–69. Chaffin, R., G. Imreh and M. Crawford, 2002: Practicing Perfection: Memory and Piano Performance (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Chaffin, R., G. Imreh, A. F. Lemieux and C. Chen, 2003: ‘Seeing the big picture: piano practice as expert problem solving’, Music Perception 20/4: 465–90. Clark, T., A. Williamon and A. Aksentijevic, 2012: ‘Musical imagery and imagination: the function, measurement, and application of imagery skills for performance’, in D. Hargreaves, D. Miell and R. MacDonald, eds., Musical Imaginations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Creativity, Performance, and Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 351–65. Connolly, C. and A. Williamon, 2004: ‘Mental skills training’, in A. Williamon, ed., Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 221–45. Ericsson, K. A., R. T. Krampe and C. Tesch-Römer, 1993: ‘The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance’, Psychological Review 100: 363–406. Fine, P. A., K. J. Wise, R. Goldemberg and A. Bravo, 2015: ‘Performing musicians’ understanding of the “mental practice” and “score analysis” ’, Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain 25/1: 69–82. Fitts, P. M., 1964: ‘Perceptual-motor skill learning’, in A. W. Melton, ed., Categories of Human Learning (New York: Academic Press), pp. 243–85. Gruson, L. M., 1988: ‘Rehearsal skill and musical competence: does practice make perfect?’, in J. A. Sloboda, ed., Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation, and Composition (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 91–112. Hallam, S., 1995: ‘Professional musicians’ approaches to the learning and interpretation of music’, Psychology of Music 23: 111–28. Hallam, S. and H. Gaunt, 2012: Preparing for Success (London: Institute of Education). Hallam, S., T. Rinta, M. Varvarigou, A. Creech, I. Papageorgi, T. Gomes and J. Lanipekun, 2012: ‘The development of practising strategies in young people’, Psychology of Music 40: 652–80.

Performers in the practice room Holmes, P., 2005: ‘Imagination in practice: a study of the integrated roles of interpretation, imagery and technique in the learning and memorisation processes of two experienced solo performers’, British Journal of Music Education 22/3: 217–35. James, M. and K. Wise, n.d.: ‘Creative performers—creative performances: constructs and processes’ (article submitted). James, M., K. Wise and J. Rink, 2010: ‘Exploring creativity in musical performance through lesson observation with video-recall interviews’, Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis 47: 219–50. Jørgensen, H., 2004: ‘Strategies for individual practice’, in A. Williamon, ed., Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 85–103. Jørgensen, H. and S. Hallam, 2009: ‘Practising’, in S. Hallam, I. Cross and M. Thaut, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 265–73. Karlsson, J. and P. N. Juslin, 2008: ‘Musical expression: an observational study of instrumental teaching’, Psychology of Music 36: 309–34. Klickstein, G., 2009: The Musician’s Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lehmann, A., 1997: ‘The acquisition of expertise in music: efficiency of deliberate practice as a moderating variable in ing for sub-expert performance’, in I. Deliège and J. Sloboda, eds., Perception and Cognition of Music (Hove: Psychology Press), pp. 151–79. Mhee, E. A., 2011: ‘Finding the muse: teaching musical expression to adolescents in the one-to-one studio environment’, International Journal of Music Education 29: 333–46. Mumford, M. D., M. I. Mobley, C. E. Uhlman, R. Reiter-Palmon and L. M. Doares, 1991: ‘Process analytic models of creative capacities’, Creativity Research Journal 4: 91–122. Pask, G., 1976: ‘Styles and strategies of learning’, British Journal of Educational Psychology 46/2: 128–48. Perry, W. G., Jr., 1970: Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston). Platz, F., R. Kopiez, A. C. Lehmann and A. Wolf, 2014: ‘The influence of deliberate practice on musical achievement: a meta-analysis’, Frontiers in Psychology 5/646, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00646 (accessed 15 February 2017). Prior, H. and J. Ginsborg, 2011: ‘First encounters of the musical kind: strategies for learning music’, paper presented at the Performance Studies Network First International Conference, Cambridge, UK, 14–17 July 2011. Runco, M. A., 2004: ‘Creativity’, Annual Review of Psychology 55: 657–87. Sloboda, J. A., 1985: The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Torrance, E. P., 1988: ‘The nature of creativity as manifest in its testing’, in R. J. Sternberg, ed., The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 53–75. Wallas, G., 1926: The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace). Young, V., K. Burwell and D. Pickup, 2003: ‘Areas of study and teaching strategies in instrumental teaching: a case study research project’, Music Education Research 5: 139–55. Zhukov, K., 2008: ‘Exploring the content of instrumental lessons and gender relations in Australian higher education’, British Journal of Music Education 25/2: 159–76.

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Small ensembles in rehearsal Jane Ginsborg

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In this chapter I consider the making of performances by musicians working in groups over time, and the extent to which both the ‘making’ and the ‘performances’ involve creative activity rather than the mere re-creation of the ideas of others such as composers and conductors. For every musician, one of the most crucial aspects of the context surrounding performances, and the most influential on the experience of performing, is preparation. Whereas solitary practice is investigated in Chapter 7, the focus here is group (or ‘small ensemble’) rehearsal. First, I look at a range of possible goals for performance, including the pleasure of preparation for its own sake, without a performance before an audience necessarily following. Second, I consider several kinds of small ensemble and their lifetimes, from temporary pairings for the purpose of a single performance to long-term partnerships. Third, I note that the time needed for a performance to take shape inevitably varies with the lifetime of the group.1 Fourth, I look at what groups actually do when they rehearse together, drawing on observations of nonverbal and verbal communication between performers in single rehearsals, and then, in more detail, over the course of a series of individual practice sessions and t rehearsals. Fifth, I compare the approaches to preparing for performance revealed by the practice and rehearsal diaries, maintained over the course of an academic year, of two student quartets and a quintet. Finally, the implications of the findings for small ensembles are discussed. I refer in the chapter to the outcomes of research by King and Ginsborg (2011) with the participation of small ensembles, for the most part between two and five musicians who on the whole perform western classical music. Where appropriate, I also draw on examples of research with performers of music in other genres, since ‘classical’ musicians have much to learn about pathways to creative performance from the rehearsal activities of pop, folk and jazz musicians. Some of the performers were students when they took part in the research, while others were professionals; some had worked together for many

Small ensembles in rehearsal

years, whereas others had only just met each other; and some were observed on a single occasion, while others agreed to the observation of their rehearsals over extended periods of time.

Rehearsal goals Not all practice and rehearsal leads to public performance: many people learn to play instruments, practise regularly and make music for their own pleasure, whether alone or in groups. Music offers the opportunity for social interaction and a sense of ‘togetherness’ (Rabinowitch, Cross and Burnard 2012)—hence the use of the French word ensemble for small groups of musicians. It has even been shown to promote empathy (Cross, Laurence and Rabinowitch 2012). In her research on amateurs’ experiences of music-making throughout the lifespan, Lamont quotes informants for whom rehearsals are clearly more important than performance: ‘I sing with my family for fun’; ‘I’ve met some brilliant people. I think I needed the break from it in my late teens and early twenties to come back to it purely for the love of it’; ‘Now I’m in four different choirs, I’ve got some good friends and I’m very busy’ (2011: 379–80). Similarly, music performance students may form groups not because chamber music is a compulsory part of their studies but for the experience of playing together and learning new repertoire. One student wind quintet enjoyed ‘learning to think creatively and critically about the music that they are playing, and to express these opinions to other musicians’ (Burt-Perkins and Mills 2008: 30). Once it was decided that their performance should be assessed, however, and especially as the examination date approached, their goals and identities—initially shared—began to diverge, and the group split up at the end of the academic year. A similar rise and fall occurred in a study of school pop groups, one respondent commenting: ‘the first three times it was excellent, it was just really good cos it was just a major jamming session … and we sort of got together through fun, like having a laugh… [G]radually now more people come, that’s [the trust between us] sort of gone’ (MacDonald, Miell and Wilson 2005: 328). Some professional musicians, too, describe their goals in of rehearsal rather than performance. Two respondents to a survey of twenty professional wind quintets said that they wanted to ‘work with friends who have honest exacting standards’ and to ‘improve my ensemble playing by working with other excellent musicians’ (Ford and Davidson 2003: 58). Musicians may hope to improve not only their ensemble playing in the context of group performance but also their individual expertise, which has the potential to enhance creative performance. As one member of a regular jazz workshop explained, When I first started and I, I wasn’t into it, I knew that it was a way for me to become better on my instrument. So I thought ‘well I’ll stick with it

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because I could see that I can grow from this’. So I stayed with jazz, I was a reluctant jazzer at the beginning, but I knew was a useful tool for me. (MacDonald and Wilson 2006: 10) While the goal of rehearsal is not necessarily performance, most rehearsals will culminate in performances of some kind, even those involving only a complete run-through of a piece of music before agreement is reached that it needs no further rehearsal and the decision is taken to start working on a new piece. Nevertheless, the goals of preparation for performance differ, from one individual to another, and between and even within groups of musicians. Sometimes these differences are problematic and lead to the break-up of the group, but in other cases they are inherent to the nature of the group and simply require appropriate strategies to be adopted in rehearsal.

Groups and their lifetimes The smallest group possible is the duo.2 At one extreme, a duo may consist of two musicians committed to a long-term musical relationship. This does not have to exclude musical partnerships with other performers, although it often does: Paul Simon performed and recorded only with Art Garfunkel between 1965 and 1970; Peter Pears performed works for tenor and piano only with Benjamin Britten, and for voice and lute only with Julian Bream; and despite recording duets in 1986 with the guitarist John McLaughlin, her partner at the time, Katia Labèque performs piano-duo repertoire only with her sister Marielle. Such partnerships are informed by familiarity. Sometimes this happens literally, i.e. through kinship, as in the many examples of sibling partnerships besides the Labèques (e.g. the pianist Peter and the singer Meriel Dickinson, and other piano duos such as Rosina and Josef Lhévinne and the Pekinel sisters) and, more rarely, parent–child duos (such as the violinists David and Igor Oistrakh, pianists Helen and Harvey Davies, or folk singers Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy). In other cases, familiarity develops through shared experiences of music-making over many years. At the other extreme, a duo may consist of two musicians who come together for a single performance such as an audition. Such a short-lived partnership might be conceptualized as that of soloist and accompanist, the former having done the bulk of their preparation for performance alone or (more likely) with the of other musicians such as teachers and coaches, the latter perhaps being employed solely for the purpose of playing ‘for’ a succession of applicants for a particular position, role or prize. They might have quite different goals: the soloist to the audition, the accompanist to facilitate the soloist’s performance and, perhaps just as importantly, to ensure future employment in the same capacity. Nevertheless, during the actual performance, they are playing with each other as well as for


each other and attempting to create the impression, for the benefit of the audition , of unanimous agreement as to style, tempo, timing, intonation and so on.

Preparation time As I have noted, the performances of different ensembles and kinds of ensemble take shape over varying lengths of time. In the case of the temporary, short-lived duo described above, the creation of a convincing performance is undertaken in a single rehearsal that can last from as little as a few minutes (if that!) in the case of some auditions, to as long as three hours or more. Longestablished groups may prepare for the performance of some works over the course of a lifetime. For example, in Blank and Davidson’s (2007) survey of seventeen piano duos, 41 per cent (seven duos) reported rehearsing together more than once a week, sometimes for six hours at a time; this proportion rose to 70 per cent (twelve duos) as the day of the performance approached, and several reported meeting daily in the run-up to a concert. Groups who perform regularly together over extended periods of time—such as the Lindsays—may prefer not to rehearse works with which they are very familiar, feeling that to do so might in fact be counterproductive to creativity in performance (Robin Ireland, personal communication, 8 December 2015). In addition to differences between ensembles in of the frequency and duration of rehearsals, there are also differences between the ways in which they rehearse. The nature of rehearsal activities is likely to depend not only on an ensemble’s goals for both rehearsal and performance, but also on the size of the group, the genre of the music to be performed, the performers’ expertise as musicians and ensemble players, and the length of rehearsal period available to them.

Rehearsal activities What do musicians actually do when they rehearse together? They play and/or sing, of course, but their music-making serves a variety of purposes such as warming-up, developing familiarity with the repertoire, making decisions as to the way it should be performed and then communicating those decisions to other of the group, and developing a unanimity of approach that could be described as cohesion or ‘attunement’ (Seddon 2005: 65). If they use a t warm-up routine, it might resemble that of the string quartet described by Vikram Seth in his novel An Equal Music (1999).3 This fictional reflects what has been described as the ‘mutual tuning-in’ (Schutz 1951, 1976) that takes place not only in the short term at the start of a rehearsal but also, ideally, over

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the course of the development of the relationship between co-performers. This has been observed, particularly, among jazz musicians, since finding a ‘groove’ (Berliner 1994: 389) depends on players’ shared social as well as musical experiences, assumptions and expectations (Bastien and Hostager 1988; Wilson and MacDonald 2005); such a ‘groove’ also enables creative performance in public as well as private (see Chapter 3 in this volume). Observing six rehearsals undertaken by a jazz sextet, Seddon (2005) identified shifts between verbal and nonverbal communication. At the outset, verbal instruction (when one player, for example, suggested how the piece to be played could be divided into sections) was used most often. This gave way to verbal and nonverbal cooperation, promoting cohesion between the players. Verbal communication was invaluable when musical communication broke down, but when the groove was finally struck and the musicians were at their most creative, their nonverbal communication represented ‘empathetic attunement’ (ibid.). Being perfectly ‘in tune’ involves listening, as Sicca (2000) has pointed out, and the ability to listen to oneself and one’s fellow musicians simultaneously—which is as important in classical music as in jazz—is a skill that can be developed only over time. Once acquired, experienced musicians may well be able to use it even within single rehearsals with new partners.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMILIARITY Evidence from observational research has shown that musicians playing together move their bodies with increasing synchronicity (Goebl and Palmer 2009). For example, two professional pianists with extensive experience of both accompanying and solo performance took part in research exploring co-performer communication (Williamon and Davidson 2002: 63). Four rehearsals and the ensuing performance were observed. The interaction between the musicians was primarily nonverbal—they spent less than 10 per cent of their rehearsal time actually talking—and the researchers noted that their ‘eye- and gestural cues became gradually more synchronous over the rehearsal period, with the performance itself reflecting the refinements that the rehearsal process had brought’. Although the musicians who took part in this study were acquainted with each other, they had not played together previously. A similar observational study was undertaken with the participation of a student string quartet, one member of which described the importance of being ‘conversational with the eyes’ (Davidson and Good 2002: 196)—the idea of ‘conversation’ emphasizing both the creative quality of their interaction, in that it was unplanned, and the direction of gaze or glance. In addition, the researchers noted not only the ways in which the performers used gesture to indicate exits, entrances and dynamic changes, but also the use of circular body sway ‘to help in establishing a wholeness in the music which was written in a manner that


could have been very fragmented’ (ibid.: 198). The use of nonverbal communication is likely to develop over time, of course: echoing the student in Davidson and Good’s study, quoted above, one piano duo interviewed by Marilyn Blank reported that ‘early on in their career together they would discuss where they were going to give [nonverbal] cues. As time went by and familiarity with their musical repertory grew, the cues often did not occur as they had done originally, and new ones emerged’ (quoted from Davidson and King 2004: 114; see also Blank 2013). Prior to undertaking our 2011 study, Elaine King and I wondered whether of singer–pianist duos with long experience of working together would look at each other more or less than the of newly formed partnerships, and whether social familiarity and expertise would also affect the use of gesture. We recruited two established professional duos and two established student duos, and we asked them to rehearse two songs that were new to them—the first song in their regular duo, the second one with a new partner from the other same-expertise duo. Finally, we asked the of one professional and one student duo to rehearse a third song with a new partner who not only was unfamiliar but also had a different level of expertise. The gestures made by the singers and pianists who took part in the study clearly fulfilled a range of functions that illustrate some of the general purposes of rehearsal. First, they did not warm up together in the way that Seth describes, although other ensembles may well do so. Their main concern, since they were classical musicians working from notated scores, was developing familiarity with the repertoire, and this is perhaps the most obvious purpose of rehearsal, at least in the early stages of preparation for performance. In each single rehearsal of a new song all the duos began by sight-reading, attempting a complete run-through without stopping. As they rehearsed, the pianists made gestures such as nodding their heads just before the singers were due to sing a new phrase, lifting their hands—sometimes exaggeratedly—to indicate the end of one section and the start of the next, and leaning forward to emphasize a climax in the music. These gestures communicated the compositional structure of the song and its expressive content both to the singer and to the putative audience. The singers also used their hands for underlining both the semantic meaning of the lyrics of the song, as most people do when they talk, and the emotional charge provided by the setting of the words to music. They made ‘pulsing’ movements too, to ensure that they maintained a regular beat, and gestures that seemed to the physical process of singing, in the absence of an external instrument. Such gestures included pointing downwards to show that they were aware of the need to lower the pitch of the note they were singing, and moving their hands upwards as though to mirror the production of a high note. Observation of the nonverbal communication of the two performers as they familiarized themselves with the songs in this first rehearsal together suggested that they

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were responding creatively to the music and that an element of creativity is therefore likely to be a feature of rehearsal generally. In addition to meeting the technical challenges of performing, the of small ensembles must know their own and each other’s roles, since they take it in turns, as soloists and accompanists, to and be ive of the other. As they refine their initial responses to the music, it is important for them to articulate and communicate to each other their understanding of the compositional structure and the composer’s expressive intentions, filtered through their own individual interpretations; later in performance, they must communicate their shared interpretation to the audience. As for our comparison of duos that were more and less socially familiar with each other, our findings echoed those of Williamon and Davidson (2002) in that the behaviour of the newly formed same-expertise duos also became more synchronous as they ‘[learned] to predict, read and respond to each other’s auditory and motor imagery’ (King and Ginsborg 2011: 198). We also found that the established duos used more gestures, and a wider range of them, when rehearsing together than when rehearsing with new partners, and one professional duo exhibited what we called ‘something of a “combined rhetoric” of gestures’ (ibid.). We were surprised, however, by how rarely the musicians— other than the of the newly formed student duo—were observed looking at each other, but this may have been because the pianists were in a position to use their peripheral vision to see the singers breathe, while the singers tended either to focus on the sheet music or to look out at an imaginary audience. An alternative explanation that remains to be explored empirically is that this is a function of familiarity, both between ensemble and with the repertoire. The Borodin Quartet, for example, two of whose have played together since 1996 while the others ed in 2007 and 2011 respectively, is described as ‘so tightly knit … it is little wonder that in performance they seem to listen to each other more intently—and look at each other less obviously—than most quartets. Not so much four string players, the Borodins are 16 living, breathing strings’ (Allison 2015). Throughout this section I have referred to nonverbal ‘communication’. In his study of performers’ phenomenological experiences of ensemble performance, McCaleb (2014) is critical of the use of this term because of its language-like connotations: it may be perceived to imply that information is conveyed from one performer to another as though in speech.4 He proposes an ecological model of ensemble rehearsal (Gibson 1977) informed by procedural rather than propositional knowledge (Ryle 1949), ed by evidence from action research with a string quartet and an ensemble of improvising musicians. Space precludes a more detailed of his study, but it is worth noting the range of ‘modes of representation’ observed in ensemble rehearsal, from the linguistic modes (explicit and referential) discussed in the next section to vocalized, performed and integrated modes (McCaleb 2014: 56).


VERBAL COMMUNICATION: SOCIAL FAMILIARITY REVISITED King (2012) revisited the impact of social familiarity on preparation for performance by comparing verbal as well as nonverbal interactions within single rehearsals undertaken by seven newly formed, ‘temporary’ cellist–pianist duos (first studied by Goodman in 2000) and the four established singer–pianist duos who had participated in the study outlined above (King and Ginsborg 2011; Ginsborg and King 2012). The comparison confirmed the findings of previous researchers on small-group behaviour: typically, when small groups develop working relationships, they form, storm, norm, perform and adjourn (Tuckman 1965; Tuckman and Jensen 1977; see also Chapter 3 in this volume). As they formed their new partnerships, the cellists and pianists were likely to make polite suggestions to each other; no ‘storming’ was observed, but ‘norming’ and ‘performing’ were exemplified by lack of disagreement and by what might be described as recapitulative and permeable discourse (Fogel 2009) through the sharing of ‘preconceived “familiar” tactics about rehearsal as they worked together for the first time’ (King 2012: 262). In the early stages of each session, once each duo had run through the music to be performed all the way through without stopping, both talk and playing took place in short bursts characterized by the author as ‘hesitant’; gradually, these became more ‘flowing’. The content of the talk was mostly related to the task at hand, focusing on the interpretation of the score—tempo, dynamics, rubato—as the two players reconciled their individual insights with the composer’s expressive intentions. There seemed to be more talking at the beginning, when the musicians were least familiar, and therefore least comfortable, with each other; progress was not necessarily smooth, and the duos who seemed the most content to adjourn at the end of the session were those whose rehearsal remained hesitant for longest. By contrast, the of the established duos did not need to ‘form’, since they were already bonded; they moved straight to norming and performing, frequently expressing solidarity by offering each other praise. Their sessions were flowing from the start as well as recapitulative, as the musicians drew on their long, shared experience of rehearsing together.

REHEARSAL TALK Musicians’ shared experiences are, of course, not confined to music-making. As we have already seen, bonds may well be familial; for example, one of the duos that took part in King and Ginsborg’s study was a married couple. Another duo in the study was a singer and a pianist whose verbal interactions and musical behaviours in rehearsing for a public performance over twenty-eight days were analysed and discussed by Ginsborg, Chaffin and Nicholson (2006a) and by Ginsborg and Chaffin (2011). This was a rare opportunity to consider how a performance takes shape over time, given the length of the rehearsal period.

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The work performed was Stravinsky’s Cantata for soprano, tenor, women’s choir and instrumental ensemble. The musicians’ preparation for performance was investigated, however, for just one movement: the first Ricercar for soprano and ensemble. The conductor also fulfilled the role of rehearsal accompanist for the singer, playing from the vocal score arranged by Stravinsky for soprano and piano. Both the singer and the pianist provided verbal commentaries as they practised alone; each of their first practice sessions was observed, on the first and fifth days of the rehearsal period for the singer and the pianist respectively. Their discussions during two rehearsals were also observed, the first being their first t rehearsal, which took place on the thirteenth day, midway through the preparation period, and the second being their final t rehearsal on the day of the performance itself. Content analyses were made of the musicians’ verbal utterances. These were coded using a framework derived from the findings of research undertaken by Chaffin and colleagues (e.g. Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford 2002) which suggested that the decisions taken during practice inform a musician’s thoughts during performance (see Table 8.1).5 Furthermore, a subset of these decisions—namely, those that are not implemented automatically, without conscious awareness—serve as retrieval or ‘performance’ cues when the musician plays from memory. In this study of the development of shared performance cues, the singer and the pianist annotated multiple copies of the score after they had given the public performance of the Cantata to indicate what they were thinking while they were performing, and at which specific beat(s) in the piece each thought occurred. This permitted a subsequent analysis to TABLE 8.1

Coding of utterances

Code

Topic

Basic (references to score, printed and annotated)

Dynamics, tempo, pauses, commas, phrases and phrasing, errors in score, duration of notes and rests, entries; word underlay, stress, pronunciation and meaning; (singer’s) pitch, intonation, technical difficulties and location of breaths; instrumentation, awareness of harmony and counterpoint, maintenance of steady pulse (conductor only)

Structural

Section boundaries and ‘switches’: repetitions or near-repetitions of musical phrases at boundaries that might cause confusion such that the singer was in danger of jumping, erroneously, from one location in the work to another

Interpretive

Interpretation of the composer’s intentions, particularly sound quality (often in relation to the poetic meaning of the words) and phrasing; relative lengths of specific pauses and commas; shaping of rubato, and changes in tempo and dynamics

Expressive

How to convey interpretation to audience, e.g. making the music ‘dance’ or sound ‘yearning’

Memory

Memorizing strategies; ing and forgetting

Metacognitive

Evaluations, requests for evaluation, goals, plans, reflections on rehearsal and research process

Shared

Need for and ways of achieving unanimity in performance

Small ensembles in rehearsal TABLE 8.2

Utterances in each practice and rehearsal session (by number and percentage)

Session

First practice

First rehearsal

Final rehearsal

Performer

Singer

Pianist

Singer

Pianist

Singer

Pianist

Utterances (no.)

93

131

159

97

81

83

Basic/structural 45 (48.3%)

97 (74%)

37 (23.3%)

36 (37.1%)

15 (18.5%)

14 (16.8%)

Interpretive

5 (5.4%)

14 (10.8%)

17 (10.7%)

24 (24.7%)

16 (19.7%)

30 (36.1%)

Expressive

4 (4.3%)

1 (0.8%)

2 (1.3%)

0

0

3 (3.6%)

Metacognitive

36 (38.7%)

19 (14.5%)

86 (54.1%)

30 (30.9%)

44 (54.3%)

35 (42.2%)

Memory

3 (3.2%)

0

12 (7.5%)

0

3 (3.7%)

0

Shared

N/A

N/A

5 (3.1%)

7 (7.2%)

3 (3.7%)

1 (1.2%)

be made of the relationship between their practice behaviours—starts, stops and repetitions of musical material—and their mental representations of the Ricercar by the time they came to perform it (Ginsborg et al. 2006b). As shown in Table 8.2, both musicians were largely concerned at the start with basic and structural aspects of the music and its performance. As they became more familiar with the work, so they grew more concerned with its interpretation and, to a lesser extent, how this would be conveyed to the audience. The degree to which their rehearsals were creative was reflected most clearly by the utterances they made that were categorized as interpretive and expressive; these utterances also predicted creativity in performance. In addition, the singer needed to ensure that she would be able to perform confidently from memory, and both referred in their t rehearsals to shared performance cues. Nevertheless, a high proportion of their talk—just over half, in the case of the singer during the t rehearsals—was directly related not to the music itself but rather to plans, goals, strategies, evaluations (i.e. statements expressing opinions) and requests for evaluations.

PRACTICE AND REHEARSAL BEHAVIOURS Having looked at how a performance takes shape over time in of the changing importance of the various aspects of music-making as revealed by rehearsal talk, I now turn to practice behaviour: the way music is segmented for rehearsal. This will inevitably depend on the piece, performer and purpose of preparation. As a follow-up to the study discussed above, Ginsborg (2011) investigated the relationship of practice behaviour to performance cues and the sequencing of work on different parts of the music by observing the singer’s individual practice sessions 1–3, 5 and 8, and her t rehearsals with the pianist in sessions 6, 9, 12 and 15.6 The Ricercar is in three main sections: two verses with three refrains, a middle section that could be characterized as a fanfare, and a coda. In the first session, the singer began with the first phrase and then worked her way through

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the piece phrase by phrase without much evident movement until she reached the beginning of the fanfare. The second half of the first session was largely devoted to work on the coda, broken into yet smaller segments, and the session ended with a run-through of both fanfare and coda without a break. After a brief attempt on the verse sections of the opening of the piece, the bulk of the second session was again spent to a large extent on the fanfare; the coda was once more practised in shorter sections, and the session ended with a final attempt on the coda only. The purpose of the third session was memorization: the singer started from the beginning of the fanfare, then worked on the coda before singing from the beginning of the fanfare to the end of the piece. Then she worked on the section of verse before the fanfare and ‘backward-chained’, singing forward from the beginning of each previous section as she gained confidence. It was not until the very end of the session that she tried to sing the whole Ricercar from beginning to end, and she did not succeed in doing so continuously. Session 5 was a short individual practice session in which the singer checked that she had memorized the whole Ricercar securely; after singing it through once from beginning to end, she worked systematically on the first verse. When the pianist ed her, they started at the beginning and worked through to the end, phrase by phrase. They repeated both the beginning of the fanfare and the beginning of the coda several times. Towards the end of the session they attempted two run-throughs of the whole Ricercar, but the longest uninterrupted run lasted only until the beginning of the fanfare. Session 8 was another individual practice session undertaken for the purpose of solving technical challenges that had emerged in the t rehearsal and while rememorizing. Again, the singer worked on small segments, focusing for most of the first half of the rehearsal on the end and the beginning of the fanfare, combining them before starting work on the first half of the coda and then the second half. Midway through the session, she returned to the beginning of the piece, working systematically on the verses and singing through the refrains. Session 9 began with more detailed work on the fanfare and coda, but the second half was devoted to an attempt to sing the first long phrase of the Ricercar in one breath, before working through the whole piece with fewer and fewer interruptions. Session 12 began with an almost uninterrupted runthrough followed by a number of repetitions of the first part of the fanfare as the musicians discussed the words that the singer would emphasize and why; it ended with another—again, almost uninterrupted—run of the whole piece. The final session was intended as a single run-through, but trouble-shooting was required to solve an unexpected problem that arose midway; once this had been addressed, a complete ‘practice performance’ could be given—and indeed both musicians reported being satisfied with the final, hitch-free performance in public that evening, in which they were both able to make unexpected discoveries about the music. For example, reflecting on the performance of the


final bars of the Ricercar that he had just conducted, the pianist remarked, ‘I found that this rit[ardando] happens because of the weight of “eternally”, the fact that [Stravinsky] placed the octave jump in the voice at that point, “eternal-ly”, the “ly” goes down, and the upbeat “eternal” goes to the two cello open strings at the bottom of the instruments—there’s a real point of emphasis on the barline.’ ‘It’s binding it down into the earth’, replied the singer, ‘it becomes earth-bound.’ In this study of a performance taking shape over the course of four weeks, I have combined information from a range of sources—talk, musical behaviour, self-reports by the musicians obtained after the performance, and analyses of the relationships between them—to provide a sketch of the process. It would be unwise to try to generalize from this observation of one duo to the approaches of all small ensembles to the task of preparing for performance, but it nevertheless has the potential for outlining some possible approaches that may or may not be adopted by other performers. In this instance, the musicians’ priorities shifted from basic learning to interpretation and expression within their individual practice; all of these needed to be rethought when they came together in their first t rehearsal, and although interpretive decisions and their implementation in performance became more important in the last rehearsals, opportunities were still taken to improve even the smallest details. The analysis of practice behaviour revealed two strategies that the performers clearly found useful: the identification of compositional sections and subsections, and working backwards when appropriate. In other words, the strategies involved not always starting from the beginning of the piece, and focusing on ages requiring particular attention. These underpinned both effective coordination between the musicians and the freedom to respond creatively to what they heard and felt during the public performance.

Approaches to rehearsal and performance: students’ diaries I now turn from the analysis of one duo’s performance taking shape over time to a comparison of the approaches to rehearsal and performance used by groups of students at a conservatoire (Ginsborg 2010): two string quartets (one newly formed by first-year students, the other made up of third-year students who had been working together since the beginning of their first year) and a newly formed wind quintet (comprising four students in the first year of their course, and one in the second year). The students agreed to keep diaries for two in the form of templates to be completed with brief entries after each individual practice session and group rehearsal, although the first-year string quartet actually kept them for all three of the academic year. The of the established quartet were clearly much more familiar with each

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other socially than the two newly formed ensembles were. They were also more experienced not only as performers but also as ensemble musicians. Retrospectively, it is possible to gauge the effectiveness (or otherwise) of some of their strategies. The established quartet and the newly formed quintet can be described as ‘successful’ groups, in that they won many prizes and gave numerous concerts together during their years at the conservatoire. Although the established quartet subsequently split up, all of the players are making careers in new chamber ensembles. At the time of writing, the wind quintet was still together, performing professionally and still winning prizes; we may assume, therefore, that their approaches to rehearsal and performance worked well for them. By contrast, the approaches of the newly formed string quartet worked less well for its : they became increasingly dissatisfied with their own and each other’s contributions to the group and agreed to disband at the end of the academic year. One factor that might well be associated with both social familiarity and level of success is time spent on individual practice and group rehearsal. The of the established quartet reported, in total, more than 14 hours of individual practice on the six works that they rehearsed as a group over the course of twenty-two rehearsals including one coaching session (38 hours in all). Although the newly formed quartet and quintet were rehearsing only two and three works respectively, the quartet reported individual practice time of just over 9 hours—more than the quintet’s 6.5 hours—but only eight rehearsals including two coaching sessions with tutors (around 11 hours), in comparison with the eight rehearsals plus nine coaching sessions (around 23 hours) undertaken by the quintet. This may of course be attributable to the nature of the works that were to be performed (respectively, a Mozart quartet and a piece of music written by a student composer to accompany a dance project, versus quintets by Nielsen, Reicha and Verdi), or indeed the relative difficulty of the music for string and wind players. Nevertheless, evidence from the ratings that the students were asked to make of their own and the other players’ focus, effort and enjoyment in practice sessions and rehearsals suggests that the of the quartet found rehearsals less rewarding than individual practice, while the reverse was the case for the quintet. The diary templates required the students to state the work or works practised, coached or rehearsed in each session and to specify up to five goals (on the whole, no more than three or four were reported per session) along with corresponding strategies for achieving them and plans for the next session. They were asked to rate each goal and strategy for ‘effectiveness’ on a scale of 1 to 10, and to reflect, when appropriate, on both ‘one thing that I was really happy about in our performance today’ and ‘one thing I would like us to do better in our next performance’. The of the three ensembles submitted a total of 1,044 goals, strategies, plans and comments on their performances in masterclasses and concerts. A preliminary analysis suggested differences between

Small ensembles in rehearsal TABLE 8.3

Early-stage individual practice: goals and corresponding strategies and plans Goal

Strategy

Plan

Newly formed quartet

Decide upon bow stroke and vibrato

Practise

Improve

Newly formed quintet

Practise fast scales

Slow practice, in different rhythms

Keep practising fast ages

Established quartet

Secure finale agework

Slow practice with consistent rounded tone

More of the same

TABLE 8.4

Late-stage individual practice: goals and corresponding strategies and plans Goal

Strategy

Plan


Play through music

Metronome

None


Sort out the technically challenging sections

Played them slowly until they were correct and then gradually increased the tempo, playing with a metronome

Play them in the context of the piece

Established quartet

Intonation of cadences in the first two movements

Slow practice (checking where possible with open strings)

The same process

the kinds of goals, strategies and plans reported and the relationships between them that could be attributable to the experience and familiarity of the group (newly formed versus established) and to the stage of practice and rehearsal (early versus late). As shown in Table 8.3, the students’ goals, strategies and plans were similar, but it is clear from the sample entries presented in Table 8.4 that the goals of the individual of the ‘successful’ ensembles were more specific in of both the sections of the work to be practised (quintet and established quartet) and the issues to be addressed in practice (established quartet). Furthermore, they noted appropriate strategies for achieving their goals and plans for their next practice session. Differences between the ensembles’ approach to preparation were also evident in their diary entries for the first and last group rehearsals (see Tables 8.5 and 8.6). The goals, strategies and plans noted by one member of the newly formed quartet for the first rehearsal revealed her approach to creative development during the process of preparation (‘introduce some interest into work’ by ‘discussing different musical options’). She acknowledged, however, that coaching the following day would be likely to influence the quartet ’ ideas. The diary entries of one of her fellow performers following their final rehearsal are poignant (‘there will not be [a] next time’): although they did ‘perform well’, according to the examiners’ report, they knew by this stage that they would be disbanding. By contrast, the goals, strategies and plans of the newly formed quintet and the established quartet, reported after their first rehearsal

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Musicians in the Making TABLE 8.5

First ensemble rehearsal: goals and corresponding strategies and plans Goal

Strategy

Plan


Introduce some interest into work—discussion

Played through whole thing first, all decided it was boring and loud, so broke it down into sections and discussed different musical options

Consolidate the ideas we discussed although we will probably have changed them as we will have a lesson tomorrow and that will bring new ideas


Play through the first movement of Nielsen

Sectionalised the music and worked on each section together and then put them together to play through

[Work] on it more, get fast sections together

Established quartet

Intonation, articulation and flow of 4th movement of Schumann Quartet No. 1 and read-through of Mozart quartet

Slowing the tempo— working in groups of twos— turning off the light to focus more on the sound

The 4th movement should be rehearsed up to speed, focusing on flow, articulation and intonation

TABLE 8.6

Last ensemble rehearsal: goals and corresponding strategies and plans Goal

Strategy

Plan


Perform well and enjoy it

Rehearsed before the assessment and just went in and played

There will not be [a] next time


Practise the 2nd movement just in case we have to play it in the chamber music competition

We worked on linking up the sections smoothly and matching the articulation and tuning

To play through the movement with no mistakes

Established quartet

Work on intonation, pulse and sound quality of opening two-part section

We worked mostly in pairs without vibrato and discussed ideas about tone

Next time we perform this work we should take more care over this

together, were once again more explicit in of what was to be rehearsed and how; the entries of the established quartet member indicate clear focus on creative outcomes (‘articulation and flow’) and strategies (‘turning off the light to focus more on the sound’). Similar comparisons can be made between the ensemble ’ diary entries following their last rehearsals. For example, the comment ‘we should take more care over this’ (i.e. ‘intonation, pulse and sound quality of opening two-part section’) can be seen as representing a more sophisticated aspiration for a quartet than ‘play through the movement with no mistakes’. In general, goals, strategies and plans are important because they underpin effective practice and rehearsal (Ginsborg 2003), and the ones reported here


are no exception. More detailed investigation was made of the three groups’ approaches to one representative work each, as follows. First, relevant diary entries were selected. The of the newly formed quartet made 248 entries in all, of which 160 related to goals, strategies and plans for practising or rehearsing the Mozart quartet that they performed for their chamber music assessment; the newly formed quintet made 247 entries in all, of which 148 related to their preparation and performance of the Nielsen Quintet; and the established quartet made 549 entries, of which 187 related to the Quartet by David Matthews. Thus, a total of 495 entries for all three ensembles, comprising nearly 4,000 words, related to respective goals, strategies and plans. Second, the 495 entries were analysed to find out which —either nouns or verbs—were most commonly used in relation to practice, coaching, rehearsal and performance. There were 189 such that could be clustered to form seven categories. Three of the categories were novel, representing references to location in the piece of music (e.g. rehearsal letters and bar and beat numbers), generic and conceptual activities. The other four derived from those used in previous research (Chaffin et al. 2002; Ginsborg et al. 2006a; Ginsborg and King 2009), representing attention to basic, interpretive, expressive and ensemble dimensions of the music or performance. Third, the 495 entries were divided into a total of 590 ‘idea units’ (Brown and Smiley 1977) because—as is evident from the examples given in Tables 8.3 to 8.6—a sizeable proportion of entries referred to more than one goal, strategy or plan. Each idea unit was then assigned to one of the seven categories (see Tables 8.7 to 8.9 for examples). Fourth, the numbers of goals, strategies and plans identified in the categories of idea units by the of each of the ensembles for practising, coaching and rehearsing were compared. Generally, goals for individual practice reflected attention to basic dimensions; after all, the purpose of practice, in the present context, was effective preparation for playing in a group coaching session or rehearsal. Goals for rehearsals were more likely to concern ‘ensemble’ issues such as role-playing or unanimity of sound. The same was the case for

TABLE 8.7 Idea units by category: goals (WQ1 = wind quintet; SQ1 = newly formed first-year string quartet; SQ3 = established third-year string quartet)

Category

Statement

Location

Learn the 4th variation (WQ1 practice)

Generic

Practise what I learnt in past lesson (SQ1 practice)

Conceptual

Think of more ideas to input into next rehearsal (SQ1 practice)

Basic

Shifting and intonation of solo ages and harmonics (SQ3 practice)

Interpretive

Concentrate on phrasing and dynamics (WQ1 coaching)

Expressive

Sound quality (SQ3 rehearsal)

Ensemble

Playing as together as possible (WQ1 coaching)

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Musicians in the Making TABLE 8.8 Idea units by category: strategies (WQ1 = wind quintet; SQ1 = newly formed first-year string quartet; SQ3 = established third-year string quartet)

Category

Statement

Location

We worked on bits of the 3rd mov[ement] (WQ1 coaching)

Generic

Playing through (SQ3 rehearsal)

Conceptual

Just thought about the things (SQ1 practice)

Basic

Clapping the difficult rhythms and playing it slowly (SQ3 rehearsal)

Interpretive

[Playing] with different bowing, articulation etc. (SQ1 rehearsal)

Expressive

We played it all as if it was a performance (WQ1 rehearsal)

Ensemble

Making sure the important voice was heard at all times (SQ3 rehearsal)

TABLE 8.9 Idea units by category: plans (WQ1 = wind quintet; SQ1 = newly formed first-year string quartet; SQ3 = established third-year string quartet)

Category

Statement

Location

[To do the same but] with the last variation (WQ1 coaching)

Generic

Spend more time on sorting it out (SQ1 coaching)

Conceptual

Making a decision about this (SQ3 rehearsal)

Basic

[To play through the same theme] and be in tune (WQ1 rehearsal)

Interpretive

Faster tempo? (SQ3 rehearsal)

Expressive

Focused again on sound world (SQ1 rehearsal)

Ensemble

To take this approach successfully into the quartet rehearsal (SQ3 practice)

coaching sessions: it might well be easier to resolve questions of balance, for example, with the help of a tutor. The established quartet’s reported significantly more goals and plans, particularly for rehearsals, than the of the other ensembles did, whereas the newly formed quartet reported significantly more strategies. The quintet ’ goal reports were most often categorized as referring to location in the piece: they were aware of the sections of the music that needed attention but relied on coaching sessions—of which they had many—for ideas on interpretation. By contrast, the newly formed quartet set its own goals in relation to interpretation, since its did not feel that they gained much from their (ittedly limited) experience of coaching sessions. Their reported strategies related primarily to conceptual issues rather than interpretation, expression or ensemble, while those of the quintet suggested a focus on playing expressively not only in coaching sessions but also in rehearsal. Perhaps because they did less individual practice than the other groups, they seem to have treated their ensemble rehearsals as practice sessions, resolving basic issues, while their coaching sessions functioned in much the same way as the quartets’ rehearsals; this might, of course, explain their relative success as an ensemble. (See Chapter 3 in this volume for further consideration of the role and practice of coaching.)


Fifth, an analysis was made of the practice and rehearsal strategies rated by the students themselves as most and least effective. Arguably, the extent to which the students were creative is illustrated by the highest-rated rehearsal strategies, a sample of which is provided in Table 8.10. Finally, each set of goals with its corresponding strategy and plan was evaluated for ‘congruence’, that is, the extent to which the researcher considered the strategy to be appropriate to its goal, the plan to its strategy, and the plan to its goal. The strategies of the established quartet were found to be wholly appropriate for all of their stated goals. This was the case to a lesser extent for the quintet, and even less so for the newly formed quartet, more than a fifth of whose strategies and goals were incongruent. Similarly, analysis of the congruence between plans and strategies showed that while 90 per cent of the plans of the quintet and the established quartet were wholly appropriate for all their reported strategies, this was the case for only around 65 per cent of the newly formed quartet’s plans. To summarize, the more experienced of the successful ensembles—the established string quartet—reported the most sophisticated goals and strategies for practice, focusing, for example, on expression. By contrast, the less experienced but nevertheless successful newly formed wind quintet reported relatively unsophisticated goals for strategies for practice and rehearsal (e.g. those classified as generic and/or relating to location) while reserving interpretive, expressive and ensemble goals for coaching sessions. The newly formed string quartet’s use of conceptual goals, plans and strategies, meanwhile, suggests that they spent a great deal of time ‘discussing’ and ‘deciding’ TABLE 8.10

Practice and rehearsal strategies rated highest by students

Practice

Basic

Metronome Tried different fingerings Slow practice of solo age for intonation Right arm/wrist/hand for string crossing and building up tempo to play up to speed

Conceptual

Listened to a few different recordings while reading the score Reading the score away from the violin Work slowly, ing everything we discussed in rehearsal

Rehearsal

Interpretation

Discussed what vibrato and articulation we wanted Character and ff dynamics being a lot louder to create atmosphere It wasn’t just about creating a mood, but also it’s useful to have a picture or story in our heads. This makes the music come to life.

Ensemble

Work through sections that we find difficult to play together Discussion and experimentation with and without the melodic line Playing in twos or threes and commenting

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issues that they neither practised nor rehearsed as effectively as they might, with predictably disappointing results. On the one hand, it could be argued that they failed to make use of opportunities that the other newly formed ensemble found valuable: to receive encouragement as well as advice from tutors, not only on playing together but also on interpretation, expression and managing the process of becoming an ensemble. On the other hand, it might be that the quartet’s end-of-year performance—however unsatisfactory the musicians felt it to be—was the product of their t creative imaginations to an even greater extent than that of the quintet, who relied on suggestions from their tutors.

Conclusion: implications for small ensembles This chapter has looked at how performances by ensembles take shape over time and how this not only predicts their creativity in performance but also reflects their creativity in practice and rehearsal. Performances take place in different settings and contexts, but all are prepared in one way or another: in a single rehearsal that might last anywhere from a few minutes to several hours; during a series of individual practice sessions and t rehearsals; or, in the case of groups with extended lifespans, over many years. The goals of rehearsal vary too, depending on the nature of the group as well as the kind of performance to be prepared, the time available for practice and rehearsal, and the particular point reached within the available timeframe. I have discussed the activities undertaken by musicians when they rehearse together, involving nonverbal and verbal communication, and considered how their form and content are influenced not only by the musical expertise of the performers but also by their familiarity with each other as they learn and develop a shared understanding of the music to be performed; the more comfortable they are with each other, the freer they are likely to feel to experiment in performance as well as rehearsal. Research with duos and small ensembles—both student and professional— suggests that practice and rehearsal strategies are likely to change over time, and the of every small group will have to negotiate those that ‘feel right’ at each stage of the preparation process. This negotiation may well form as important a part of the creative process as the decision-making that musicians must also undertake, particularly in the rehearsal of notated, western classical chamber music. As they explore different ways of understanding and playing the music in order to reach what they consider to be a mutually satisfactory interpretation of the composer’s intentions, they are likely to deploy talk, bodily movement such as gesture, and/or use of the eyes. Creativity in performance that is communicated convincingly to listeners depends, arguably, on creativity in rehearsal, which in turn arises from


effective communication within the group. This can be achieved just as much by experienced musicians who have worked together for many years, and for whom that communication is more implicit than explicit, as by performers coming together for the first time to share their discovery of the music with each other and their audience.

References Allison, J., 2015: ‘The Borodin Quartet: “We are not here to perform nice music” ’, http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/11699383/The-Borodin-Quartet-Weare-not-here-to-perform-nice-music.html (accessed 15 February 2017). Bastien, D. T. and T. J. Hostager, 1988: ‘Jazz as a process of organizational innovation’, Communication Research 15/5: 582–602. Berliner, P. F., 1994: Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Blank, M., 2013: ‘A clarity of purpose, a unanimity of sound: an investigation into the rehearsal and performance strategies used by professional pianoforte duos’ (PhD dissertation, University of Sheffield). Blank, M. and J. W. Davidson, 2007: ‘An exploration of the effects of musical and social factors in piano duo collaborations’, Psychology of Music 35/2: 213–30. Brown, A. L. and S. S. Smiley, 1977: ‘Rating the importance of structural units of prose ages: a problem of metacognitive development’, Child Development 48/1: 1–8. Burt-Perkins, R. and J. Mills, 2008: ‘The role of chamber music in learning to perform: a case study’, Music Performance Research 2: 26–35. Chaffin, R., G. Imreh and M. Crawford, 2002: Practicing Perfection: Memory and Piano Performance (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Cross, I., F. Laurence and T.-C. Rabinowitch, 2012: ‘Empathic creativity in musical group practices’, in G. E. Mherson and G. F. Welch, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 2, pp. 337–53. Davidson, J. W. and J. M. M. Good, 2002: ‘Social and musical coordination between of a string quartet: an exploratory study’, Psychology of Music 30/2: 186–201. Davidson, J. W. and E. C. King, 2004: ‘Strategies for ensemble practice’, in A. Williamon, ed., Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 105–22. Fogel, A., 2009: ‘What is a transaction?’, in A. J. Sameroff, ed., The Transactional Model of Development: How Children and Contexts Shape Each Other (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association), pp. 271–80. Ford, L. and J. W. Davidson, 2003: ‘An investigation of ’ roles in wind quintets’, Psychology of Music 31/1: 53–74. Gibson, J. J., 1977: ‘The theory of affordances’, in R. Shaw and J. Bransford, eds., Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), pp. 67–82. Ginsborg, J., 2003: ‘Singers’ goals for practice and memorization’, paper delivered at the Fifth Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, Hochschule für Musik, Hannover, , 8–13 September 2003.

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Musicians in the Making Ginsborg, J., 2010: ‘The effects of performance on practice and rehearsal’, paper delivered at Empirical Musicology II: Approaches to Performance, Leeds, UK, 25–26 March 2010. Ginsborg, J. and R. Chaffin, 2011: ‘Performance cues in singing: evidence from practice and recall’, in I. Deliège and J. W. Davidson, eds., Music and the Mind:Essays in Honour of John Sloboda (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 339–60. Ginsborg, J. and E. King, 2009: ‘Gestures and glances: the effects of familiarity and expertise on singers’ and pianists’ bodily movements in ensemble rehearsals’, in J. Louhivuori, T. Eerola, S. Saarikallio, T. Himberg and P.-S. Eerola, eds., Proceedings of the 7th Triennial Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM 2009) (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä), pp. 159–64. Ginsborg, J. and E. King, 2012: ‘Rehearsal talk: familiarity and expertise in singer–pianist duos’, Musicae Scientiae 16/2: 148–67. Ginsborg, J., R. Chaffin and G. Nicholson, 2006a: ‘Shared performance cues in singing and conducting: a content analysis of talk during practice’, Psychology of Music 34/3: 167–94. Ginsborg, J., R. Chaffin and G. Nicholson, 2006b: ‘Shared performance cues: predictors of expert individual practice and ensemble rehearsal’, in M. Baroni, A. R. Addessi, R. Caterina and M. Costa, eds., Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (Bologna: Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna), pp. 913–19. Goebl, W. and C. Palmer, 2009: ‘Synchronization of timing and motion among performing musicians’, Music Perception 34/3: 427–38. Goodman, E. C., 2000: ‘Analysing the ensemble in music rehearsal and performance: the nature and effects of interaction in cello–piano duos’ (PhD dissertation, University of London). Hartley, P., 1993: Interpersonal Communication (London and New York: Routledge). King, E. C., 2012: ‘Social familiarity: styles of interaction in chamber ensemble rehearsal’, in E. C. King and H. Prior, eds., Music and Familiarity (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 253–70. King, E. and J. Ginsborg, 2011: ‘Gestures and glances: interactions in ensemble rehearsal’, in A. Gritten and E. King, eds., New Perspectives on Music and Gesture (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 177–201. Lamont, A., 2011: ‘The beat goes on: music education, identity and lifelong learning’, Music Education Research 13/4: 369–88. MacDonald, R., D. Miell and G. Wilson, 2005: ‘Talking about music: vehicle for identity development’, in D. Miell, R. MacDonald and D. J. Hargreaves, eds., Musical Communication (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 321–38. MacDonald, R. and G. Wilson, 2006: ‘Constructions of jazz: how jazz musicians present their collaborative musical practice’, Musicae Scientiae 10/1: 59–83. McCaleb, J. M., 2014: Embodied Knowledge in Ensemble Performance (Farnham: Ashgate). Rabinowitch, T.-C., I. Cross and P. Burnard, 2012: ‘Long-term musical group interaction has a positive influence on empathy in children’, Psychology of Music 41/4: 484–98. Ryle, G., 1949: The Concept of Mind (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Schutz, A., 1951: ‘Making music together—a study in social relationship’, Social Research 18/1: 76–97.

Small ensembles in rehearsal Schutz, A., 1976: ‘Fragments on the phenomenology of music’, in F. J. Smith, ed., In Search of Musical Method (London, New York and Paris: Gordon and Breach Science), pp. 23–71. Seddon, F. A., 2005: ‘Modes of communication during jazz improvisation’, British Journal of Music Education 22/1: 47–61. Seth, V., 1999: An Equal Music (London: Phoenix House). Sicca, L. M., 2000: ‘Chamber music and organization theory: some typical organizational phenomena seen under the microscope’, Studies in Cultures, Organisations and Societies 6: 145–68. Tuckman, B., 1965: ‘Developmental sequence in small groups’, Psychological Bulletin 63/6: 384–99. Tuckman, B. and M. A. Jensen, 1977: ‘Stages of small group development revisited’, Group and Organizational Studies 2: 419–27. Williamon, A. and J. W. Davidson, 2002: ‘Exploring co-performer communication’, Musicae Scientiae 6/1: 53–72. Wilson, G. B. and R. MacDonald, 2005: ‘The meaning of the blues: musical identities in talk about jazz’, Qualitative Research in Psychology 2: 341–63.

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The creative work of large ensembles Stephen Cottrell

Studies of creativity in musical performance have tended to focus on the work of individuals,1 perhaps unconsciously mirroring the longstanding fascination in western culture with the idea of individual creative genius. Much less consideration has been given to ‘group creativity’2—that is, to the types of creativity that are nurtured and manifested within large music ensembles, among others. Such ensembles make particular demands on those involved in preparing music performance events. Assembling large numbers of instrumentalists and/ or singers in one place, taking them through the series of rehearsals usually necessitated by the musical complexity of pieces written for such forces, and mounting a concert that generally involves an audience of a size commensurate with the enterprise all pose significant musical and logistical challenges that have an impact on the creative endeavours of the participants. In many musical traditions around the world, these large ensembles are often seen as the pinnacle of collaborative musical performance, around which, to some degree, the traditions themselves become organized. Notwithstanding the importance attached to concerts by, say, solo pianists, singers or string quartets, the symphony orchestra remains the most high-profile ensemble in the western classical tradition, and a particularly important icon of that tradition. This iconicity has led to the orchestra ideal being deployed in a number of metaphorical constructs. As Ramnarine (2011: 329) points out, such metaphors often focus on power relationships within the ensemble and have ranged from ‘a late seventeenth-century model of subordination and divine-right authority … to an early nineteenth-century one of ordered voluntary association’. But as she further observes, the interaction between musicians and conductor has also been taken by some to exemplify particular models of workplace relationships and management strategies: 186

Faulkner describes the orchestra as an ‘exemplary model of collective action’ (1973: 156) that might instruct communications in work

The creative work of large ensembles

organisations because of its internal systems of control and negotiations over authority between conductor and player… Atik similarly writes about the interactive dynamics of leadership and followership within the orchestra as a model for conceptualising styles of management and the organisation of labour in consumer markets (1994). Christopher Small (1994: 60–1) conceives the professional symphony orchestra as a model of the industrial enterprise … in which a group of individuals (the orchestra) is welded into a ‘productive unit’ by accepting the ‘superior authority’ of the conductor. (Ramnarine 2011: 329) Implicit in these characterizations, however, are rather different relationships between the conductor and the musicians. Faulkner’s view of the ensemble as a form of collective social action suggests a more egalitarian distribution of power, or at least one that acknowledges that the input of all contributors in some way shapes the final outcome; Atik sees the conductor as a leader whose charismatic influence over his or her followers is ultimately what leads to a successful and satisfying musical performance; and Small asserts a more causal relationship between the two parties, with the musicians simply obeying the instructions of an authoritarian figure who exerts total control over their labours. But do any of these models adequately capture the manner in which orchestras and other large ensembles actually function? And if so, do such models represent the best way to stimulate creative behaviour from all participants in the orchestral performance event? These questions are at the heart of this chapter. It starts with a brief historical overview of the changing roles of musicians and conductors in large ensembles before reviewing in more detail the specific working relationships between the parties, including those found in groups that choose to dispense with a conductor entirely. The chapter concludes with a summary of what appears to be best practice in relation to stimulating creative musical behaviour in these contexts.

History and context Both the orchestra and the sophisticated forms of sociomusical interaction that underpin it are relatively modern achievements. While the word ‘orchestra’ has its roots in ancient Greece, for many centuries it denoted a theatrical space from which the music might emanate within a dramatic performance. Not until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries did the word come to be used for an instrumental ensemble of the type that we understand today (Carter and Levi 2003: 5). As these ensembles grew in size and sophistication, higher levels of musicianship skills were expected of those who performed in them. Whereas the smaller string bands or wind consorts of the renaissance

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brought together groups of musicians with similar dispositions, the amalgamation of diverse instruments in the operatic, church and concert contexts of the baroque and early classical periods necessitated the accommodation of more disparate skills. This trend continued through the late eighteenth and particularly the nineteenth centuries. Ensembles expanded in line with the evolving musical aspirations of orchestral composers, with larger numbers of string players now matched by assorted wind and brass sections and accommodated within ever larger concert halls. Inevitably, the skill sets required of individual musicians in these larger ensembles changed as the groups evolved. Whereas the viol player of the renaissance string band would normally be in close proximity to his perhaps four to eight fellow musicians, by the late nineteenth century a concertmaster might be overseeing as many as fifty to seventy string players, with the orchestra further comprising perhaps sixteen to twenty-five wind players and several percussionists, keyboard players and/or harpists.3 The growing size of the orchestra required not only larger stages, with concomitant increases in the distance between musicians, but also changes to the ways in which the ensemble was laid out, with particular hierarchies developing within given sections of the orchestra. Thus the modi operandi of orchestral musicians also necessarily evolved. Whereas the physical proximity of musicians in smaller ensembles enables physical and cognitive empathies between players to be generated more easily, large ensembles function differently: they require good sightlines and understanding across the ensemble on a much greater scale, particularly between section principals, in order that the sections can cohere satisfactorily. As we shall see, this has obvious implications for the creative process in such ensembles. The greater difficulties in relation to coordination, tuning and interpretation presented by more complex orchestral scores eventually required the inclusion of a performer whose express role was to oversee the work of the other musicians. Thus began, from the early nineteenth century, the seemingly inexorable rise of the orchestral conductor. Again this led to some reshaping of musicians’ skill sets in large ensembles, along with a considerable shift in the social dynamics that act as a foundation for orchestral performance. Musicians now had to learn to work in several dimensions simultaneously: in addition to focusing on their individual contribution, they had to relate their output to those in their immediate section, to the performance of the orchestra as a whole, and to the demands and expectations of the conductor. If musicians had previously relied upon the interactions between themselves as the basis of ensemble creativity, now they had to learn to accommodate the gestures of a musician who made no immediate sonic contribution yet whose influence in rehearsals exceeded that of the other musicians. As Adorno ([1962] 1976: 104–17) and others have observed, the introduction of this overseer can be read as ‘industrializing’ orchestral performance, since it established a hierarchical, quasi-corporate structure in which the conductor could be seen as analogous to the foreman on


the factory floor, directing and constraining the actions of the other workers so that a finished product emerged to his (rarely her) satisfaction. The greater complexity of orchestral music also made it financially advantageous to employ a conductor to rehearse large ensembles. While in theory it is possible for such groups to work on complex pieces unaided, this usually requires many more rehearsals, since individual musicians need a deeper understanding of both the score and the various contributions of those around them. As musicians moved from being eighteenth-century craftsmen to unionized twentieth-century professionals, with concomitant increases in pay and conditions, orchestral performance became an ever more expensive operation. Employing a conductor was a way of reducing rehearsal time and thus costs, at least until the very significant fees demanded by many conductors became more commonplace from the mid-twentieth century, which once again challenged orchestral music-making as an economic practice. The professionalization of musicians’ work was in part undergirded in the nineteenth century by the creation of music conservatoires and other training establishments along with an attendant infrastructure of performance examinations and certification, all of which sought to legitimate performance standards. However, these establishments tended to focus on the performance and interpretative skills at the heart of solo performance. Indeed, the development of ensemble skills—specifically, orchestral performance skills—has often been seen by educators as of subsidiary interest. In the past, this led to the somewhat paradoxical situation that, although many people rightly or wrongly regarded the symphony orchestra as the apotheosis of musical excellence, the music education infrastructure ing it was not focused on producing musicians properly equipped to sustain it. As many of the contributors to this volume argue, conservatoires today endeavour to develop more rounded musicians who have a broader skill base and are therefore better equipped for a wider variety of employment opportunities. The performance standards expected of musicians in large ensembles have risen over the past century or so, and this can be demonstrated empirically by comparing recordings from different periods. Much greater emphasis is now placed on ensemble precision, e.g. in relation to rhythmic coordination and tuning. The ubiquity of near-flawless performances heard on recordings today has brought additional pressures on musicians and conductors in both rehearsal and performance. Errors seem to take on additional significance precisely because of their rarity, yet fear of making mistakes can be a major inhibitor of both individual and collective creativity. If left unchecked, such inhibition can undermine the flexibility and suppleness in ensemble performance that are now usually taken as indicators of aesthetic quality. The same holds for the increased emphasis on ensemble precision. It could be argued that the rise of conservatoires and examination systems represents, as Foucault might have it, the promotion of orthodoxy and a form

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of social control, which permits certain types of interpretation while constraining others. And several scholars, for example Philip (2003), have argued that the widespread dissemination of recordings and internationally itinerant conductors has led over time to considerable global homogeneity among orchestras, in relation to both the nature of their sound and their musical interpretations. How, then, might large ensembles mitigate these constraints upon creative practice?

How large ensembles function Previous research on orchestras has generally focused on either their historical development (Carse 1948, 1950; Spitzer and Zaslaw 2004; Carter and Levi 2003) or the social and cultural contexts in which they are embedded (Herndon 1988; Mueller 1951). In contrast, more recent studies have investigated the operational characteristics of large ensembles, while others have considered how their leadership and management strategies may be applied in different organizations. For example, Faulkner (1973) considered the nature of social interaction in orchestras, particularly that between musicians and conductor, noting that the prevailing authority structures arose not from a static pattern of roles and statuses but rather from ‘a network of interacting human beings, each transmitting information to the other, sifting their transactions through an evaluative screen of beliefs and standards, and appraising the meaning and credibility of conductor directives’ (ibid.: 156). Atik (1994) also considered the interactive relationships between leaders and followers in orchestras (see above), while Allmendinger, Hackman and Lehman (1996) undertook a cross-cultural study of orchestral working practices, which concluded that the most artistically successful were also those that achieved long-term financial stability. Other recent research has considered leadership strategies in orchestras, either from the perspective of management studies (Maitlis 1997; Koivunen 2003) or from that of practising musicians who have reflected on their own performing and conducting activities (Lewis 2012; Logie 2012). More recently, Gaunt and Dobson have noted that the interactions between orchestral musicians constitute a ‘community of practice’, which the musicians construe as a ‘learning environment in which complex interactions between individual and collective development take place’ (2014: 312; see also Chapters 2 and 4 in this volume). This developing body of literature demonstrates the growing interest in understanding how orchestral conductors and musicians come together for often brief periods of rehearsal, how they arrive at shared understandings of the unfolding of musical sound over time, and how they make evident those understandings in the course of performance. In short, it seeks answers to questions about how orchestras do what they do, and, potentially, how their


working practices might be inflected to ensure maximum musical creativity on the parts of both the individuals involved and the collective whole. Such questions do not lend themselves to easy answers. Viewed from the concert hall auditorium, the manner in which these ensembles function may appear quite straightforward: the music indicates what notes the musicians should play and when, and the conductor directs the musicians in their playing, linking together the various sections of the ensemble and shaping the overall contributions of the musicians to form the ‘productive unit’ identified by Small. But this simplistic and rather inaccurate assessment of the conductor’s role— described by Hackman as the ‘leader attribution error’ (2005: 117)—obscures some important points. Although the conductor undoubtedly wields significant leadership influence, this is distributed in rehearsal and performance through other musicians in the ensemble—section leaders in particular—who have some input into the decision-making that leads to creative performance. String section leaders will usually arbitrate on bowing patterns, wind principals on breathing points and other aspects of phrasing, and all principals on almost indiscernible yet important aural characteristics such as the quality of tone to be employed at a particular point. And while the execution of a ritardando, for example, may well be asserted by the conductor’s baton—an obvious gesture from which the whole ensemble endeavours or at least is expected to take its lead—its specific implementation is also dependent on those small but critically important gestures that accompany musical performance: for example, slight movements of an instrument or another musician’s body, which musicians are attuned to and which in part inform their understanding of how and when to play.4 Thus, while some of the information that guides the actions of musicians may be expressed verbally or through direct instruction, much of it is inferred through nonverbal behaviour, careful listening or ‘on the job’ training, which is one reason educating musicians for successful orchestra performance can be difficult, and why some musicians, notwithstanding their significant individual technical expertise, may be quite unsuccessful as orchestral players (see Cottrell 2004: 103–21). The working relationships between conductor and musicians are particularly important. As already noted, one popular view of the conductor is that of an authoritarian figure who directs the orchestra to recreate his or (less often) her vision of the composer’s score. Seen in this way, conductors are the supreme arbiters of musical interpretation, with little or no room for creative input from the musicians under their command. Only they appear truly capable of unlocking the score’s secrets, and thus the score is given a central and almost fetishized significance in relation to orchestral performance. Such is the approach taken by perhaps the most well-known modern discussant of the art of conducting, Gunther Schuller, in The Compleat Conductor (1997). In his view, the score awaits ‘realization’ from the musicians, and he quotes Ravel’s observation that ‘one should not interpret my music; one should realize it’ (cited in ibid., 7).

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Much of Schuller’s book is given to exhaustive analyses of recorded performances in which, as he frequently asserts, conductors and musicians fall short of the high standards of fidelity to the musical text that he expects. Yet not only does this image promote an idealized view of the score that is arguably falling out of fashion, but it also reduces the conductor’s role to that of an individual slavishly reconstituting musical sound according to instructions given by a perhaps long-dead creator, while simultaneously obviating consideration of any creative contribution that the musicians themselves might make. As Leslie Lewis (2012: 58) points out, Schuller’s approach implies that the conductor’s role is essentially that of a translator: the conductor interacts with the composer through the score to determine what the composer meant to happen, and the conductor then instructs the musicians accordingly. There is no suggestion that the musicians might influence the conductor’s views, nor of any direct connection between the musicians and the score. It could also be argued that such a model risks appearing to infantilize orchestral musicians by implying that they are directly controlled by a paternalistic conductor who makes all the decisions for them. Schuller’s approach might be modelled as in Figure 9.1. In reality, however, the relationships between the conductor, the musicians and any musical text are more nuanced. Instead of conceiving conductor and musicians as essentially being in a master–slave relationship, they are better construed as having a mutually dependent and reciprocal association; at the very least, this is more satisfying for the musicians, who are more likely to feel that the creative individual voice that they have worked hard to develop is being given some expression, however compromised this may be by the scale of the enterprise and the input of many other similar voices. And since both conductor and musicians are reliant on the score, or on a part arising from it, all parties may be seen to have views as to what that score represents and what musical behaviour might flow from it. As Cook (2003) would have it, the score becomes not so much a text to be realized but a script to underpin sociomusical interaction. Thus the performance itself is manifested not through the direct consequence of authoritarian diktat, but through a collaborative venture in which conflicting ideas may be negotiated and resolved, such that an effective musical performance arises. This might be modelled rather differently, as in Figure 9.2. The performance is shaped at the point where the three components intersect.

Score

Conductor

Ensemble

Performance

FIGURE 9.1 Modelling Gunther Schuller’s implied relationships between musical score, conductor, ensemble and performance


Ensemble

Performance Conductor

Score

FIGURE 9.2 A more equitable model of the relationship between musical score, conductor, ensemble and performance

This is not to imply that these elements are necessarily balanced or that the contributions they make are always equally proportioned. But it does suggest that there are dynamic relationships at play which need to be understood by those taking part in orchestral performance and which, if harnessed appropriately, can lead to increased satisfaction on all sides as well as more successful musical and creative outcomes. From this perspective, the leadership demands made of conductors are perhaps more complex than those conventionally allocated to the traditional authoritarian figure. Certainly conductors must fulfil the role of a strong leader, giving direction to the ensemble both in rehearsal and in performance. But they additionally need to be skilled negotiators, mediating between competing demands while ensuring that their own musical personality is communicated in which are both understood and acceptable. As Christopher Warren-Green, erstwhile leader of the Philharmonia Orchestra, observes, ‘What [the conductor] should really be is an enabler. He should allow all those musicians to give of their best. There are very few who can do that.’5 The next section considers leadership strategies that conductors might employ to ‘enable’ the orchestra in the manner suggested by Warren-Green.

Leadership in orchestras Leadership research has increased significantly over the past few decades. This has resulted in the identification of a number of leadership styles, of which four appear to be most relevant in considering the conductor–musician relationship: 1. Autocratic leaders make decisions alone, with little reference to or input from the rest of the team; they exhibit total authority and to a considerable degree act unilaterally.

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2. Participatory or democratic leaders seek the views of the rest of the team but ultimately make the final decisions themselves; however, they do endeavour to make team feel included in the decision-making process. 3. Transactional leaders focus on the performance of specific tasks; people may be rewarded directly for performing certain tasks well or achieving specified targets, but team may also be penalized in some way for failing to meet those targets. 4. Transformational leadership relies less on obvious direct rewards and more on motivation and communication, focusing on the overall ‘big picture’ and inspiring the team to achieve it.6 These diverse styles of leadership might all be employed in large musical ensembles. Indeed, different types of leadership may be evidenced by a conductor at successive points in the rehearsal/performance process, and the style adopted is also likely to change according to the nature of the ensemble: a large symphony orchestra and an attendant choir will not be handled the same as, say, a small chamber orchestra with a few solo singers, nor will a highly skilled and experienced professional orchestra on the one hand and an amateur ensemble on the other. These multiple styles might yield quite varied results, however, and each can have a distinct impact on the musicians involved and the levels of satisfaction they derive from their work. Unsurprisingly, autocratic conductors tend to be unpopular with orchestral musicians, although this has not stopped some from achieving very fine results: Arturo Toscanini and Georg Solti are two conductors with such reputations. But this style of musical leadership has become rarer in recent years, in part because of the greater influence that musicians now have over the choice of conductors with whom they work, especially in self-governing orchestras, and perhaps also because of the increasingly peripatetic lives that professional conductors now lead. Participatory leadership is popular with musicians but can be difficult to discharge effectively when working with large ensembles. It is often impractical during rehearsals to discuss every musical decision that needs to be made. Nevertheless, good conductors do endeavour to incorporate musicians’ views within their overall understanding of how a piece should unfold, and individual musicians are certainly more satisfied when they feel that their own creative personality has an outlet. In chamber ensembles such as string quartets, the absence of a conductor inevitably requires the distribution of leadership among the four players, notwithstanding the heightened leadership role normally undertaken by the first violin; the participatory leadership that arises from this is one reason many musicians find this kind of smaller-scale musicmaking to be highly satisfying.


The most frequently employed styles are those of transactional and transformational leadership. Transactional leadership is in some ways the more utilitarian of the two. Burns (1979: 4) notes that this is the most common form of interaction: a mutually acceptable set of expectations is established in order to reach a commonly agreed goal. Specific transactions might include clear and direct indications and gestures from the conductor, leading to agreed responses from the musicians, a shared understanding of the effective use of rehearsal time, etc. Transactional leadership appears to be less common and less efficacious in professional orchestras (Bertsch 2009) but is more enthusiastically received in amateur ensembles (Rowald and Rohmann 2009). This is perhaps understandable, but there are circumstances in all cases where the relationship between conductor and musicians is likely to be more transactional, that is, where the musicians will rely more directly on the conductor for directions and cues; examples include performances of complex modern music and of obscure and unfamiliar repertoire for which rehearsal time has been limited. Transformational leadership is the least easily defined of these categories, both in relation to orchestras and elsewhere, but it is often the most highly valued. Here conductors are assumed to demonstrate a capacity to lead the orchestra beyond conventional expectations, to engender musical outcomes that transcend quotidian concert experience. Quite how, as Simon Rattle puts it, this ‘weird thing … that happens between conductors and orchestras’7 actually arises is a matter for debate. Most conductors believe that they achieve transformational leadership, although research suggests that, at least in professional orchestras, the musicians they oversee are less persuaded that this is the case (Bertsch 2009). One of Atik’s respondents observed that ‘the very best conductors that I’ve worked with become part of the orchestra. I don’t mean that they lose their identity but in fact the whole orchestra plays with him rather than follows him’. Another noted that the musicians developed ‘an energetic field, a psychological energy field which is very strong and has an existence of its own. And the conductor has to be forming that field and be part of it’ (1994: 26). That both of these respondents felt the need to resort to such metaphorical statements is indicative of the fact that, while all parties may believe that something special is happening on the concert stage, it is difficult to verbalize what this is. Nevertheless, it is clear that the idea of transformational leadership, in which a highly visible and charismatic conductor motivates and inspires musicians for the purpose of producing the best possible performance, is powerfully attractive. The extent to which this ideal actually informs orchestral practices is moot, however, and as Bass observes, ‘leaders will exhibit a variety of patterns of transformational and transactional leadership. Most leaders do both in different amounts’ (1985: 22; italics in original).

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Problems and challenges: ensemble performance and creative practice Just as research into orchestras has generated insights relevant to leadership practices in other contexts, it is similarly useful to consider how research on other creative individuals can inform our understanding of collective musical creativity. For example, in his well-known work on the ‘creative class’, Florida (2002) argues that creative personalities dislike rigid hierarchies and instead prefer flat and informal organizational structures. Undoubtedly this explains in part why many musicians prefer the egalitarian contexts of the chamber music ensemble, which allows them greater control over their creative output than the more hierarchical symphony orchestra. The business psychologist ChamorroPremuzic (2013) has summarized what he describes as ‘7 rules for managing creative people’. These include allowing failure without undue penalty, not pressurizing individuals or creating an overly rule-bound environment, and providing regular variety and stimulation in the workplace. (He also argues that creative individuals should not be paid too highly, as doing so might undermine the intrinsic value that they find in the creative activity itself; this is seldom a problem for orchestral musicians.) Given the nature of their work, large ensembles may find it difficult to accommodate some of these needs. Condoning failure in rehearsals is one thing, but the same shortcomings on the concert stage are unlikely to be viewed favourably if they happen more than very occasionally or if they undermine the precision now expected of the larger ensemble or a section within it (as discussed above). On the other hand, both conductors and fellow musicians might bear in mind the desirability of demonstrating empathy towards players who ‘fail’ because they have been endeavouring to take a new approach to a well-worn piece or phrase. Variety and stimulation may be difficult to achieve in professional orchestras because their concert diet generally revolves around a limited repertoire, and orchestral musicians often take an antipathetic view of the contemporary music styles that might in part provide such variety; these styles are also often difficult to sell at the box office. However, particularly in the UK and the USA, the fact that orchestral musicians have been expected to play a greater role in outreach and education projects in recent years has helped to vary the routine of rehearsal and performance, and many players have learned to value and enjoy this expansion of their role. While such activities may not inform their performances per se, they contribute to a more stimulating and satisfactory work environment overall. Successful ensembles are replete with rules, whether inscribed socially (e.g. starting rehearsals on time, or maintaining appropriate relationships and behaviour within the ensemble) or musically (e.g. in relation to tuning, timing or tone). But musicians are likely both to feel and to be at their


creative best when they are given as much latitude as is reasonable to express themselves within this rule-bound framework. Atik draws attention to a ‘testing phase’ in the relationship between musicians and conductor. This is a short period at the beginning of a rehearsal which occurs when an orchestra is working with a conductor for the first time (and it is perhaps more characteristic of professional ensembles than amateur ones). Atik notes that in this period of perhaps ten to fifteen minutes, ‘players explore the boundaries of the superior–subordinate relationship and the professional competence of the conductor, while, simultaneously, the conductor tests out how much he can demand of his players and the musical capabilities of the “band” ’ (1994: 25). It might be argued that this testing phase reflects the conductor and the orchestra establishing a shared understanding of the prevailing rules and their boundaries, as a necessary prerequisite for musical creativity to flourish in the orchestral context. In addition to these sociomusical issues, there are fundamental logistical requirements that (ideally) must be met in rehearsals and performance if large ensembles are to function effectively. Many of these are relatively obvious. Musicians need stable seating and music stands, with enough light to read the score and parts but not so much direct light shining onto the stage that they are blinded. As noted earlier, sightlines between conductor and performers, and between key musicians such as principal players, are especially important so that they may recognize, however peripherally, those bodily gestures required for orchestral synchrony. Thought must therefore be given to the stage layout, particularly in contexts such as theatre pits or halls not specifically designed for orchestral performance, where space may be cramped and/or inconveniently distributed. Acoustics are especially important. Halls which are too dry can leave an ensemble sounding flat and lifeless, and individuals can become uncomfortable with their own sound. Spaces with very resonant acoustics—e.g. cathedrals—pose a different problem, since the long decay times of the musical sound may make it difficult for performers to hear important aural cues. Hall temperature is also important; spaces that are too warm or too cold make tuning more difficult in addition to the personal discomfort experienced by musicians. Studio work can feel very different for all performers, with screens sometimes placed between musicians to help the recording engineers balance the ensemble sound, or the conductor closely watching a screen and accompanying time code if recording a film score. Outdoor performances too can be challenging since the acoustic will be entirely different, and gusts of wind may blow scores or clothing in a disconcerting fashion. Notwithstanding the apparent triviality of some of these logistical details, they are important in providing a secure platform for conductors and musicians so that they may focus on their creative endeavours.

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Creative performance in choirs Some of the qualities of, and constraints upon, musical performance in large choral groups are similar to those found in instrumental ensembles, even though the relationship between choirs and conductors, and indeed between the singers themselves, is rather different from those characteristic of instrumental ensembles.8 The physical proximity of singers in smaller groups again often obviates the need for a separate conductor since, as with instrumentalists, one of the singers can adequately fulfil this role. But larger vocal ensembles clearly require a director of some kind, for many of the reasons outlined previously: to compensate for the distances between performers, to reduce the time-consuming nature of a fully democratic approach to decision-making, to economize on rehearsal time, etc. Nevertheless, there are important operational differences between these two types of ensemble, particularly in relation to the creative aspirations and expectations of the participants. Perhaps the most obvious is that in major orchestras the musicians are usually professionals, and they will have obtained their position in the orchestra only after an extensive period of training which hones not only their technical skills but also their musical personality. In contrast, of choirs are typically amateurs, in the sense that they are likely to earn their living away from the choir. Some may have received a musical education (the capacity to read staff notation is usually a prerequisite, for example), and a few may be trained singers. But many will view the choir as an enjoyable addition to their working lives, notwithstanding the considerable commitment they may make to it, and thus the basis of their participation is qualitatively different from that of orchestral musicians (see Louhivuori, Salminen and Lebaka 2005). Choral singers may rehearse only once or perhaps twice a week, whereas a professional orchestra will often work together every day. All of this has an impact on the nature of their creative contributions and their perceptions of the role of individual creativity in their work. The tensions already noted between instrumentalists’ highly developed sense of musical self and the constraints inevitably imposed by the needs of the orchestra or the demands of the conductor do not apply in the same way to choral singers. Indeed, these amateur singers are operationally much more dependent on the conductor figure than are orchestral musicians. Research evidences the significant reliance on and impact of conducting gestures on choral singers, whether in relation to tone quality or intonation (Brunkan 2013; Mann 2014), or the mirroring of the conductor’s facial gestures by singers (Garnett 2009; Manternach 2012). Transactional leadership thus plays a greater role in choirs than it does in instrumental ensembles. This implies that musical creativity is construed rather differently in these large vocal ensembles, particularly since the compositional nature of most choral works also reduces opportunities for individual musical expression.


Choral scores are often divided into just four parts (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), although further subdivisions may occasionally occur. Normally many singers share a given part, and thus the capacity of the individual to influence the delivery of that part may be limited. Just as a rank-and-file violinist needs to align his or her performance with the rest of the section—unlike, perhaps, the first clarinet or the harpist—so too is musical individuality moderated in the choir by the collective requirements of a particular subgroup. Nevertheless, a sense of musical individuality remains. For example, Ternström (2003: 7) draws attention to what he describes as the ‘self to other ratio’ (see also Keller 2014). This is a measure of the relationship between the perceived strength of a singer’s own voice (which arises from a combination of airborne and bone-conducted sounds) to that of the choir in which he or she is immersed (the sound of which is heard both directly and via reverberations in the hall). While the preferred ratio varies widely between individuals—that is, different singers prefer to hear different balances between their own sound and that of the ensemble—these ratios appear to be accurately and consistently reproduced. Notwithstanding this psychoacoustic expression of the musical self, the collective practice of choral performance means that choir singers are often unused to having their individual voice highlighted. To counteract this, Freer has argued for the introduction of improvisation exercises in choir rehearsals, noting that these would dilute singers’ reliance on musical notation, enable musical material to reflect individual vocal capability more closely, and, most importantly in the present context, ‘influence musical self-esteem’ (Freer 2010: 19). Brewer and Garnett (2012: 264) have suggested that singers might adopt a cognitive strategy of putting themselves ‘in the position of actors, putting on a character for the purpose. It is helpful to think of that character … communicating to the audience as if one to one. So an individual in a choir contributes something very specific and important to the whole.’ Finally, choirs in the western classical tradition usually work from a full vocal score, allowing each individual to see how the contribution of his or her section (soprano, tenor, etc.) is meant to fit into the larger whole; moreover, the vocal score used by each singer may well be identical to that used by the conductor. In contrast, orchestral players normally work from an isolated part, albeit one which may have occasional cues that indicate the contributions of others; only the conductor works from a full score which shows all the musical interactions. These varying relationships with both the conductor and the musical script that guides individual contributions inevitably inflect the working practices of performers and their perceptions of themselves as creative individuals. In her study of choral conducting, Garnett (2009: 172–3) draws attention to the different vocal blends achieved by two choirs, which might be taken as proxies for the contrasting approaches to collective creativity that they represent. She notes that the singers in a lesbian/gay/bisexual amateur choir with a strong commitment to social and political solidarity not only demonstrated

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a strongly shared body language but were also encouraged to sound ‘like one voice, like one choir without any individuals’. Conversely, a chamber choir of trained singers showed significant variances between individual postures and less overall concern with the ultimate blend of the ensemble; as with instrumentalists, their professional training had encouraged a more developed sense of musical self-identity, which was retained in the ensemble context. In general, however, the individualistic creativity that underlies instrumental training in the western classical tradition is subsumed in large vocal ensembles by the overarching sense of communal enterprise. Ultimately, the singer’s use of a complete vocal score rather than the instrumentalist’s single part, while arising as a matter of practical expediency because singers can turn pages more easily, can be read as indexical of the choir’s collective and often homogeneous creative musical endeavour, as opposed to the aggregation of musical individuals represented by the more differentiated, and frequently heterogeneous, orchestral score.

Alternative models To enhance their sense of collective musical creativity and assert more musical control in rehearsal and performance, some large ensembles have developed alternative organizational models. Certain chamber orchestras have begun to dispense with the conductor and to work instead on an unconducted basis or, occasionally, with a guest conductor of their choosing. The Prague Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1951, may be the longest-running ensemble of this kind, while the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, established in New York in 1972, is perhaps the most widely recognized. The UK’s Britten Sinfonia provides another example. The fact that the trend has increased over the past two decades means that such ensembles are now widespread. They offer a middle path between the musical egalitarianism of the small chamber ensemble and the more obvious hierarchies found in larger symphony orchestras. They also demonstrate particularly advanced forms of distributed leadership, to the extent that the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, for example, has been used as the basis of a textbook on management leadership.9 These conductorless ensembles may be distinguished from their symphonic counterparts in a number of ways. They tend to demonstrate more flexibility in their size and will modify their instrumentation according to the particular project at hand, sometimes appearing as a small chamber group while at other times nearing the size of a symphony orchestra. They can be economically more efficient, in part because of this flexibility but also because of the obvious financial savings that arise through not paying costly conductor fees. They tend to be popular with their audience base, with whom they generate close ties. And


their musicians derive more satisfaction because of the greater musical control afforded in rehearsal and performance by the absence of a conductor. On the other hand, one of the risks of these highly participatory, democratic ensemble structures is that the rehearsal process is significantly lengthened because everybody can contribute his or her views about how the music should be performed. Indeed, for their first major performance the Orpheus Orchestra required ‘between seventeen and twenty rehearsals’ before they arrived at a shared understanding of the approach they would take (Khodyakov 2007: 10). Professional orchestras would usually find such a lengthy rehearsal schedule uneconomic, and the Orpheus Orchestra was no exception. Although the musicians were not paid for their first set of rehearsals, they did need remuneration for later rehearsals in order to survive; this caused the orchestra to develop a system of rehearsing with a smaller number of ten to thirteen core group , who would agree on the approach to be taken before adopting it in rehearsals involving the full ensemble. Participatory leadership has been further ensured through the rotation of principal players, such that the leader of each string section rotates, with individuals having oversight at different times. In the case of the Orpheus Orchestra, the lack of a conductor has both required and facilitated much greater trust between the musicians, even though they have also had to implement a number of control mechanisms—such as the degree to which an individual musician might object to the decisions made by the core group for a given performance—in order to ensure the smooth running of the ensemble.10 Notwithstanding these challenges, the success and longevity of these conductorless orchestras has demonstrated that creative performance can be manifested in large ensembles without the need for a supervisory figure, however unlikely that may appear to those who believe such a figure to be essential for orchestral performance.

Conclusions Orchestras remain popular as subjects for metaphor construction and as paradigms of collaborative social organization, in addition to their obvious importance as iconic music-making ensembles. The skill sets of the musicians who play in them and the conductors who appear to lead them have evolved significantly over the past few centuries, and the commonly held view of the conductor as an overseer who directs the activities of the musicians whom he or she controls on a master–slave basis masks a more complex series of relationships between the participants. Successful orchestral performance depends not only on the conductor’s gestures but also on the distribution of leadership among the ensemble, such that individual musicians undertake intermittent leadership roles according to the ebb and

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flow of the music. Creative orchestral performance most commonly arises through a shared understanding of these distributed leadership roles, and the effective working of the ensemble is facilitated not only through collective responses to the conductor’s gestures but also through the employment and recognition of a range of micro gestures through which the musicians’ efforts are synchronized. Conductors must understand the difference between transactional and transformational leadership while also recognizing that skills in both are necessary for creative orchestral performance. Although transactional leadership may be more in evidence in rehearsals, especially with less proficient musicians or for pieces that are musically complex, transformational leadership is an important part of the creative process, particularly in performance, when musical heights may be scaled that go beyond the routine or utilitarian, and when that ‘mutual tuning-in relationship’ (Schutz 1977: 108) is created for performers and listeners alike. Choral singers may have attitudes to creativity which differ from those of instrumentalists, and their immersion in their communal musical enterprise may lead them to be less concerned with expressions of musical individuality. In general, however, they remain highly dependent on the conductor’s gestures, which significantly affect their creative output. Playing in conductorless chamber orchestras can be very satisfying for musicians, who relish the additional leadership responsibilities that arise from the more participatory approaches that they entail. But, although they may offer considerable flexibility in relation to musical programming, they often require more rehearsal time, as the players devise performance strategies to circumvent the lack of a central coordinating figure. The larger the ensemble or the more complex the musical score, the more likely it is that a conductor will be needed, either to overcome the musicians’ inability to see each other in very large ensembles or because of the financial costs of the many rehearsals that might otherwise be necessary. Finally, it should be borne in mind that creativity is socially inscribed wherever it is identified. Whether construed as a form of ‘musical talent’ (Kingsbury 1988) or as being ‘creative in performance’ (Clarke 2012), musical creativity is a social fact (Frith 2012), the attribution of which requires social negotiation and validation. In many ways, therefore, putting the creative into large ensemble performance inevitably means putting the social there also.

References Adorno, T. W., [1962] 1976: Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press). Allmendinger, J., J. R. Hackman and E. V. Lehman, 1996: ‘Life and work in symphony orchestras’, The Musical Quarterly 80: 194–219.

The creative work of large ensembles Atik, Y., 1994: ‘The conductor and the orchestra’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal 15: 22–8. Bass, B. M., 1985: Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations (New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan). Bertsch, D. Lynn, 2009: ‘The relationship between transformational and transactional leadership of symphony orchestra conductors and organizational performance in U.S. symphony orchestras’ (PhD dissertation, Capella University). Brewer, M. and L. Garnett, 2012: ‘The making of a choir: individuality and consensus in choral singing’, in A. D. Quados, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Choral Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 267–71. Brunkan, M. C., 2013: ‘The effects of watching three types of conductor gestures and performing varied gestures along with the conductor on measures of singers’ intonation and tone quality: a pilot study’, International Journal of Research in Choral Singing 4: 37–51. Burns, J. M., 1979: Leadership (New York: Harper & Row). Carse, A. V. A., 1948: The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz: A History of the Orchestra in the First Half of the 19th Century, and of the Development of Orchestral BatonConducting (Cambridge: Heffer & Sons). Carse, A. V. A., 1950: The Orchestra in the 18th Century (Cambridge: Heffer & Sons). Carter, T. and E. Levi, 2003: ‘The history of the orchestra’, in C. Lawson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–21. Chamorro-Premuzic, T., 2013: ‘7 rules for managing creative people’, Finweek, 25 April 2013, pp. 40–1. Clarke, E., 2012: ‘Creativity in performance’, in D. Hargreaves, D. Miell and R. MacDonald, eds., Musical Imaginations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Creativity, Performance, and Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 17–30. Cook, N., 2003: ‘Music as performance’, in M. Clayton, T. Herbert and R. Middleton, eds., The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 204–14. Cook, N., 2007: ‘Performance analysis and Chopin’s Mazurkas’, Musicae Scientiae 11: 183–207. Cottrell, S., 2004: Professional Music-Making in London: Ethnography and Experience (Aldershot: Ashgate). Faulkner, R., 1973: ‘Orchestra interaction’, Sociological Quarterly 14: 147–57. Florida, R. L., 2002: The Rise of the Creative Class: and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books). Freer, P. K., 2010: ‘Choral improvisation: tensions and resolutions’, Choral Journal 51: 18–31. Frith, S., 2012: ‘Music as a social fact’, in D. Hargreaves, D. Miell and R. MacDonald, eds., Musical Imaginations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Creativity, Performance, and Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 62–71. Garnett, L., 2009: Choral Conducting and the Construction of Meaning: Gesture, Voice, Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate). Gaunt, H. and M. C. Dobson, 2014: ‘Orchestras as “ensembles of possibility”: understanding the experience of orchestral musicians through the lens of communities of practice’, Mind, Culture, and Activity 21: 298–317.

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Musicians in the Making Hackman, J. R., 2005: ‘Rethinking team leadership or Team leaders are not music directors’, in D. M. Messick and R. M. Kramer, eds., The Psychology of Leadership: New Perspectives and Research (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), pp. 115–42. Herndon, M., 1988: ‘Cultural engagement: the case of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra’, Yearbook for Traditional Music 20: 134–45. Keller, P. E., 2014: ‘Ensemble performance: interpersonal alignment of musical expression’, in D. Fabian, R. Timmers and E. Schubert, eds., Expressiveness in Music Performance: Empirical Approaches across Styles and Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 260–82. Khodyakov, D. M., 2007: ‘The complexity of trust-control relationships in creative organizations: insights from a qualitative analysis of a conductorless orchestra’, Social Forces 86: 1–22. Kingsbury, H., 1988: Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Koivunen, N., 2003: ‘Leadership in symphony orchestras: discursive and aesthetic practices’ (PhD dissertation, University of Tampere). Leech-Wilkinson, D., 2006: ‘Portamento and musical meaning’, Journal of Musicological Research 25: 233–61. Lewis, L. A., 2012: ‘The incompleat conductor: theorizing the conductor’s role in orchestral interpretation in the light of shared leadership practices’ (PhD dissertation, University of London). Logie, N., 2012: ‘The role of leadership in conducting orchestras’ (PhD dissertation, Open University). Louhivuori, J., V.-M. Salminen and E. Lebaka, 2005: ‘ “Singing together”—a cross-cultural approach to the meaning of choirs as a community’, in P. S. Campbell, ed., Cultural Diversity in Music Education (Bowen Hills, Queensland: Australian Academic Press), pp. 81–92. Maitlis, S., 1997: ‘Decision making in British symphony orchestras: formal structures, informal systems, and the role of players’, Harmony 4: 45–55. Mann, L. M., 2014: ‘Effects of solo and choral singing modes on vibrato rate, extent, and duration exhibited by undergraduate female singers’, International Journal of Research in Choral Singing 5: 26–38. Manternach, J. N., 2012: ‘The effect of nonverbal conductor lip rounding and eyebrow lifting on singers’ lip and eyebrow postures: a motion capture study’, International Journal of Research in Choral Singing 4: 36–46. Mueller, J. H., 1951: The American Symphony Orchestra: A Social History of Musical Taste (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Pace, I., 2012: ‘Instrumental performance in the nineteenth century’, in C. Lawson and R. Stowell, eds., The Cambridge History of Musical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 643–95. Philip, R., 2003: ‘Historical recordings of orchestras’, in C. Lawson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 203–17. Ramnarine, T. K., 2011: ‘The orchestration of civil society: community and conscience in symphony orchestras’, Ethnomusicology Forum 20: 327–51. Repp, B. H., 2000: ‘Pattern typicality and dimensional interactions in pianists’ imitation of expressive timing and dynamics’, Music Perception 18: 173–211.

The creative work of large ensembles Rowald, J. and A. Rohmann, 2009: ‘Transformational and transactional leadership styles, followers’ positive and negative emotions, and performance in German nonprofit orchestras’, Nonprofit Management & Leadership 20/1: 41–59. Sawyer, R. K., 2003: Group Creativity: Music, Theater, Collaboration (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Sawyer, R. K., 2006: ‘Group creativity: musical performance and collaboration’, Psychology of Music 34/2: 148–65. Schuller, G., 1997: The Compleat Conductor (New York: Oxford University Press). Schutz, A., 1977: ‘Making music together: a study in social relationships’, in J. L. Dolgin, D. S. Kemnitzer and D. M. Schneider, eds., Symbolic Anthropology: A Reader in the Study of Symbols and Meanings (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 106–19. Seifter, H. and P. Economy, 2001: Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management from the World’s Only Conductorless Orchestra (New York: Times Books). Small, C., 1994: Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in Afro-American Music (London and New York: Calder, and Riverrun Press). Spitzer, J. and N. Zaslaw, 2004: The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650– 1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ternström, S., 2003: ‘Choir acoustics: an overview of scientific research published to date’, International Journal of Research in Choral Singing 1: 3–11.

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10

Learning in the spotlight APPROACHES TO SELF- REGULATING AND PROFILING PERFORMANCE

Aaron Williamon, Terry Clark and Mats Küssner

The stage (broadly defined) is a contextually rich setting with particular and sometimes challenging acoustic and environmental features that can have an impact on musicians’ perceptions of their performances.1 It is an inherently risky place too, watched closely by audiences and with the presence of co-performers placing further pressures on individual musicians to ‘get it right’. Numerous studies have shown that the physical (Williamon et al. 2013; Fancourt, Aufegger and Williamon 2015), psychological (Kenny 2011) and environmental conditions (Williamon, Aufegger and Eiholzer 2014; Alessandri, Schuchert and Lasauskaite Schüpbach 2015) under which musicians perform are radically different from those under which they practise and rehearse. Studies with classical musicians show consistently heightened physiological states when performing under high-stress conditions, with predictable increases in heart rate and decreases in heart rate variability (see Williamon et al. 2013). Similarly, the level of cortisol, a steroid hormone related to stress reactivity, has been shown to increase significantly for orchestral musicians and singers on the days of performance compared with nonperformance days (Fredrikson and Gunnarsson 1992; Gill, Murphy and Rickard 2006; Halleland et al. 2009; Pilger et al. 2014; Fancourt et al. 2015). Such heightened physiological states are, at least in part, linked to the level of anxiety experienced by musicians when they perform in public. Kenny (2009: 433) defines Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) as:

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the experience of marked and persistent anxious apprehension related to musical performance that has arisen through specific anxiety-conditioning experiences. It is manifested through combinations of affective, cognitive, somatic and behavioural symptoms and may occur in a range of

Learning in the spotlight

performance settings, but is usually more severe in settings involving high ego investment and evaluative threat. It may be focal (i.e. focused only on music performance) or occur comorbidly [i.e. alongside] with other anxiety disorders, in particular social phobia. It affects musicians across their lifespan and is at least partially independent of years of training, practice and level of musical accomplishment. It may or may not impair the quality of the musical performance. McGrath (1970: 20) proposed that debilitating performance anxiety arises from the perception of ‘a substantial imbalance between demand and response capability, under conditions where failure to meet that demand has important consequences’. Within public performance situations, demands can be imposed by musicians themselves or through the environment, context and situation in which the performance takes place (Clark, Lisboa and Williamon 2014a). Environmental demands, for instance, include such factors as social pressure manifesting from perceived audience and co-performer expectations, as well as characteristics of the performance venue that differ dramatically from the places where learning and practising occur, including acoustic response, size and shape of the performance space, lighting, flooring, and the location and proximity of the audience (Alessandri et al. 2015; Williamon et al. 2014). Further contextual and situational demands include the music to be performed, as well as the concert attire and protocols that must be followed before, during and after the event. Musicians also bring resources to each performance. These include strategies for coping effectively with the demands of the situation, the level of preparation achieved and their previous performance experiences; however, previous experience can also function as a demand, depending on the nature of the experience (Clark et al. 2014b). The key point about both demands and resources is that they do not necessarily have an automatic outcome in and of themselves. Rather, it is the musician’s perception and interpretation of them that result in specific consequences, be they constructive or destructive. In seeking to explain the relationship between anxiety symptoms and subsequent performance outcomes in sports, Jones (1995) highlighted that athletes view their anxiety symptoms as being either facilitative and helpful or debilitative and harmful to their performance quality. Numerous studies have confirmed this relationship; for instance, the ability to interpret anxiety symptoms as facilitative versus debilitative has been found to distinguish higher- from lower-performing gymnasts and swimmers (Hanton and Jones 1999; Jones, Swain and Hardy 1993; Mahoney and Avener 1977; Thomas, Hanton and Maynard 2007). In addition, performers’ sense of control over their demands and resources can moderate performance outcomes. Hanton and Connaughton (2002) found in their research with swimmers that anxiety symptoms perceived as being within a performer’s control and facilitative to performance resulted in increased focus, motivation

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and confidence. Conversely, those symptoms perceived as being negative or debilitative to performance could be restructured or overcome using standard psychological skills coaching, such as arousal control strategies and thought replacement (ibid.). Within music, many musicians practise performing by seeking out real-life performance experiences, ideally with the aim of learning to make facilitative interpretations of their demands and gaining requisite control over their resources (Clark et al. 2014a). However, even when such exposure is explicitly offered through a training programme—for instance, in specialist music schools, conservatoires and universities which operate their own concert venues—the cost and logistics associated with organizing and running public performances limit the number of opportunities that can realistically be provided. Moreover, without systematic strategies for monitoring and reviewing performances, there is no guarantee that mere exposure to the stage will be educative in and of itself. This gap in performance education poses problems for identifying and acquiring skills needed to perform effectively, and it can mean that even the most practised performer will find the stage an unfamiliar and awkward place (see Figure 10.1). We now, therefore, turn to the concept of self-regulated learning as a lens through which musicians can view and review their performances as opportunities for learning. To assist musicians in applying principles of

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People and places

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Contextual richness FIGURE 10.1 A schematic diagram of the level of risk and contextual richness typically experienced in practice, rehearsal and performance, illustrating the experiential gap between those situations in which musicians learn and where they perform (adapted from Kneebone 2011; © Roger Kneebone, used by permission)


self-regulation to their performances, we introduce performance profiling, a systematic approach to identifying and enhancing skills applied widely in sport and other domains (Weston, Greenlees and Thelwell 2013), as a means of carrying out effective ‘self-regulated performing’.

Self-regulated learning Self-regulated learning refers to processes whereby individuals assume personal responsibility for and control of their acquisition of knowledge and skills (Zimmerman 1990). It occurs when learners become ‘metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviourally active participants in their own learning process’ (Zimmerman 1989: 329), which is in contrast to those situations where learners follow or merely react to external impetus or instruction. Three processes are central to effective self-regulation: 1. Forethought: the thought processes and personal beliefs that precede efforts to engage in a task; 2. Performance/volition control: processes that occur during learning that affect concentration and performance; 3. Self-reflection: the learner’s reaction and subsequent response to the experience (see Zimmerman 1998). Paris and Winograd (1990) proposed that regular self-assessment of learning processes and outcomes promotes more effective monitoring of progress, facilitates the identification and correction of mistakes, and enhances feelings of self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s ability to perform domain-specific skills (Bandura 1997; McCormick and Mherson 2003; Mherson and McCormick 2006; Pajares 1996; Ritchie and Williamon 2012). Motivationally, self-regulated learners have been found to report high intrinsic task interest and to attribute their successes and failures to their own behaviours and efforts (Zimmerman 1985); that is, they consider their learning outcomes as dependent upon the amount of effort they expend on a task and the effectiveness of the strategies employed (Dweck and Master 2008). Self-regulated learners select, structure and create environments that are specifically designed to optimize learning (Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons 1986). Furthermore, they demonstrate awareness of the relationship between self-regulatory processes and strategies and their self-identified objectives, while also understanding and being committed to using these strategies to achieve their goals (Zimmerman 1990). Although self-regulation has predominantly been studied within educational psychology, music-specific research has shown that musicians also benefit from taking an active role in initiating learning, in choosing an appropriate and effective pathway to develop their skills, and in systematically managing learning processes (see Ritchie and Williamon 2013). Mherson and Zimmerman

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(2002) argue that musicians’ learning is a result of the interplay between three factors: their personality traits, their behaviours and their environment. They suggest that the productivity with which ‘learners monitor these three sources of self-control influences both the effectiveness of their strategic adjustments and the nature of their beliefs in themselves’ (ibid.: 328). To assist musicians in applying principles of self-regulation to their own learning, Jørgensen (2004: 86) proposes four broad types of practice strategies, three of which correspond to the three central processes of self-regulation, plus a fourth for organizing one’s practice strategies: 1. Planning and preparation strategies (i.e. ‘forethought’ in the self-regulated learning framework): for activity selection and organization, setting goals and objectives, and time management; 2. Executive strategies (i.e. ‘performance and volition control’): for rehearsal, distribution of practice over time, and preparing for a public performance; 3. Evaluation strategies (i.e. ‘self-reflection’): for process and product evaluation; 4. Metastrategies: knowledge of strategies, and control and regulation of strategies. By explicitly highlighting metastrategies, Jørgensen (ibid.) encourages musicians to attain a thorough understanding of their own repertoire of strategies, together with the ability to control, regulate and exploit that repertoire. Chaffin and his colleagues (Chaffin and Imreh 2001, 2002; Chaffin et al. 2003) conducted a series of studies to examine the use of self-regulation within expert musical practice. They recorded and analysed forty-five practice sessions totalling just over thirty hours in which a concert pianist worked on a piece that she was preparing for a commercial recording. To understand the content and behaviours in her practice sessions explicitly, they asked her to comment on what she was focusing and working on, any aspect of the music that she felt posed a challenge, her goals and strategies for addressing these challenges, her plans for forthcoming practice sessions, and evaluations of her progress. The pianist’s practising behaviours exemplified the four types of self-regulatory practice strategies highlighted by Jørgensen (2004): her practice and the range of strategies employed within it were highly structured (planning and preparation strategies); overall, her practice was geared towards the performance even from the earliest stages of learning (executive strategies); she drew upon an extensive range of exercises in order to overcome challenges and weaknesses in skill (metastrategies); and her ‘run-throughs’ and practice performances were carefully monitored to determine progress (evaluative strategies).2 A challenge for all musicians is to develop and employ strategies for selfregulation systematically and consistently in their day-to-day learning, and Jørgensen (2004) helpfully suggests how to approach this task. In the next


section, we extend these ideas from the practice room to the concert platform and highlight how self-regulation is relevant not only to instances of daily practising but also to preparing for and learning from performance itself. Indeed, rather than simply setting the (unattainable) goal of producing note-perfect performances, musicians should employ planning, executive and evaluation strategies to identify and develop their performance skills.

Self-regulated performing While performances are sometimes thought of as the product or end-point of musicians’ daily practice activities, they can also be tremendous opportunities for learning and development (Clark et al. 2014a). By reflecting systematically upon performance experiences, musicians have the opportunity to assess a range of performance skills. This, in turn, can facilitate understanding of the impact of those skills on their ability to perform and can be used ultimately to enhance performance quality. Chaffin and Imreh (2001: 65) argue that ‘studying performance behaviour can provide an important and largely unexplored source of information for exploring the effectiveness of practice’.

PERFORMANCE PROFILING A central component of self-regulated learning is the need for musicians to develop a clear understanding of the self. One method to facilitate self-awareness, and to optimize performances as learning opportunities, is performance profiling. It is an approach commonly employed by athletes, coaches, and sport scientists and psychologists as a first step in deg training programmes, no matter whether the nature of the programme is to foster physical, technical or psychological skills (Butler and Hardy 1992; Weston 2008). Performance profiling was derived from Personal Construct Theory (Kelly 1955), which seeks to understand how people interpret and then behave within the world. Originally conceived to aid coaches in understanding athletes’ needs from the perspective of the individual athlete, performance profiling can assist musicians in conceptualizing performance in their own and identifying their aspirations and perceived strengths and weaknesses. The ‘coach’—i.e. the principal study teacher or another teacher with whom the musician is working—is then better equipped to devise and implement individualized training programmes, rather than issuing blanket prescriptions to facilitate skill development and performance enhancement. In general, the profiling process begins with the performer reflecting upon the particular skills and attributes needed to excel in his or her discipline. Musicians, for instance, could imagine performing at personal peak level and then list the qualities needed to achieve this consistently over time.

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They could also think of other musicians whom they regard as outstanding and then list the salient qualities that make those people so distinct. In addition, they could be prompted by descriptions of performance qualities given by other musicians in method books, treatises and interviews (Weston et al. 2013). Once identified, the skills and attributes are compiled into a chart, such as the circular diagrams shown in Figure 10.2. The performer then rates his or her own level for each of the chosen skills (i.e. the ‘now’ state) in order to identify personal strengths and weaknesses, with the rating usually made on a numerical scale of 1–10 where 1 indicates very poor and 10 indicates skill mastery. After this, each skill is rated at the level where the performer would ideally wish to be (i.e. the ‘ideal’ state), taking into time scales, personal ambitions and any other factors relevant to the prevailing context. Visually depicting and scoring each of the skills and attributes allows a quick review of the performer’s skill levels. Rather than trying to include all possible relevant skills or attributes within a single performance profile, musicians can generate multiple profiles (see Figure 10.2b). These may address any number of individually relevant qualities, including sets of artistic and technical skills, presentational and communicative skills, and career and life skills. Although music teachers may pre-populate performance profiles with specific skill sets to facilitate the reflection process when working with their students, it is important that each musician ultimately identifies skills that he or she considers essential for success in order to maximize the effectiveness of performance profiling’s intentionally individualized approach. This fosters ownership of the performance profiling process, ultimately enhancing motivation and engagement (Weston et al. 2011).

EMPIRICAL FOR PERFORMANCE PROFILING: GENERAL PERSPECTIVES In of overall improvement, performance profiling engages the musician in processes of self-reflection to identify the qualities needed to excel. It also promotes the sharing of information, as the individual’s views are compared with those of colleagues and teachers. For single instances of performance, it enables and encourages post-performance analysis, helps identify important areas on which to work and improve, and enables progress to be monitored and interventions to be evaluated (Butler and Hardy 1992; Butler 1997). There is evidence from sport that sustained use of performance profiles enhances motivation. Weston and colleagues (2011) found that soccer players who completed three individual performance profiles over a six-week period showed significantly increased intrinsic motivation, whereas a single profiling session did not lead to an increase. Many areas of research converge to indicate that when performers are intrinsically motivated to undertake a task, they are

(a)

(b)

Artistic skills

Career skills

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Artistic skill 6

Technical skills Artistic skill 5

Ensemble skills

Presentation skills

Artistic skill 1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Artistic skill 2

Artistic skill 3

Artistic skill 4

Practice skills FIGURE 10.2 Example of a performance profile of (a) general musical skills and (b) specific artistic subskills. In each profile, black lines show the performer’s current skill levels (the ‘now’ state), and grey lines represent the performer’s ideal levels (the ‘ideal’ state), where 1 = very poor and 10 = skill mastery. Ultimately, each musician should identify general and specific skill sets that he or she considers essential for success in order to maximize the effectiveness of the individual performance profiling.

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more persistent in the face of challenges or setbacks and put more effort into achieving goals (Ryan and Deci 2000). Performance profiling is also a valuable tool to enhance task involvement and goal-directed thinking in performers (Weston, Greenlees and Thelwell 2010). Task-oriented performers assess their abilities on the basis of selfreferenced mastery of a skill, rather than comparing themselves to others (Nicholls 1984; Nicholls et al. 1989). Performers exhibiting a task orientation have been found to practise more during their free time and exert more effort in enhancing their performance (Duda 2001; Duda and Nicholls 1992). The identification of intrinsic goals, conceived of as achievement goals that focus on enjoyment, has been found to predict self-rated performance quality among musicians, actors and dancers, as well as being positively associated with wellbeing and negatively associated with the intention to quit (Lacaille, Koestner and Gaudreau 2007). Given that goal-setting has also been found to increase motivation (Vidic and Burton 2010), the combined employment of performance profiling and goal-setting strategies could enhance intrinsic motivation. Although typically carried out as an individual activity, performance profiling can also be employed in team settings, and research has shown that this leads to increased team cohesion among athletes (Butler and Hardy 1992) and between teams and their coaches (Dale and Wrisberg 1996). In a similar vein, the sharing of common performance goals, underpinned by a unified concept of an ideal sound, has been found to facilitate coordination of chamber musicians’ actions and movements (Keller 2008). Finally, performance profiling has been found useful for monitoring progress in a variety of settings and contexts, including pre-competition periods (Butler and Hardy 1992), during ‘training camps’ (Butler, Smith and Irwin 1993) and across a whole competitive season (Dale and Wrisberg 1996), and for psychological skills intervention (Jones 1993). It has also been shown to be a useful strategy for facilitating post-performance evaluation (Butler and Hardy 1992; Butler et al. 1993; Weston et al. 2010).

PERFORMANCE PROFILING IN MUSIC Although empirical research in music is still lacking, all of the features listed earlier as being enhanced by performance profiling—self-awareness, intrinsic motivation, task involvement, goal setting, ensemble performance, monitoring progress and evaluating performance—are skills and qualities central to progressing towards musical excellence (Chaffin and Lemieux 2004). Given this, it is plausible to argue that employing performance profiles for multiple sets of skills can facilitate pathways to expert performance in music. Two key points about musicians’ skill development over time are worth considering when applying performance profiling to one’s personal learning. First, the identified attributes of each musician’s sets of skills (and hence


those represented on the performance profile) are likely to vary across his or her career. The attributes of a first-year music performance student—with a predominant focus on technical skills to be developed or repertoire to be played, for instance—may differ considerably from those of a recent conservatoire graduate or an established professional. This change in skill preoccupation (i.e. those skills that are considered to be of utmost importance at a particular point in time) is linked to talent and career development in numerous domains of performance, including teaching. Outside the field of music, for instance, a seminal work by Fuller and Brown (1975) observed that school teachers progress through a series of stages regarding their primary concerns related to teaching. In this context, concerns refer to areas of preoccupation or fixation. In the first stage, teachers’ concerns are often vague, with correspondingly low involvement in teaching. In the second stage, their concerns are more linked to survival; these include classroom control, mastery of content and their own adequacy as teachers. By the third stage, teachers’ concerns are more focused on the task, namely their teaching performance. Finally, teachers ultimately reach a fourth stage in which their primary concern is the impact of their teaching on their students. In this stage, teachers demonstrate concern for their pupils’ social, academic and emotional needs. Relating this to music teaching, Yourn (2000) explored the concerns of beginning music teachers and noted that the latter did report progressions of concerns similar to those proposed by Fuller and Brown. Yourn also pointed out that not all of the beginning music teachers in the study progressed steadily from one stage to the next; instead, they would often move back and forth within the sequence. On this basis, Yourn proposed that those in charge of music teachers’ training should both consider the concerns of beginning teachers and, by doing so, encourage increased self-awareness in order to facilitate effective progression through the stages. Although teaching music and performing music are different activities, it would seem evident that performers also progress through a series of different primary concerns as they develop proficiency and confidence as professionals. In a recent study comparing comments from experienced and less experienced classical musicians regarding optimal and suboptimal performance perceptions, a distinction between areas of primary concern also emerged (Clark et al. 2014a). Most commonly, the less experienced musicians voiced concern for audience evaluation, considering a ‘perfect’ performance to be of utmost importance when performing. The more experienced musicians, meanwhile, expressed concerns regarding the development of audience–performer connections and enjoyment of the performance event as a whole, while still being conscious of the quality of their performance. When musicians of different ages and abilities create personalized performance profiles, they must consider their level of proficiency to ensure that the skills included

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are developmentally appropriate, recognizing that the most important skills for any one musician (in other words, those represented on the performance profile) will vary over time. Second, a musician’s self-rating of proficiency with certain skills—as well as views on their ideal levels—will also fluctuate over time. Referring to the skills listed within the performance profile in Figure 10.2, one can easily imagine how music students’ assessment of their ‘artistic skills’ may vary with the repertoire being performed. Their perceived ‘presentation skills’ could also depend on the performance situation and no doubt would fluctuate as a result of previous performance experiences, whether positive or negative (Ritchie and Williamon 2011). Although a musician’s skill development could be characterized as a continual progression through a series of developmental phases (Sosniak 1985; MacNamara, Holmes and Collins 2006), it is recognized that a musician’s actual developmental trajectory is anything but linear (see Chapter 7 in this volume). These fluctuations could, and should, be reflected in a developing musician’s performance profiles. For instance, a trumpet student may decide to learn and implement a new embouchure style. In the early stages of learning, a negative impact on tone and sound quality may result. Reflecting these changes on a performance profile would help the trumpet student maintain a perspective of how these changes interrelate, and at the same time connect with longer-term objectives. The timescales over which musicians’ skills develop have largely been neglected in research and educational practice (Clark and Lisboa 2013). Yet, the changing perceptions of the importance of skills at different stages of a musician’s career may have far-reaching implications for educational contexts.

Conclusions Musicians’ performance spaces are distinguishable from their practice and rehearsal spaces because of the physical, psychological and environmental conditions inherent within them. While these conditions can contribute to the excitement of live performance events for performers and audiences alike, they are also potential sources of pressure for musicians, irrespective of their level of performance experience. If not managed effectively, such pressures can transform into debilitating music performance anxiety which, in turn, can affect both performance quality and a musician’s general well-being and enjoyment of performing. Just as athletes can interpret anxiety symptoms as being either facilitative and helpful or debilitative and harmful to their performance quality, experienced musicians too have discussed the importance of achieving control over their performance resources and forming facilitative interpretations of performance demands. The central role of perception and interpretation in gaining control of this kind suggests a need for more explicit strategies to assist music students to learn constructively while in the spotlight.


In contrast to the relatively ive roles assumed by learners in traditional didactic contexts, real-life performance experience allows musicians to learn by doing, together with reflecting upon what they do (Clark et al. 2014a; Williamon 2004). Indeed, this very ‘doing’ provides musicians with exposure to the physical, psychological and environmental conditions that so vividly distinguish performing from practising. Nevertheless, exposure alone to the conditions that make performance unique will not necessarily guarantee that musicians will actually gain greater self-awareness and understanding. When underpinned by a process of self-regulated learning, performance profiling can provide a ‘direct encounter with the phenomena being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter, or only considering the possibility of doing something about it’ (Borzak 1981: 9). In this chapter, performance profiling has been presented as an approach by which self-regulated learning can be applied by musicians to their performances and, as a result, facilitate self-regulated performing. We have argued that performance profiling can assist musicians in gaining greater insight into their performance experiences. This insight can then form the basis for observation and reflection, offering them opportunities to assess their strengths and weaknesses in performance skills systematically, and highlighting avenues for improvement. In doing so, we have demonstrated how musicians’ training can be informed by insights and practices drawn from other domains. Such interdisciplinary dialogue, we suggest, is undoubtedly pertinent to helping musicians bridge the gap between the practice studio and the performance stage and, ultimately, will benefit them in both forging and following productive and creative pathways to performance.

References Alessandri, E., C. L. Schuchert and R. Lasauskaite Schüpbach, 2015: ‘From the practice room to the concert venue: a preliminary study’, Dissonance 131: 28–33. Bandura, A., 1997: Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control (New York: W. H. Freeman). Borzak, L., 1981: Field Study: A Source Book for Experiential Learning (Beverley Hills: Sage). Butler, R. J., 1997: ‘Performance profiling: assessing the way forward’, in R. J. Butler, ed., Sports Psychology in Performance (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann), pp. 33–48. Butler, R. J. and L. Hardy, 1992: ‘The performance profile: theory and application’, The Sport Psychologist 6: 253–64. Butler, R. J., M. Smith and I. Irwin, 1993: ‘The performance profile in practice’, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 5: 48–63. Chaffin, R. and A. F. Lemieux, 2004: ‘General perspectives on achieving musical excellence’, in A. Williamon, ed., Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 19–39.

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Musicians in the Making Chaffin, R. and G. Imreh, 2001: ‘A comparison of practice and self-report as sources of information about the goals of expert practice’, Psychology of Music 29/1: 39–69. Chaffin, R. and G. Imreh, 2002: ‘Practicing perfection: piano performance as expert memory’, Psychological Science 13/4: 342–9. Chaffin, R., G. Imreh, A. F. Lemieux and C. Chen, 2003: ‘Seeing the big picture: piano practice as expert problem solving’, Music Perception 20/4: 465–90. Clark, T. and T. Lisboa, 2013: ‘Training for sustained performance: moving toward longterm musician development’, Medical Problems of Performing Artists 28/3: 159–68. Clark, T., T. Lisboa and A. Williamon, 2014a: ‘An investigation into musicians’ thoughts and perceptions during performance’, Research Studies in Music Education 36/1: 17–34. Clark, T., T. Lisboa and A. Williamon, 2014b: ‘Learning to be an instrumental musician’, in I. Papageorgi and G. Welch, eds., Advanced Musical Performance: Investigations in Higher Education Learning (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 287–300. Dale, G. A. and C. A. Wrisberg, 1996: ‘The use of a performance profile technique in a team setting: getting the athletes and coach on the “same page” ’, The Sport Psychologist 10: 61–77. Duda, J. L., 2001: ‘Achievement goal research in sport: pushing the boundaries and clarifying some misunderstandings’, in G. Roberts, ed., Advances in Motivation in Sport and Exercise (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics), pp. 129–82. Duda, J. L. and J. G. Nicholls, 1992: ‘Dimensions of achievement motivation in schoolwork and sport’, Journal of Educational Psychology 84/3: 290–9. Dweck, C. S. and A. Master, 2008: ‘Self-theories motivate self-regulated learning’, in D. H. Schunk and B. J. Zimmerman, eds., Motivational and Self-Regulated Learning: Theory, Research, and Applications (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 31–51. Fancourt, D., L. Aufegger and A. Williamon, 2015: ‘Low-stress and high-stress singing have contrasting effects on glucocorticoid response’, Frontiers in Psychology 6/1242, http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01242 (accessed 15 February 2017). Fredrikson, M. and R. Gunnarsson, 1992: ‘Psychobiology of stage fright: the effect of public performance on neuroendocrine, cardiovascular and subjective reactions’, Biological Psychology 33: 51–61. Fuller, F. F. and O. H. Brown, 1975: ‘Becoming a teacher’, in K. Ryan, ed., Teacher Education: The Seventy-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 25–52. Gill, A., F. Murphy and N. S. Rickard, 2006: ‘A preliminary examination of the roles of perceived control, cortisol and perceptions of anxiety in music performance’, Australian Journal of Music Education 1: 32–47. Halleland, H., A. Harris, S. Sornes, R. Murison and H. Ursin, 2009: ‘Subjective health complaints, stress and coping in orchestra musicians’, Medical Problems of Performing Artistes 24: 58–62. Hanton, S. and D. Connaughton, 2002: ‘Perceived control of anxiety and its relationship to self-confidence and performance’, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 73: 87–97. Hanton, S. and G. Jones, 1999: ‘The acquisition and development of cognitive skills and strategies: I. Making the butterflies fly in formation’, The Sport Psychologist 13: 1–21. Jones, G., 1993: ‘The role of performance profiling in cognitive behavioral interventions in sport’, The Sport Psychologist 7: 160–72.

Learning in the spotlight Jones, G., 1995: ‘More than just a game: research developments and issues in competitive anxiety in sport’, British Journal of Psychology 86: 449–78. Jones, G., A. Swain and L. Hardy, 1993: ‘Intensity and direction dimensions of competitive state anxiety and relationships with performance’, Journal of Sports Sciences 11: 525–32. Jørgensen, H., 2004: ‘Strategies for individual practice’, in A. Williamon, ed., Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 85–103. Keller, P. E., 2008: ‘t action in music performance’, Emerging Communication 10: 205–21. Kelly, G. A., 1955: The Psychology of Personal Constructs (New York: Knopf). Kenny, D. T., 2009: ‘Negative emotions in music making: performance anxiety’, in P. Juslin and J. Sloboda, eds., Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 425–52. Kenny, D., 2011: The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kneebone, R., 2011: ‘The art, science, and simulation of performance’, in A. Williamon, D. Edwards and L. Bartel, eds., Proceedings of the International Symposium on Performance Science 2011 (Utrecht: AEC), pp. 93–102. Lacaille, N., R. Koestner and P. Gaudreau, 2007: ‘On the value of intrinsic rather than traditional achievement goals for performing artists: a short-term prospective study’, International Journal of Music Education 25: 245–57. MacNamara, A., P. Holmes and D. Collins, 2006: ‘The pathway to excellence: the role of psychological characteristics in negotiating the challenges of musical development’, British Journal of Music Education 23/3: 285–302. Mahoney, M. and M. Avener, 1977: ‘Psychology of the elite athlete: an exploratory study’, Cognitive Therapy and Research 1: 135–41. McCormick, J. and G. Mherson, 2003: ‘The role of self-efficacy in a musical performance examination: an exploratory structural equation analysis’, Psychology of Music 31/1: 37–51. McGrath, J. E., 1970: ‘A conceptual formation for research on stress’, in J. E. McGrath, ed., Social and Psychological Factors in Stress (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), pp. 19–49. Mherson, G. and J. McCormick, 2006: ‘Self-efficacy and music performance’, Psychology of Music 34/3: 322–36. Mherson, G. and B. J. Zimmerman, 2002: ‘Self-regulation of musical learning: a social cognitive perspective’, in R. Colwell and C. Richardson, eds., The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 327–47. Nicholls, J. G., 1984: ‘Achievement motivation: conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice, and performance’, Psychological Review 91: 328–46. Nicholls, J. G., P. C. Cheung, J. Lauer and M. Patashnick, 1989: ‘Individual differences in academic motivation: perceived ability, goals, beliefs, and values’, Learning and Individual Differences 1: 63–84. Pajares F., 1996: ‘Self-efficacy beliefs in academic settings’, Review of Educational Research 66/4: 543–78.

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Musicians in the Making Paris, S. G. and P. Winograd, 1990: ‘How metacognition can promote academic learning and instruction’, in B. J. Jones and L. Idol, eds., Dimensions of Thinking and Cognitive Instruction (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), pp. 15–51. Pilger, A., H. Haslacher, E. Ponocny-Seliger, T. Perkmann, K. Böhm, A. Budinsky et al., 2014: ‘Affective and inflammatory responses among orchestra musicians in performance situation’, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 37: 23–9. Ritchie, L. and A. Williamon, 2011: ‘Measuring distinct types of musical self-efficacy’, Psychology of Music 39/3: 328–44. Ritchie, L. and A. Williamon, 2012: ‘Self-efficacy as a predictor of musical performance quality’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 6: 334–40. Ritchie, L. and A. Williamon, 2013: ‘Measuring musical self-regulation: linking processes, skills, and beliefs’, Journal of Education and Training Studies 1: 106–17. Ryan, R. M. and E. L. Deci, 2000: ‘Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being’, American Psychologist 55: 68–78. Sosniak, L. A., 1985: ‘Learning to be a concert pianist’, in B. S. Bloom, ed., Developing Talent in Young People (New York: Ballantine), pp. 19–67. Thomas, O., S. Hanton and I. Maynard, 2007: ‘Anxiety responses and psychological skill use during the time leading up to competition: theory to practice I’, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 19: 379–97. Vidic, Z. and D. Burton, 2010: ‘The roap: examining the impact of a systematic goal-setting program for collegiate women’s tennis players’, The Sport Psychologist 24: 427–47. Weston, N. J. V., 2008: ‘Performance profiling’, in A. M. Lane, ed., Topics in Applied Psychology: Sport and Exercise Psychology (London: Hodder Education), pp. 91–108. Weston, N. J. V., I. A. Greenlees and R. C. Thelwell, 2010: ‘Applied sport psychology consultant perceptions of the usefulness and impacts of performance profiling’, International Journal of Sport Psychology 41: 360–68. Weston, N. J. V., I. A. Greenlees and R. C. Thelwell, 2011: ‘The impact of a performance profiling intervention on athletes’ intrinsic motivation’, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 82: 151–55. Weston, N. J. V., I. A. Greenlees and R. C. Thelwell, 2013: ‘A review of Butler and Hardy’s (1992) performance profiling procedure within sport’, International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology 6: 1–21. Williamon, A., 2004: ‘A guide to enhancing musical performance’, in A. Williamon, ed., Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 3–18. Williamon, A., L. Aufegger and H. Eiholzer, 2014: ‘Simulating and stimulating performance: introducing distributed simulation to enhance musical learning and performance’, Frontiers in Psychology 5/25, http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00025 (accessed 15 February 2017). Williamon, A., L. Aufegger, D. Wasley, D. Looney and D. P. Mandic, 2013: ‘Complexity of physiological responses decreases in high-stress musical performance’, Journal of the Royal Society Interface 10/89: 1–6, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2013.0719 (accessed 15 February 2017).

Learning in the spotlight Yourn, B. R., 2000: ‘Learning to teach: perspectives from beginning music teachers’, Music Education Research 2: 181–92. Zimmerman, B. J., 1985: ‘The development of “intrinsic” motivation: a social learning analysis’, Annals of Child Development 2: 117–60. Zimmerman, B. J., 1989: ‘A social cognitive view of self-regulated learning’, Journal of Educational Psychology 81: 329–39. Zimmerman, B. J., 1990: ‘Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: an overview’, Educational Psychologist 25: 3–17. Zimmerman, B. J., 1998: ‘Developing self-fulfilling cycles of academic regulation: an analysis of exemplary instructional models’, in D. H. Schunk and B. J. Zimmerman, eds., Self-Regulated Learning: From Teaching to Self-Reflective Practice (London: Guilford Press), pp. 1–19. Zimmerman, B. J. and M. Martinez-Pons, 1986: ‘Development of a structured interview for assessing student use of self-regulated learning strategies’, American Educational Research Journal 23: 614–28.

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Incorporating improvisation into classical music performance Juniper Hill

Why improvise? Why might a classical musician today want to improvise? Potential motivations abound: for the personal expression and self-determination of the performer, for the stimulation of collaborators, for the excitement of listeners, to brand an individual sound on the commercial market, to discover and develop one’s personality as a musician, to lessen performance anxiety, to improve technique, to deepen understanding of pre-composed musical material, for historical authenticity, for innovation, for social engagement, or simply for the challenge and joy of spontaneously creating music. In this chapter, I discuss some of the benefits of incorporating improvisation as a developmental tool in lessons and rehearsals and as a creative act in public performances. Narratives from professional musicians exemplify diverse approaches towards improvising in private and in public.1 I conclude by addressing some of the challenges facing improvising classical musicians in today’s institutionalized, capitalist world.

What is improvisation and what place does it have in western art music?

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I propose a broad definition of musical improvisation as a spontaneous creative activity in which artistic decisions are made in the moment of performance. Improvisation may encom, for example, the spontaneous composition of whole pieces, the invention of melodic lines and countermelodies over given harmonic or modal structures, variations of known melodies, and elaborate embellishments along with subtler ornamentation of pre-composed

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pieces. Within our broad definition we can also include the improvisation of expressive devices that usually fall under the rubric of interpretation—e.g. tempo fluctuations, articulation, dynamics, agogic accents, vibrato, timbre and so on—because these too may be determined by the artist in the moment of performance, if they are not fixed in advance by composers, editors, teachers and convention. One of the main factors inhibiting improvisation in today’s classical music communities is an underlying attitude that the creative potential of performers is somehow inferior. To encourage the incorporation of more improvisation into western art music is inherently to advocate for performers to be allowed—and to allow themselves—to exercise greater authority in the creative process. There are some myths about improvisation that ought to be debunked. First, just because a decision is spontaneous does not mean that it is unprepared or that it comes out of nowhere. Improvisation may be greatly facilitated through general training to improve skill sets and specific practice sessions to prepare material and explore ideas. In my research, I identified six valuable skill sets for improvising: the aural skills to play by ear, the memory facility to store and access musical vocabulary, the ability to negotiate musical structures (e.g. a practical understanding of music theory), technique, decision-making skills and self-assessment skills. The preparation of material, ideas and skills may make it easier to enter into the flow state that many improvisers find so productive and inspiring. A second myth is that a creative work must be entirely original. Improvisation often benefits from the recycling of preexisting materials and the of preexisting structures and models. However, conforming entirely to preexisting models is not, I would argue, a creative act for the performer because it entails no artistic decision-making by the performer. The creative process entails an interweaving of recycling, transforming and innovating.2 A third myth sometimes encountered is that improvisation belongs in jazz and various world music or vernacular traditions but not in serious western art music, especially not in classical and romantic music. In actuality, a broad variety of improvisational practices have flourished throughout many centuries of western art music practice. It is generally acknowledged that improvisation was an intrinsic part of performance practice during the medieval, renaissance and baroque eras. Common types of improvisation in various periods of early music included, for example, inventing polyphonic lines to accompany preexisting chants, hymns or popular songs; improvising chords over a fixed bass line (basso continuo); floridly ornamenting pre-composed melodies (e.g. diminutions on a ground); creating sets of variations of familiar themes; varying a section of a piece upon its repetition or reprise; inserting freer sections between composed sections (e.g. aggi, cadenzas); and extemporizing whole pieces (e.g. fantasies, preludes, toccatas and fugues).3 Furthermore, when musicians lived in a predominantly oral culture, learning pieces by ear and storing them

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in their aural memories instead of in notation, they typically would have performed preexisting pieces through a process of oral composition. The theory of oral composition proposes that instead of memorizing a piece note by note and performing it by rote, bards and musicians had a mental storehouse of skeletal structures and themes that they filled out with stock phrases and formulae in the moment of performance (Lord 1960). Thanks to the early music revival and historically informed performance movements, many of these older improvisational practices are more widely known and employed nowadays. The practice of improvisation during the classical and romantic eras is less widely acknowledged by musicians. In my interviews, I encountered a few who felt that it was historically inauthentic and morally wrong to improvise when playing material from these periods. However, as the interest of music researchers in historical performance practices has grown, awareness has been heightened of the multiple forms of improvisation that flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, entire pieces in the form of fantasies and preludes were widely improvised, especially by keyboardists (see e.g. Hamilton 2008). Vocalists and solo instrumentalists were expected to add their own elaborate embellishments to pre-composed pieces, to vary melodies upon repetitions and reprises, and to display their virtuosity through extended improvisations at fermatas and cadenzas. Furthermore, notation in many cases was considered to be a guideline, with composers often writing out ornamentation to help novices and amateurs but not necessarily expecting professional virtuosos to follow the suggestions. Notwithstanding the push by certain romantic composers (especially Germans) for performers to follow their scores more literally, the music that audiences heard at the time would have borne a much stronger stamp of the performer than today’s performances of the same repertoire (see Brown 1999). Brown argues that ‘whether ornamentation … was enjoyed, merely tolerated, or even detested by the composer, however, does not alter the fact that it was a pervasive aspect of nineteenth-century musical life’ (ibid.: 420). Even into the early twentieth century, recordings demonstrate that performers often took considerably greater artistic liberties in improvising their interpretations of scores than musicians today do (see Leech-Wilkinson 2009a, 2009b; Philip 1992). The paucity of improvisation in western art music performance practice over the last century is therefore an anomaly.4 Aside from the early music scene and certain contemporary music circles that embrace free improvisation and indeterminate compositions, mainstream approaches to the performance of classical- and romantic-style repertoire tend to excessively restrict the creative liberties of the performer. In small pockets and circles around the world, however, improvisation has been making a comeback, sometimes practised more or less in its traditional forms and sometimes finding new roles and new meaning in the lives of classical musicians today. Some


key contemporary performer–scholars and performer–pedagogues, such as Robert Levin and David Dolan, have been working as creative musical ‘activists’ to revive improvisation in classical music.5 In my research I found classical musicians who do not improvise at all and are opposed to the idea, some who would like to improvise but do not feel that they have the skill sets or knowledge to do so, and others who have been actively and eagerly incorporating improvisation into their work and art. The next two sections illustrate approaches that this last group of musicians has taken, in some cases renewing historical practices in modern contexts and in other cases introducing innovative methods.

Improvisation as a developmental tool Improvisation can be an important developmental tool both as a learning technique for students and as a practice strategy for professionals. Musicians in my study found it useful for deepening understanding of traditional repertoire, improving technique and aural skills, expanding interpretative and expressive possibilities, discovering a personal voice, and lessening performance anxiety. In this section, I describe the approaches of a pianist, a vocalist, a horn player and a flautist, all of whom have established careers as performers and teach advanced conservatoire students.

PIANIST KRISTIINA JUNTTU: ‘A METHOD TO FREE MYSELF’ For professional pianist Kristiina Junttu, improvisation is a key practice technique and a pedagogical tool. ‘It is more a method to free myself than an art form to perform on stage’, she explains. When she first started improvising, I was scared that I wouldn’t have any ideas or I just wouldn’t find anything to play… [Later] I understood that you don’t have to create something completely new, rather you can use any kind of material, rearrange it and start with that… Liszt has this large collection of technical exercises that are like cells of his music… Bartók has Mikrokosmos. It’s like a treasure box. Every composer has something like that. Kurtág has Játékok. Brahms also has exercises. They are completely different because they’re in their own style… I realized that I can use them as material for improvisation, that if I understand the main idea and transpose and build up phrases I can do loads of things. So I started to do exercises practising these different things… It was the attitude that you can simplify everything to where you can work with it. Find that skeleton, play with the basic things, and then do some modulations, change the metre, change the harmonization. Then you realize that you can go a bit further and a bit further and a bit further.

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By breaking down and playing with the components that characterize several composers’ stylistic languages, Junttu gains technical versatility as well as a deeper aural and intellectual understanding of the material from the inside out. After such playful deconstruction and reconstruction in the practice room, Junttu finds that she is able to create a feeling of spontaneity, freshness and energy on stage even when performing traditional work from a score: Always when you play a classical piece on stage you should somehow create it anew, so it feels like it’s the first time… You can’t do that if you don’t know the piece… To keep the music very alive and flexible, even when reading … you have to allow yourself to do something that you never even tried when you were practising. Maybe it’s not that obvious for the listener. It can be different phrasing or articulation or ornamentation. The improvisation is not that big in of what it actually sounds like… But you know when you go to a concert and you’re mesmerised? Then you know that something is happening here and now and it’s so present.6 Improvisation as a practice strategy can also lead to important psychological benefits, as Junttu explains: I try to keep myself open and not have too criticizing an attitude toward myself. That’s hard because that criticizing attitude is something that I learned from a very young age and it’s destructive, it does not help me play well at all. Improvising when you’re practising, even when you’re learning a new piece, is helpful to avoid that … to not be too serious and to have a playful way of playing with the piano and with pieces… Then you are able to achieve more of what your ability actually is. When I can keep that attitude on stage I play so much better. It’s like a flow… I am more open to whatever happens and able to react really fast or do things that are completely new… But you have to rehearse that way; otherwise it’s not possible on the stage. Junttu’s experiences here are representative of many musicians who found that overly critical and perfectionist attitudes towards the execution of the score impeded technique and heightened performance anxiety, whereas maintaining a more playful attitude can help musicians better perform to the full extent of their abilities. Similar exercises can also be valuable in teaching, as Junttu illustrates: I started to play games with some simple songs, for example ‘Happy Birthday’ in a Liszt style… We just take some children’s songs, play them by ear and then add the chords. Then we do it in different keys and with different accompaniments… It’s very pianistic, so like ornamentation, doing broken chords for the accompaniment, or using loads of octaves,


or doing a kind of cadenza in between, or changing the metre from three to four, and then doing modulations and those kinds of things. Improvisational games can help students develop aural skills, technique, confidence and stage presence, as Junttu has observed: They are more flexible with their instrument. They can pick up tunes [by ear] and play them with left-hand accompaniment… They know the basic structures better—things like chords, inversions, progressions and keys are easier for them… It develops both their ear and their physical technique. It’s so much easier to get to that kind of level where you can just think and your fingers know… The way they are with the piano is more free and they are not that scared of making mistakes… They are confident with the instrument and confident playing to others, and they find that comfortable way of doing music. Contrary to the popular myth that one must master technique before becoming creative, Junttu reveals how improvisation can develop technique: I have one amazing student who came to me when she was six. She was so keen on music, but her fingers didn’t move at all. She was really behind in development of motor ability. So I had to start her with all these improvisation exercises. We improvised pieces, we did exercises with hands and fingers, and now she’s eleven, and her way of playing the piano is so completely free that she’s amazing… Her way of playing the instrument is so rewarding to listen to, it’s easy and so natural.

VOCALIST PÄIVI JÄRVIÖ: ‘THE POSSIBILITY TO PERFORM SOMETHING THAT NOBODY HAS HEARD’ While pianists have played a prominent role as improvisers in classical music, improvisational approaches can be just as effective on other instruments. My next examples come from the work of mezzo-soprano Päivi Järviö, who also uses improvisation in the practice room and the teaching studio. Her rehearsal methods provide evidence of how improvisation can be used as a form of practice-based research for discovering new ways of interpreting old music. She explains: I think the way you practise is very important. Practising isn’t about finding the way you’re going to play this piece, rather it’s about finding lots of ways you could play this piece, taking it apart and throwing it around and not deciding. Maybe you can decide something, but then in performance something else might happen because after discovering all of these options you might find something new in the performance that you hadn’t tried before. If, however, it’s just ‘I choose this then I go here’, it means

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that I can’t go there. So ideally it gives you more room in the performing situation instead of having to balance on a tight rope where if something happens you fall. Practising for Järviö is thus a key exploratory stage in which she discovers and investigates a great range of interpretative possibilities. A deeper understanding of these possibilities then allows her to approach her interpretation of traditional music (in her current project, eighteenth-century French baroque repertoire) with spontaneity and flexibility. An added benefit of not being locked into one way of performing is that it makes failure in performance much less likely. Having this flexibility to spontaneously pursue multiple possible options is, for Järviö, mandatory for making music art. Otherwise it becomes, in her words, ‘a crossword puzzle where you have just one right answer’. She laments that even in early music circles ‘the crossword puzzle model is beginning to be there; the fans of early music go to the concert to see if you filled in [the boxes] correctly’. When she sang modern music with a professional chamber choir, she similarly found the attitude that everyone was ‘so proud that we could learn everything so fast, sight-read anything and sing all these different things in the concert… The ideal is a person who can produce the right notes with the minimum amount of work and then they’re happy with it.’ The downside of this attitude is that ‘if you have this situation where you have two rehearsals and a full concert, you don’t have the time to go to the uncomfortable area… It’s important to feel uncomfortable and not always just stick to what feels nice or natural, because it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the right answer for you or for anybody.’ For her, such a lack of exploration and discovery is when music stops being art. She proclaims, ‘I don’t want to perform anymore if I don’t have that space. I don’t see any point in doing a gig to do something correctly. I don’t feel good afterwards, I feel like a prostitute, that I’m selling something that is not the real thing, that I’m cheating the audience. They believe that we are doing art.’ Järviö has also encountered the ‘crossword puzzle model’ while giving lessons and demonstrations for conservatoire students. For example, in a masterclass, students became confused by conflicting instructions regarding how to interpret a age. Järviö told them, ‘isn’t it wonderful that there are so many different alternatives! It’s you who are playing and there is no right answer to this. There are different answers and many of them can work and some of them don’t and that’s the risk that you take, but you decide.’ These advanced students were intimidated: ‘they had never done this. They were really scared of making decisions.’ Järviö encourages students to overcome such inhibitions by role modelling: I give them so many alternatives that they start to realize that actually it is not this or this but it’s like eight different alternatives… So they understand that it’s an unending field of possibilities. Because they want to do things right, it’s very scary to launch into something like that, so I also


give bad examples and make fun of myself so that they can hear that this is not so serious, it’s just music. In my research, I found that attitudes emphasizing a single correct model of performance and interpretation can inhibit creativity and increase performance anxiety. Anticipating negative judgement if one departs from that model can lead individuals to self-censor, conform and avoid taking creative risks. Furthermore, having only one right answer often leads to an increased fear of making mistakes, failing or embarrassing oneself. These fears are the basis of performance anxiety (see Kenny 2011), which can lead to negative physical consequences (such as technique being inhibited by tension), inhibitive psychological impacts, and distracting thoughts that prevent performers from entering into a flow state. Using improvisation in rehearsals and teaching can instil more helpful attitudes—that there are multiple possible solutions and that perhaps music need not be taken too seriously all of the time. A teacher’s modelling of occasional failures as acceptable also helps to foster a safe environment in which learners can explore less encumbered by anxiety.

HORNIST ERJA JOUKAMO- AMPUJA: ‘DARE TO MAKE MISTAKES’ The next example further illustrates how improvisation can be employed as a tool for lessening performance anxiety and encouraging creativity. Horn player Erja Joukamo-Ampuja works for a professional orchestra and teaches horn, improvisation pedagogy and creative musicianship at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. She underwent a transformation in her approach to music-making when, after having played in orchestras for several years, she went to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London for additional training in improvisation and creative musicianship. It was ‘in those kinds of exercises’, she explains, ‘that I realized for the first time that I had lost my creativity and the joy of just playing around with my instrument’. Also in her studio horn teaching at the Academy, she feels that her job is ‘to train them so that they win the auditions’. Joukamo-Ampuja now teaches improvisation to ‘bring creativity into the classical musician’s training, because somehow there’s a lack of it’. She is one of the leaders of a five-level course series entitled Creative Musicianship Skills, offered at the Sibelius Academy. The courses aim to teach classical musicians to ‘dare to make mistakes’, ‘to dare to be creative’, ‘to use their virtuosity also in the creative way and not only in playing exactly from notation’, to improve interaction skills and group dynamics, and to interact creatively with audiences and youth. These creative musicianship courses often begin with improvisational games and exercises adapted from theatre (and influenced by the work of Johnstone 1979). Exercises frequently take participants outside their comfort zones. This is important for lessening inhibitions (a violinist might be very concerned about

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embarrassing herself by improvising on the violin, but might not care so much if her musical peers see that she is a terrible actor), as well as for equalizing the playing field (none of the musicians in the class may be good actors) and building ive group dynamics (they can all make fools of themselves together and still respect one another as musicians). Many exercises are also approached as games, which is important for instilling a sense of playfulness so that participants feel free to explore possibilities and so that they get the feeling that it is acceptable to make mistakes. Overcoming fear of mistakes is a crucial component of developing the courage to take risks, which is entailed in any creative work that challenges conventions.

FLAUTIST KRISTIINA ILMONEN: ‘THE COURAGE TO EXPRESS YOURSELF’ Playful and exploratory improvisation can also be an important part of the musician’s self-discovery process. Flautist Kristiina Ilmonen, who also teaches improvisation courses at the Sibelius Academy, elaborates on the importance of experimental improvisation as a pedagogical tool: We don’t want that we would only have people becoming free avant-garde free specialists, that’s not our goal… We believe that it is a very good way of finding elements in yourself as a musician that you would not otherwise find. So through improvisation, you can find your personality as a musician. You get courage to do things you wouldn’t do otherwise. Also you get a wider tool box… You find ways to express yourself and courage to express yourself, also traditionally. Acquiring such skills also enables orchestral musicians to do creative collaborative outreach work. For example, children and audience may present compositional ideas to of the orchestra who realize them using improvisation.7 Thus, improvisation can be a valuable developmental tool for musicians at all stages, from novices to professionals, greatly enhancing performers’ ability to fluidly and expressively interpret traditional material in concert.

Improvisation in performance The classical musicians whom I interviewed engage in many types of improvisational activity in public performance. Some improvise subtle nuances of interpretation while remaining fairly faithful to pre-composed scores; others improvise their own cadenzas within canonical repertoire; others delight and impress audiences by extemporising entire pieces in their concerts; and others use improvisation for practical functions in church services, at weddings, and


as accompaniment for modern dance and theatre performances. Here I present examples from the work of a clarinettist and an organist.

CLARINETTIST KARI KRIIKKU: ‘I PLAN, PLAN, PLAN THIS CADENZA … AND THEN I TAKE OFF’ Kari Kriikku, a clarinettist with an international career as a soloist, improvises his own cadenzas when he performs concertos by both modern and classical composers.8 Kriikku discloses his approach to preparing his improvised performances: I really try to use the material from the piece. I copy pages of my part or of the score and I cut it up. I make a puzzle of it and lay it all out on the table. Then I see the whole cadenza like this on the table. Then I add my links to these pieces. This is how I plan a cadenza in the early days. Now after I’ve played a piece many times I can just go to the stage and make a new cadenza and see what happens. Kriikku is simulating the process of oral composition. First he builds a bank of macro and micro musical material—overall frameworks and skeletons and a vocabulary of suitable motives, connecting links and embellishments—which he practises until he can manipulate them smoothly. Then in the moment of performance he uses these materials to construct his cadenza. In times and cultures in which musicians have developed through aural immersion in one style—learning, performing and storing their repertoire orally—the ability and propensity to manipulate musical building blocks in the moment of performance often have developed naturally and with less conscious effort. This results from biological factors, namely the way in which the human brain analyses, stores, retrieves and reconstructs aural information, as well as cultural factors, such as the tendency for musical works to be less fixed and for musicians to be exposed to multiple versions of pieces (see Hill, in press; Lord 1960; McLucas 2011). In contrast, in contemporary institutionalized cultures in which musical works are often rigidly fixed, musical material is primarily stored in and retrieved from notation instead of human memory, and performers are no longer immersed in only one style but rather exposed to a plethora of diverse styles, the process of oral composition may need boosting with a more intentional strategy (see Hill 2009). Kriikku’s puzzle-piece method is a deliberate strategy for building up that important vocabulary base, which is more difficult for musicians to develop when they learn music by notation instead of by ear. Using puzzle pieces specifically from the score of the concerto in which the improvised cadenza will occur ensures that Kriikku’s improvisation will cohere with the stylistic norms established by specific composers within certain works. If modern musicians were to allow themselves to draw from the diversity of

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musics that they have experienced in their lifetime, then it is likely that the resulting improvisation would not remain within stylistic boundaries. This is a matter of aesthetic choice and values. For some, transcending such boundaries is inappropriate while for others it represents the peak of creativity. As flautist Ellen Burr avows: ‘creativity, to me, is listening and being open to the moment, and allowing yourself to pull in disparate images and ideas and sensations … like a whirlpool coming in to synthesize all these things to this one place, like a centrifugal force, and from that centre is what you speak’. One of the biggest challenges that Kriikku reports is not repeating himself, which is important to him so that his cadenzas always sound new and fresh. He explains that if you allow yourself to simply come up with something on the spot, maybe something nice happens, but the danger is that you start to do things that you are sure about. [You think,] ‘this is what I have always done, I know people enjoy this special thing on the clarinet, and I’ll do it again’. But that’s not really interesting. So I have to make a plan, and then once the plan is clear in my mind I can improvise with the plan when I see the reactions from the audience. Then I can leave off big parts of the plan, take off, and eventually come back to the plan. I can even leave it open as to whether I finish the cadenza loudly or really quietly, which is a big deal in classical music. Hence, in contrast to the myth that improvisation should be completely spontaneous, Kriikku finds that preparing for an improvisation makes it more likely that he will do something new than if he goes into an improvisation unprepared. Improvising cadenzas can have a big impact on relationships with other musicians and with the audience. Kriikku has found that ‘if you decide to be really free and improvise’, you run the risk of leaving other musicians in insecure positions: If you don’t tell the conductor if you’re going to finish loudly or quietly or how you’re going to end, how will he know when to bring the orchestra in? There’s no sense to make the conductor feel scared whether he will come in in the right place. So sometimes if you have an unsure conductor in this world, you can make a deal that ‘in the end of the cadenza I will start to do this and you just come in’. The reception that Kriikku has received from modern composers is an important reminder that many composers in the past and the present have appreciated the creative input of performers: Composers started to write pieces for me and some included big moments for improvising, like the first and second concertos by Jukka Tiensuu… In the first Tiensuu concerto the cadenza … is a big part of the piece…


It’s quite clear that it should be an improvised cadenza and I always try to create something new. Tiensuu did write out his own cadenza, but he only wrote it if someone were to play it who can’t improvise… The Magnus Lindberg Concerto only has a place for a cadenza; you can play a cadenza if you want or you can leave it off, the composition is built like that. But I started to play quite a big cadenza and we were at the BBC Proms Festival and Magnus was saying ‘now go for it and play a long cadenza’. Then I went to the LA Hollywood Bowl to play this piece and then Carnegie Hall with the New York Phil, and he said ‘no, play a bigger cadenza’. So he started to like the idea. Even though ‘their language is more modern’, Kriikku considers ‘the music of [contemporary composers] Tiensuu and Lindberg classical as well, because it’s clearly part of the classical music history’—and together these composers and performers are continuing a historical performance practice into the present. During the classical era, composers would often write concertos with specific performers in mind and provide room for performers to contribute their own creative work (with cadenzas being notated as an optional aid for those not skilled or confident enough to improvise their own). Improvising can have an impact on a performer’s relationship with the audience. Performing well-known concertos from the classical canon can often be nerve-wracking, confesses Kriikku: There is kind of a pressure because they are such great pieces. There are at least four that are running all the time wherever I go… The tension is not because you have something new and the audience is listening to the music, rather what it is is [that] they are listening to its execution, ‘oh, I’ve heard this concerto before, let’s see how this is now’. If we could solve this problem about tension we could make much more interesting interpretations of classical pieces… But at the moment when my cadenza comes in the concert, I’m not tense. It’s my big moment. It’s interesting and it includes the element of improvisation. Shifting the listener’s focus from how well a familiar piece is executed to discovering and enjoying new musical experiences can lessen musicians’ potential performance anxiety, thereby freeing them to be more creative.

ORGANIST CHRISTOPH BULL: ‘THE AUDIENCES THINK “THAT’S JUST INCREDIBLE!”’ Next I present examples from the work of organist Christoph Bull, a German musician now based in Los Angeles. When playing in church services Bull engages in more functional types of improvised performance, while in concerts he embarks on boundary-challenging improvisations.

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In contrast with many of the other musicians in this study who came to improvisation relatively late in their musical development, Bull received formal tuition in improvisation from an early age. Though he describes this early training as ‘conservative’, it provided an important foundation of skill sets: [My teaching] was fairly traditional … [going] back to baroque forms and then maybe some romantic symphonic forms… It was service-oriented for church … so it had a practical application, like for example making up an intro to a church hymn. Another thing they taught us was to reharmonize a church hymn. So here’s the harmony that’s in the hymn book, and here’s a way where you can make it more romantic with a richer harmony. My teacher would show me these chords that have a romantic sound, like some diminished or half-diminished chords, or she might show me how you can harmonize a hymn using a lot of fourths that’ll make it sound more modern. Once equipped with such training, the church environment provided tremendous freedom and for improvisation, as indeed it has for generations of musicians: A prelude would be an opportunity before the service starts to kind of set a mood, to feel the mood of the room and do something, like building from something very quiet to fortissimo and then starting the service with the opening hymn. When I was in it was a little bit more customary to start it off with a bang, so there are different methods. Sometimes the postlude can be a room for improvisation, sometimes communion can be a room for improvisation, and sometimes what happens is that we’re playing an anthem and then the anthem is too short and the liturgical action is continuing so that would give me an opportunity to improvise in the style of the anthem, make it appear as if that is actually still part of the music. I enjoy trying to stay in that style, using the same kind of harmonies, using some of the themes. So I’ve found the church to be a nice environment for improvisation, and I think it has encouraged it throughout time. Despite these numerous opportunities for improvisation, the church environment can also be constricting. A functional musician must balance the needs of the ritual and be sensitive to the tastes of participants. One village congregation found Bull’s Messiaen-inspired arrangements of hymns to be ‘quite jarring’. He reflects: A lot of what I learned I don’t do any more because I find that in real life most of the time it’s actually best to keep it simple. I learned all of these fancy things … but it doesn’t necessarily help them to follow it… When I was still in I would put these methods to the test. For example, I would do a reharmonization of the hymn with those fourths and seconds


and I did notice that some people didn’t really like that. To be quite honest I think they might’ve had a point, because those were traditional hymns and I’m not sure that they really sound better with those modern harmonies. It’s interesting, but I’m not really sure if it helps. It could be a little bit distracting. So I found myself going back to being more conservative with it. As a functional musician, Bull developed sophisticated harmonic substitution skills and a broad range of stylistic tools that were not really necessary in church services. However, these skills and tools proved invaluable for artistic expression in other venues. The most adventurous improviser in comparison to the other classical instrumentalists in the study, Bull now performs a diverse array of improvisational approaches: I started … just fantasizing, so it was less of an improvisation where you are supposed to have some kind of order and more just doing whatever you want… Sometimes I improvise on existing pieces, using them as a point of departure. Right now I’m working on something where I’m taking a Mendelssohn overture and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and I’m creating a hybrid piece between the two … jumping back and forth like a mash-up and then I create a little interlude so it works with the modulation. So if people know the pieces, they’re really going to like that… Sometimes in concerts I will improvise on subjects that are submitted by the audience… Somebody might say ‘dissonance’ or ‘joy’… One time somebody came up with the idea ‘improvisation on September 11th, 2001’, so that of course turned out to be a serious piece… I’ve had people sing a theme, too, and that’s nice because then that becomes part of the performance… If I have like ‘A Little Night Music’ as a theme and ‘Stairway to Heaven’, then maybe I can combine those two. People usually enjoy the juxtaposition of things that really wouldn’t normally be juxtaposed… Sometimes I collaborate with a painter… I play and I see what he’s painting to the music and it really inspires the both of us… It can be more fun when there are other people and it also might take you into unexpected territory… My gang is the painter, my girlfriend who is a singer, and a percussion player… Once in a while I just need that interplay.9 These diverse artistic choices are of course guided by Bull’s own dynamic personality and aesthetic values. It is also likely that his experiences as a developing and working functional musician—in which improvisation was an integrated and integral component—played a key role in fostering self-confidence and enabling attitudes. Bull exhibits a particularly positive attitude towards potential criticism: I don’t care so much about what’s allowed and what’s not. I also accept that if some people are against that, then maybe that’s ok if there’s a

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little controversy… Sometimes I might play the original piece and then I’ll continue with the improvisation on it. So I’m not too concerned that I desecrated the old Bach, you know? … Sometimes the fans are more concerned about that. Even in rock music some people have violent reactions to a cover version of a song: ‘how can you do that?’ And I’m like, ‘hey, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Listen to the original, it’s still there, nobody took away the original piece.’ Many musicians are inhibited by anxiety related to potential negative . If musicians are able to receive criticism without letting it erode their selfconfidence, it makes it much easier to confidently take creative risks. Oftentimes musicians themselves are more disapproving of improvisation than listeners. Bull reflects: I’m never quite happy with it. I always think, ‘oh, I could have done that better’, but the audience always appreciates the improvisation. They think it’s amazing, when it’s really not, it’s just something that musicians do. But the audiences think ‘that’s just incredible that you can come up with something seemingly out of nowhere!’ … People like it.

Challenges facing improvising classical musicians today Given all the benefits of improvising—such as expanded creative expression, enhanced interpretation of traditional repertoire, improved technique, decreased performance anxiety, more exciting performances, and greater audience involvement and appreciation—why is there not more improvisation in the contemporary practice of classical music? Constraints and inhibiting factors are unfortunately numerous. Those that came up in my interviews with musicians might be categorized into three spheres: (1) education, (2) career pressures and (3) values. Not having had the opportunity to develop the relevant skill sets was one of the biggest practical constraints that musicians encountered. Many musicians reported lacking the aural skills to realize musical ideas on their instruments, the memory facility to spontaneously access a musical vocabulary, a practical understanding of music theory that can be applied in their own playing, and in some cases even decision-making skills. For example, one American violinist, Camille,10 was frustrated that her teacher ‘didn’t teach me ear–hand coordination… It was all reading and it wasn’t hearing… There was no connection between theory and what I was playing.’ When she later began studying improvisation, she experienced ‘a disconnect that made me feel very uncomfortable… I was put in a high level [class] because of my ability to play, but I couldn’t. I was swimming in there because I couldn’t vibe in of just the ability to jump in… I was able to fill in a lot of those


gaps, but those were always my weaknesses.’ In another example, a European cellist, Tuomas, reflects that his conservatoire teacher was so authoritarian that when he graduated he had no knowledge of how to express his own musical ideas: ‘it was like a nightmare because there was no model to be copied… After studying seven years with him, I was unable to make any decisions, unable even to find out how to make fingerings for a classical piece of music.’ Another major factor inhibiting classical musicians from improvising nowadays is the potential risk of receiving negative for anything that might deviate from the notated score and conventional interpretation norms. Assessments from teachers, exam boards and audition committees can be the most inhibiting. For example, an American clarinettist, Luke, expresses his frustration that If you do something really out of the box, it could be really interesting and inspiring, but … you almost feel that need to fit yourself into a box. Like when you play in an audition, at least for me, it feels like you’re restricted… There’s that pressure that you want to play everything like really correctly … because orchestra committees just want you to play in a box… The people who get the jobs here are the ones that can just play all the notes and all the rhythms in tune and in the right place. The underdevelopment of creativity-enabling skill sets and the fear of negative assessments can affect individuals at a deeply personal level. At the same time, these constraints may operate systematically across our musical communities via educational institutions and professional assessment mechanisms. Underlying such pedagogical approaches and assessment criteria is a specific set of values and beliefs—values that we perhaps should reassess and challenge. One set of values that strongly influences education is an overemphasis on perfectionism, which can have negative psychological effects, leading to increased performance anxiety and self-censorship. Another is the attitude that improvisation is play and does not belong in serious music-making. Yet another is an extreme emphasis on the precise and supposedly faithful execution of a score. Is art music really better if it is serious and never changing? Could there not be benefits to ‘serious music’ if more play were incorporated? The most pervasive and insidious inhibitions against the creative agency of performers are connected to the belief system in which improvisation in classical music is considered to be wrong. This belief often goes unspoken, but Elizabeth, a septuagenarian orchestral musician in the United States, articulated it clearly: ‘I thought I would do a little improvising occasionally when I was playing classical things, but that actually isn’t right… That was wrong.’ The basis for her value judgment was twofold: ‘because the classical composers

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put down what they wanted you to play’, and ‘because if you’re not [being completely faithful to the score], then you’re giving the listener a different piece of musical information than they should have, and I think that that’s actually wrong… They should hear it like it was done in the day.’ These are the ideals of remaining faithful to a composer’s intentions and recreating a historically authentic sound, but such attitudes have a specific twentieth-century history (see Goehr 1992). Recent research in performance studies has demonstrated that performers took much greater creative liberties in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than was previously believed to be the case when many of the teachers of our current generations of performers were taught music history. Regardless of whether or not the creative liberties of performers would have been tolerated or appreciated by historical composers and heard by historical audiences, perhaps it might be worthwhile to challenge these values. LeechWilkinson and Doğantan-Dack (2013) question why we are bent on ‘obeying the every collectively imagined whim of a man who, as often as not, has been dead for several hundred years’. They propose that ‘we have no ethical obligations to dead composers’. This contemporary value system restricts the creative authority of performers in favour not only of composers but also of teachers and editors. Underlying this ideological system is an assumption that performers’ creative capacity is inferior—an unspoken aspect of the entrenched hierarchies of classical music culture. Setting low expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy:11 when performers are not given the opportunity to develop enabling skill sets, they are crippled from realizing much of their creative potential. In this respect, it is telling that many of the improvising classical musicians whom I interviewed were self-taught or followed pathways alternative to mainstream music education. Until pedagogical goals and curricula change, aspiring creative performers will need to take some of their training into their own hands in similar ways. Surely it is time for classical performers to assert their right for greater artistic autonomy.

References Brown, C., 1999: Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1970–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press). Dolan, D., 1996–97: Improvisation series, Classical Piano (March/April 1996: 13; May/ June 1996: 11; July/August 1996: 13–14; November/December 1996: 13–14; January/ February 1997: 11–12). Dolan, D., 2005: ‘Back to the future: towards the revival of extemporization in classical music performance’, in G. Odam and N. Bannan, eds., The Reflective Conservatoire: Studies in Music Education (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 97–131.

Incorporating improvisation into classical music performance Goehr, L., 1992: The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Hamilton, K., 2008: After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (New York: Oxford University Press). Hill, J., 2009: ‘Rebellious pedagogy, ideological transformation, and creative freedom in Finnish contemporary folk music’, Ethnomusicology 53/1: 86–114. Hill, J., in press: Becoming Creative: Insights from Musicians in a Diverse World (New York: Oxford University Press). Johnstone, K., 1979: Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (London: Faber & Faber). Kenny, D., 2011: The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Leech-Wilkinson, D., 2009a: ‘Changing performance styles: piano playing’, in idem, The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Recorded Musical Performance, http:// www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/studies/chapters/chap6.html (accessed 15 February 2017). Leech-Wilkinson, D., 2009b: ‘Recordings and histories of performance style’, in N. Cook, E. Clarke, D. Leech-Wilkinson and J. Rink, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 246–62. Leech-Wilkinson, D. and M. Doğantan-Dack with D. Gilchrist-Katz, 2013: ‘How creative can a musical practice be?’, public lecture-demonstration, AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice Performance/Research Seminar Series, Institute of Musical Research, University of London. Levin, R., 1992: ‘Improvised embellishments in Mozart’s keyboard music’, Early Music 20/2: 221–23. Levin, R., 1997: ‘Performance prerogatives in Schubert’, Early Music 25/4: 723–27. Lord, A., 1960: The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). McLucas, A. D., 2011: The Musical Ear: Oral Tradition in the USA (Farnham: Ashgate). Moore, R., 1992: ‘The decline of improvisation in Western art music: an interpretation of change’, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 23/1: 61–84. Nettl, B. et al., 2014: ‘Improvisation’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www. oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/13738pg1 (accessed 15 February 2017). Philip, R., 1992: Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rosenthal, R., 1994: ‘Interpersonal expectancy effects: a 30-year perspective’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 3/6: 176–79. Rosenthal, R. and L. Jacobson, 1968: Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils’ Intellectual Development (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston). Sancho-Velasquez, A., 2001: ‘The legacy of genius: improvisation, romantic imagination, and the Western musical canon’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles). Sanguinetti, G., 2012: The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press). Treitler, L., 2003: With Voice and Pen: Coming to Know Medieval Song and How It Was Made (New York: Oxford University Press).

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Musicians in the Making PERSONAL INTERVIEWS

Bull, Christoph. Los Angeles, USA, November 2012 Burr, Ellen. Los Angeles, USA, November 2012 Camille (pseudonym). Los Angeles, USA, November 2012 Elizabeth (pseudonym). Los Angeles, USA, November 2012 Ilmonen, Kristiina. Helsinki, Finland, September 2008 Järviö, Päivi. Helsinki, Finland, May 2012 Joukamo-Ampuja, Erja. Helsinki, Finland, May 2012 Junttu, Kristiina. Helsinki, Finland, May 2012 Kriikku, Kari. Helsinki, Finland, May 2012 Luke (pseudonym). Los Angeles, USA, October 2012 Tuomas (pseudonym). Helsinki, Finland, May 2012

Insight

Musical artistry and identity in balance Carlos Lopez-Real

As I began putting together this Insight, one of the hardest tasks was finding the right opening sentence. I wanted to contextualize the essay to give readers both a frame of reference and, in particular, a sense of who I am in relation to ‘creative performance’. This inevitably led to familiar dilemmas about how best to capture the slippery sense of professional identity. This is common to many with a so-called portfolio career, among whose ranks I count myself. I initially tried ‘I’m a musician working primarily within the field of small-group contemporary jazz’, having already dismissed ‘I’m a saxophonist …’ as too narrow. Such pithy ‘elevator pitches’ have their place, and I use different versions all the time, depending on the situation. However, when considering my own pathway in more holistic , there is something central and essential about slipperiness of identity, about constantly evolving practice, about the shifting focus of my own artistic journey, and about uncertainty. So let me try again. I play the saxophone. I love playing it and I enjoy the sounds I make. I confess to initially being drawn to it by the look just as much as the sound, although these days it’s the physical sense of togetherness, and a certain ‘release’ through playing, that are the prime attractions of the instrument. I wish that I played it more, but mostly only in the sense that I always wish there were more hours in the day. In general, when I choose not to play it for a period, it’s because of that slippery sense of professional identity and my artistic focus being elsewhere, such as composing, curating, teaching or collaborating in other ways. There are many key relationships—symbiotic ones—which are integral to my own pathway to creative performance. Many of these feel like two sides of the same coin. I’m an improviser and a composer. I’m a performer and an educator. I have an individual artistic voice and an artistic voice embedded within a collective of musicians, a community of practice. These are some of the ‘big picture’ relationships, but there are many significant micro relationships too. For example, I perform in intimate settings for a handful of people, and I perform at festivals for tens of thousands; I perform live for audiences

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and I ‘perform’ in the recording studio. I could go on, but instead I will try to unpack some of the ‘big picture’ relationships. For me, improvising and composing are mutually beneficial processes to engage in. Let me take improvisation first. The core of my ‘craft’ throughout my career to date has been playing jazz, and improvisation has always been a central element of that. The jazz styles I’ve worked in have varied hugely, from early twentieth-century recreations such as the Pasadena Roof Orchestra, through small-group bop styles of the 1940s–60s, to all manner of contemporary styles to which the casual observer would hardly ascribe the label ‘jazz’. Away from jazz, I’ve also worked with improvisation in other styles. These include Indian classical music and many variants of popular western music such as salsa, samba, funk, etc. Added to this has been considerable experience of improvising in socalled ‘free’ contexts, ostensibly without a predefined style, and usually without predefined structures to contain the improvisation. In practice, however, there are just as many subgenres of ‘free’ music as there are in any other realm; it tends to be more about certain stylistic preferences (often atonal and arhythmic), and a clear ‘language’ usually emerges. In cross-arts contexts, I’ve improvised and composed music in collaboration with dancers and filmmakers. All of this experience has given me a much deeper understanding of the nature of musical improvisation than I would have had if I’d been playing primarily in one style. Importantly, it has helped me to untangle processes that were essentially genre-neutral, versus ones that were to do with ‘language’. Improvisational skills and processes which I came to see as universal include aural imagination; memory; creation of narrative and awareness of overall shape; emotion; ability to play different ‘roles’ within the improvising ensemble; motivic development; knowledge of chords, scales and modes; and control of space, phrase shape, pitch range, dynamics, articulation, tone, phrase length, phrase density, pulse, metre, internal pacing, time feel and intervallic structure. All of these ‘tools’ can then be deployed to communicate meaningfully with other musicians, using a shared stylistic language. The knowledge of the subtleties and details of each musical language is just as important for good communication as the universal tools themselves. These lessons, learned through my varied musical experiences, have simultaneously been unpacked, explored, tested and developed through my teaching. My roles as educator and performer have mutually reinforced one another. In particular, it was with my ‘educator hat’ on that I refined my concepts of the nature of musical language within specific styles, and how best to learn that language as an improvising musician. I came to view the importance of equilibrium between yet another pair of processes. A ‘top-down’ method of language acquisition involves listening, transcription and the imitate-assimilate-innovate cycle; a ‘bottom-up’ tool kit of resources, strengthening the ‘building blocks’

Insight: Carlos Lopez-Real

of the music, s this. There are parallels between genre-neutral skills and those primarily concerned with style, idiom and language. This awareness in turn helped me to understand the direct correspondence to composition, as all of these are skills, processes and considerations central to my work as a composer. The main difference, of course, is that they occur in disparate time frames. It’s too simplistic to say that the improviser deploys these skills ‘in the moment’ and more intuitively, while the composer has time to more consciously manipulate them and ponder the outcomes. Both the improviser and the composer are working with a vast repository of tacit knowledge, often in an intuitive, direct and aural way. Correspondingly, both bring to bear conscious strategies, problem-solving and decision-making processes. Nonetheless, the disparate time frames do result in outputs which themselves are distinct. As a composer, I can craft form and structure that often would be difficult for an improviser to achieve. As an improviser, I can effect a subtlety of phrasing almost impossible to notate or even conceive as a composer. For me, however, improvisation is at its best in group situations where a deep, shared musical language can facilitate real musical conversation. This leads me to consider the third of my ‘big picture’ relationships, namely my individual artistic voice within a wider community of musicians. Jazz is a highly collaborative art. The key developments in the history of jazz music have happened on the bandstand, night after night, as musicians improvise together, using their current favourite materials and devices. The language evolves quite literally before one’s eyes and ears. Someone may improvise a new melodic ‘solution’ to a particular harmonic ‘problem’, and, if it resonates with the other musicians, this will be picked up on and developed. It may stick and be further developed during subsequent performances, eventually bedding down as a new part of the collective language. It’s very common for the musicians I work with to record their performances and then listen to them for new ideas, and this speeds up the evolutionary process of language development. My generation looks back enviously at a time when jazz musicians could hold a nightly residency at a club for months on end, for the very reason that this was the creative cauldron in which the music developed so rapidly. The digital age offers us different opportunities, however, including almost unlimited access to recordings of the past. Our listening, and what we can absorb in of musical language through transcription, is broader than past generations could ever have dreamed of. In one way, this fast-tracks young players to having a very complete mastery of the improvisational ‘canon’. On the other hand, the process is essentially one-way, rather than collaborative. One of the means by which this collaborative gap has been filled has been the formation of numerous semiformal networks or collectives of musicians, coalescing around common musical or social ideas. In 2007 I brought together several musicians to form the E17 Jazz Collective. This harnessed the potential of the high density of top jazz musicians in Walthamstow in East London,

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many of whom already knew each other socially and professionally. Over the years we’ve curated hundreds of gigs, plus several festivals and collaborations with other groups. Aside from more external recognition, such as funding and awards, the benefits to the musicians have been primarily artistic. Existing musical connections have been strengthened and new ones developed, often resulting in the formation of new bands where the personnel overlap. This context has facilitated the refinement of our own improvisational ‘dialect’ in the manner described above. My personal musical voice has been tangibly influenced by regularly collaborating with my local peers. In turn, I’ve made a distinct contribution to the collective artistic identity, through my playing, composing and band-leading. For me, a collective means a way of working together which goes beyond simply playing music together. It means having a mutual understanding of our place as musicians within society, and specifically within our own immediate cultural and social contexts. Just as there is fluidity to the jazz scene as a whole, so there can be fluidity to the nature and makeup of collectives. E17 Jazz itself has changed, for example, and in fact is in a process of constant evolution. Just as people come together to form natural networks, collectives and collaborations, so too (on a more macro level) can collectives. Currently several collectives collaborate on larger creative projects, and some London ones are ing forces to make a more unified presentation to European funding bodies. This balance of looking inwards versus outwards seems entirely in keeping with the other elements of my professional identity: improviser/composer, performer/educator, individual/member of collective. As I consider these relationships, it becomes clearer to me that I’m essentially dealing with creative expression generally, rather than creative ‘performance’ in particular. On the other hand, there are innumerable connections between the two which themselves undergo constant evolution as one develops as a musician. The fact that artistic journeys can progress along several pathways at one and the same time may encourage the slipperiness of identity and the sense of uncertainty that I’ve discussed, yet these in turn can be sources of creative inspiration to be tapped as one wishes at any given stage.

Insight

Ensemble music in the making: a matter of shared leadership Margaret Faultless

The most fascinating and far-reaching influences on my career as a performing musician have been musical encounters and discussions with colleagues. These take the form of verbal and nonverbal communication, both on and off the platform. It is well known that nonverbal communication can be expressed through body language, often in the form of signs and signals recognized by another person or a group of people. This is certainly the case in small and large musical ensembles alike. But for me, the most sophisticated communication in such contexts takes place through the music itself, when subtle and verbally indescribable nuances can be suggested and negotiated whilst the music is being played. I have found that in the rehearsal setting (itself a mode of performance) these interactions can be intense, transforming the musical experience. An ensemble large enough to be called an orchestra is a complex social organism, and the variety of expressive interactions present during the process of rehearsing and making artistic decisions can be stimulating, challenging and sometimes unexpected. At best, it is a highly charged, artistically creative environment where multilayered, simultaneous exchanges take place. The reciprocal nature of these exchanges is often suggested by the music itself and is mirrored in the act of rehearsing and performing. In a larger orchestra, where players cannot hear each other well enough to play without potentially endangering ensemble or balance, a silent conductor indicating time and character is essential. Many repertoires and associated venues require an individual who can be seen by all musicians and who can take responsibility for an artistic overview. The pit at Bayreuth, for example, is designed not so that orchestral players can hear each other, but rather for the audience’s acoustic experience. In these circumstances, no single player has an overview of the whole performance; rather, each musician contributes through technical skill on an instrument that is mediated via visual signals from the conductor and somewhat limited aural . This does not necessarily diminish the experience for each player,

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however. Even from the back of an orchestra pit in an opera house, it is still possible to know and feel whether the performance is exceptional rather than merely adequate. The role of complex social encounters within a large ensemble playing repertoire composed during the decades before the era of silent conducting is worthy of special consideration. This music was not composed with the necessity of a conductor in mind. All of Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies and most of Beethoven’s fall into this category. These works have become core repertoire for period instrument orchestras. It is within such ensembles that I have had the privilege of participating and observing the minutiae of social interactions and their profound effect on performances. For many reasons, a conductor is often in charge of this earlier repertoire, bringing an individual artistic interpretation into the rehearsal process and the concert performance. But the conductor’s presence also entails a distinctive hierarchy, which inevitably redefines the internal social dynamics of the ensemble. When musicians work together, they develop an understanding of the whole score, not only of their own individual line. Within this social network (when the group is functioning well), the control of the flow and drama of the music es between instruments, and each player takes on a remarkable variety of roles. These roles involve leading and following, switching between one and the other, and exploring the middle ground in a complex world of exchanges, where (unlike spoken conversation) more than one musical debate can happen simultaneously and intelligibly. To offer just a few examples, the role of an individual line in an ensemble can, at any one moment, be melodic, structural, soloistic or accompanimental; it can influence rhythmic ebb and flow, or underpin the harmonic foundation. In my experience, through understanding the function of these various elements, a good chamber orchestra knows—sometimes instinctively, sometimes assisted by direction—how to apportion responsibility and to define the role of individual lines in order to enable the music to ‘speak’. These musical interactions, which are implicit in the language of the classical period, mirror the Enlightenment itself. The classical style of the late eighteenth century appears to play out new social conventions through sonata form. Certain typical patterns of reciprocal phrases, contrasting material, small-scale gestures, harmonic events and the arch of the tonic–dominant polarity of sonata form itself all contribute to a world of musical social encounters played out in and through music. In both rehearsal and performance, individual musicians and sections thereof express these aspects of classical form as social acts. An audience goes to a concert to see as well as to hear these encounters take place on stage, and it can appreciate the role of the social both in the performance and potentially in the music itself. In some rehearsal formats, the social dynamic of the ensemble can be such that each player feels empowered to contribute by making suggestions about how to shape the interpretation. However, it is crucial to know when it

Insight: Margaret Faultless

is appropriate to contribute. Otherwise, the results can be unwieldy, which is unsatisfying as well as simply inefficient. Often there does need to be someone in charge of the process. In order to maximize the creative potential of the whole group, it is essential that a style of leadership conducive to collaborative interaction be developed. The more I experience being led by a player–director or by directing ensembles myself, the more convinced I am that overprescriptive rehearsal techniques and overmarked musical material can inhibit creativity. Such approaches attempt to define a performance before it happens and even disregard the nature of an individual group of players. The instructions ‘loud–soft’, ‘short– long’ or ‘fast–slow’ are not creatively stimulating and rarely engage colleagues’ respect for long. It is more creative and inspiring to rehearse the possible nature of a performance suggested by the notation (treating it as a map, not a blueprint), rather than to propose a single interpretation that ostensibly would suffice for every performance and venue. Combinations of these possibilities can then result in a unique performance that does not rely only on preformed decisions as to exactly how to play each phrase. Once a common musical language is defined between players through the rehearsal process (and after working out technically challenging ages), the performance itself becomes a conversation, a multilevel exchange of simultaneous ideas. The shared understanding that develops of the music’s structure ensures that these exchanges between players remain unchaotic and stay within a range of intelligible social interaction. Such creative spontaneity and flexibility has been well documented and described as a mode of performance in the case of the solo performer. But it can be extended to much larger ensembles and, I would argue, could become an essential tool in the work of any chamber orchestra. As good creative practice, this would enable every participating musician to experience the rehearsal and performance process as one in which they can influence and mould the performance, and one in which the social dynamics of the ensemble can promote and help to realize the creative potential of musicians and listeners alike.

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Insight

Making connections Helen Reid

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When I think about experiences which have shaped my life as a musician and as a pianist, I inevitably come back to an injury that I suffered which nearly ended my career before it had begun. I was fifteen and had just started to study at a music school. I was diligent and enthusiastic, practising for up to four or five hours a day. Eventually I started to feel pain in my right arm, and this developed into tendonitis. Over the next four years, I continued to play, interspersed with periods of rest and trips to various specialists, but the injury grew worse rather than better. The irony was that I had begun to excel as a pianist. During the time when my injury was at its worst, I won concerto competitions, performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto with the Hallé Orchestra and my school orchestra; I was also a keyboard finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. On the outside I seemed to be flying, but in private I was suffering both physically and mentally from the strain of the injury. I couldn’t write, I could barely lift anything, and all my strength was poured into being able to continue to play. Secretly, I despaired of my pianistic future, feeling that I was living on borrowed time with my playing. Many stories of injuries do not have happy endings, but my story does. I was extremely fortunate to meet wonderful piano teachers who analysed my physical approach to the instrument, as a result of which I started to alter the way I was playing. At the same time, I met a very skilful osteopath who treated the physical injury. I realize now that this two-pronged approach was the only thing that possibly could have cured the injury. One would not have worked without the other. Now, some twenty years later, I no longer view this period as entirely negative: instead, I see it as a positive experience that enabled me to grow as a person, musician and teacher. As less was known about musicians’ injuries at the time I was suffering, I had to explore many avenues to learn more about how to improve the physical symptoms. In addition to receiving treatment from various practitioners, I began to closely examine my physical relationship with the piano. I started to realize that I was playing pieces without enough regard for my physical

Insight: Helen Reid

shape, in particular my very small hands. Now, I am especially aware of the repertoire that I choose to perform and that I recommend for my students. This is not as simple as avoiding ‘big’ pieces which could be considered unsuitable for small hands. Whether large or small, hands have different shapes and stretches between the fingers. In fact, I have noticed that students with larger hands sometimes find pieces with bigger spaces between the notes challenging, because they rarely have to move their wrist in order to manage stretches; therefore, they can lack the flexibility of those with smaller hands, who often have to compensate. On a more holistic level, I started to connect my knowledge of the whole body to produce the best sound in the most economical manner. I learned that a relaxed arm, a free wrist and firm fingers mean a stronger connection with the keyboard and a greater range of sound. Through lessons in Alexander Technique, yoga and Pilates, I began to bring the rest of my body into this process, which meant that playing the piano became comfortable and a source of physical pleasure. With physical relaxation came mental relaxation. When I felt nervous, I could use the physicality of playing the piano to calm my mental state. I would look for places in a work—a forte chord, for example—where I knew I could relax my whole body into the keyboard. This, in turn, would counter the physical and emotional symptoms of my nerves. In my playing and my teaching, I try to ensure that musical gestures are inextricably linked with physical gestures; not only does this make the overall shape and structure of a work more convincing, but it also means that I endeavour to use my body ‘musically’ at all times, rather than engaging in an excessive physical approach with the risk of injury. With regard to practice, for many years I was forced from my established routine of practising some four hours a day to a maximum of two hours. However, my desire to play had become so heightened, and my appreciation and desire for that practice time so strong, that I began to achieve more, or certainly no less, in that time than I had done previously. My physical practice became immensely focused. I also employed more mental practice techniques, such as analysing harmonic and musical structure, and memorizing compositions away from the instrument. Alongside this I learned more about the historical and biographical contexts of the pieces. Developing the scholarly side of my work as a musician inspired me to embark on a Master’s degree and conduct some additional research projects, which further enhanced and inspired my playing and teaching. The emotional impact of the injury on my playing is much harder to disentangle. Playing the piano had always been an emotional outlet, and naturally I poured the myriad emotions that I felt during this time—a depth of emotion that, at the age of fifteen, I had never experienced before—into my playing in one or more ways. This seemed to give my performances greater

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depth, and I felt that I began to develop a stronger connection with the works I was playing. I entitled this essay ‘Making connections’ because, reflecting on the last twenty years, I realize that this is what now characterizes my playing and teaching. If a musical journey through a piece is to be most convincing at least for the individual performer, then I believe that physical gesture needs to connect with musical intention. Making physical and emotional connections in this way means that playing the instrument is a constant journey as well as a joy, and it may also allow audiences to connect more deeply with my performances. Such connections are also an excellent way to avoid subjecting oneself to the kinds of injury that I suffered from and that afflict so many musicians in the making.

PART 3

Creative dialogue and reflection

12

Reflection and the classical musician PRACTICE IN CULTURAL CONTEXT

Mary Hunter and Stephen Broad The musician who has surrendered his will to tradition has lost all hope of keeping the tradition alive. —Rosen (2002: 18) The notion of reflective practice is implicit in all of the chapters of this book, to the extent that they are describing or calling for critical thinking about the core elements of (mostly) classical music in different learning contexts—lessons, practice, ensemble rehearsals, performances and assessments. In this chapter, we want to put certain kinds of reflection into a slightly broader historical and philosophical context. In particular, we wish to consider how the ideologies of classical music, which have been the underpinning of western musical training since the nineteenth century, might or might not be present in the kind of reflection in which classical performers engage, and might distinguish reflective practice in classical music from that in other genres. We hope that by identifying some elements of these musicians’ mental and imaginative habits and practices as socially constructed or culturally determined, we might help to encourage a sort of meta-reflection which could broaden the seemingly ‘natural’ assumptions that underlie many classical musicians’ approaches to practice and interpretation, and which could have a liberating effect as a consequence. Indeed, if critical thinking in and through musical practice is closely connected to the idea of an artist’s constantly evolving frames of reference, the cultural and ideological frame of the kind of music that he or she plays is as important as any other. We operate under the assumption that to take the core values of classical music explicitly and critically into in reflective practice is essential to the way practising musicians understand and respond to the changing world. This chapter, then, is partially ethnographic, to the extent that it is based on the observations and comments of performers as they reflect on what they do. These observations and comments come both from student practice diaries at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (hereafter RCS) and from a series of

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semistructured interviews with professional musicians, which were carried out as part of a project on the discourse of classical music performance.1 Although the specific focus on RCS students and a small sample of professional musicians is inevitably limiting, we hope that our conclusions will have some resonance for those studying and teaching in other conservatoires and in university music departments, as well as for classical performers outside these learning contexts.

Classical music ideology The core ideology on which these classical-music-focused educational settings have traditionally rested relies on a canon of deified composers and reified works—the ‘classics’ of so-called classical music. The fact that certain composers and works come into or fall out of favour and that the ‘standard repertoire’ constantly evolves does not alter the ontological status of composers and works within this ideology. Indeed, the periodically fierce battles over what should be included in the canon (music by women? by people of colour? works in ‘popular’ styles?) only prove how important the idea of a canon is to the institution of classical music.2 What interests us here more than the contents of the canon, however, is the fact of its existence, together with the ways in which the genre-specific notions of dead, though ultimately authoritative, composers and unique, more or less fixed works preserved in scores may affect how classical musicians think about what they are doing.

COMMONALITIES BETWEEN REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN CLASSICAL MUSIC AND OTHER IDIOMS Clearly much reflective practice in classical music is not, and has no reason to be, very different from that in any other genre where the performers have significant professional ambitions. All serious musicians in all traditions reflect on questions such as whether a performance speaks to those listening to it, whether it is emotionally satisfying to the performer(s), whether it is adequately rehearsed, how to prepare an effective performance efficiently, whether nerves get in the way, whether the ensemble (if there is one) works well together, whether the performer(s) are in the right physical shape for the performance, whether the performance represents the overall style of music adequately, how a given performance might fit into a career trajectory, and so forth. For none of these questions does the ideology of the canon or the discourse of classical music impinge in any obviously distinct way on how classical musicians think about music-making, and perhaps that is why a fair proportion of the performance studies literature makes no, or few, distinctions between classical music and other kinds of music taught in relatively formal situations like conservatoires.3

Reflection and the classical musician

For example, when Anna, a postgraduate student at the RCS,4 critiqued a recording of her accompanying, she was obviously referring to a general stylistic framework of ‘classical song-accompanying as it is currently practised’. However, that is not in principle any different from the rock guitarist experimenting with how much distortion to add to a solo riff to make it both individual and stylistically idiomatic. Anna’s reflection thus can serve as a generically acceptable example of the species: An essential aspect that was missing in most songs was the variety of colour. No matter how loud I thought the bass was from my perspective, it could have been much more and this would have helped the depth and colour needed in most songs. Also, upper voicing needed more ‘ping’ in chords and not just equal weight applied to all notes. I could be a more active member of the duo and in driving the song, rather than being ive and simply following the singer. Similarly, the comments about nerves by her colleague Sophia could come from a young (or not so young) musician in any tradition: This performance class showed me the importance of overcoming my nerves, as even though Hilda and I performed exactly the same piece as before a couple of months ago in front of John and the strings students, I was more nervous and therefore was not as happy with how I played… The problem with nerves that I find is that they’re almost completely random in how they strike—for example, when I played a concerto with orchestra last summer I was nervous, but the exhilaration of the performance was such that I got over them very quickly, whereas during this small performance class, which was effectively a showcase for new prospective students, I was pretty nervous throughout my performance for no good reason that I could work out.

PARTICULARITIES OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN CLASSICAL MUSIC However, once reflection turns to interpretative rather than to social, physical or practical questions, and the focus is a specific work or works, the issue of the cultural-ideological frame of reflection becomes more interesting.5 The verbal discourse of classical music quite routinely raises three issues peculiar to, or at least highly characteristic of, this genre. The first involves a concern to divine from a printed score and then to do justice to (or ‘respect’) ‘the composer’s intentions’. The locution ‘what did he mean or could he have meant by this articulation or dynamic marking?’ is ubiquitous in classical music practice, and it testifies to the fundamental sense of a coherent and ostensibly single intention behind the notation. In nonclassical western music, only tribute bands,

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which aim to recreate the performances of their heroes in every sonic and visual detail, raise comparable questions about original intent. However, because the aim of a tribute performance is typically reproduction rather than interpretation, and because the sources for the performances are audio and video recordings rather than printed scores, the performers are not usually caught on the horns of the same dilemmas as classical performers. Secondly, concern about the propriety of the overt intrusion of ‘ego’ in performance and interpretation is especially acute in classical music.6 One professional classical musician who took part in the interview study noted that part of his maturation involved getting his ‘ego in the right place’, by which he meant not on display during his performances, and not his primary concern. As classical musicians, we figure ourselves as being engaged in the ‘realization of … elements’ sometimes evident, sometimes hidden within a musical composition,7 rather than in the creation of a ‘cover version’ of a work, in which the point is precisely not to render the performance transparent to an imagined original, but to change the original in ways that blatantly identify it as now the possession of the current performer. The need to moderate the overt intervention of one’s personality as a performer is both explicit and implicit in many kinds of discourse about classical performance. For example, in a philosophical essay on the ethics of (classical) musical performance, Urmson (1995) describes the problematics of being ‘faithful’ to dead composers whose written indications are radically incomplete, yet he goes on to reinforce both the authority of the composer and the subordinate position of the performer: I think it is deplorable that there should be arrogant performers who believe that the satisfactions of their individualities, their artistic visions, or what you will, are of such central importance that all other considerations can be legitimately ignored by them… We should be glad that, on the whole, we live in a time when performers, unlike operatic and theatrical directors[,] … do in general take their responsibilities seriously. (Urmson 1995: 163–4) Finally, using the score rather than other media or oral tradition as the primary repository of truth is also particularly characteristic of classical music. Rosen writes, ‘The eminent value of the score—the theoretical structure of pitch and rhythm with some of the other aspects of music indicated generally in a somewhat cursory fashion—is, I think, unique to Western music’ (2012: 34). He gives further weight to the score, stating that ‘there are many different ways of realizing the score, but they are all realizations of the same work, which in fact remains invariant—remains, we might say, visible but inaudible behind all these realizations’ (ibid.: 28). Professional musicians who participated in the semistructured interviews8 reported here often referred to score study as a primary source of interpretative conviction and artistic bona fides. For example, a violist


described using Simon Rowland-Jones’s heavily annotated editions of the Haydn quartets as follows: These editions are fantastic. They are not definitive; he’s taken the most direct sources he could… He cites all the different sources. And then it gives you this wonderful freedom of choice … and that’s really fun… And, I mean, you start to gain authority… It comes from really really really doing as much as you can to research and expose yourself to different things. And a professional pianist noted: It’s taken me fifteen years to deal on the one hand with my ego, which was inflated… My values shifted … towards ‘oh, what’s the music doing’… Partly that happened because of people I came into with… One in particular pointed me back to the music, she pointed me back to the score, and basically told me … ‘look at how these things connect, look at where this phrase goes…’ Recordings, live performances by other artists, and the lore of teachers and other authority figures—the oral traditions of this genre—are often described as important, even indispensable. However, despite (or, some would say, because of) its relative paucity of detailed information about performance, the score is felt to be the ultimate arbiter of interpretative limits in ways that are unique to this genre. Rosen, for example, writes, ‘it is the basic antagonism of score and performance, of concept and realization, that is the glory of Western music’ (2012: 27). Underlying all discussions of the ontological status of the score is not only the idea that there are such constant entities as works, which exist to be ‘recreated’, ‘brought to life’ or even ‘reproduced’ in performance,9 but also the notion that performances d as being of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony have an obligation to fall within a penumbra of possibilities limited by the score.10 Most important for everyday practice is the notion embedded in this discourse that works are hierarchically above performances—that is, works (however defined) are both more important and more capacious than performances of them (Levinson 1996). In other words, ‘the work’ embodies intentions (what kinds and at what level is a point of discussion), at least some of which need to be made evident for the performance to be ‘of’ that work; therefore, the performer has relatively limited freedom to display his or her ‘personality’. A review of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, for example, notes: ‘The Academy found every nuance in the music’ (Furones 2013; italics added), again implying that performers tease meanings out of something preexisting and with a finite range of implication, rather than adding personally or culturally meaningful elements to an incomplete and malleable set of suggestions.

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ALTERNATIVE MODELS TO WORK- AND COMPOSER- CENTRICITY There are, of course, musicologists and philosophers who propose alternative models: the ethnomusicologist Christopher Small, for example, has baldly and provocatively suggested that ‘there is no such thing as music’, replacing ‘music as thing’ with ‘music as social process’. The philosopher Stan Godlovitch has also taken a broader view of performance, including classical; he suggests that in practice ‘the performer–listener axis [carries] more weight than the performer–composer pair’, and that ‘the work, in action-centred conceptions, becomes one means of marshalling various skills eager, so to speak, to issue forth in acoustic gifts to receptive beneficiaries’ (1998: 50). In other words, the work is more a vehicle for shaping and displaying the performer’s technical and expressive means than a more or less static object to be ‘reconstituted’ in performance. Finally, the phenomenologist philosopher Bruce Ellis Benson (2003) also takes a more fluid attitude to the relation of works and performances, setting up a model of continuous improvisation, ed from composer to performer to listener. However, while influential in certain circles, these incursions do not seem to have had a very profound or pervasive effect on most professional and semiprofessional critical discourse about classical music performance, let alone on the habits of thought prevalent among many musicians. Indeed, among practitioners, examples of the prevailing ideology of service to an authoritative composer and reified, if also capacious, works are common in instructions given to students or in descriptions of their own senses of the task of interpretation. Consider, for example, the remarks of cellist Steven Doane in an interview with Tim Janof: Janof: Is there such a thing as a wrong interpretation? Doane: I would say the only interpretation you could say was wrong is one where there is a blatant disregard of the text. If somebody ignores tempo markings, articulation indications, and dynamic markings, showing a real carelessness for these elements, and if it’s obvious that the performer comes first and the composer comes second, then his or her interpretation shouldn’t even be dignified by the term ‘interpretation’. (Janof 1995; italics added) A violinist who took part in the interview study similarly described the need to strip one’s work of ‘mannerisms’, a term also used pejoratively by the pianist Susan Tomes when she writes, ‘We always believe we’re sincerely free of mannerisms and ing fancies’ (Tomes 2010: 261). By describing certain kinds of personal musical choices or behaviours as ‘mannerisms’, both the violinist and Tomes speak to the ideology of restraining what are believed to be purely personal (and perhaps even selfish) interventions in the work-text, because what


the performer is perceived as doing ostensibly should not draw attention away from whatever is understood as ‘the work itself’.

THE WERKTREUE MODEL IN PRACTICE In the heat of musical practice, teachers, coaches and other musicians in instructional or explanatory positions tend to be less explicit about the discourse of Werktreue (fidelity to the work) and self-denial. We tend to address interpretative problems in of what will project to an audience, or what lends sufficient contrast or character to a age, without ever explaining the criteria for ‘sufficient’ or why we think the music ‘demands’ this or that expressive nuance from the performer. In addition, and perhaps not surprisingly in this context, the reflective practices of young and developing musicians quite often seem to skirt or short-change the questions of expression and interpretation that might invoke this ideology. Hultberg, for example, notes: In a study on Danish piano students, Nielsen (1996) found that, to a large extent, they direct their attention towards mastering technical problems in order to play correctly, rather than towards expressivity. This concerned their reflections on both performances of their own and those of fellow-students. Case studies of the self-regulated learning strategies of two Norwegian organ students showed that these concentrated mainly on solving instrumental-technical problems and paid little attention to musical expression… (2008: 8) Nor is this weighting of practice and reflection towards the practical and technical confined to younger musicians. Chaffin and Logan (2006), studying a seasoned professional pianist’s rehearsal strategies in learning, performing and recording the last movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto, noted that considerations of interpretation and expression came very late in the process, and their article (ittedly focused on questions of long- and short-term memorization and performance cues) suggests no explicit concern about Werktreue or the relative importance of the performer’s own expressive/interpretative ideas in the process of developing the performance. Another of Chaffin’s studies using the same data notes the difficulty of a demand for explicit acknowledgement of the ideology: ‘practice behaviour almost certainly contains theoretically important information about practice that the musician does not or cannot provide in self-reports’ (Chaffin and Imreh 2001: 66; italics added). The authors (one of whom, Gabriela Imreh, was the pianist in the study) observe that the subject’s practice behaviour included little time working over her dynamics and phrasing—key elements of interpretation, particularly when playing Bach on the modern piano. This suggests that decisions about the allowable and appropriate range and placement of dynamics and the quality of the phrasing had been made according to some set of cultural and musical conventions either before

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the practice had even begun or in the course of learning the piece, as a result of well-sedimented and unexamined assumptions. The relative lack of time spent on developing the approach to dynamics and phrasing as such does not mean that the performer did not think about them at some point, but rather that such interpretative questions and the larger historical and ideological issues they raise may not be easily accessible, interesting or urgent to the performer in the process of practising. Hultberg notes further: The close connection between musical expression and tradition-based knowledge taken for granted may be one reason why many of the students participating in [Hultberg’s study of students’ practice techniques] paid little attention to their own strategies for developing musical expressivity. Another reason may be the emotional character of musical expression. Because of this, it belongs to a very personal domain of the individual musicians, and it is difficult to verbalize. (2008: 10; italics added) In other words, what we seem to have is a situation where classical music practitioners, if asked, will refer to the default ideology embedded in classical music discourse, but where, in actual practice, that ideology is experienced as secondary to, or hidden behind, the more urgent and ‘pan-generic’ concerns of presenting a performance for a given audience in a given situation. There is, nonetheless, some evidence that, although the core notions of deified composers and reified works are not often explicitly acknowledged by musicians in the course of their activities, they are guiding principles. Most empirical studies of how professional or proto-professional musicians learn and prepare classical music tend to focus on questions of memory, practice segmentation and the distribution of time in practice sessions.11 However, some such studies do acknowledge—if briefly—the importance of the cultural and institutional context in which the practice and preparation take place. Sloboda, for example, notes: ‘expert performance is the result of the interaction of specific knowledge of [a] piece alone with general knowledge acquired over a wide range of musical experience’ (1985: 94; italics added). Miklaszewski, in a classic and seminal study of practice (1989), is more specific about the role of the underlying ideological premises: ‘The starting situation was therefore that of a musician receiving the message from the composer in the form of the musical score … and possessing enough cultural and professional experience to transform it into a musically intelligible acoustical message’ (ibid.: 98; italics added). These articles, however, quite conspicuously omit any consideration of the nature of the ‘cultural and professional experience’ that informs the interpretative aspect of the practice. Some digging is therefore necessary to reveal these values. An unusually detailed and reflective age by Gerald Moore exemplifies how, even when completely implicit, the threefold ideology of divining the composer’s intention, minimizing the overt presence of the self, and working with abstract ideas


profoundly informs the way he thought about the brief piano introduction to Schubert’s ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’ D. 768: Dynamically this little Vorspiel is all pianissimo but within the bounds of that pianissimo there must be a slight increase or swelling of tone and a subsequent reduction of tone. It is a curve—rising then falling; the smoothest of curves with one chord ed to the next. So restricted in range is it, so narrow the margin between your softest chord and your least soft chord that if you go one fraction over the limit at the top of your curve all is ruined. Each chord though related and ed to its neighbour is a different weight, differing by no more than a feather. You listen selfcritically as you practise it. You experiment. You play it giving each chord a uniform and gentle pressure so that there is no rise and fall of tone—all pianissimo. You then try to give it that infinitesimal crescendo and diminuendo that is really wanted to give shape and meaning to the phrase: but it is out of proportion—you have overdone it—so you start again. Now you find that your chords are muddy, your pedalling is faulty, one chord treses on another’s preserves instead of gently merging into it without blurring. You work at this. (Moore 1966: 179–80; English-language italics and underlining added) The segments that we have underlined clearly figure the phrase as having objective qualities ‘put there’ by Schubert, and thus requiring Moore to ‘realize’ what the composer obviously intended, rather than choosing or inventing devices pleasing to the pianist himself. His phraseology is, tellingly, not, ‘one way to make sense of this is to extend the marked crescendo–decrescendo in bar 1 to cover the whole two-bar phrase’, but rather, ‘it is a curve’ and ‘there must be’ such a swell. This phraseology immediately figures the performer as serving the music rather than creating it. The majority of Moore’s work, then, comes in realizing a sound-image that he attributes to Schubert’s authorship, or at least to stylistic habits native to that repertoire; there is no evidence in this age of his making a decision about how the phrase goes, or (of course) about how he might have come to that decision. The erasure, or at least eliding, of his own authorship of the phrase is entirely characteristic of classical music culture. Indeed, according to Clarke (2011), elements of performance that could be considered interpretative sometimes seem to be added more or less unconsciously by performers. The bulk of Moore’s reflection involves how to get the effect that he attributes to ‘the music’. His lovely image of the chords differing by the weight of a feather (italicized above) demonstrates the abstract quality of working from a score in a manner that is characteristic of classical music. It is common for performers to use striking physical descriptions with no literal relation to anything evident on the page to help them embody and thus personalize both this otherwise disembodied sound-image and the otherwise

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rather unhuman process of attaching themselves to the musical gestures in the score.12 To be sure, performers of all genres of music will often use physical imagery to achieve a certain sound, but the lack of a referent here (no simultaneous text, no explicit stylistic context, little indication in the score) emphasizes the extent of the physical imagination necessary in classical music to translate the page to the stage. Moore, of course, was a mature professional when he wrote these words, and a lifetime of thinking and reflective practice lies behind them. He could probably have given a fascinating answer to the question of who or what the agent of the demands that he sensed in this little phrase was, but he did not feel the need to ask himself the question as at that point his thinking about it fell into Hultberg’s category of ‘tradition-based knowledge taken for granted’.

SPECIAL INSTANCE: MUSICIANS IN THE MAKING AND CLASSICAL IDEOLOGY What about younger musicians today? Do they seem to make the same assumptions as Moore? If Moore belonged to the ‘it goes like this’ school, rather than the ‘I have made a conscious choice to do it this way’ school, how do musicians in the making deal with the questions of agency and authority highlighted in our reading of Moore’s reflections? Moore lived at a time when classical music was still uncritically taken as the ne plus ultra of music, at least in formal and academic settings, and when classical musicians typically did not play other kinds of music and were certainly not expected to.13 Today’s young musicians live in a world where classical music has a very slender share of the market and declining cultural capital, and is almost certainly not the only music on their phones or other devices. Thus the fundamental and ‘default’ values of the genre are at least potentially open to question by them in ways that may not be so easily accessed by their teachers or, indeed, through the disciplines of philosophy and music criticism; in other words, the special qualities and underlying ideologies of classical music may, in some ways, be more readily perceived by them than by performers of Moore’s generation. Before looking at further examples of student reflection, it should be noted that when our small sample of RCS students engaged in free journal-writing, the majority of their observations echoed the bias towards technical issues noted above. However, in cases where students were asked to focus more closely on questions of interpretation or to document the preparation of a single piece, their relation to these values came to the surface more clearly. Cynthia, for example, recorded her thoughts about what sort of cadenza to play in a Mozart violin concerto, comparing the cadenzas of James Ehnes and Leopold Auer: I believe it all comes to down to a matter of taste and I can see the pros and cons for both cadenzas. Personally, I find the James Ehnes cadenza


fits the simple and modest character of the rest of the music and develops the themes in the concerto without over-exaggerating in a way that seems distasteful and overdone. The Auer, however, I find contains too much technical difficulty and bravado that does not seem fitting with the character of the rest of the music. I think the important words here are the ‘character’ of the music rather than ‘style’ of the music. I believe the quality of the music should come first, and not the issue of ‘authenticity’ and what Mozart would have wanted. This age clearly documents some struggle with what Cynthia feels to be her rightful place in relation to the music. On the one hand, she understands the music to have an inherently ‘simple and modest’ character, and her determination that the Auer cadenza is essentially too flashy to be commensurate with that character would probably find broad agreement. In other words, she is working within the well-understood norms of current classical music culture in determining both the character of the music and the commensurability of the Auer cadenza. Although she does not say so explicitly, Cynthia might in principle be thought to agree that it would not serve the ‘composer’s intentions’ well to include a cadenza that by general agreement did not fit the body of the movement. On the other hand, she quite consciously does not make this leap, because she seems to be struggling with the distinction between ‘character’ and ‘style’, the former being something that she identifies with and perhaps feels some control over, and the latter apparently being something that through her musical formation in the ‘classical’ world she has come to see as related to the composer’s intentions, and that she cannot or will not ‘make her own’ as she ponders a suitable cadenza. Book-learned ‘authenticity’ seems to be rejected as a criterion for choosing a prewritten cadenza. At the same time, it also seems to become a spur for thinking about writing her own: However, Eva Badura-Skoda et al. have made me question the appropriateness of performing a pre-existing cadenza in the first place. The solution to this would be to attempt to write my own cadenza, which, after researching the classical approach, seems more appropriate. By referring to the information I have researched on the compositional process and structure, I feel like this is something that is achievable. Like much on-the-fly thinking, Cynthia’s ideas are not completely consistent or coherent, but what very clearly comes out of this age is a desire to make sense of the music on what feels like her own , even if that means rejecting what she perceives as an institutionally powerful concern with historical truth. However, when historical truth s a more creative personal involvement with the music, in the form of writing her own cadenza, she invokes it. In other words, she is aware (at least to a certain extent) of the default ideologies of classical music, particularly concerning a respect for history and the

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supposed intentions of the composer, but she feels free to use them only on an ‘as-needed’ basis. Another student, referred to here as Pedro, also struggles with his role as an interpreter: It is essential to me that the performer understands and makes sense of the music on their own. The aim should be to translate the composer’s intentions into their own understanding. It is completely unrealistic to think that as soon as you open a Beethoven score, all of his thoughts and intentions will be transferred to you and you will understand their meaning just as he did through some sort of osmosis! We need to make sure as performers that we make sense of his writing in our own way. My experience suggests that the best approach to this is to try and work out what you think before beginning reading and potentially being swayed with too many diverse opinions on how others have understood Beethoven’s intentions. Certainly it is important to learn from others but playing the piano is a very personal thing and I know that if an idea comes from me the sincerity will translate itself into the performance. This does not mean that we should disregard how Beethoven wanted his sonatas to be played, not at all. Brendel encapsulates this well: ‘Free elements—fire, water and air—will not carry us unless we have first practised our steps on firm ground. We follow rules in order to make new exceptions more impressive’.14 This student lays out with quite touching specificity both the tension between his own sense of the music and what he takes to be Beethoven’s intentions, and the need to try to make ‘Beethoven’s intentions’ his own, so that he can be in some sense authentic to himself and also true to Beethoven. The Brendel quote suggests that the way in which this student conceptualizes his relation to Beethoven is as a movement from more literal ‘obedience’ to a more creative approach, or at least one integrated with his own ideas. The comment about working things out by oneself before reading the critical literature (and perhaps also listening to recordings) indicates that he is acutely aware of the limits on ‘plausible’ or ‘acceptable’ interpretation in this world, and wants to stake out a bit of territory that feels ‘sincere’ before having that territory reshaped by received opinion about the music. What we do not know from this, of course, is how these generalizations about finding one’s place in a confined interpretative space actually play out in his moment-to-moment decisions about a specific work, to be performed under specific circumstances; this would be an interesting topic for further enquiry. Another student, Angus, confronted with the vexed question of changing timpani parts in music written before the widespread use of pedal timpani, also described dealing with the tension between his understanding of what the composer actually wrote and his own sense of how the music ‘should’ go.


His discussion centres on the question of which changes are ‘necessary’ to the music, and how he determined this supposed necessity for change: When performing this piece, I try to change as few notes as possible. This is to keep it as close to [the] composer’s original part as possible… The goal is to make changes that are almost unnoticeable but are changed to benefit the music. However, different timpanists have their own view on this. There are the purists, who change absolutely nothing in the parts as playing exactly what the composer has asked. An example of this is in [the] Chicago Symphony Orchestra recording with Riccardo Muti. There are the conservative timpanists, where I would class myself, who only change notes that are absolutely necessary. But making an informed change based on what is necessary to the music. And there are the extremists, who change any and every note possible and actually begin to compose their own parts, disregarding the composer’s intentions. I studied the score long before the first rehearsal, and listened to the piece until it was part of me, so I could make an artistically informed decision whether or not a note change was necessary. After this, at the first rehearsal, I had a brief word with the conductor to ask if I could implement some of the changes. It is important to be on the same as the conductor as, like timpanists, every conductor has their own view. If they do permit it, I must be 100% sure that the changes I am making are correct or risk losing the trust of the conductor, and also the orchestra. Like Pedro, Angus prioritizes coming to his own understanding of the music before making any final decisions, but he is less self-conscious than Pedro about the unfixed and latent nature of the music before his own interventions; he seems to think of ‘the music’ as something whole and complete that he can internalize. Like the philosopher Urmson, he has nothing but scorn for timpanists who disregard the composer’s intentions by ‘compos[ing] their own parts’. Interestingly, though, at the same time as he clearly needs to feel that he is channelling the composer’s intentions in his own decisions, the politics of the timpanist’s relation with the conductor seem to take priority over his own interpretation of the composer’s intentions, however thoroughly considered. In other words, although Angus’s sense of his place in the music is constrained both by his intuiting of the composer’s intentions and by the predispositions of the conductor, he nonetheless feels the need to be able to ‘own’, or identify with, the choices he has made. The pressure of circumstances is even clearer in the following reflection by a violinist, Joanne, on playing Bach: I need to work out exactly how I am going to perform this piece. Playing to different audiences will affect this. If it is an exam on baroque, of course I will mainly play with a baroque style, yet for a recital I am not

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sure exactly what I will do. Bach is confusing as each teacher teaches it differently, each performer performs it differently, each scholar has different opinions on authenticity. At this stage in my violin career, I am more inclined to use both teachings from the modern and baroque schools on my modern violin. I find playing Bach on a modern violin much more exciting and the creation of colours is endless with the right technique and knowledge. On the one hand, Joanne exemplifies Small’s notion (1998: 17) that the meanings made in a performance in one kind of venue for one kind of audience are different from those created in other venues and for other audiences, but at the same time she goes beyond Small in suggesting that her performance choices may be quite different from one circumstance to another. What is interesting about this from the perspective of the ideology of classical music is how she shows an awareness of a way of playing (‘baroque’) that presumably invokes the composer’s intentions—or at least his acoustic and interpretative horizons—as essential criteria for interpretative choices, but she uses it only as an ingredient in a more mixed, even discursive, approach. This approach to interpretation seems, at least rhetorically, to assume more overt agency and authority over her decisions than is evident in, for example, the age from Gerald Moore that we quoted above, and indeed this quite explicit shouldering of agency is characteristic of all the student reflections that we have included here, though they exhibit various degrees of tension about the relation of performer agency to composer intention. Once again, it is not clear how this sense of agency would play out in the details of a particular interpretation—that is, how much felt difference there is between Moore’s implicit ‘this is how it goes’ and these students’ ‘I make a conscious choice to play it this way’ when they work on the details of an interpretation.

Conclusions and directions for further research We have suggested that the traditional (that is, nineteenth-century) ideology of classical music performance, though rarely explicit in reflective practice, does inform and frame decisions about, and attitudes to, interpretation in ways that may distinguish classical music performance from that in some other genres. We would suggest that because of the twin demands of Werktreue and selfexpression at the core of classical music ideology, questions of performer agency and authority may be more acute than in other genres, at least in the interpretative process. There is, however, no comparative empirical work to this suggestion, and this is worth further investigation. The differences in rhetoric between Moore and the RCS students may be a matter of chance, as well as of age and experience, but we would also suggest the possibility that


changes in the social place of classical music, as well as an emphasis on both more reflective and more creative practice in conservatoire studies (if not more generally), may have made these young performers more conscious of, as well as more confident in, their agency and authority to make interpretative decisions and/or to view interpretation as a more explicitly discursive process, a dialogue with the material and the context. A segment from the practice diary of Sarah, a student at a liberal arts college in the USA rather than a conservatoire in the UK, and unprompted by explicit questions about agency and authority, may suggest something of this process: No doubt the aspects of myself that I used are different from any other performer’s, which makes my interpretation unique. I also it that this must have distorted the piece from what the composer created. But the composer is not powerless in the interpretation of a piece; a piece is written in a way to suggest particular interpretations through dynamics, form, phrasing, etc. … Music requires engagement of the individual in order to be active and alive. So in the future I hope I can somehow better train myself to stay absolutely engaged throughout the performance and to not have … intermittent lapses. I was a little terrified because I felt like I had lost control over what was happening! One of the interesting things about this age is the way in which Sarah associates a creative engagement with the music with a sense of control that has to do with her own agency and decisions rather than the inarguable demands of the music. Obviously, our sample size is too small to indicate whether these comments are a generational matter or simply a case of individual attitudes, but the question is clearly worth additional study. Further work might also show to what extent (if at all) the structures of conservatoires and other formal music-educational environments, with their emphasis on assessed performances and, increasingly, on self-conscious reflection, bring a renewed critical perspective on the ideological worlds of classical music. If it is the case that there is a generational shift in performers’ assumption of authority and agency (crudely speaking, from ‘it must be this way’ to ‘I take it upon my own shoulders to play it this way’), it raises the interesting question of where to place the boundaries of ‘classical music performance habits’, or whether, indeed, there need to be generic boundaries in thinking about performance. If the interpretation of classical music now has a looser relation to the notion of ‘the composer’s intentions’ than it had in the past (and continues to have in some circles), then it would be interesting to be able to chart the changes in reflective practice. Perhaps if the generational shift that we perceive in the examples we have quoted reflects a wider reality, young performers will feel less tension about their place in the music, and older performers will use a more authorial (and perhaps more honest) rhetoric about their interpretative choices.

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Another way of describing the difference between Moore’s reflection and the students’ comments is that while the students are wrestling with the nature of the space available to them to ‘express themselves’, to be creative or to assume agency, partly because of their youth, and partly because they live in a musically pluralistic world, Moore thoroughly internalized the discursive (and perhaps psychological) norms of classical music culture as he knew it, and thus ceased to reflect on them. Charles Rosen—a generation younger than Moore (he was born in 1927), more inclined to theorize about the demands of classical music in general, and more aware of its cultural context in the early twenty-first century—delineates the space available to performers in characteristically broad . He suggests that the continued vitality of classical music—that is, what distinguishes it as classical music and gives it continued relevance—is the notational ‘inadequacy’ that allows performers to remake, or at least rethink, works so that they have currency in the performer’s world: For centuries, the tradition of art music has rested on this opposition of composition and realization, and on the sense that the composition has a value that transcends all imaginable realizations. Whether this fundamental aesthetic requirement will last into the future, I do not know. (Rosen 2012: 37) In other words, he is arguing strongly for the importance of ‘realization’ (as opposed to ‘reproduction’), and thus for the explicit agency of the performer. However, he also demonstrates the narrowness of the discursive space within which this opposition should most productively operate: [The tradition] is subtly undermined by directors of opera who think that they can invent stage business, which has no relation or relevance to the music… It is violated by the fans of authentic period style who think that a work of music can be simply identified with the way it might have sounded to the composer. It is misunderstood by the widespread failure to grasp the different ways a work could be realized during the lifetime of the composer and, in addition, the ways in which it is altered by the generations that follow, while retaining an important part of its validity. It is ignored by so many who do not recognize the special character of the Western tradition, and who imagine that it can be treated as another variety of folk music. (ibid.) Too much invention and you’re out of bounds, but too literal an understanding of historical obligation and you’re equally wrong; too little understanding of performance lineages and your approach will be impoverished, but too much reliance on those essentially oral traditions and you won’t be playing ‘classical music’. No wonder performers young and old concentrate on technique and situation-dependent issues like nerves and ‘projection’!


Rosen’s description of the values of the field is stern and has a moralistic tinge, as well as implying a clear hierarchy between classical and ‘folk’ music. Nonetheless, it is a salutary reminder that once such values are made explicit in reflection, not only can they be put to use in an infinite variety of ways, but they can also be challenged.

References Adorno, T. W., 2006: Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction: Notes, a Draft and Two Schemata, ed. H. Lonit, trans. W. Hoban (Cambridge: Polity). Benson, B. E., 2003: The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Brendel, A., 1976: Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (London: Robson). Chaffin, R. and G. Imreh, 2001: ‘A comparison of practice and self-report as sources of information about the goals of expert practice’, Psychology of Music 29/1: 39–69. Chaffin, R. and T. Logan, 2006: ‘Practicing perfection: how concert soloists prepare for performance’, Advances in Cognitive Psychology 2/2–3: 13–30. Clarke, E., 2011: ‘Creativity in performance’, in D. Hargreaves, D. Miell and R. MacDonald, eds., Musical Imaginations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Creativity, Performance, and Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 17–30. Creech, A., I. Papageorgi, J. Potter, E. Haddon, C. Duffy and F. Morton, 2008: ‘Investigating musical performance: commonality and diversity amongst classical and non-classical musicians’, Music Education Research 10/2: 215–34. Dunsby, J., 1995: Performing Music: Shared Concerns (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Furones, L., 2013: ‘The Academy of St Martin in the Fields perform exhilarating Bruch and Beethoven in Madrid’, https://bachtrack.com/review-oct-2013-academy-st-martinfields-madrid (accessed 15 February 2017). Godlovitch, S., 1998: Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study (Abingdon and New York: Routledge). Goodman, N., 1976: Languages of Art (Cambridge, MA: Hackett). Hultberg, C., 2008: ‘Instrumental students’ strategies for finding interpretations: complexity and individual variety’, Psychology of Music 36: 7–23. Janof, T., 1995: ‘Conversations with Stephen Doane’, Newsletter of the Internet Cello Society, http://www.cello.org/Newsletter/Articles/SDoane.html (accessed 15 February 2017). Kerman, J., 1983: ‘A few canonic variations’, Critical Inquiry 10: 107–25. Krausz, M., ed., 1995: The Interpretation of Music: Philosophical Essays (New York: Oxford University Press). Levinson, J., 1996: ‘Performative versus critical interpretation’, in idem, The Pleasures of Aesthetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), pp. 60–89. Liuzzi, D., [n.d.]: ‘How did I come to know the De Pue brothers?’, http://depuebrothersband-blog.tumblr.com (accessed 15 February 2017). Miklaszewski, K., 1989: ‘A case study of a pianist preparing a musical performance’, Psychology of Music 17/2: 95–109. Moore, G., 1966: Am I Too Loud? (Harmondsworth: Penguin).

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Musicians in the Making Nielsen, K., 1996: ‘Læring i praksis [Learning in practice]’, paper presented at the NNMPF Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, April 1996. Repp, B., 1997: ‘The aesthetic quality of a quantitatively average music performance: two preliminary experiments’, Music Perception 14: 419–44. Rosen, C., 2002: Piano Notes: The Hidden World of the Pianist (New York: Free Press). Rosen, C., 2012: Freedom and the Arts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Sloboda, J. A., 1985: Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Small, C., 1998: Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press). Tomes, S., 2010: Out of Silence: A Pianist’s Yearbook (Woodbridge: Boydell). Urmson, J. O., 1995: ‘The ethics of musical performance’, in M. Krausz, ed., The Interpretation of Music: Philosophical Essays (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 157–64. Woody, R. H., 2002: ‘Emotion, imagery and metaphor in the acquisition of musical performance skill’, Music Education Research 4/4: 218–23.

13

Towards convergence ACADEMIC STUDIES AND THE STUDENT PERFORMER

Celia Duffy and Joe Harrop

‘Not an entirely simple affair’: separations and connections This chapter concerns the interrelationship between musical performance and so-called academic studies. It begins by reviewing some of the existing scholarship on performance studies, including historically informed performance (HIP); this brings the questions underlying that scholarship into sharp focus. The discussion then turns to the higher education (HE) music environment and the recent moves to unite distinct strands of musical study within a single curriculum. Opinions and observations from a range of interested parties are also considered. The overriding themes are duality and separation on the one hand and connections and convergence on the other—of ‘thinkers’ and ‘doers’, of insight and analysis, of formal and tacit knowledge, of conservatoires and universities, and of academic lectures and one-to-one performance tuition. In his book Performing Music: Shared Concerns, Dunsby cites a marvellously understated observation from Roger Sessions: ‘one must … accustom oneself to the fact that the performance of music is not an entirely simple affair’ (1995: 48). Dunsby notes this in respect of Joseph Kerman’s notorious separation of ‘thinkers’ (i.e. scholars) and ‘doers’ (i.e. performers) as evidence that there are in fact no pure ‘doers’. Kerman’s separation—no doubt the topic of many a performance studies seminar—and our own ‘separation anxiety’ about such divisions are a recurring theme of this chapter. Dunsby’s lucid and humane take on the subject, like his nonpartisan subtitle (‘shared concerns’), is an example of one of many attempts to build bridges. During the past thirty years or so, a clearly delineated discipline of performance studies has emerged in addition to a significant body of related 271

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literature. Alongside this, the HIP movement has matured. In higher music education in the UK, conservatoire and university courses have converged; conservatoires now deal with ‘academic’ subjects in a far less perfunctory manner, and most university courses offer an equal place to performance options, rather than just practical additions to the serious business of musicological scholarship. The official pronouncements of UK and other quality assurance agencies, in their subject definitions and benchmarks, offer a view of musical study as a deeply interconnected ecology. All of these contribute to building a picture of the relationship between performance and ‘academic subjects’; as noted above, separation is a recurring theme, but so is convergence. Our background as authors is as follows. One of us has lived through these changes as a teacher and manager and has worked in both the university and the conservatoire sectors, latterly being involved in the reform of a conservatoire curriculum. The other has lived through them as a conservatoire student and is one of the early PhD graduates of a conservatoire, combining performance with scholarship. So our orientation in this chapter is both how it feels ‘on the ground’ as a young professional and (relatively) recent student, and how it seems as an educational old hand. Both of us come from the western classical tradition, and it is that tradition, largely from the perspective of the UK higher education undergraduate degree course, that we are writing about. In this chapter we adopt the term ‘academic studies’ as shorthand for the study of music history and analysis. We are aware, of course, that, in its broadest sense, academic studies could embrace everything which is not directly related to the technical development of the individual performer, including areas as diverse as aesthetics, harmony and counterpoint, modern languages, and the plethora of other topics subjects on offer in UK HE music (QAA 2008). We are also aware how old-fashioned ‘academic studies’ sounds in today’s edu-speak. We nevertheless ask whether and how academic studies might influence performance, inform performers’ choices or even lead to more creative performances, and we look at educational interventions which are attempting to promote such a relationship between the two. In the discussions below, we tend to skirt the issue of closely defining a creative performance (versus a routine or, in Furtwängler’s , an ‘adequate’ performance, as noted below); this is discussed elsewhere in the book (see for example Chapter 7). For us, the working definition of a creative performance would be, in various measures, one that is somehow independent, individual, challenging, thoughtful, risky, enlightening and disturbing, offering new light on the music. A creative performance will have elements of risk, with strategies for engaging its listener in ways that may not be conventional. It will be considered, certainly; informed, maybe.

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Writing on performance: from performers, on analysis, on history An obvious starting point when investigating performance would be to examine what performers themselves say about their decision-making, their choices, their sources, and the processes in which they engage. Dunsby (1995: 47), again, usefully reminds us that over past centuries there has been an important and substantial literature on performance and on wider musical issues written by performing musicians (e.g. C. P. E. Bach and Schumann). In contemporary musical literature, scholar–performers from the world of HIP (of which more below) and the more recent publications of those with practice-as-research doctorates are bringing out work that can talk the scholarly talk from the standpoint of a professional performer. However, Dunsby reports Kerman’s tendency in the latter decades of the last century (that is, before the emergence of practice as research) not only to sniffily dismiss both the technical ‘training manuals’ as well the impressionistic ‘coffee table’ outputs of performers (Dunsby 1995: 46), but also those seriously intentioned attempts by artists themselves to unravel some of the complexities and paradoxes that they face (Brendel 1976). Kerman can be quite patronising: ‘reading books by the great artists is not the best way to gain understanding of their artistic secrets’ (1985: 196). If the performance of music is not an entirely simple affair, neither is writing about it. Returning to our dual definition of ‘academic studies’ as dealing with analysis and history, how might an analytical understanding of music assist the creative performer first of all? Two formidable performing musicians, Brendel and Furtwängler, provide some clues. In his volume Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, Brendel succinctly describes the role of the performer, who needs the confidence to translate the composer’s intentions into his or her own understanding, unravelling those intentions ‘with the help of one’s own engaged emotions, one’s own senses, one’s own intellect’ (1976: 25; italics added). Cook, writing about Furtwängler’s mutually fruitful professional relationship with the theorist Schenker, sums up Furtwängler’s position on creative performance, starting (in perhaps typically uncompromising manner) with the conductor’s precondition for adequate—not even creative—performance: ‘The precondition for adequate performance’, says Furtwängler, is that ‘the work in question, its vital form and structure, is fully and properly understood, i.e. that we are fully capable of reading it’ (quoted from Cook 1995: 106). ‘In order to acquire this sort of understanding’, Cook notes, the performer has to reconstruct ‘the composer’s “overriding vision” of the work as “an artistic entity”… The payoff is that, once a vision has been achieved, performance becomes in essence a “process of re-creation” ’. Moreover, ‘the performer should “re-experience and re-live the music each time anew” ’. Furtwängler advocates steering a course between what he describes on the one hand as ‘individualistic emotionalism and vague, colouristic self-indulgence’ and, on the other, ‘the sterile worship of

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a literal text’ (quoted from ibid.: 106).1 What is needed is proper understanding of a work’s form and structure, a vision of the whole, and an emergent sense of an artistic entity. A look at writings and debates from the perspective of HIP reveals corresponding views about the contribution that historical awareness can make to creative performance. First of all, it is worth noting that many HIP scholars are respected performers and vice versa; this reciprocity suggests potential links between historical knowledge on the one hand and creative music-making on the other. Furthermore, in reviewing debates about HIP over several decades, Butt (2002: 42) comments that the ‘puritanical’ aspect of twenty years earlier is often absent from the work of more recent scholar–performers, which is to say that the ‘new’ HIP avoids the literalism of previous counterparts and is more rooted in creative performance. There is much of interest in the relationship between creative performance and HIP in Butt’s discussion of the controversial views of Richard Taruskin. For example, Butt (2002: 18) highlights Taruskin’s comparisons between ‘straight’ and ‘crooked’ HIP performances, which respectively are literalistic and creatively inspired. Referring to the latter, Butt commends Taruskin’s approach—‘his avocation of ionate commitment, risk and vision coupled with self-awareness, a sense of choice in performance, and responsibility to both the audience and the richest and deepest possible meanings of pieces of music’ (ibid.: 23). All of this suggests that it is possible to take an informed and ethical stance with regard to historical contexts while achieving creative and inspiring performance. Be that as it may, the separation of thinkers and doers has lingered in the scholarly literature. As Butt also notes (2002: 14), this sharp delineation is perhaps most obvious in the title of Taruskin’s important volume Text and Act (1995). Attitudes of performers towards scholars, to use Kerman’s phrase (1985: 196), range ‘from mild dilettantish curiosity to outright derision’; attitudes from scholars towards performers are often patronising. Dunsby (1995: 46) calls for ‘the inevitability of the coexistence of music and discourse, not shy[ing] away from it into the retreats of fragmentary subdisciplines, with mute performers and arid commentators’.

Writing on performance: the educationalists’ perspective We now turn to a very different type of literature, one focusing on quality assurance in education. The ecologically balanced, interdependent state of affairs described above, in which one branch of musical endeavour serves another, is affirmed in the official pronouncements of quality assurance in higher music education in the UK. It is easy to sneer at or dismiss the literature on quality assurance, but the UK Subject Benchmark for Music offers a sensible and

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sensitive view, put together not by faceless bureaucrats but by peers in higher music education. Nevertheless, although it gives an even-handed and informed picture of UK higher music education in all its many facets, it perhaps errs on the idealistic side. The purpose of the UK Subject Benchmark, originally devised in 2002 and lightly revised in 2008, was to define the nature of undergraduate degrees in music, ‘mapping out the subject territory and describing the range of skills and attributes of graduates in the subject’ (QAA 2008: 5) and then articulating the minimum requirements or expectations of achievement. It is the first part of the benchmark document—the mapping of the discipline of music—that is of most interest here. The benchmark statement starts with an of developments in the UK as regards where and how music is studied, noting that, historically, certain types of institutions concentrated on particular musical disciplines: Conservatoires (the first British conservatoire opened in 1823) were founded specifically for the education of composers and performers, while university music departments from the 1890s both encouraged students to develop an historical and critical understanding of a canon of ‘masterworks’—a concept which has itself more recently become an object of critique—and to engage with the practical processes of music, most notably through the craft of musical composition. (2008: 7) What was, up to the early 1990s, a clearly separate and distinctive provision is now markedly less so, with conservatoires gaining degree-awarding powers and practice emerging not only as research-worthy but also as research-degree-worthy. The latter in itself has led to an enhanced status for practice and a new relationship with more academic approaches. University music departments now offer not just additional performance options, but also credit-bearing pathways and often named degrees in performance. Things have come a long way since 1973, when Wilfrid Mellers (then Professor of Music in one of the UK’s most forward-looking music departments, at the University of York) wrote about ‘the division between music colleges (places that do) and universities (places that know)’ (Mellers 1973: 246). Along with this converging environment for higher education musical study, a picture emerges through the benchmark statement of convergence and interdependence at a deeper level, in the nature of the connectedness of the subdisciplines of music: ‘The three basic activities of composing, performing and listening are seen to be interconnected in important and fundamental ways, so that the study of music is always an holistic affair’ (QAA 2008: 7). This holistic study should produce ‘well-informed, reflective, versatile, innovative and openminded musicians’ in which creative pursuits are complemented and nourished by the so-called knowledge-based skills giving the student ‘the ability to understand and theorise their art’ (ibid.: 10). There appears to be a good foundation

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in this ideal(istic) educational framework for the interdependence of creative performance and academic subjects. Digging a little deeper, how is this interrelationship actually taught and fostered, and in what contexts? A number of innovative undergraduate modules in both university and conservatoire settings deal with this relationship specifically, and we consider a couple of examples below. More generally, however, the most holistic experience potentially happens in the one to two hours a week (for conservatoire students anyway) of the one-to-one lesson. We say potentially, as the one-to-one has received scrutiny recently, and it remains a slightly risky proposition in the world of quality management and defined learning outcomes. However, a well-taught and well-balanced one-to-one session is likely to include technical, critical, creative, theoretical, analytical and historical elements, and the boundaries between these elements are hardly ever rigidly drawn (Cox 2007: 12; see also Chapter 2 in this volume). We noted earlier that the UK Subject Benchmark errs on the side of idealism, painting a rather optimistic picture of the interconnected, interdependent, ecumenical nature of music study. In practice, the traditions, economic restraints and logistics of the delivery of the music curriculum can result in istratively convenient timetabling and organizational boundaries, along with a compartmentalization that persists between areas of study despite the best efforts of both the QAA and institutions themselves. These divisions also seem to persist in the attitudes of both teachers and students. As Cox notes in his AEC publication on deg the music curriculum, learning through historical and analytical study about musical style … is not much use if, at the end of the lesson, the student packs away these ideas along with his or her notes and goes on to an instrumental lesson in which they perform the piece they have prepared thinking only of technique and tone production… [T]his kind of dislocation between types of learning can be surprisingly common and is almost always damaging to a student’s development as a thoughtful and well-rounded musician. (2007: 12–13) This is not just a European perspective: a trenchant critique of compartmentalization of the curriculum has recently been offered in a provocative report by the College Music Society in the USA (Sarath 2014). The report identifies ‘pervasive fragmentation within the curriculum and organizational structures of music schools’ as a primary deficiency of the present curricular framework: ‘In the conventional model, performance studies are taught separately from theoretical studies, both of which are taught separately from historical and cultural inquiry, thus promoting a fractured conception of music as a collection of discrete compartments, often referred to in the vernacular as “silos” ’ (ibid.: 21). The report recognizes the drive outlined above in the UK context towards a more holistic approach, describing previous ‘partial strategies’ to

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unite conventional theory, history and performance (such as studying music for large ensembles in history and theory classes). However, these strategies are seen as merely tinkering with or adding to the traditional, essentially inflexible, foundation curriculum—and with only partial success. The report advocates a radical rethink of the music curriculum in which creativity is recognized as core to the overall spectrum of study, making a case for ‘genuine’ unification across every facet of musical study via the twin pursuits of improvisation and composition. It recognizes that this is a very ambitious goal: ‘If genuine integration has been elusive within the narrow horizons of conventional models, the vastly expanded set of culturally diverse and cross-disciplinary skills and understandings called for in our time renders this essential educational component all the more challenging’ (ibid.: 22). It is not possible here to debate the pros and cons of this initiative, as we would need to be sensitive to and knowledgeable about the marked differences between models and practices of HE music education in the USA and those in the UK or Europe (for example, in the former context, prescribed textbooks are prevalent, as are longstanding traditions and structures of the ‘liberal arts’ model). For our purposes, the report provides a refreshingly sharp prod and a counter to the happily integrated state of affairs encountered so far in the ‘official’ literature. Furthermore, it casts usefully critical light on the approaches described in the next section.

Two exemplars It is in response to compartmentalization of the curriculum (as well as other factors such as a growing need to cover both HIP and practice as research) that new styles of module have been developed that encourage students both to think about and to tease out the links between academic studies and performance. We consider one such example from the conservatoire sector and one from a university music department. Needless to say, these examples should be seen as indicative of certain trends rather than representing the full range of practices in both conservatoire and university contexts. They nevertheless usefully illustrate some of the changes that have taken place in recent years while also suggesting how curricula might evolve further across the board. At the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS)—where one of the authors spent much of her career—the ‘academic studies’ question has been much debated over the past few years (Munro 2007), and a module entitled ‘Style in Performance’ serves as an exemplar of how academic studies and performance could be integrated—not just in teaching but in assessment too. The module was delivered tly between academic and performance teachers (this in itself is noteworthy) and was compulsory in every year of study of the BMus degree programme. Given our discussion of HIP earlier in the chapter,

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it is interesting that the thinking behind this module originated in a course on performance practice that was tly offered by RCS and the University of Glasgow; another impetus was introducing practice as research into the undergraduate curriculum and the convergence of emerging practice-based research and teaching. The objective of the module was to approach performance practice in a more relevant, unified way, placing particular emphasis on learning through practice and reflection, from the perspective of a holistic development of students as performers (Broad 2010). Importantly, through its delivery in the form of tutored rehearsals/workshops, the module offered students an environment in which critical, informed experimentation (rather than ‘getting it right’) was encouraged. Integrated assessment, in which students’ efforts in playing, reflecting and articulating their performance decisions were all given weight as part of the assessment, was a very significant feature of this module. As Munro observed in a talk in 2007, Woodwind players would never dream of assessing a flautist by asking the student to write an essay on flute playing. In the past, we would never have dreamt of assessing music history by asking students to do anything other than write an essay. But need this be so? Style in Performance, with its emphasis on performance founded in research, is a significant step along the way towards integrated assessment. Stephen Broad, the designer of this module, also comments on the effect that integrated assessment wrought on students’ attitudes: ‘The performance/viva might not be seen as a significant innovation in its own right, but the t assessment of students’ articulation of their learning in speaking and performing— the single grade assigned as a result of the performance/viva—has noticeably changed the way they approach the subject material’ (2010: 14). This is a (not very) veiled reference to the understandable tendency of conservatoire students (sometimes egged on by their teachers) to prioritize performance above all else in their portfolio of study; in an integrated assessment, however, this is not possible. The front page of the handbook of the module ‘Studies in Performance’ at the University of Huddersfield sums up its content eloquently and succinctly: it presents a formidably complicated Schenkerian sketch of an excerpt from one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas alongside a picture of the composer’s 1803 Erard piano. Huddersfield is an example of a university music department that has always given performance an equal place alongside other elements of musical study, and it currently offers a BMus pathway in performance, looking to attract students who are high achievers in both performance and scholarly work. In the compulsory honours-year module ‘Studies in Performance’, students are presented with, and respond to, performance issues from a number of angles. The module descriptor is clear in its orientation towards ‘thinking performers’,

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and it dives straight into the heart of performance practice debates, encouraging students to make links which they then apply to their own practice. It starts with a series of keynote lectures that, typically for Huddersfield with its emphasis on contemporary music, include ‘Authenticity and interpretation for the 21st-century performer’ alongside topics such as intuition and investigation, understanding structure, and issues around editions. One of the assessment methods is an ‘illustrated seminar’ in which students discuss their approach to interpreting a chosen work, focusing on one of these topics to focus their presentation:

• • • •

Present an analysis of your selected work and demonstrate how it affects your interpretative choices. Discuss the issues relating to authenticity and performance in your selected work and your interpretative responses to these. What problems relating to notation and/or editions are there with your selected work and how do you address these? Analyse and compare recorded interpretations of your selected work and how these affect your interpretative decisions. (Huddersfield 2014: [7])

These two examples are designed to help students make very explicit links between distinct areas of musical study and, to use the QAA terminology, understand more about the claims of one on the other. At the undergraduate level, they stand as attempts in what is still a commonly compartmentalized HE music curriculum to consider together the concerns and practices of academic studies and performance (and, importantly, to assess them together too) and also to give students a defined space in which to address them. But what about the influence of academic studies on creativity in performance? One of the informants who contributed to our research,2 Peter Sheppard Skærved, made a forceful point about ‘the polarization of practice and enquiry which has endangered the spirit of discovery and inspiration which underpins music’. Regarding such enquiry as itself a creative, researchled undertaking is essential: because its goal is not just about being ‘informed’ as a performer but rather about gaining understanding, enquiry of the type referred to by Sheppard Skærved is as much about asking ‘what if ?’ In trying to investigate the chemistry between practice and enquiry, an essential tool is that of reflective practice. The UK Subject Benchmark emphasizes the importance of being articulate about artistic practice. We have seen that an institution can give students some guidance, e.g. with specific modules on performance practice, that will help them to make informed decisions using more highly developed critical skills, to become articulate and able to conceptualize through language, to develop greater knowledge about history and context, and, at best, to display a research-led, exploratory creative outlook. But what about those students who, when asked about their decisions, might answer, ‘I just feel it

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this way’? A conscious and deliberate habit of reflective practice can assist in teasing out answers, and partly for that reason reflective practice is now being incorporated into most HE music curricula. Guillaumier (2016) notes that reflection can be a useful and productive way of enabling students to deal holistically with their creative, practical and academic practices. She has some advice for teachers: One of the main difficulties that we can experience when we try to ‘teach’ reflection to conservatoire students is a deep misunderstanding and abiding mistrust of what this might entail. Reflection is very often an activity that students perceive to be quite separate from their day-to-day artistic practice. From the outset, our main aim must, therefore, be to align and integrate reflection with creativity, to establish it as a process, as a ‘doing’ activity rather than as a distant, albeit assessable add-on. (ibid.: 355) Creative performers might usefully learn, through reflective practice, to be articulate and able to include academic knowledge as an important stimulus for their artistic explorations and choices. As we shall see in the next section, many of our informants believe it is the performer’s responsibility to do just that.

Taking stock: views from the thinking doers As part of the research feeding into this chapter, we invited a range of informants to comment on the relationship of creative performance and academic study from their perspectives as artists and educators. It should be noted that we solicited information from these s in a nonsystematic, rather informal manner, and we are grateful for their generosity in allowing us to reproduce their remarks here. The main question that we bluntly asked our informants was whether academic studies make any difference to creative performance and whether it is necessary for a creative musical performer to have academic skills. We asked their opinion on the separation of academic studies and performance, how any perceived gap might be bridged and whether any particular approach might be helpful. Our informants3 ranged from ‘early career’ professionals such as recent Master’s or doctoral students at UK and US conservatoires, to professors of academic and performance studies, independent music scholars, and leaders in music education at HE level. Several institutions from the UK, New Zealand and USA were represented. A list of broad questions was emailed in August 2015 and responses collected during the two months thereafter. The breadth of comment reflected a spectrum of attitudes towards academic study and performance, as well as discussion of the many challenges that come with training for musical performance requiring physical rather than mental application.

Towards convergence

Our respondents were unanimous that academic studies do make a difference in educating performers. But not all were convinced that the difference was uniformly positive. Neil Heyde for one remarked: ‘Certainly I won’t argue that a high level of musical literacy (in the broadest sense) is not useful for a classical musician, but past that stage it gets complicated’. He expressed some concerns, including a worry that academic study could potentially dull a performer’s (more creative?) instincts. John Harris, artistic director of the contemporary music ensemble Red Note, echoed this in what he described as the ‘quickest reptilian responses and reflexes’ from conservatoire-trained players (e.g. those without an academic background) in contrast to those who had followed a university route. Sheppard Skærved was uncompromising: ‘there’s no hierarchy of informed performance that I accept. For instance—in a chamber music discussion, knowing stuff does not entitle anyone to a greater or lesser stake in the outcome, although there is never any way of determining an outcome—music not being a democratic, or logical process!’ So for Sheppard Skærved, a student’s claim that she ‘just feels it this way’ in answering a question about interpretation in a class discussion is as good as any other, perhaps more informed response. (We return below to the process of musical creativity, its personal, ego-centred rather than ‘democratic’ nature, and its resistance to logically determined paths.) Sheppard Skærved made a further plea ‘to keep exploring, not put up markers marking discoveries and fixed conclusions’. The widespread practice of dealing with academic studies as something altogether separate from performance was acknowledged by most informants, and many expressed a strong wish for less factionalization. Heyde reported that he had spent his professional life trying to remedy such a separation, and he suggested that at the postgraduate level his institution had succeeded in this—but only at that level, where the ‘groundwork’ is already in place. Some respondents were slightly more sanguine. W. Dean Sutcliffe commented: ‘There has probably always been something of a gap—I’m not sure if it is such a bad thing, and I doubt if it is some new, pressing problem—though the rhetoric of recent times might suggest this is the case.’ As for Sheppard Skærved, his trenchant comment on the ‘separation issue’ was that It’s a disaster, and one which is worsened by the plague of qualifications within the dialogue. I don’t accept them, haven’t done them, don’t respect them. Both ‘sides’ are equally responsible for a separation, and in many circumstances, this has resulted in a polarisation of practice and enquiry which has endangered the spirit of discovery and inspiration which underpins music.

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THE MUSICIAN, ACADEMIC STUDIES AND THE PROFESSION Several of our respondents saw academic studies as vital to the work of music professionals. Jason Bae, one of our early-career informants, was adamant about this: I strongly believe that performing artists should never think that there is a separation between their physical practising and performing with academic music study. They must have academic studies in music in order to call themselves professional performing artists. Performing artists who have no knowledge … will look like amateurs, perform like amateurs and usually in the end, they accept themselves that they are doing music as a hobby. There are concrete, practical advantages too. Henry Wong Doe observed that a strong music theory background is essential for memory in piano performance: ‘Those who rely solely on muscular or visual memory suffer constantly. In this respect, a solid music theory background is essential in the successful performance from memory.’ For those pursuing a portfolio career, an informed, academic background may enhance their professional profile and encourage an entrepreneurial approach (for example, in innovative programming). Sutcliffe commented thus: Apart from the intrinsic intellectual value of the academic study, from a purely career point of view, wider and better knowledge enables performers to make more informed choices about repertoire, enabling them potentially to carve out a niche, and become able and engaging introducers of their performances, for instance. This was also true of my many years of teaching experience at Cambridge—the students who made it as performers were almost all at the top end in of academic achievement, and had ‘boxed clever’ in how they constructed their careers. Certain musicians—including several of our informants—have a career in both the academic and the performance sectors of music. A feature of the work of these performer–scholars is the variety of outcomes that emerge from the conjunction of their academic and performance approaches. For example, Sheppard Skærved works in the fields of history, biography, organology, iconography, compositional sketch study, score analysis and editing, in addition to giving concerts and making professional recordings. An example of the ‘outcome-rich’ approach that he and other performer–scholars take is his collaboration with the Library of Congress, focusing on Paganini, Ole Bull and Tartini (among others).

Towards convergence

THE PERFORMER’S HABITS AND MINDSET The ways in which performers learn, and in particular the inevitability of long hours of solo technical practice, can sometimes promote tunnel vision. Echoing Guillaumier’s experience above, Wong Doe commented: ‘I believe the repetitive aspect of mastering a piece has a lot to do with it—students seldom spend time reflecting away from their instrument and practice task as an integral part of learning a piece. Since this would be done away from the teaching studio, it is difficult to encourage and monitor it’. Ambitious, driven performance students (sometimes encouraged by their ambitious, driven teachers) are more likely to feel that they need every hour they can get in the practice studio. Bae noted how seriously students regard their practice time: ‘For many musicians, if they feel like they have less time to practise, this gives them an incredible amount of stress and pressure and everything else that they will be doing other than practising will seem pointless and [a] complete waste of time or life even.’ How can we counter the student performer’s feeling that time away from repetitive and strictly disciplined practice is wasted time?4 Bae remarked that ‘a lot of it has to do with an individual’s own curiosity to learn—attending a class or concert is one thing, but actually internalizing the material and applying it in context with their performance is another’. In a similar vein, Davidson-Kelly (2014) describes how the teaching strategies of the piano teacher Nelly Ben-Or, in which students learn material away from the piano in the initial phase, thus internalizing it, can enhance the quality of their musical understanding. Amanda Glauert suggested that teaching strategies in academic subjects must both acknowledge the fundamental ego-centricity of the performer and recognize that content will be more or less efficiently filtered by student performers receiving it, in the sense that they will take what they (artistically) need. She said: ‘A performer needs to be allowed and even encouraged to filter any new knowledge through their personal needs in a fairly ruthless fashion, such as in focusing on particular repertoire or even a particular technical challenge.’ It goes without saying that academic subjects have to be taught well, imaginatively, and in a way that encourages the student to make connections. Graham Mhail commented: ‘I think it will come down to the way this more “formal” knowledge is approached pedagogically. Somehow students need to be convinced of its value. Teachers need to make some visible connections for students and stimulate their imaginations and interest in this knowledge. Dry lectures will not be the way!’ For Heyde, The trick … is to ensure that the questions you ask from an ‘academic’ perspective are real questions—rooted in and emerging from practice— rather than invented questions. It’s all too easy to ask things just because they seem like they might be interesting, or to seek answers to generic

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questions about style and context without having really explored why these things might matter. Heyde continued: ‘The real challenge is that skills develop very asymmetrically in different people so finding the right time to start introducing ideas and questions is something that has to be individually tailored. Educational systems are in general not very good at this’. Glauert had this personal perspective: Academic studies are not simply about ‘broadening out’ knowledge, though that is clearly an important part of a performer’s growth and development, but also about finding out how to apply that knowledge into the personal situation—which will be different for each student. ‘Student-centred learning’ is an old concept but it is absolutely vital for performers. So providing ‘academic studies’ for performers needs to remain a surprising, dynamic business. It should involve balancing the familiar with the unfamiliar, broadening while focusing, dealing with the near at hand while also encouraging unusual connections. Aesthetic connections to other arts and scientific perspectives remain important sources of stimulation, but the issue of relevance for the individual student can’t be avoided in a conservatoire context where each is so busy and so pressured. Glauert developed the idea of reconciling the deeply personal mindset of performers—taking what they need—with an ethical stance, namely, a notion of their responsibility and agency as a (creative) artist: ‘Academic studies are one means—but not the only—of encouraging performers to take responsibility for what they are doing. Historical awareness can help performers gain perspective on the challenges they face and to think of themselves as fulfilling a role rather than merely a task (set by someone else).’ There is a responsibility to be open to others’ ideas and to one’s audience: Aesthetics is always a helpful part of the mix, in my view, whether it is combined with history, analysis, psychology, or whatever because it encourages the personal experience of the performer to be set in the context of the s of others. Thus the potentially closed or introspective world of the performer (obsessed with life in the practice room or teaching studio) can be opened to the demands of communicating, ‘uttering’ in a communal context. Wong Doe, who teaches piano at an institution in the USA, also pointed to these issues: while there are exceptions of brilliant students, the majority of the student population these days expect and feel entitled to receive information without any active participation (e.g. follow-up questions, making

Towards convergence

connections themselves) in the learning process. Active thinking and curiosity is perhaps the hardest thing to encourage in a student who doesn’t feel a responsibility to think outside their comfort zone—this is perhaps the single biggest challenge in teaching in my experience. In his belief that conceptualizing what we do as musicians ‘enables us to move from a state of random experience to understanding and development’, Mhail’s remarks bring us back full circle to the thinkers and doers schism— this time from a pedagogical point of view: I know [that] the influential music educator David Elliott (Music Matters, 1995) thinks formal and verbal knowledge about music and musicianship is of secondary importance to ‘knowing-in-action’ (i.e. doing it). He argues that many of the world’s finest musicians cannot talk about what they do… While I agree with Elliott this is certainly a fact (that many musicians can’t talk about it) I do not agree that within education this is a sufficient expectation. What is special about educational contexts is the aim of developing deeper understanding about what we do, through conceptualising (which relies on language).5

Preaching to the converged A conclusion to the above discussion might lead to claims about the effectiveness of uniting academic and practical approaches to the study of performance. It goes without saying that convergence is not a simple process, and it is unlikely to be found by following a rule book. One of our informants, W. Dean Sutcliffe, sounded a note of caution as to whether integrated teaching strategies actually make much difference, noting that ‘teaching philosophies and practices seem to have moved decisively in the direction of “relevance” for many decades now without maybe any evidence that this has led to greater engagement on the part of students as a whole’. On the other hand, the work of the professional performer–scholars referred to above provides a potent demonstration of how this ‘bringing together’ can have real creative results. Musicians who fit this description, or that of scholar– performer, appear to be growing in number and in profile. Our informants themselves are all, to a greater or lesser degree, both performers and academics, and they too bear witness to what can happen when the ‘separation’ lamented here is overcome.6 Furthermore, conservatoires and universities are increasingly offering a blended approach of academic studies and performances studies, or at least are offering both in parallel. There are now several Master’s and research degrees where the convergence of academic studies and performance is the central focus of the programme.7 In the arena of musicianship studies—for example,

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in harmony, counterpoint and stylistic composition—relevance to ‘real music’ and to a wide range of musical skills has been a common objective for decades (see Steinitz and Sterman 1974). As a result of these developments, more student musicians will encounter a blending of performance and academic studies either within a module’s coursework or a degree programme as a whole. Integrated teaching strategies may at least nudge some student performers into thinking twice when confronted with academic studies or an academically informed viewpoint, before protesting ‘but I need to practise!’ or ‘I just feel it this way’. Others will relish the integrative intellectual and creative challenge of musical praxis.

References Brendel, A., 1976: Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (London: Robson). Broad, S., 2010: ‘Style in performance’, in K. Neil, ed., Research-Teaching Linkages: Enhancing Graduate Attributes, Creative and Cultural Practice (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education), http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/docs/publications/ enhancing-graduate-attributes-creative-and-cultural-practice.pdf ?sfvrsn=18 (accessed 15 February 2017). Butt, J., 2002: Playing with History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cook, N., 1995: ‘The conductor and the theorist: Furtwängler, Schenker and the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony’, in J. Rink, ed., The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.105–25. Cox, J., 2007: Curriculum Design and Development in Higher Music Education (AEC Publications), http://www.aec-music.eu/files/File/AEC%20Handbook%20-%20 Curriculum%20Design%20and%20Development%20in%20Higher%20Music%20 Education%20-%20EN.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Davidson-Kelly, K., 2014: ‘Mental imagery rehearsal strategies for expert pianists’ (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh). Dunsby, J., 1995: Performing Music: Shared Concerns (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Elliott, D. J., 1995: Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Guillaumier, C., 2016: ‘Reflection as creative process: perspectives, challenges and practice’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 15/3–4: 353–63. Harrop, J., 2006: ‘The rhetoric of the second violin: a study of performance practice in the string quartet’ (PhD dissertation, Royal Academy of Music). Huddersfield, 2014: University of Huddersfield, Department of Music and Drama, AHM 3403 Studies in Performance, Module Booklet 2014–15. Kerman, J., 1985: Musicology (London: Collins). Mhail, G., 2010: ‘Crossing boundaries: sharing concepts of music teaching from classroom to studio’, Music Education Research 12/1: 33–45. Mellers, W., 1973: ‘The study of music at university. 2: A question of priorities’, The Musical Times 114: 245–9.

Towards convergence Munro, G., 2007: ‘Goodbye Academic Studies’, talk at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, UK, 29 November 2007, unpublished. QAA [Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education], 2008: The Subject Benchmark Statement for Music at Honours Degree Level, http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/ Documents/Subject-benchmark-statement-Music-.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Sarath, E. et al., 2014: Transforming Music Study from Its Foundations: A Manifesto for Progressive Change in the Undergraduate Preparation of Music Majors. Report of the Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major. Conference Version. (College Music Society), http://www.music.org/pdf/tfumm_report.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Steinitz, P. and S. Sterman, 1974: Harmony in Context: A New Approach to Understanding Harmony Without Conventional Exercises (Croydon: Belwin-Mills). Taruskin, R., 1995: Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press).

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Musical expression from conception to reception Darla Crispin and Stefan Östersjö

On ‘expression’

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Musical performers who reflect upon their practice are likely to recognize that expression is an extremely important part of it. But what is musical expression? Can music communicate specific ideas or emotions? Is expression encoded into the musical materials, or does the performer have the licence to interject his or her personality? Or, perhaps most intriguingly, is expression something that emerges from the conjunction of the musical work and its incarnation in a particular performance, thereby linking it to emotion, intention and representation in music? The word ‘expression’ crops up abundantly in conversations between musicians and is used with many connotations. When a performance is described as ‘expressive’, this does not necessarily imply that it is expressing a thought, an idea or even a specific emotion; it is more an indication that it belongs to a certain category of performance (however paradoxical the alternative idea of a ‘nonexpressive’ performance may seem). What, then, is the relationship between expression and emotion in music? We believe that the two should not be directly equated: although many convincing studies demonstrate that music has the potential to arouse emotions in humans, musical expression goes beyond music and emotion. For example, composers and performers might carry out their artistic practice without any overtly emotional intention, yet their compositions or performances may still arouse powerful, though unbidden, emotions in listeners. The ‘production chain’ of a score-based musical work is complex, with many constructional, interpretative and receptive stages in the respective practices of composer, performer and listener that problematize the tasks of empirical studies on emotion and music (Gabrielsson and Juslin 1996: 68).

Musical expression from conception to reception

An ‘expressive’ performance, as commonly understood among musicians, is one with qualities distinguishing it from a performance that merely reproduces those physical properties of the work imparted through the score— pitches, durations, dynamics, timbres, etc.—in a literal and error-free manner. ‘Expression’ is often seen as a facet of a performer’s individuality and, in general, is considered a positive and enlivening attribute. However, it is equally clear to musicians that ‘expression’, if applied intrusively, can have negative consequences. Where positive tips over into negative is partly a matter of taste, whether cultural or individual, and this, in turn, gives rise to the notion of a ‘field’ of musical expression which each performer needs to negotiate with understanding and care, and with the ability to adapt to different repertoires or performing contexts. Many performers will be familiar with these issues, the complexity of which is belied by the simple often used by musicians; they might nevertheless be surprised to learn that such issues have been debated for centuries, if not millennia, extending from early developments in rhetoric to more recent speculation about how the manner of communication and what is communicated interact. Differences in the type of musical expression determine the degree to which, and the ways in which, music as an art form is or is not communicative: what, if anything, it might be saying to us, and how it might be doing so—or how the manner of saying something musically might itself generate meaning.1 Our reflections in this chapter stem from our long experience in the professional performance, conservatoire and research sectors. One of us interfaces with the issues under discussion through work that integrates performance and historical musicology while being closely informed by developments in artistic research in music. This activity has been carried out through a series of research fellowships and conservatoire posts, one of which involves leadership of a conservatoire-based research centre. The other author has a busy and varied career as a globally active professional guitarist/instrumentalist—with a notable presence in Asia—while also being embedded in the European environment for artistic research as a research fellow. From quite different perspectives, we are each fascinated by the complex questions around how art conveys its meaning within varied situations of presentation and reception, and how the social and cultural dimension of this might be more transparently and vividly conveyed. These matters are at the heart both of this chapter and of the process of creative development on which the entire book focuses.

MAPPING EXPRESSION An attempt to understand more concretely how musical expression works and to communicate more effectively about it is one feature of the turn towards practice that developed in musicology near the end of the last century. Music

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practitioners have themselves taken part in this, increasingly seeking to apply research paradigms to, and in, their work. This trend has emphasized the importance of understanding art music as functioning within complex and shifting agencies and social situations. Related to this, historically informed performance has revealed the extent to which a single tradition can host many—often conflicting—approaches to musical expression, all of which may demonstrate their own rigorous search for understanding what was ‘meant’ when the creators and first performers of a given music brought it into being in a specific physical environment and cultural milieu, and with specific instrumental and other resources. To contextualize our contemporary understanding of musical expression, it is necessary to revisit ideas that developed around the institutionalization of the growing split between composer and performer, and alongside the emergence of an increasingly prosperous middle class that stimulated a proliferation in the production of printed music for these new consumers to acquire (Weber 1992; Habermas 1989; Horkheimer and Adorno 1997). Acquisition divorced from creation in this way gave rise to a need to understand how to realize the material that had been acquired. Realization entailed both a ‘faithful’ reproduction of the notated elements of the score and the injection of qualities necessary to ‘bring to life’ these elements. It was in the latter domain that the issue of expression therefore took on an overt and problematized character and gave rise to the formally recognized concept of ‘interpretation’. Goehr (2007) proposes that ‘interpretation’, as a descriptor applied to the act of musical performance, had no currency before 1800 and came into common parlance only during the nineteenth century, as the roles of composer and performer separated and became specialized in parallel with the emergence of the ‘work-concept’. Her analysis points up a dual possibility for performance. One option emphasizes the score as a locus for a carefully structured performance, while the other emphasizes the event of performance, its social situation, and the idea that it is with the performer, rather than the work in abstract, that the prerogative of genuine realization resides. In reality, these positions cannot be prised apart by placing specific performers in one category or the other, but considering the varied approaches could form the basis for a spectrum of expressive tendencies that have specific, yet overlapping characteristics. The aim to realize a printed score as a ‘perfect performance of music’ (Goehr [1998] 2004: 132–73) as encapsulated in the concept of Werktreue has formed much of the background to conservatoire-based music training, even though the prioritization of the musical text can be said to have its core emphasis in disciplines such as musicology and musical analysis. Both of these have tended to emphasize the primacy of the score, although, more recently, the turn towards practice has prompted modifications to this approach. Historically, placing emphasis upon the score, and the concomitant rise of the musical canon, relegated performers to a secondary position. Their role was to serve the score


through supposed abnegation of narcissistic personal expression in favour of a serious attempt to ‘sound out’ the meaning of the score by correctly interpreting and realizing its many signs. In the late nineteenth century, this doctrine was articulated in the critical work of Eduard Hanslick and manifested in the purportedly more serious music-making of Johannes Brahms or Clara Schumann, for example, as well as being adopted as a performative ideal in many strands of twentieth-century performance. The concert-hall environment, itself an innovation of the nineteenth century, can be suggestive of a place of solemn, priestly ritual and, more recently, of sober, high-minded civic cultural responsibility. These, too, can have an effect on the expressive properties of performances. Another of the key ideas concerning musical expression advocated by Hanslick is the notion of ‘absolute music’, positing that music may be enjoyed in and of itself, free of connotations and associative baggage; indeed, there has been a strong connection of this position with postwar performance practice and its privileging of ‘high art’ music. There is, however, a twist, in that many performers who have been judged as achieving such an aim have themselves been imbued with aspects of the quasi-mystical transcendence associated with the music that they realize. These ‘great interpreters’ are generally received as ‘anti-virtuosic’ because of the belief that they place accurate realization of the score above the supposedly easy option of indulging themselves and pleasing the audience. Arguably, then, the Werktreue tradition has developed into two performance approaches, each characterized by its own take on musical expression. In the first, the performer remains invisibly subservient to the work, while in the other, the performer carries out the mediating role but becomes foregrounded through doing so (Goehr [1998] 2004: 132–73). Figure 14.1 shows that the performer aims for transparency in the former mode, whereas in the latter a unique ‘signature dish’ is sought, based upon the ‘recipe’ that is the work. In actuality, both of these positions are illusory, being neither clear-cut nor permanent. In any case, the notions of Werktreue and the ‘work-concept’ itself have been widely challenged, with Taruskin noting that ‘the “work-concept” … regulates not only our musical attitudes but also our social practices’, imposing on performers ‘a truly stifling regimen by radically hardening and patrolling what had formerly been a fluid, easily crossed boundary between the performing and composing roles’ (Taruskin 1995: 10). This may be seen as one problematic aspect of postwar musical practices which have been characterized by severe, austere styles; by academic composition, including computer music; and by a quest for aural ‘perfection’ which technological change has exacerbated to such an extent that human agency has sometimes appeared to be imperilled. Arguably, a pressing contemporary problem with the social entrenchment of the concert hall’s ‘high art’ function is that the reverential conduct which it demands is at odds with the informality both of youth culture and of cultures outside Western European norms of the recent past. That musical training has

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FIGURE 14.1

The Werktreue tradition

The Virtuoso tradition

The Perfect Performance of Music

The Perfect Musical Performance

Performances are deemed subservient to the work in purpose, subordinate to the work in value, and derivative of the work in nature.

In the perfect musical performance, value resides in the creative acts of individuals who give meaning to music in each moment of their act of performing or engaging with music.

Performers as subservient to the work

The demand here is for performance transparency: performances should be like windows through which audiences directly perceive works.

Performers as great interpreters of works

Each performance does something different with the fixed recipe that is the work, and it is the unique difference or execution in each performance that makes all the aesthetic difference.

‘Werktreue’ and ‘Virtuoso’ traditions (after Goehr [1998] 2004: 140–65)

concentrated on these norms and their concomitant concert hall etiquette has served only to widen the schism. But emphasis upon fidelity to the score is by no means the only path open to performers. Alongside this ideal, and roughly contemporaneous with it, there emerged its apparent opposite: a performance that emphasizes the event itself as a social phenomenon and, increasingly, as an act of transcendence linked not to the perfect realization of the notated score, but to the realization of the ‘perfect musical performance’ (Goehr [1998] 2004), as in the right-hand side of Figure 14.1. Perfection in musical performance emerges as the ‘squaring of the circle’ of elements such as the evident attainment of a high level of virtuosity, and of the charisma and the ability to engage the audience of the consummate performer.2 It is noteworthy that the term ‘transcendence’ therefore becomes attributable to both the formal self-renunciation of the Werktreue tradition and the seemingly hypnotic appeal of practitioners of evident and exceptional skill. However, the latter became enmeshed in a great deal of myth-making—some of it self-perpetuated—concerning ‘devilish bargains’ made in exchange for the ostensibly unearthly attainment of exceptional physical dexterity and personal magnetism. The expressive qualities emerging from this kind of emphasis upon transcendence foreground the theatrical and dramatic elements of the act of music-making in the public sphere, along with a freer approach to


extemporization and even the re-composition of supposedly inviolable canonical works in order to magnify their levels of difficulty. The two principal positions here, and their varied expressive properties, are by no means mutually exclusive: indeed, most performers try to fuse elements of both in developing interpretations that show creative vitality. Nevertheless, if we adopt a wider historical perspective of the development of contrasting approaches to expression in western classical music during the twentieth century, two major strands may once again be identified: (1) a progression from nineteenth-century performance traditions to a postmodern preservation of their ideals in present-day concert-hall culture, and (2) the development of an awareness of historic performance practices, which shift from being products of an obscure, academic discipline to achieving commercial breakthrough and being seen as providing artistic liberation from earlier dogmas. These two poles represent an aesthetic field of tension in which conceptions of work identity, fidelity to the work, basic playing techniques and the very instruments upon which to play have been questioned (Goehr 2007; Butt 2002). Ironically, this debate has emerged alongside the gradual change of status of the amateur performer—who was at the heart of nineteenth-century music-making—and the decline of what Barthes (1977) termed ‘Musica Practica’, accompanied by a movement towards contemporary concert-hall culture (Small 1998) and the divide it has created between audiences and professional musicians (both composers and performers).

COMPOSER– PERFORMER– AUDIENCE The kinds of separation that we have described between composers and performers, works and performances, and musicians and audiences need to be understood in the context of a further separation, one affecting performers in particular. In past as well as current debates about authenticity, performance practice and work reception, there has been relatively limited opportunity for performers to make an active contribution. At least in respect of western art music, historical musicologists, music theorists and others such as philosophers have tended to pay greater heed to the utterances of composers as opposed to those of performers, likewise to the evidence of the score as opposed to that of the performance event. This trend has been counteracted in recent years, but a distinction is still often made between the work as artefact (the score) and the work as event (the performance). So, it is perhaps not surprising that the idea of expression as applied to performers and performances has tended to be split into contradictory approaches involving either an introverted yet self-abnegating focus upon the composer and the score, or an extrovert theatricality that may communicate excitement, transcendence and/or a deliberate expression of the performative self through the medium of musical performance.

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From past history to present problems With the greater focus upon performance in various musical disciplines since 1990, the complex history of ideas concerning musical expression has been interrogated in increasingly sophisticated ways. But this sharpening focus, and the intensification of research around it, is only beginning to influence day-to-day musical training within conservatoires and university music departments. In actuality, much of the pedagogical language concerning musical expression perpetuates the idea that music can convey an accurate expression of a composer’s biographical or psychological situation. We may ask: When people make statements about composers’ intentions, what is it that they are trying to say? After all, something in the score must be worth being true to. And, if there is no interpretative truth in such devotion to attempting a faithful score-realization, then where is it? The search for an answer to such questions places a spotlight upon the human, subjective aspects of musical performance and reception, and the resilience of an idea far older than that of Werktreue—namely, the notion that music has the power to express something that lies beyond the powers of rational cognition, which is given voice when a performance comes into being. Here, the score is an invitation to expression and a source of raw material for it, rather than being the locus of all that must be expressed. It is no accident that the rise of interest in understanding music through its performances and reception, rather than through its identity-by-proxy as a notated artefact, has gone hand in hand with an emphasis upon types of knowledge other than the purely cognitive. ‘Tacit’, ‘embodied’ and ‘embedded’ knowledge have become important concepts in trying to relate musical expression and musical meaning in this new, performance-orientated environment.

LINKING PAST IDEALS TO CONTEMPORARY THEORY: A FIELD MODEL The preceding discussion points to two distinct perspectives on expression in music. On the one hand, expression is evoked by our relation to concrete images or narratives that are found in the physical world; on the other, musical expression may be thought of as the articulation of abstract ideas and concepts. To deepen this contextualization, we now outline more recent research, structuring this section as a further expansion of the distinction between concrete and abstract reference points for musical expression. Concrete approaches can be divided into those that focus on emotion in music either as evoking external images and narratives or as springing from human emotions and/or from the embodied experience of being human. A parallel subdivision in domains of more abstract understanding of musical expression exists between approaches based on the notion that music engenders thoughts of a metaphysical nature, and those asserting that expression arises from musical structure


which performers draw on or deviate from in order to create an expressive performance. The model in Figure 14.2 illustrates this. Spanning these quadrants, research into musical expression was extended to several increasingly specialized fields during the twentieth century. The disciplines in question could be summarized simplistically (and not within mutually exclusive categories) as follows:

• •

• •

•

Music theory and analysis: expression as residing in the score, orientated towards the composer and requiring a learned form of reading; Music history and musicology: expression as culturally, socially and temporally mediated, but also in reference to a canonized past, which musicians try to understand and uphold in performance; this was once manifested as a desire for re-creation (e.g. in early phases of the historically informed performance movement3), but now takes the form of a desire to situate one’s own reading carefully; Psychology of music and performance science: expression as empirically studied, focusing on emotion, body and gesture; Artistic research, studies of recorded music, and performance studies in general: expression as related in/through performance, both by those studying performers and by performers themselves; performance as the focus of the study, through recordings as well as other types of investigation; Music psychology, music computing and music technology: expression tested by and applied in computer science (e.g. the development of computer systems for expressive music performance).

Concrete

Expression is directed towards evoking a scene, image or narrative to be found in the external, physical world.

Expression springs from the human emotions and/or the physical, gestural experience of being human.

FIGURE 14.2

Abstract

Extramusical: descriptive, programmatic

Extramusical: conceptual, ideaconveying

Intramusical: corporeal, embodied in the human

Intramusical: structural, abstract but situated in the work

Expression is directed towards invoking thoughts, ideas and concepts of a metaphysical nature—more internalized than description but still external to music itself.

Expression emanates from the nature of the work itself—its proportions, processes and cardinal points, and the spacing and rhythm of these.

A model of four main conceptual approaches to musical expression

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INTRAMUSICAL STRUCTURAL APPROACHES In twentieth-century studies of the psychology of music, ‘expression in music’ was often described—in very empirical —by how practitioners deviate from the score, i.e. implying that expression is tantamount to deviation. Seashore defines expression in music as ‘artistic deviation from the fixed and regular: from rigid pitch, uniform intensity, fixed rhythm, pure tone, and perfect harmony’ (Seashore 1938: 29). However problematic the concept of deviation may be, it forms part of a wider strand of research, all of which can be located at the abstract end of the spectrum referred to above, aiming to identify the source of musical expression in the musical structure itself. Accordingly, much research in music psychology and in computing has been devoted to defining generative principles and so-called performance cues, both of which ostensibly contribute to musical expression. According to Palmer, one function of interpretation (which is to say, the use of expressive variations) is to highlight particular structural content. In principle, as suggested above, this is linked to elements such as phrase boundaries, metric organization, rhythmic groupings of the notes on various levels, and melodic shape. Here the expressive cues that the performer uses essentially communicate to the listener a particular ‘conceptual interpretation of the musical composition’ (1997: 119). Gabrielsson and Lindström (2001) review the methods and findings in thirty-two empirical studies between 1936 and 1999 which examine the role of separate performance cues (tempo, articulation, harmony, timbre, etc.) and structural features in the music that contribute to the expression of different emotions. The way in which performers deviate from the letter of the notation has remained one field of interest. One of the main findings from this research is that the actual performance of a piece of music almost never corresponds to the nominal values of the notation. In all performances, there are deviations or systematic variations from what seems to be prescribed by the notation. Juslin refers to this phenomenon as ‘performance expression’ (2000: 1797) and reiterates Palmer’s (1997) observation that it concerns ‘the small and large variations in timing, dynamics, timbre and pitch that form the microstructure of a performance and differentiate it from another performance of the same music’ (118). Some of these arise from an inevitable lack of technical control on the part of performers; others are likely to be consciously or unconsciously intentional. But to some extent the interest in deviations in performance has also pointed towards the ‘concrete’ side of the model in Figure 14.2, where basic human emotions are assumed to be a source for musical expression, or rather, where the emotions of the performer are believed to have an effect on the expressive qualities in a performance. While reading deviation in the light of the music’s structural properties has typically dominated research, Gabrielsson’s (2003) comprehensive review of empirical research on music performance at the millennium reveals that there has been an increase in the research linking these performance characteristics to emotional expression as well.


Perspectives on the relationship between emotion, expression and interpretation vary in studies examining the interaction between analysis and performance. Berry’s Musical Structure and Performance (1989) served as one catalyst in its articulation of a possible means by which such a relationship might be envisioned (see also Dunsby 1989, 1995; Rink 1995, 2002; Cook et al. 2009). A wide-ranging study by Cook (1999) is of particular note here, as he cites the concept of ‘expression’ to challenge aspects of the structuralist approaches of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) and, moreover, the broader literature that has been developed around the idea of a generative theory of tonal music (Sloboda 1988). Cook argues that expression remains intertwined with aspects of human, performative agency, rather than existing beyond the realm of human action. As part of the attempt to better understand ‘real performances’ of the past and present, research into historical recordings has facilitated the evolution of more advanced tools for analysis of audio data4 and has contributed to the increasing interest in performance within the field of musicology (DoğantanDack 2009; Philip 1992; Cook et al. 2009). The reading of the data generated by these new approaches has, in turn, led to new thinking about how music’s topography might be a factor within musical expression; more recent interest in musical ‘shape’, buttressed by increasingly sophisticated technological research tools, reflects this.5 Technology can be exploited not only in the understanding of musical expression, but also in its creation. The development of what is currently referred to as computer-generated ‘expressive performance’ of music emerged only in the 1980s, but it proliferated quickly. A review article by Kirke and Miranda (2009) lists thirty-one computer systems for expressive performance. Fourteen of them draw on rule systems, while the other seventeen use different sources such as linear models and Artificial Neural Networks. An extensive application of the generative approach to the study of musical expression is the ‘KTH-rule system’ developed in dialogue between the violinist Lars Frydén and a research team at the Department of Speech, Music and Hearing at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. One output of the team’s work was the software modelling system for musical expression called Director Musices, one of many Computer Systems for Expressive Music Performance (CSEMP). These systems, which are built on generative rules, are closely related to one of the major strands in music-psychological research into expression and emotion in performance (Friberg, Bresin and Sundberg 2006).

INTRAMUSICAL CORPOREAL APPROACHES: HUMAN EMOTIONS AND MUSIC The connection between human emotion and music has been the subject of empirical research for almost 100 years. Much of this history is discussed by Eerola and Vuoskoski (2013), who review 251 studies, divided into seven

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methodological categories: theoretical, self-report, biological, clinical, developmental, music-analytic, or those that work with individual and cultural differences. Any of these categories may be used separately, or two or more may be combined in the same project. Self-report studies remain the most common, together with biological studies. The researchers conclude that the use of biological measures has become frequent, whereas analysis methods and self-report methods have not developed at the same pace (ibid.: 314). Palmer observes that performers employ various expressive cues in order to communicate the emotive content of the music to listeners, and that the latter generally utilize the same code in order to decode or recognize these. This has been linked with the general use of vocal expressions of emotion among humans, as well as with characteristics of human physical motion (Palmer 1997: 120). Gestural elements of performances can serve a range of expressive functions and are neither merely inevitable by-products of singing or playing instruments nor possibly undesirable distractions. Since the 1990s, research into the function of gesture in musical performance has confirmed the development of our general understanding of human perception as fundamentally multimodal (Livingstone and Thompson 2006; Thompson, Graham and Russo 2005). Hence, human perception of music is not acousmatic but is stored as motor-mimetic images of movement, action and sound (Godøy 2003, 2006). In studies of the projection of musical expression in performance, visual gesture has emerged as a strong component (Clarke and Davidson 1998; Dahl and Friberg 2007; Davidson 1993, 1994, 1995, 2007). Indeed, Davidson finds that ‘vision can be more informative than sound in the perceiver’s understanding of the performer’s expressive intentions’ (1993: 112). Leman (2008) brings these developments further into the discourse of embodied cognition in a theory of musical communication, which proposes that intention is projected in music in the same way as in other social interactions: in musical performance, patterns of sonic energy both evoke and emerge from bodily gestures that are culturally meaningful to an individual. Leman also pays particular attention to the performer’s interaction with the instrument, which he describes as action–perception loops of haptic, sonic and, often, visual . Through the instrument, a performer ‘transmits the sonic and visual energy to the listener, who, through mirror processes, can make sense of it… Music encodes corporeal articulations in sound … which can be decoded, predicted, and understood because they rely on movements which appeal to the action-based ontology of human subjects’ (2008: 161). Some of the above-mentioned approaches to expression in music performance take on multiple methods or cross-modal perspectives. An attempt at a more overarching and inclusive perspective is the GERMS model as presented by Juslin in 2003.6 It has five dimensions:


G E R M

S

Generative rules which function to clarify the musical structure; Emotional expression which serves to convey intended emotions to listeners; Random variations which reflect human limitations with regard to internal timekeeper variance and motor delays; Motion principles which prescribe that some aspects of the performance (e.g. timing) should be shaped in accordance with patterns of biological motion; and Stylistic unexpectedness which involves local deviations from performance conventions. (ibid.: 273)

We find the multifaceted approach that Juslin proposes to be a substantial step forward towards an understanding of the processes embedded in musical expression in performance. While remaining within the scientific domains of psychology and computing, the perspectives covered by the GERMS model could be understood as touching on all four domains in the field model that we presented above. We also sympathize with Juslin’s outspoken ambition to contribute to a more considered approach of how to teach performance expression in conservatoires: ‘The problem is compounded by the fact that musical expression involves tacit knowledge that is difficult to convey from teachers to students. Research on expression could help to render the tacit knowledge explicit. Rather than surrender to individual differences in expressive ability in the name of musical talent, we could address them through theoretically informed teaching’ (2003: 275). However, we believe that the complexity of the enquiry demands a truly multidisciplinary approach. Researchers working in musicology, music psychology and computing should be prepared to stretch to performance studies and artistic research. We feel that Juslin too readily dismisses the possibility of drawing on introspection (2003: 281) and first-hand s from performers. The development of methods through artistic research (Freeman 2010; Cox and Crispin 2013; Frisk and Östersjö 2013; Hultberg 2013; Schwab and Borgdorff 2014) may lead to interdisciplinary research that can go beyond the limitations encountered in earlier attempts at drawing on introspection.

A revised model for expression in the field of the musical work We believe that an underlying problem in past research on musical expression has been the failure to for the co-creativity of performance as discussed earlier. We now propose modifications to our earlier model that for the multiple agents in question, among them composers and performers, as well as the fourfold division of understandings of musical expression within the form of a field of the musical work.

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Our previous discussions underline the increasing awareness that the musical work is not the stable object we tend to think in of. The traditional view of the musical work as a fixed entity (reflecting the composer’s intentions) that is produced in two phases—one productive and one reproductive—is alarmingly misleading. We propose that it is more useful to consider the production of a musical work as made up of multiple processes of interpretation and construction—a field of action. The identity of the work is the result of the relative impact of multiple agents that take part in a continual constructive process, in a manner similar to how Stubley discusses the identity of the self in the action of play as an identity in the making (1998: 98). This phrase also captures the fluid identity of the musical work and shifts the perspective from the abstract object, which is to say from the notion of an enduring work, to the working, to the act of performing, and finally to the self and the other. The identity of a musical work is therefore the result of the negotiations of multiple agents; however, this identity is also affected by the processes in which the ‘text’ of the score is attuned to other ‘texts’ within the musical discourse. Such intertextuality is another side of this identity in the making. In a musical discourse, not only scores, but also performances, function as ‘text’. These points concerning identity bring us back to the need for a more holistic way of considering musical expression. Until now we have described a historically situated series of models that gives rise to a sense of a fractured field and that uses many languages. But this array could be looked at in a more unified manner through a revision of Figure 14.2 that exposes the idea of the expressive field for the musical work (see Figure 14.3). Reflecting on this model, we find that the heart of the matter is how the performer’s voice, developed in prolonged explorations of the affordances and resistances of the instrument, is confronted by or resonates with the agency of a score. A key here is the ‘resistance’ of the instrument: ‘the instrument does not just yield ively to the desire of the musician. It is not a blank slate waiting for an inscription. Likewise, the musician does not just turn the instrument to his own ends, bending it to his will against whatever resistance it offers. Rather musician and instrument meet, each drawing the other out of its native territory’ (Evens 2005: 161). A performer can either be resonant with the affordances of the instrument or develop ways of denying habit in order to achieve a critical approach in shaping the music as sound (Östersjö 2013). Cumming discusses these microstructures of signification and how a perception of voice is produced through a ‘combination of nuance and timbral characteristics’ (2000: 167). The development of this ‘voice’ is not merely a solitary affair but rather a complex interplay between years of hard work under the guidance of various teachers, years of listening to music in concerts and on recordings, and years of playing with others—an interplay that also has a further impact on the personal development of the individual. Cumming discusses the role of her violin teachers, claiming


Composer

Performer

Audience

Inferred expression Enacted expression













The Score the performer’s primary source of information from which to infer the appropriate mode(s) of expression

FIGURE 14.3

The Instrument a source of both affordances and resistances

The Performer’s Body; the Performer’s Voice an important source for the audience when inferring the intended mode(s) of expression

Refining the expressive field for the musical work

that they ‘extended their role beyond the transmission of technical skills, or even of formal and stylistic understanding, to include a challenge to emotional life, and rationality, in the name of musical interpretation’ (ibid.: 8). Claims such as this suggest a close connection between what we are describing as the performer’s voice and certain aspects of the concept of authenticity in performance. Without delving too deeply into this much contested area, let us recall the four types of authenticity proposed by Kivy, namely: authenticity as intention, authenticity as sound, authenticity as historic practice, and what he ‘The Other Authenticity’, or the personal authenticity of the performer (1995: 108–42). Our concept of voice and Kivy’s Other Authenticity are, we believe, very close to one another. In the field of the musical work, the relative power given to opposed kinds of authenticity represents one of many forces at play. The call for authenticity turns attention in several directions: towards the composer’s intentions for performance, towards the practice within the musical discourse, towards ‘sonic authenticity’ (achieved by employing the relevant instruments and the

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relevant technology), and towards the personal authenticity of the performer. In refining a notion of the musical field of expression, then, the questions around these multiple authenticities help us to make specific modifications, arriving at a reading in which, at some point in the later stages of the process, the strongest agents could be considered to be the performer and the instrument. Within this new model, we conceive of the listening of the performer and that of the audience as co-creative in the field of the work. Hence, all musical listening is, by way of association and discrimination, a way to launch creative imagination in an individual (Sessions 1971: 31–2). In this act of listening, the impact of multiple agents is what creates distinct manifestations of musical expression: in the voice of the performer, in a specific rendering of a composition and as felt emotion in a listener. This calls attention to those porous areas which break down the unidirectional aspects of the Werktreue model, facilitating a possibility within which the composer–performer–audience directive becomes more of a renewable cycle, inclusive of all and challenging fixed notions of authorship. Blurring the boundaries in this way has the potential to enfranchise listeners, since the comprehension of the formal aspects of a musical work becomes interwoven with apprehending how it sounds and with ‘understanding’ what those sounds may mean. Moreover, the judgements concerning this become a shared responsibility and another potential form of musical expression, rather than merely an action of one specific individual in a predetermined critical role. Within this more socially responsive field lie fresh possibilities for considering what musical expression is, how it functions, and how we can continue to experience it through music-making. At the outset of this chapter, we suggested that expression is a concept that is deeply, and almost instinctively, embedded in musicians’ experience of their practice. One might add that it is a property of music that often stands out to artists from other fields. And yet, as has been seen, it has a tendency to become elusive under closer scrutiny and to divide and reshape itself into a variety of forms under the interactive influence of a range of agencies and other concepts. In some ways, this is evidence of its pervasiveness, and musicians—whether established or ‘in the making’—should not be discouraged from trying to probe its essential character. This chapter represents our attempt to do just that, examining expression from a variety of perspectives and suggesting that, by looking at it more closely, we might be better able to detach it from other strong ideologies of musical performance, most notably that of Werktreue. Our vision of a more equal and engaged relationship between composer, performer and audience in the formation and perception of musical expression may have an element of idealism to it, but we believe that it is an ideal to which, in our respective musical roles, we should all aspire.


References Barker, H. and Y. Taylor, 2007: Faking it: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music (New York: Norton). Barthes, R., 1977: ‘Musica practica’, in idem, Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (London: Fontana Press), pp. 149–54. Berry, W., 1989: Musical Structure and Performance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Butt, J., 2002: Playing with History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Clarke, E. and J. Davidson, 1998: ‘The body in performance’, in W. Thomas, ed., Composition, Performance, Reception: Studies in the Creative Process in Music (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 74–92. Cook, N., 1999: ‘Analysing performance and performing analysis’, in N. Cook and M. Everist, eds., Rethinking Music (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 239–61. Cook, N., E. Clarke, D. Leech-Wilkinson and J. Rink, eds., 2009: The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cox, J. and D. Crispin, 2013: ‘Allotropes of advocacy: a model for categorising persuasiveness in musical performance’, Music + Practice 1/1, http://www.musicandpractice.org/ volume-1/allotropes-of-advocacy-musical-performance (accessed 15 February 2017). Cumming, N., 2000: The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Dahl, S. and A. Friberg, 2007: ‘Visual perception of expressiveness in musicians’ body movements’, Music Perception 24/4: 433–54. Davidson, J. W., 1993: ‘Visual perception of performance manner in the movements of solo musicians’, Psychology of Music 21/2: 103–13. Davidson, J. W., 1994: ‘What type of information is conveyed in the body movements of solo musician performers?’, Journal of Human Movement Studies 6: 279–301. Davidson, J. W., 1995: ‘What does the visual information contained in music performances offer the observer? Some preliminary thoughts’, in R. Steinberg, ed., Music and the Mind Machine: The Psychophysiology and Psychopathology of the Sense of Music (Berlin: Springer), pp. 105–13. Davidson, J. W., 2007: ‘Qualitative insights into the use of expressive body movement in solo piano performance: a case study approach’, Psychology of Music 35/3: 381–401. Doğantan-Dack, M., ed., 2009: Recorded Music: Philosophical and Critical Reflections (London: Middlesex University Press). Dunsby, J., 1989: ‘Guest editorial: performance and analysis of music’, Music Analysis 8/1–2: 5–20. Dunsby, J., 1995: Performing Music: Shared Concerns (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Eerola, T. and J. Vuoskoski, 2013: ‘A review of music and emotion studies: approaches, emotion models and stimuli’, Music Perception 30/3: 307–40. Evens, A., 2005: Sound Ideas: Music, Machines, and Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Freeman, J., ed., 2010: Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research Through Practice in Performance (Music + Performing Arts) (Faringdon: Libri).

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Musicians in the Making Friberg, A., R. Bresin and J. Sundberg, 2006: ‘Overview of the KTH rule system for musical performance’, Advances in Cognitive Psychology 2/2–3: 145–61. Frisk, H. and S. Östersjö, 2013: ‘Beyond validity: claiming the legacy of the artistresearcher’, in Svensk Tidskrift för Musikforskning 95: 41–63. Gabrielsson, A., 2003: ‘Music performance research at the millennium’, Psychology of Music 31/3: 221–72. Gabrielsson, A. and P. N. Juslin, 1996: ‘Emotional expression in music performance: between the performer’s intention and the listener’s experience’, Psychology of Music 24/1: 68–91. Gabrielsson, A. and E. Lindström, 2001: ‘The influence of musical structure on emotional expression’, in P. N. Juslin and J. A. Sloboda, eds., Music and Emotion: Theory and Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 235–39. Godøy, R. I., 2003: ‘Motor-mimetic music cognition’, Leonardo 36/4: 317–19. Godøy, R. I., 2006: ‘Gestural-sonorous objects: embodied extensions of Schaeffer’s conceptual apparatus’, Organised Sound 11/2: 149–57. Goehr, L., [1998] 2004: ‘Conflicting ideas of performance perfection in an imperfect practice’, in idem, The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 132–73. Goehr, L., 2007: The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, revd edn (New York: Oxford University Press). Habermas, J., 1989: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. T. Burger (Cambridge: Polity Press). Horkheimer, M. and T. W. Adorno, 1997: Dialectic of Enlightenment (London: Verso). Hultberg, C., 2013: ‘Artistic processes in music performance: a research area calling for inter-disciplinary collaboration’, Svensk Tidskrift för Musikforskning 95: 75–94. Juslin, P. N., 2000: ‘Cue utilization in communication of emotion in music performance: relating performance to perception’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 26/6: 1797–813. Juslin, P. N., 2003: ‘Five facets of musical expression: a psychologist’s perspective on music performance’, Psychology of Music 31: 273–302. Juslin, P. N., A. Friberg and R. Bresin, 2002: ‘Toward a computational model of expression in music performance: the GERM model’, Musicae Scientiae, Special Issue 2001–2002, 5/1: suppl. 63–122. Kirke, A. and E. R. Miranda, 2009: ‘A survey of computer systems for expressive music performance’, ACM Computing Surveys 42/1, Article 3. Kivy, P., 1995: Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Leman, M., 2008: Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Lerdahl, F. and R. Jackendoff, 1983: A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Livingstone, S. R. and W. F. Thompson, 2006: ‘Multimodal affective interaction: a comment on musical origins’, Music Perception 24/1: 89–94. Östersjö, S., 2013: ‘The resistance of the Turkish Makam and the habitus of a performer: reflections on a collaborative CD-project with Erdem Helvacioğlu’, Contemporary Music Review 32/2-03: 201–13. Palmer, C., 1997: ‘Music performance’, Annual Review of Psychology 48: 115–38.

Musical expression from conception to reception Philip, R., 1992: Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rink, J., ed., 1995: The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rink, J., ed., 2002: Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Schwab, M. and H. Borgdorff, eds., 2014: The Exposition of Artistic Research: Publishing Art in Academia (Leiden: Leiden University Press). Seashore, C. E., 1938: Psychology of Music (New York: McGraw-Hill). Sessions, R., 1971: The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Sloboda, J., ed., 1988: Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology of Composition, Performance, and Improvisation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Small, C., 1998: Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press). Stubley, E. V., 1998: ‘Being in the body, being in the sound: a tale of modulating identities and lost potential’, Journal of Aesthetic Education 32/4: 93–105. Taruskin, R., 1995: ‘Last thoughts first’, in idem, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 3–47. Thompson, W. F., P. Graham and F. A. Russo, 2005: ‘Seeing music performance: visual influences on perception and experience’, Semiotica 156/1–4: 203–27. Weber, W., 1992: The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

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Dialogue and beyond COMMUNICATION AND INTERACTION IN ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE

Elaine King and Anthony Gritten

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Research on ensemble performance has generally involved the study of communication in both rehearsal and performance, exploring the ways in which co-performers encode, transmit and decode various types of information about musical materials in the process of creating and maintaining a performance. Recent research into group rehearsal processes (as distinct from the individual practice by each member of the ensemble) highlights the importance of nonverbal communication (King and Ginsborg 2011), communicative gestures (Dahl et al. 2010), modes of communication (Seddon and Biasutti 2009) and visual communication (Kokotsaki 2007). It is generally agreed that the embodied discourse of ensemble rehearsal processes is both verbal and nonverbal and that an ensemble ‘can be viewed as a task performance system with a strong socio-emotional element’ (Kokotsaki 2007: 642). This chapter interrogates the notion of communication in ensemble performance, focusing in particular on the ‘qualitative transformations’ that occur during and as a result of changes from rehearsal to performance in the context of western art music-making. These transformations are defined for the purpose of this chapter as instances during performance that yield dramatic and extraordinary experiences for one or more co-performers; such experiences are affective, cognitive and/or corporeal in quality. The transformations in question are not dictated by frequency of occurrence, but they are influenced by shifts in dialogue as described below. Acknowledging that a huge array of factors influences these transformations, we focus here on the use of the ‘communication’ and ‘interaction’—that is, on facets of dialogue—when proceeding from rehearsal to performance. Table 15.1 provides definitions of these key as applied in the context of this chapter and in research in the field more generally.

Communication and interaction in ensemble performance TABLE 15.1

Definitions of key applied in the context of ensemble rehearsal and performance

TERM

DEFINITION

Dialogue

Deliberate simultaneous exchanges of information and evaluations (verbal, nonverbal) between two (or more) musicians which may reflect communication among other facets of conversation

Communication

Deliberate one-way process of discourse between two (or more) musicians as illustrated by turn-taking

Interaction

Deliberate two-way process of mutually constructive discourse between two (or more) musicians as illustrated by reciprocity and co-constructed musical identities

We argue that the idea of communication alone does not go far enough in explaining ensemble performance because it is based upon a narrow understanding of dialogue that prevails only during ensemble rehearsal. An expanded conceptual model for ensemble performance is therefore proposed. From a philosophical point of view, the model acknowledges the epistemic difference between ensemble rehearsal and performance; that is, in these two arenas of music-making we assume fundamentally different evaluations and deployments of knowledge and beliefs about the processes taking place. Moreover, this difference is characterized by a paradigm shift from communication to interaction; in other words, while these may be used interchangeably because they belong to the same paradigm of meaning, communication has been used primarily to describe our thinking about ensemble performance to date. We suggest that a shift is required in the ways in which these words are thought about and used in the context of ensemble playing. As such, communication, which is usually assumed to be a one-way process between two preconstituted subjects (turn-taking), is superseded by interaction in live performance. The latter acknowledges that co-performers are mutually socially constructed by their participation in the ensemble activity in of attunement, entrainment, and reciprocity, all of which become important in live performance through what Kokotsaki (2007: 656–7) describes with Bakhtinian vocabulary as ‘a kind of active listening’. Interaction draws upon an embodied physical knowledge that is entirely gestural and corporeal, alongside which (verbal) communication is one small contributory component. We argue that it is more propitious to understand the central role of embodied knowledge in ensemble performance in of interaction rather than communication.

Communication in ensemble rehearsal The literature on ensemble rehearsal has grown rapidly in the last quarter century or so, and many advances have been made in understanding both the roles

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of co-performers in the process and the function of reciprocal communication during the development of a relatively stable consensus on how the music is to be performed. It is generally agreed that the cognitive load on co-performers is higher, or at least more extensive (albeit distributed), than in solo performance, with the multiple interrelationships between co-performers all requiring attention and response. Various ‘complex social factors’ (Davidson 1997: 209) arise in ensemble performance which are absent from, or at least attenuated in, solo performance, for the ensemble acts as a microcosm of the wider social world. This means, as Lehmann, Sloboda and Woody (2007: 166) remark, that ‘Like any other group of people working together, musical ensembles are subject to powerful interpersonal dynamics and social processes. The success of a group can ultimately hinge on how the musicians handle leadership, individuality, and collaborative problem solving among themselves’. Numerous studies have reported on the balance between talking and playing in ensemble rehearsal (e.g. Goodman 2000; Williamon and Davidson 2002; Davidson and King 2004), indicating that talking—an obvious example of verbal communication—may be more prevalent in newly established groups and influenced by the levels of experience of the performers (King and Ginsborg 2011; see also Chapter 8 in this volume). Thus, one of the key factors in ensemble rehearsal is the relative weighting of verbal and nonverbal discourse. It is fair to say that ‘the nature and quality of interactions among co-performers in of verbal and non-verbal communication largely determine the quality of the musical production itself’ (Kokotsaki 2007: 642). It has long been recognized that kinesic expression and tone of voice convey significant proportions of what is perceived and understood in an utterance (DePaulo and Friedman 1998). This is particularly true in ensemble rehearsal, where, notwithstanding the length of time spent conversing with co-performers, the spoken dialogue during an ensemble rehearsal session plays a relatively small part in the development of the performance. Instead, the relationships between co-performers generally proceed in a multi-modal manner.1 A study of co-performer communication by Williamon and Davidson (2002) concluded that, in addition to ensemble rehearsals functioning as a means to firm up the timing and phrasing of gestures, there is a further emergent layer of communication in the ensemble rehearsal that consists of various nonverbal gestures and moments of eye that are synchronized with particular cue-like features of the music. In such instances of qualitative transformation (discussed below in relation to live performance), it is clear that co-performers’ social bodies play a key role in shaping musical processes and mutually meaningful experiences (Moran 2011: 5) and that ‘successful performers tend to use bodily movement to enhance their communication of expressive information’ (Lehmann et al. 2007: 168–9) because this is more productive than resorting to verbal exchange. In general, nonverbal communication is increasingly recognized in performance studies as a key component of the ensemble rehearsal process, and

Communication and interaction in ensemble performance

research data in this area are becoming more robust. Many of the insights from Kurkul’s (2007) study of nonverbal communication in one-to-one instrumental lessons also hold for ensemble rehearsals, in which the ‘educational’ or ‘pedagogical’ imperative is normally absent, particularly the idea (ibid.: 328) that certain nonverbal behaviours serve different functions, including (1) being the primary way of expressing emotion, sometimes in contradiction to what the verbal component of the utterance seems to be saying; (2) providing a language for articulating personal relationships between performers; (3) regulating dialogue and fine-tuning it; and (4) offering ways of reading and responding to coperformers’ evolving social identities that are more nuanced and flexible than purely verbal means. It is often unclear how ensemble rehearsal talk between of an ensemble relates to or informs their specifically musical relationships (Wilson and MacDonald 2012: 564) beyond providing a basic focal point, a direction of travel or sometimes a distraction: the extent to which the epistemological link between talking about a problematic age and then running it through together is also far from firm and unequivocal. Indeed, for every ensemble there is a different mode of communication between its co-performers, and modes of communication often vary from one performance to the next, according to local contexts and the evolving relationships between of the ensemble and with their audiences. It has been concluded in several studies of different types of ensemble, however, that successful ensembles tend to do most of the important ensemble rehearsal work by utilizing a variety of modes of playing together rather than through spoken conversation (Murnighan and Conlon 1991; Durrant 1994), from repetitive engagements with small fragments to longer runthroughs and listening to ages without certain parts being played. Communication in ensemble rehearsal takes many forms, from score-based analytical exercises to loosely framed discussion about tempos, timing, interpretative matters and intonation. With respect to physical action, researchers over several decades have devoted a great deal of attention to the identification and categorization of gesture types. One way of classifying gestures in of their relation to performance preparation is to break them down into three main types: kinesic, proxemic and paralinguistic. Kinesic gestures include eye , facial expression, hand gestures and body orientation (Ekman and Friesen 1969). Proxemic gestures concern physical distance and touching (Hall 1963). Paralinguistic gestures encom features like silence, tone of voice and noise. Other nonverbal behaviours are ‘steady eye , forward posture, head nodding, smiles and laughter, appropriate touch, animated facial expressions, varied vocal inflection, sensitive use of space and timing, and expressive use of gestures’ (Kurkul 2007: 330–1; see p. 329 in ibid. for a table of major behavioural categories). What this battery of tools and techniques affords ensemble co-performers is a flexible mode of communicating with one another through means that are not exclusively verbal, a pragmatic modus operandi

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that is intuitive (while also being rigorous), and a way of maintaining a sense of continuity between music-making on the one hand and reflecting on and enhancing the music-making on the other.

Interaction in performance According to Blacking (1973: xi), ‘many, if not all, of music’s essential processes can be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of human bodies in society’. Cross (2008: 151) echoes this: ‘we find music performing a multiplicity of roles, often in the form of dynamic interaction. Music is not simply something that is heard and consumed, it is something that is done in interaction with others’. For instance, the performance of string quartets has often been described—more than metaphorically—as a ‘conversation between four friends’ (Hunter 2012). Mithen (2006: 12) depicts the verbal interaction in human conversation as the ‘manner in which we synchronise our utterances when having a conversation’, and he claims that this is similar to communal music-making. It is interesting to note that Mithen uses the term ‘interaction’ to describe verbal exchanges in human conversation, even though the synchronization of utterances in this context might be considered primarily to be about turn-taking. Ensemble performance requires the preliminary synchronization of individual parts during concerted action such that turn-taking is no more than a specific pattern of interaction embedded within it. Nevertheless, Blacking’s allusion to ‘patterns of interaction’ and Mithen’s reference to ‘conversation’ are important, and they the conceptual model of ensemble performance proposed later in this chapter. The study of interaction in relation to ensemble performance in music is by no means new: the term has been defined, used and explored in a range of contexts and scenarios. The ‘facilitating effects of co-action on human performance’ referred to by Davidson (1997: 215) have often been noted in research, although less work has been done to tease apart what ‘facilitation’ means in this context, especially since ‘the mere presence of others is not necessarily facilitating’ (ibid.). The following discussion summarizes some of the research on interaction that informs our conceptual model, and a number of patterns of interaction are identified en route. Ensemble playing has been defined as being about two types of dialogue, musical and social (Goodman 2002), where the former concerns the coordination or synchronization of musical material and the latter concerns the relationship between the players in the group. For example, in her ethnomusicological of jazz improvisation, Monson (1996: 2) explores interaction in three ways: (1) via the creation of music through the improvisational interaction of sounds; (2) via the shaping of social networks and communities that accompany musical participation; and (3) via the development of a range of culturally variable meanings and ideologies that


inform jazz interpretation. Monson extends the concept of interaction beyond the immediate framework of the jazz band into the wider socio-cultural context. About the immediate band context, which directly relates to this study, she maintains that ‘interacting musical parts are simultaneously interacting musical personalities’ (ibid.: 176), acknowledging the overlap between musical- and social-interaction processes. She claims that the inventiveness required in jazz improvisation presents demands which differ from those in western classical performance; she also highlights the interactional options in the jazz player’s basic tool kit, which include imitation, call-and-response, walking, riffing and playing pedal points (ibid.: 72). Such devices for musical interaction, along with turn-taking, might be heard to represent both literal conversational patterns of interaction in ensemble performance and heuristics for dialogical interactive performance. On a more abstract level, Sawyer (2003) presents a model of the ‘interactional forces’ operating in group creativity in his study of jazz improvisation. On the basis of his research into the creative aspects of language and conversation in linguistic anthropology, Sawyer (ibid.: 86–7) identifies four components of group musical creativity: (1) the performer of a given musical act within the whole, who contributes something new to the flow of interaction; (2) the other participants in the interaction, for example, co-performers and of the audience; (3) the characteristics and constraints of the performance genre; and (4) the independent constraints deriving from the flow of prior interaction in the ensemble activity. What is interesting about Sawyer’s model is that the ‘interactional forces’ operate as they do in everyday conversation: that is, the development of (musical) ideas is regarded as a continuous dialogical process in which the of a group interact like participants in a conversation, steering the exchange of ideas through competing tendencies in order to agree gradually that something new is being presented (inventiveness) or something older is being maintained (coherence) (ibid.: 88). These conversational forces of invention and coherence may be regarded as features of interaction. A wider theory of musical interaction is put forward by Brinner (1995) in his study of Central Javanese gamelan. Brinner articulates four types of interaction: (1) an ‘interactive network’, pertaining to the make-up of an ensemble, i.e. those involved in it along with the roles, relationships and links between them; (2) an ‘interactive system’, referring to the means and meaning of communication and coordination, or how interaction is achieved; (3) an ‘interactive sound structure’, which concerns the constraints and possibilities inherent in the ways in which sounds are put together (such as the progression of textural and formal ideas); and (4) ‘interactive motivation’, applying to the consideration of goals, rewards, pitfalls and sanctions about performance as well as why musicians choose to play together in an ensemble. The conceptual model of performance proposed later in this chapter relates particularly to Brinner’s second type of interaction, ‘interactive system’, which necessarily includes an

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understanding of the ways in which coordinated action is achieved within the immediate framework of an ensemble’s musical activity. The study of coordination in performance was initially dominated by research on the synchronization of timing between co-performers; this understanding of dialogue was narrow but nevertheless useful. The ideas of timekeeping and tracking emerge as central themes in this discourse. Timekeeping underlies the communication of musical information in performance; it helps to determine the strategic use of auditory and visual cues and, arguably, is essential for the successful coordination of an ensemble. Timekeeping is inextricably linked to the process of tracking, which describes the way in which co-performers predict and react to the ongoing relay of musical information; in other words, it is the means by which co-performers interact with one another during performance. Predictive and reactive behaviour is vital in performance (Goodman 2002). According to the Guarneri String Quartet, ‘every moment of our playing is conditioned by what has just occurred or by what we think is about to occur’ (Blum 1986: 20). Loft (1992: 10) remarks that ‘every player is not only thinking about the particular line in the music as it unfolds, but is reacting to everything that transpires in the other voices of the composition’. In effect, co-performers in an ensemble constantly make complex predictions and, at the same time, quick reactions to the fluctuating circumstances in performance; this nuanced dialogue mutually constitutes their musical identities. In relation to his notion of an interactive system, Brinner (1995) argues that the musical communication within an ensemble during performance includes a variety of acts, some of which reflect predictive behaviour while others concern reactive behaviour. He defines a ‘cue’ as a ‘musical, verbal, visual or kinetic act specifically produced for the purpose of initiating an interaction—that is, bringing about a change in the performance of others in the ensemble—that would not occur otherwise’ (ibid.: 183). Three specific types of cue are identified: ‘prompts’, ‘signals’ and ‘markers’ (ibid.: 190). Prompts are safety cues ‘produced solely for the purpose of putting derailed musicians back on the tracks’; signals are given as ‘reminders or warnings before disaster strikes’ and function as ‘predictable cues’; and markers are referential, for they orientate performers during a sequence of events.2 These three types of cue can be understood in psychological as triggers for patterns of dialogue, which can be explained in of perceptual theories about memory and cue abstraction (Deliège 1997) as well as motor programming theories (Clayton 1985; Shaffer 1984). Performers consciously or nonconsciously assimilate a ‘schematic representation’ of aural and/or visual cues or movements which allows them to make ongoing comparisons between what they think is about to happen and what is actually happening in performance. The above approaches to interaction in performance are essentially rooted in an understanding of group creativity as communicative in so far as it presupposes a certain kind of call-and-response dialogue and, in some cases, an


explicit conversational basis as multiple acts of mutual exchange between preconstituted musical subjects. More recent research challenges and loosens this position. In Embodied Knowledge in Ensemble Performance, McCaleb (2014; see also McCaleb 2011a, 2011b, 2013) proposes that interaction within the framework of the immediate ensemble can be both communicative and noncommunicative. He argues that a paradigm of ‘reaction’ and, more specifically, ‘inter-reaction’ is more productive for understanding the performance of an ensemble than a paradigm of ‘communication’ based on transmission, in which information is ‘pushed’ from one person to another via a process of encoding, transmitting and decoding.3 McCaleb (2014) presents a model involving three stages which operate in a cycle: transmitting, inferring and attuning. Transmitting is concerned with the performers’ operation of their instruments; this is dynamically related to their musical intentions and hence dependent upon embodied knowledge. Inferring is the process by which performers infer the musical intentions of their coperformers on the basis of the transmitted output that they perceive over time. Attuning is the activity of each performer perceiving individual contributions alongside his or her own and drawing implications through modifying and adjusting their own interpretation to recognize the ensemble’s overarching, shared (or at least co-present) intentions. The cycle starts again as performers transmit the information that they have attuned. McCaleb (2013: 4) claims that ‘every action in performance begets another, creating a socio-musical context which constantly adapts to the constituent ’ musical interpretations’. The key feature of his dialogical model is that it encomes the process of encoding—that is, the intention to communicate information or make an idea explicit. The inter-reaction paradigm ‘s for all events [both intentional and unintentional] that may transpire during a performance, rather than simply those intended to happen’ (McCaleb 2014: 101). This model, based on a productively broad notion of dialogue, affords an alternative configuration of interaction that could be regarded as separate from encoding. McCaleb (2014) provides three examples to illustrate his model. His first example discusses the manner in which of the Boult String Quartet deal with a ‘mishap’ in performance as the cellist performs one age of a movement differently from the plan agreed in rehearsal. As with Monson’s (1996) and Brinner’s (1995) parallel research, the awareness of how coperformers in an ensemble negotiate a ‘mishap’ or a change of musical idea provides evidence of how that ensemble interacts in order to achieve a coordinated interpretative effect; communication alone does not afford the ensemble a solution to the potential problems arising from the mishap. Yet, the comparison of information between ensemble rehearsal and ensemble performance indicates that both predictive and reactive behaviour is at work and that some kind of schematic representation underpins the performance. McCaleb’s second and third examples reflect ways in which co-performers ‘pull’ information from one

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another, rather than ‘push’ in the older sense of ‘transmission’ assumed in communication: again referring to evidence from a rehearsal by the Boult Quartet, McCaleb (2014: 102–3) observes that the violist leads the pacing of an expressive melody while the other players attune to this shape, and that the cellist signals the end of a musical line with a nod encoded by the other players as the start of the ensuing age. McCaleb (2013) also argues that co-performers rely upon embodied knowledge. Phenomenologically speaking, embodiment is a matter of the body being capable of knowing how to do things without intellectual intervention; as van Manen writes (2011: 21), ‘the body knows’. Leman’s (2008) approach to embodied knowledge is strikingly congruent with McCaleb’s model of inter-reaction (transmitting → inferring → attuning). Leman argues that the human body is a ‘mediator’ acting as a conduit between physical energy and human experiences, transforming one form of energy into another, from biology to action and (in another direction) from representation to materiality. This model of the musical body emphasizes the processual nature of embodied knowledge: it results from the body’s working on its environment and being worked on by that same environment. McCaleb, referring to the socio-cultural level of ensemble dynamics, this ‘inter-reaction’ (2011: 6) and, as noted above, offers a model of how such energetic mediation plays out dialogically in an ensemble’s performance. Thus, if embodied knowledge is acquired through experience, the mediation of energy and inter-reaction, then ensemble rehearsal is a particularly vital way to develop this nonexplicit information. The ensemble’s mode of learning is interaction, and communication emerges later as a means of confirming and debating what the interaction has already proposed, mediated and established as the most musically productive way forward. The cyclical model proposed by McCaleb, overlaying Leman’s model of embodied knowledge production, challenges the way in which ensemble interaction is understood and explained, providing an alternative platform on which to build a conceptual model.

Towards a conceptual model of interaction The process of constructing a conceptual model that relates ‘rehearsal communication’ and ‘performance interaction’ can begin by recalling the likely similarities and differences between the activities that take place in (western) ensemble rehearsals and performances, thereby articulating their boundaries. In ensemble rehearsal, co-performers typically balance run-throughs of musical material with intensive work on smaller sections of a piece: according to Gilboa and Tal-Shmotkin (2010: 34), ‘In the rehearsal phase, discuss the repertoire, negotiate interpretation, practice, experiment, work on technical issues and repeat complicated excerpts. The main objective of a rehearsal is to establish shared musical goals within the ensemble as soon as possible’ (see


also Davidson and King 2004). The musicians can start and stop run-throughs, talk and play alternately or simultaneously, and communicate with one another using gestures, movements and actions to convey and develop musical ideas. Co-performers listen intently to one another, monitoring their own playing as well as the outputs of fellow players (Keller 2008, 2010), and harnessing dialogical skills of prediction and reaction via awareness and monitoring aural, visual and kinetic cues. Most ensemble rehearsals involve the achievement of short- and long-term goals of performance where the rehearsal affords the opportunity for co-performers to assert individual interpretative ideas, to try out and negotiate interpretative possibilities (Goodman 2000), and to formulate a performance ‘plan’ (as indicated by McCaleb 2011a: 7; see also McCaleb 2014), that is, a sense of how they might perform a particular piece of music together. As Davidson writes (1997: 220), ensemble ‘rehearsals are occasions to learn the score and plan the coordination of timing, as well as to establish general expressive features of the music’. The ensemble rehearsal also affords an equally important social experience in which co-performers can forge, establish and develop friendships; explore one another’s musicianship; gain knowledge about ensemble rehearsal techniques; and obtain insight into how co-performers work and perform. In live performance, an ensemble presents one complete version of the piece without stopping to tweak or replay ages, a point that is both trivially true and phenomenologically vital, since this fact of the performance’s temporality causes a shift in co-performer interrelationships. Gilboa and Tal-Shmotkin (2010: 34), using the term ‘communication’ in broadly the way in which this chapter proposes using the term ‘interaction’, write that live performance requires different communication channels [compared to ensemble rehearsal]. Participants must create an implicit communication strategy to make time-critical decisions such as cueing, dynamic balance and articulatory adjustments. Auditory communication and body language prevail [over verbal utterance]. The performance phase combines anxiety and artistry; performance remains mysterious even to the musicians themselves. During a performance there are external factors that affect the ensemble, including the audience along with such physical variables as the acoustics, temperature, the stage and the hall. Thus, co-performers in an ensemble engage with one another during performance with the same basic tools and techniques as in rehearsal, that is, by employing gestures, movements and other actions (and, depending on tradition, other means such as the verbal prompts used by jazz and popular musicians). Equally, they listen acutely and actively to their own and co-performers’ outputs (Keller 2008), fostering predictive and reactive behaviour based on the relay of aural, visual and kinetic cues. But there is no time for communication, for interaction takes precedence as co-performers acknowledge the presence of their audience—however large or small, formal or informal—in the making

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of a performance that will entertain or engage. The ensemble is likely to want to achieve a strong sense of group cohesion in front of the audience, by such means as coordinating their dress, walking on and off stage together, and bowing together—matters of interaction that are socially coded and recognized as meaningful in a particular context. The last of these is likely to be dictated to an extent by contemporary performance etiquette in the relevant tradition. Coperformers develop musical ideas and experiences in live performance just as they do in ensemble rehearsal. In order to contextualize the model of interaction in performance proposed in this chapter, the issue of qualitative transformation (as defined above) in live performance needs to be addressed. It has long been acknowledged that music is a process and that this defining property affects the ways in which it emerges and engages: for example, ‘the variations which occur spontaneously [in performance] are critically dependent on the co-performers being able to detect and act immediately upon one another’s ideas’ (Davidson 1997: 220); and performance pivots around ‘the moment-by-moment process that performing musicians must undertake in co-constructing the musical interaction event’ (Moran 2011: 14). However, the notion of qualitative transformation expands the concept of ‘process’ by encoming the issue of what happens to the musical knowledge developed, used, assimilated and refined over a series of ensemble rehearsals when it is embodied in live performance. The subject of qualitative transformation in live performance is relatively new to performance studies, but several scholars have begun to investigate it, often from the perspective of artistic practice as research.4 One such writer is Doğantan-Dack (2012), who has discussed qualitative transformations in her artistic practice as the pianist in a piano trio. Her two guiding questions concern how performers continue to learn while on stage performing to the audience, and how live performance functions as a site for knowledge production (with the tangential issue of whether it can thus be categorized as research). Of particular relevance to this chapter is her claim: ‘It is evident that the emergence of such embodied, affective insights about these works is dependent on the experience of performing them one after the other—in one go, as it were—in a live performance context’ (ibid.: 35). If this is the case, and if ‘the most significant knowledge acquisition during the development of expertise in music performance happens through live public encounters with audiences and music’ (ibid.: 37), then the epistemic difference between ensemble rehearsal and live performance needs to be understood in an alternative way—namely, as a paradigm shift from communication towards interaction. This chimes with Davidson’s observation (1997: 209) that ‘there are moment by moment issues of coordination, cooperation, and to and from coperformers and audience which occur during the performance. That is, there are overriding sociocultural factors which shape the processes and behaviours brought to the performance context, alongside more immediate factors related


to direct human interaction’. Similarly, as Moran argues (2011: 13), ‘The qualitative data analysis points to action strategies in the non-verbal behaviour arising from physical co-presence in musical events. In particular, a range of communicative, coordinated, other-aware behaviours associated with relationship maintenance seem to be key contributors to the dynamics of the interaction—for example, movement cues related to attention-giving and attention-receiving behaviours associated with social rapport and responsiveness.’ Although these issues, factors and behaviours can be dealt with in an ensemble rehearsal, they cannot be completely predetermined beyond the most general level of prediction and preparation. As a result, they exceed the bounds of communication: the kind of dialogical ‘relationship maintenance’ that develops ‘rapport’ and that affords the insights valued by Doğantan-Dack requires performance. The point about qualitative transformation is that, as Leman puts it (2008: 172), ‘in a context where groups of people are together, corporeal imitation can lead to emergent behaviour, … [which can be categorized as a] group resonance effect’.

Conclusions and implications: pathways to creative performance What aspects of co-performer communication and interaction are required if qualitative transformations are to be afforded to an ensemble during performance? And how do such transformations lead to creative ensemble performance? On this matter the literature is consistent, as some examples about ensemble rehearsal and performance suggest. While Davidson (1997: 22) insists upon good verbal communication in rehearsal, Lehmann et al. note that ensemble players need empathy and should ‘relate well with one another and share a commitment to the success of the group’ in rehearsal and performance (2007: 165; see also Kokotsaki 2007, and Myers and White 2012). They also claim that attention should be given to ‘individual ’ feelings of affiliation and cohesion’, to issues of ‘leadership and status’, and to sensitivities about ‘individual performer idiosyncrasies’ in both contexts (Lehmann et al. 2007: 175–6; see also Kokotsaki 2007: 657). In of relationships within the ensemble, it is productive to develop certain characteristics, such as ‘learning to weave together separate personalities, managing conflict, sharing responsibility and ing each other’ (Gilboa and Tal-Shmotkin 2010: 22). Many of the detailed nuances of co-performer relationships concern ‘facilitating shared, social action’ (Moran 2011: 6) and constructing a hybrid musical–social identity which involves ‘empathetic attunement’ (Seddon and Biasutti 2009; see also Waddington 2013). Such an identity depends crucially on ‘the social construction of other players’ musical perspectives’, as opposed to the latter necessarily being understood by the co-performers as ‘intrinsic characteristics’ (Wilson and MacDonald 2012: 569). While all of these qualities can be seen as goals of

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ensemble rehearsal and performance, they are often difficult to achieve reliably and consistently, and there are numerous distractions that can impede their emergence in performance. There are also many case histories of breakdowns or mishaps in live performance that document precisely where such qualities are in short supply or have disappeared for whatever reasons (for example, Weeks 1996; Myers and White 2012). Given the status of qualitative transformations in live performance and the need to acknowledge their potentially distracting and/or productive irruption into the performers’ consciousness, this chapter has proposed that whereas communication is paramount in ensemble rehearsal contexts, interaction becomes foremost during performance events. This does not mean that the one is absent from a given context or that the two are mutually exclusive: instead, it indicates that one presides over the other according to the situation. This involves a shift beyond call-and-response dialogue towards a broader, mutually co-constituting dialogical activity. An epistemic difference is evident because the boundaries of one activity (ensemble rehearsal) are distinct from those of the other (performance). Arguably, the presence of the performers’ bodies changes meaning as ensemble rehearsal is succeeded by performance, as interaction becomes the principal mode of dialogue and co-performers rely more heavily upon their bodies to develop coordinated action and enact meaningfully musical behaviours. In other words, higher proportions of interaction in performance necessitate increased reliance upon dialogue using the body. Even though the immediate skill set required of co-performers when playing through a piece of music together is essentially the same in ensemble rehearsal and performance—that is, as indicated above, co-performers attend to their own part and monitor the outputs from other players, listen attentively, predict and react to one another, and relay aural, visual and kinetic cues—there are different bodily sensations involved in performance compared with ensemble rehearsal, and these are related to the phenomenology of performance temporality and to the co-constituted dialogical identities of co-performers as they emerge during the performance. This sensation of dialogical identity—of the ensemble gelling, locking, getting into the groove—can be articulated as the presiding of interaction over communication through the increased reliance upon embodied knowledge in live performance. In the light of existing research, and by way of summary, we suggest that numerous patterns of interaction operate during an ensemble’s performance. These include six characteristics: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Conversing (call-and-response, turn-taking, imitative) Behaving (predictive, reactive) Interacting (invention, coherence) Cueing (cues, prompts, markers, signals) Encoding Transmitting, inferring and attuning


During ensemble rehearsal, these patterns of dialogic interaction, either separately or in combination, can be tried and tested, stopped and started, negotiated and altered using verbal and nonverbal communication. During performance, however, the patterns, now well-learned and assimilated, are accessed, presented and negotiated in their own through the mechanism of mediated embodied knowledge outlined above. In short, they are produced in the moment rather than imitated, and this is the essence of creative ensemble performance.

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Musicians in the Making Goodman, E. C., 2000: ‘Analysing the ensemble in music rehearsal and performance: the nature and effects of interaction in cello–piano duos’ (PhD dissertation, University of London). Goodman, E., 2002: ‘Ensemble performance’, in J. Rink, ed., Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 153–67. Hall, E., 1963: ‘A system for the notation of proxemic behaviour’, American Anthropologist 65: 1003–26. Hunter, M., 2012: ‘ “The most interesting genre of music”: performance, sociability and meaning in the classical string quartet, 1800–1830’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 9: 53–74. Keller, P. E., 2008: ‘t action in music performance’, in F. Morganti, A. Carassa and G. Riva, eds., Enacting Intersubjectivity: A Cognitive and Social Perspective on the Study of Interactions (Amsterdam: IOS Press), pp. 205–21. Keller, P. E., 2010: ‘Individual differences, auditory imagery, and the coordination of body movements and sounds in musical ensembles’, Music Perception 28: 27–46. King, E. and J. Ginsborg, 2011: ‘Gestures and glances: interactions in ensemble rehearsal’, in A. Gritten and E. King, eds., New Perspectives on Music and Gesture (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 177–201. Kokotsaki, D., 2007: ‘Understanding the ensemble pianist: a theoretical framework’, Psychology of Music 35/4: 641–68. Kurkul, W. W., 2007: ‘Nonverbal communication in one-to-one music performance instruction’, Psychology of Music 35/2: 327–62. Lehmann, A. C., J. A. Sloboda and R. H. Woody, 2007: Psychology for Musicians: Understanding and Acquiring the Skills (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Leman, M., 2008: Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Loft, A., 1992: Ensemble! A Rehearsal Guide to Thirty Great Works of Chamber Music (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press). McCaleb, J. M., 2011a: ‘Communication or interaction? Applied environmental knowledge in ensemble performance’, paper presented at the Performance Studies Network First International Conference, Cambridge, UK, 14–17 July 2011. McCaleb, J. M., 2011b: ‘Embodied knowledge in ensemble performance: the case of informed observation’, paper presented at the PERFORMA’11 Conference on Performance Studies, Aveiro, Portugal, 19–21 May 2011. McCaleb, J. M., 2013: ‘Embodied knowledge: the case of ensemble performance’, paper presented at the Performance Studies Network Second International Conference, Cambridge, UK, 4–7 April 2013. McCaleb, J. M., 2014: Embodied Knowledge in Ensemble Performance (Farnham: Ashgate). Mithen, S., 2006: The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Monson, I., 1996: Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). Moran, N., 2011: ‘Music, bodies and relationships: an ethnographic contribution to embodied cognition studies’, Psychology of Music 41/1: 5–17. Murnighan, J. and D. Conlon, 1991: ‘The dynamics of intense work groups: a study of British string quartets’, istrative Science Quarterly 36/2: 165–86.

Communication and interaction in ensemble performance Myers, S. A. and C. M. White, 2012: ‘ “Listening with the Third Ear”: an exploration of empathy in musical performance’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology 52/3: 254–78. Sawyer, R. K., 2003: Group Creativity: Music, Theater, Collaboration (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Schwab, M., ed., 2013: Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research (Leuven: Leuven University Press). Seddon, F. and M. Biasutti, 2009: ‘A comparison of modes of communication between of a string quartet and a jazz sextet’, Psychology of Music 37/4: 395–415. Shaffer, L. H., 1984: ‘Timing in solo and duet performance’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 36A: 577–95. van Manen, M., 2011: ‘Embodied knowledge: we discover what we know in our embodied being’, Phenomenology Online: A Resource for Phenomenological Inquiry, http://www. phenomenologyonline.com (accessed 15 February 2017). Waddington, C., 2013: ‘Co-performer empathy in expert ensemble playing’, in A. Williamon and W. Goebl, eds., Proceedings of the International Symposium on Performance Science 2013 (Brussels: AEC), pp. 331–6. Weeks, P., 1996: ‘Synchrony lost, synchrony regained: the achievement of musical coordination’, Human Studies 19: 199–228. Williamon, A. and J. W. Davidson, 2002: ‘Exploring co-performer communication’, Musicae Scientiae 6: 53–72. Wilson, G. and R. MacDonald, 2012: ‘The sign of silence: negotiating musical identities in an improvising ensemble’, Psychology of Music 40/5: 558–73.

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Responding to performers LISTENERS AND AUDIENCES

Sinéad O’Neill and John Sloboda I reckon half of it is audience, yeah? Half of the gig’s the audience and the that you get from them… [Y]ou say ‘vibe’ or something, but it is that thing, isn’t it when you can feel that the people are going together on a journey and you can go more and more and more. —Jazz musician (Brand et al. 2013: 640)

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The connection between performers and audiences is the subject of this chapter. Some of these connections are explicit and overt; others are subtle and intangible. There are certain assumptions about musical performance inherent in the title, in which ‘performers’, on the one hand, are separated from ‘listeners and audiences’, on the other. In some musical traditions, this separation is not particularly marked. However, in this chapter, we focus mainly on classical music, using examples from other genres for clarification, and in a concert or recording of classical music, the listeners usually are not the performers, for that specific event at least. Systematic thinking about how performers and audiences relate is not yet part of mainstream pedagogy in classical music training; this chapter provides an overview of the field for emerging and established musicians alike. Greater awareness by performers of the modes of audience response is a necessary step towards a clearer understanding of how such responses might best inform their creative practice. We are primarily concerned with listener or audience responses that are available to the performer and that may inform the performer’s creative practice. Therefore, our predominant focus is on events where performers and audience are both physically present, simultaneously experiencing the music as it unfolds in time; while remaining aware of the debates surrounding the vexed question of ‘liveness’, we nevertheless employ the term as shorthand for this combination of co-presence and simultaneity.1 However, we are also interested in how audiences respond

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to performers beyond live performance, since communication that takes place before and after an event can also have significance for a performer’s creative practice. On the one hand, it might seem that the maximum potential availability of audience response to performers arises when performer and audience are in the same physical location, such that audience response can affect the unfolding of the performance. On the other hand, musicians might be most open to receiving audience responses outside the performance itself, since the culture of classical music events means that they often remain relatively isolated from the audience while performing. Accordingly, this chapter is in two main sections. The first section focuses on the types of communication that can take place between audience and performers during the performance itself; the second section deals with communication that takes place after the performance has finished. The chapter draws on existing research and highlights potential areas for future exploration. Throughout the chapter, we consider the implications of the research for creative performance practices.

During performance A number of influential scholars have articulated how musical performance is irreducibly social in nature (Small 1998; Clarke 2003; Cook 2003). This section provides an overview of the scholarly literature exploring the web of interactions between the performers and audience of a musical performance. Constraints in space and scope limit us to a consideration of the concert tradition; future work might consider scenarios such as street performance, in which the performer–audience relationship is constituted quite differently. There are three subsections: first, the phenomenology of music as performance and the integral role of the audience therein; second, the significance of performance spaces in defining and enabling particular behaviour; and third, empirical research into the performer–audience relationship.

PHENOMENOLOGY The perception of organized sounds as music has been studied from a number of vantage points. Eric Clarke has arrived at conclusions from a psychological perspective that complement those of Nicholas Cook, examining the same question from a musicological viewpoint. Both argue that the relationship between listener and musical object is fundamental to the concept of musical meaning, which is not inherent in a musical ‘text’, but rather is enacted in the process of performance (Clarke 2003: 117; Cook 2003: 213). They also agree that musisychological and musicological models of what music-listeners hear have been dominated to a great extent by text-focused music analysis. Cook argues that

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this approach to performance analysis assumes a musical ‘text’ forming the Urtext of the performance. Instead, he suggests that we should see musical works as ‘scripts in response to which social relationships are enacted’ (Cook 2003: 213). In parallel to Cook’s view, in Chapter 7 of this volume, Wise, James and Rink demonstrate that musical creativity, even in the context of individual practice, should be seen as a process rather than a ‘thing’. Cook’s conclusion fits well with Clarke’s concept of the ‘ecological’ view of music listening, which is founded on the idea of ‘affordance’, in which an object has meaning according to what potential usage it offers—or affords—a person perceiving it. Music affords a listener different things in different settings: for example, there would be distinct affordances for the music from a car radio, exercise class, nightclub, restaurant and so on. We suggest, for example, that a nineteenth-century symphony performed in a concert hall affords the listener the opportunity to sit and listen in a contemplative manner. A series of madrigals performed in a bar, interspersed with commentary from the singers, affords a more social behaviour on the part of the audience, while a performance of salsa music in a space with a dance floor will afford dancing and moving on the part of the audience. Christopher Small, with his thesis that ‘music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do’, put forward the argument that the listener is equally active and is ‘musicking’ just as much as the performer (1998: 2). The combination of repertoire, performer behaviour and performance space creates a particular set of affordances for the ‘musicking’ of performer and audience. Mackintosh’s explication of styles of auditorium—horseshoe, fanshaped, rectangular and so on—demonstrates the relationship between auditorium design and audience behaviour, according to his proposition that theatre is ‘a system of dynamic spatial harmony, dynamic because theatre space is to be arranged not for repose but to encourage the movement of energy’ (1993: 162). In a horseshoe auditorium, for example, many seats have a limited view of the stage but an excellent view of the audience seated opposite. In an eighteenthcentury Italian opera house, the boxes on either side of the auditorium both enabled their occupants to survey the rest of the audience and had curtains that could be drawn in front for privacy; the stage was almost secondary to the primary activity of socializing. At the same time, the thrust stage commonly in use at the time meant that performers occupied the same architectural volume as the audience, rather than being framed by the proscenium, as in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chanan has argued that the architectural development of the concert hall brought with it associated social conventions of audience behaviour; we could say that particular architectural solutions encourage altered ‘rules of engagement’ between audience and performer. Chanan notes that, in the concert hall, the nineteenth-century development in which more and more of the audience are seated directly facing the stage goes hand in hand with the


compositional development of the romantic symphony, since ‘the result is a more attentive relationship to the music, which begins to develop a more and more complex idiom’ (1994: 157). Thus, paradoxically, what some commentators refer to as the ‘ive’ audience, in which audience are seated in the dark, facing the stage, without talking, may arguably be a more psychologically engaged audience than its eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century counterparts, since more attention is given to the stage and the performance in this configuration. Mackintosh notes that, in some ways, architecture for musical performance was coming full circle towards the end of the twentieth century, with directors and performers increasingly interested in bringing performers out from behind the proscenium arch into a closer interaction with the audience, and that trend has continued to the time of writing. Initiatives such as The Night Shift, from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE), are moving away from the romantic ideals of the silent, contemplative audience and the clear distinction between performance space and audience space. Where performers have the choice, decisions about where to perform and how to arrange the space can be used to alter an audience’s behaviour and experience, as the OAE has demonstrated. Future research could usefully examine the difference in experience between an audience that is seated and whose attention is directed towards the stage by the seating arrangements, and an audience that is free to move about, chat, come and go, and so on. Since performers and producers of classical music are increasingly interested in the opportunities afforded by a change in the traditional, nineteenth-century arrangements, it would be useful to know more about the potential risks and benefits in each case.

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH In the last ten years or so, research in the field of music psychology has shown that the act of attending a concert is a complex social phenomenon requiring implicit and explicit knowledge of various kinds. The concept of ‘the familiar’ comes to the fore in much research into audience experience. Similarly to the studies of popular musicians mentioned later in this chapter, audience response to performers of classical music seems to be more positive when audience feel familiar with the performers, perhaps knowing something about their private lives, for instance, or following their career for a certain period of time. In some cases, ‘familiarity with the performers was assumed as a consequence of hearing them play, listening to their spoken introductions to concerts, and mingling with them in the foyer during intervals’ (Pitts and Spencer 2008: 233). Furthermore, ‘this apparent intimacy increased the sense of [audience] loyalty to the festival and to the players in particular’ (ibid.). Familiarity with place was also found to be a factor in a

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positive audience experience, with audience tolerating the disadvantages of a familiar performance space and focusing on its advantages, perhaps because of ‘place attachment’ (ibid.: 235). Familiarity with performers and location seems to engender a strong sense of personal involvement in and commitment to the performance among an audience. Conversely, we might deduce—as Pitts and Spencer suggest—that these very factors would militate against attracting an audience to the unfamiliar, encoming repertoire, performers and venue. It is notable that Pitts and Spencer’s study focuses on audience experience. It would be interesting to explore whether the performers in the study were aware of the concerns and experiences of their audience. We propose that performers could enhance the audience experience by balancing the unfamiliar with the familiar, and by addressing potential audience discomfort arising from the unfamiliar. The experience of first-time concertgoers indicates that familiarity with the norms of concert behaviour is of significant concern to this group (Dobson 2010). First-time attenders felt that they did not know how to participate in the performer–audience interaction habits operating in the classical concert culture. Dobson’s participants felt unsure about how to express their response to the performances that they attended, and uncertain as to the meaning of the rest of the audience’s responses (ibid.: 117). The study found that performers could help share the necessary knowledge with inexperienced audience . One of the three performances that Dobson’s participants attended was part of the OAE’s The Night Shift, where performers explained and demonstrated the repertoire in an informal atmosphere. Participants found the explanations useful in gaining insights into the performance (ibid.: 120). Realizing that each performance was contingent on the performers, rather than a Platonic ideal, helped the participants feel that their own responses were a legitimate part of the concert experience. They also realized that the situation was a dynamic system rather than static, and that both they themselves and the performers were part of that system. Much of the etiquette of the classical concert may be so familiar to both performers and habitual audiences that they can unintentionally make those who are unfamiliar with the ‘rules’ feel excluded. For example, in one study, which documented a post-concert interaction between performers and audience (Sloboda 2013), it came as a significant surprise to the performers to learn that one member of the audience did not realize that it could be helpful, and possibly even crucial, to his understanding and engagement to read the programme notes in advance of a performance. At the time of writing, empirical research into musical performance seems, to a large extent, to focus on either audiences or performers. However, both research and performance practice seem to be moving towards a consideration of the interaction between the two, and it is certainly a fruitful area for future exploration.


MUSICAL COMMUNICATION During a musical performance, information flows in both directions between performers and audience, and the kind of information that is transmitted and picked up can substantially affect participants’ musical experience. Beyond the ways in which the musical sounds are created, the movements and expressions of performers and audience—both subtle and overt—have communicative meaning that can significantly affect the intensity and character of the experience. Musicians and audience alike report experiencing performances that ‘take flight’ and feeling an intense emotional response, often coupled with the impression that the response is shared by others (see, for example, the personal statements in Gabrielsson 2011). This section discusses how research has shed light on musical communication and its constitution and elements. Communication requires a commonality or coordination of experience, drawing on shared physical and mental capacities, shared underlying processing mechanisms, or shared cultural and social understandings about the meaning of what is happening. What kinds of commonalities between people have been identified in research to date? We consider two specific areas in detail, briefly mentioning others. We begin with the level of commonality that is most likely to be universal across various cultures and degrees of musical understanding or sophistication. This level might be called ‘basic response’, rooted as it is in fundamental perceptual, motor and emotional capacities widely shared across the human species, and thus commonly occurring across many musical events. We then move to something at the other end of the spectrum, possibly highly determined by shared knowledge and values, which might be called ‘peak response’, including experiences often referred to in psychological literature as ‘flow’ or ‘strong musical experiences’. Relying as they often do on a particularly deep engagement with the specific content and context of the music, peak responses are relatively rare, in comparison with basic responses.2 In the transition from one to the other, we briefly mention some of the middle ground between these two extremes.

BASIC RESPONSE Entrainment—a well-established phenomenon in the study of human interaction—is a process whereby a group of human beings comes to align rhythmical and cyclical behaviours with each other when in each other’s presence, so that their responses become more coordinated than they were before (Clayton 2012; Trost and Vuilleumier 2013). This process has been observed in contexts as diverse as rowing, walking and—of course—musical activity. Entrainment can operate at differing levels and can relate to external aspects such as body movement (swaying, tapping) or internal aspects such as heartbeat or fluctuations in attentional focus over time (Jones and Boltz 1989).

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It appears that humans have a strong capacity to perceive various levels of periodicity in complex ongoing events, and that this capacity emerges in early infanthood. Indeed, theorists such as Malloch and Trevarthen (2009) suggest that the entrainment interplay between caregiver and infant found in early musical interaction (through musical songs and games) is a central means of developing social communicativeness and the sense of ‘self-in-relation’ that is essential to social and emotional development. Thus, entrainment is a powerful means of coming to apprehend that one both belongs in the human world and is capable of influencing it. Most of the serious empirical work on musical entrainment has focused on its occurrence between performers, no doubt for the partly pragmatic reason that demonstrating entrainment is easiest when there are overt measurable sounds or movements. Musicians not only execute the movements necessary to produce the sounds, but engage in a plethora of other movements (gestures, bodily swaying, etc.), which can be noticed, coordinated with others and captured on video by researchers (see Clayton 2012 for recent examples).3 In the archetypal classical concert setting, sounds and overt movements by audience are muted and may even stimulate social censure. Thus, video- or audio-recording a typical classical audience will yield scant clear indications of entrainment. However, there is now converging evidence that, even when not overtly moving, the motor cortex of listeners is active in ways which suggest that an important component of their engagement with the music is an imaginative construction of a motor response to it. This was shown, for instance, by Dolan et al. (2013), who also demonstrated through EEG measurements that a key aspect of performance under the control of performers—in this case, the degree of improvisatory elements—could influence the magnitude of listener response and its degree of coordination with musician response. In addition, Phillips-Silver and Trainor (2007) have shown that when adults are encouraged to move rhythmically to music, the act of moving alters the way in which they perceive the music. In a context where variation in movement is possible in both performers and audience, there is the possibility of entrainment through the diminution of movement. Many participants in live music have reported moments where ‘you could hear a pin drop’ or ‘the entire hall stopped breathing’. This coordination of stillness (signalling a particularly intense attentional focus) at a key moment in the music seems to be an especially powerful means of experiencing and expressing a shared response. Such moments may be partly stimulated by musical sounds, but the visible movements of the musicians also contribute to audience response, as demonstrated by the work of Jane Davidson and others. Davidson assessed the information that a person watching and listening to a musical performance received by looking at the movements of the performer (1993, 1994, 2001; Davidson and Correia 2002). Her experiments demonstrated that vision is significant for the perception of musical features


such as intervallic distance, phrase shape and expressivity. This significance is shown by the contrasting responses that listeners give to the same sound when viewing the performers’ movements, versus simply listening to the sound. Performers may be more or less aware of the information that they are conveying visually, and may use more or less explicit techniques to communicate with the audience through visual means. Davidson’s findings suggest that performers’ gestures assist the audience in perceiving the same musical structures as the performer. Trost and Vuilleumier (2013) argue that the shared process between performer and audience may go beyond the perception of musical structures (such as rhythm) to encom the perception of emotions in music: ‘brain regions that are implicated in rhythm processing play also a role in the generation of empathic feelings’ (ibid.: 220). They describe ‘mirror neurons’ (ibid.), which are activated in the brain of the perceiver on perceiving another person displaying an emotion. These mirror neurons respond to music, implying two things: (1) that listeners respond to a person creating music as though the person were displaying an emotion, and (2) that the actions needed to create music are simulated in the brain of the listener. All of the above has implications for performance practice and training. Gesture, body movement, facial expression and other aspects of ‘stagecraft’ are often treated idiosyncratically or informally by performing musicians and may not be systematically addressed in formal training. Conscious and explicit attention to these aspects of performance—and how they may elicit response in an audience—could well yield substantial dividends. Audiences and performers also deploy cultural and socially specific knowledge in the construction of musical experience, constituting the ‘middle ground’ between basic and peak response. This knowledge includes understanding the ‘rules of engagement’ of the performance event, as well as specific knowledge about musical style and language. Much of the content of music psychology research has been concerned with characterizing in great detail the way in which this shared, ‘musical’ knowledge is embedded in the perception of the basic building blocks of music—pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre and phrase structure (Deutsch 2013). It is now well established that, despite varying levels of formal training and understanding, both trained and untrained people within a broad musical culture (such as that of western tonal music) have an implicit understanding of these basic musical units (Huron 2006). The enculturation of performers and audience alike within a tonal system provides a ready-made context for the collective experience of a given performance. However, this shared space is always more or less fragile, since musicians can introduce into it elements which—while being familiar to them, in consequence of their deeper professional involvement—may appear strange or even repellent to many audience . How the new may be introduced into a performance

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context in a way that stretches, but does not rupture, the shared experience is an abiding practical preoccupation of those involved in the promotion of new music (Lerdahl 1988). There is little empirical research to date on this issue, although it was one of the motivations for the research into audience response to Roger Reynolds’ The Angel of Death, discussed below. The practice of performing an unfamiliar piece twice within a programme, something that has commended itself to some performers of new or unfamiliar music, is another area which could benefit from systematic research and evaluation involving musicians and audiences. This practice is a straightforward way in which performers can directly address issues of familiarity through their programming.

PEAK MUSICAL EXPERIENCE The elements of musical communication and experience discussed in the previous section are present in every musical performance. ‘Peak’ or ‘strong musical experiences’ contain all of these elements as well, but because they occur relatively rarely, such experiences must contain added elements not present in all performances, both external (e.g. context) and internal (e.g. mood or predisposition of the participant). Performing musicians will be particularly interested to know whether there are elements within their control that can increase the likelihood of a peak experience for the audience. Most of the available literature deals with individual response, whether of performer or listener, rather than coordination or interdependency of response between individuals. This limitation is partly a result of the usual means of gathering data in this area—consequent on the relative rarity of these experiences— which is to ask for retrospective reports from many individuals widely scattered in space and time. The most extensive example to date of this approach is the work of Gabrielsson (2011). His 1,300 s of strong experiences with music (SEMs) were gathered from almost 1,000 people from diverse demographic and musical backgrounds by advertising through the national media. The s are from the period 1908–2004, and the book contains verbatim translations (from the original Swedish) of about 500 of these reports, selected to be representative of the variety of the original, larger sample. It is noteworthy that every is unique, even the handful dealing with the same music and the same occasion, so that generalizations are difficult (ibid.: 11). Gabrielsson reproduced the s, grouped in categories, with minimal commentary.4 It is clear that the respondents set great store by their strong experiences with music; that these experiences happen to people of all ages, demographics and musical backgrounds; and that people store up memories of the experiences even to the point of their becoming the dominant memories of a whole time of life (e.g. early childhood). They seem to be experiences that form a crux of


respondents’ thinking about life and their place in the world. They are described as elemental spiritual experiences. The reported experiences often occurred with recorded music, making it difficult to establish the significance of the performer–audience relationship in the experience. For the most part, the ‘content’ of the music—i.e. ‘the music itself’—is what people report experiencing, rather than any conscious identification with performers, composer or other listeners, although ‘[i]n many of the s, it is apparent that the strong experience is primarily dependent on the qualities of a particular artiste or ensemble’ (ibid.: 410). Gabrielsson’s 2011 study enables us to identify some common factors in strong musical experiences among performers: (1) a feeling of connectedness between performers; (2) a feeling that the audience understands what is happening, is excited by it and is transmitting that excitement back to the performers; (3) a feeling of relinquishing control, technique and work; and (4) a feeling of complete immersion in the music to the extent of not thinking at all. Gabrielsson comments that Communication with the audience is an important factor [in SEM for performers]. On the one hand, the visual impressions of the musicians’ playing and commitment mean a lot for the listeners’ experience; on the other, the musicians are affected by what they see and notice of the listeners’ reactions. Positive reactions by the listeners inspire the musicians to (even) greater commitment, which in turn spurs the listeners to (even) greater response, and so on. One narrator expressed it as being like ‘playing ping-pong with the audience, you get the ball back all the time; if they really get going, we get going even more’. (ibid.: 249) Similar remarks were made by respondents in Brand et al.’s (2013) study of the reciprocal relationship between jazz performers and their audiences (researchers asked musicians and audience to respond to the question ‘What makes a successful jazz gig?’), as exemplified in the opening quotation of this chapter. The conclusions to be drawn from Gabrielsson’s research on strong experience also chime with the characteristics that musicians report when they have an optimal live performance experience (Minassian, Gayford and Sloboda 2003): namely, audience response is a key factor. There is little evidence that performers are a focus of SEMs for audience in the same way; however, that may be because many of the reported SEMs involve recorded music. Future research could examine the extent to which the engaged audience at a live event feels that a direct connection with the performers is a key part of the experience. More directly ive corroboration of the potential for shared peak experiences comes from studies of various nonclassical musical contexts, such as the music in Sufi religious ceremonies explicitly designed to inculcate a shared experience of ecstasy, or the use of music in Pentecostal religious services, where

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a high level of emotional and physical arousal is generated among a large proportion of worshippers (see Becker 2001). Becker observes that western classical music may be a particularly inimical context for the generation and mutual acknowledgement of shared peak experience. She identifies the predominant subjectivity of the western classical audience as ‘an individual with a strong sense of separateness, of uniqueness from all other persons, whose emotions and feelings are felt to be known in their entirety and complexity only to him or herself, whose physical and psychic privacy is treasured’ (2001: 141). Cultures where emotion is perceived in a more collective and public framing may be the ones where shared experience can be more easily generated, claimed and noticed. The ‘separateness’ of many people’s experience of classical music is encouraged by a culture of non-interaction between performers and audience before or after the performance. Thus, it is interesting to speculate whether performers might be able to increase the conditions for peak experience by interacting with audience more intensively between performances, creating more of a sense of community. Some of the ways in which this might happen are explored in the next section.

After the performance In this section, we discuss the opportunities for audience to communicate their experience of a musical performance to the performers themselves, and the implications that might have for the performers’ creative practice. We consider three types of : formal, informal, and press reviews. Formal encomes post-performance questionnaires, discussions and surveys; informal covers stage-door chat, fan letters and social media. While formal methods for facilitating are often initiated by a third party— producers, promoters or indeed academic researchers—informal methods are most likely to be initiated by fans or artists. The final category, press reviews, is an area ripe for future research, especially as it is currently undergoing radical changes, with reviews increasingly written by non-professionals.

FORMAL Formal is becoming more widespread as organizations and artists come under growing pressure from funders to demonstrate the impact of their work. Many post-performance surveys and questionnaires are primarily concerned with marketing and logistical issues. Here, we focus instead on audience relating to the performance itself. Although artists and producing companies often employ informal methods for receiving audience , formal techniques are less commonly used, and research associated with formal audience is limited.


Much of the work combining formal audience with research has been informed by choreographer and writer Liz Lerman. Lerman’s Critical Response Process (CRP) is designed to enable a conversation that is artist-led and that leads the artist back to his or her work in order to continue its development (Lerman and Borstel 2003). The CRP takes the performance itself as a starting point, with its meaning, and the motivation for its creation, as the basis on which is given. The CRP and derivative processes are increasingly used as tools to enable artists to draw on audience response in the development of creative performance, but as yet, to our knowledge, they have not been subject to evaluative research.5 It is to be hoped that future research will examine the potential of the CRP to develop creative practice. Recent research in music (Sloboda 2013) has explored formal relating to the audience experience of musical performance, with an initial focus on jazz and classical music. Putting the artist’s concerns at the centre of the process is a key feature of the research, which resonates with Lerman’s philosophy: ‘the Critical Response Process begins with the philosophy that meaning is at the heart of an artist’s work, and to start with meaning is to begin with the essence of the artistic act’ (Lerman and Borstel 2003: 19). Sloboda’s research uses a similar starting point for the design and evaluation of guided sessions, exploring how curated from live audiences can be of value to the creative process. In particular, the work focuses on the potential of processes whereby ‘musicians themselves take a lead in the formulation of the research questions that are posed to the audience, and are centrally involved in the review of the data so obtained’ (Sloboda 2013: 2). Reviewing outcomes from five distinct projects, Dobson and Sloboda (2014) suggest that the key value of this research lies in discovering the impact that audience can have on the artistic team. They found, for instance, that having the research questions in mind during rehearsal could help to sharpen the focus of the rehearsal process itself. It also became clear that musicians sensed a different (and enhanced) attention from an audience that was expecting to offer comments afterwards, and that they experienced a significant ‘power shift’ in favour of the audience, which was both welcomed and experienced as unfamiliar and challenging. Finally, several participants mentioned how they valued the raw, unmediated comments of non-experts, which contrasted positively with the more technical and professional language of commentary from peers and teachers. It is also clear that poor experiences of post-concert sessions in the past have made some musicians wary of being involved in such processes, and that the design, preparation and curation of these events need to be as careful and detailed as the artistic performance itself if all parties are to derive maximum benefit from them. We propose that postperformance sessions, if contemplated, should be developed as an integral part of the performance event.

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The research project devised around Roger Reynolds’ 2001 composition The Angel of Death is a major psychological study of the relationship between what listeners hear in a live performance and what the composer intended them to hear. Reynolds worked closely with a group of musicologists and psychologists to create a musical work that would be the subject of psychological experiments regarding listeners’ perception of musical structures. While Reynolds notes that ‘the essential ethic of the creative process will not allow one to act in violation of one’s own aesthetic sensibility’, he nevertheless acknowledges the importance of the learning gained during this project for his creative practice: ‘I would prefer to face these questions [of audience understanding of musical materials] armed with more than informal, and in all probability strongly predisposed, positions to guide me’ (2004: 355). Reynolds goes on to note that future work could usefully build on the ‘Angel Project’: ‘perhaps, then, a sufficient weight of evidence could be accumulated so that some influence on the course of musical practice and thought might be exerted’ (ibid.).

INFORMAL Audiences have always been eager to connect with performers, as evidenced by their presence at stage doors and in the bars of theatres, waiting for performers to emerge after a performance. Many musicians have anecdotes about informal being given in these contexts. In other cases, a performance might be either formally or informally assessed by a teacher or an examination . Anecdotally, it seems evident that awareness of this sort of assessment can greatly affect the performer’s own experience of his or her performance.6 Depending on the performance space and the genre of music being performed, might also take place during a performance, as in Brand et al.’s (2013) study. Social media enables informal to take place immediately and directly, and artists, as we shall see, are often expected to respond with equal alacrity. Although audience was not the primary subject of Brand et al.’s study, informal audience nevertheless comes to the fore as a key component of the performance event, with the potential to influence the event for better or worse. Many of the musicians with whom Brand et al. spoke identified a feeling of intrusion and defensiveness with respect to unsolicited , including suggestions from the audience about how the performance could be improved; ‘these interactions were regarded by the musicians as unwelcome and experienced as hostile interventions from the audience’ (ibid.: 643). The authors note: ‘[a]lthough affected by their audience’s thoughts and responses, [the performers] were unwilling to allow their audience to dictate or unduly influence their artistic expression or direction’ (ibid.: 644). In the light of Lerman’s CRP, it is apparent that the referred to by Brand et al.’s musicians, made without any controlling framework, caused a feeling of defensiveness rather


than an eagerness to continue creative work. We might suggest that control over the process and the structure of the process itself are determining factors in whether the is viewed constructively. Although classical musicians are increasingly active in social media, many of the processes of online are more developed in the rock/pop world, and some research has already been conducted in this area. Nancy K. Baym (2012), who interviewed thirty-six musicians between 2010 and 2011, explores the blurring lines between ‘fans’ and ‘friends’ for musicians with an online presence. She reports that while musicians have always befriended audience through fan letters and post-show conversation, social media has made the process of far more personal than before. Audience who use social media to communicate with musicians have high expectations that the musician will respond quickly and that the response will be on the basis of a level playing field, rather than an artist-to-audience hierarchy. The expectation of a relatively intimate response from an artist can lead to real friendship, as well as to validation for artists. For musicians, Baym found that ‘social media interactions … with audience online also offer memorably high points that can be profoundly validating’ (ibid.: 296). One band manager noted: When I first started working with them, Eddie would say, ‘Yeah, you know, I’ll be at home writing songs and does anybody care? … But then I post on Twitter and Facebook and all these people respond immediately. And I’m like, ‘Wow, people really care.’ You know, so I think it can be really wonderful instant gratification, especially for a songwriter who is at home. (ibid.: 296) The musicians to whom Baym spoke told stories about discovering that their music had helped people deal with difficult emotional situations; ‘[t]he story musicians told me most often was of hearing that their music helped someone deal with death’ (ibid.: 297). Baym posits that it is particularly important and useful for musicians to hear of their work helping audience deal with emotional trauma because ‘their creative output is so often cast as “entertainment”… [T]hese stories can thus be seen as affirming for musicians that they do more than provide surface pleasure’ (ibid.: 298). In these instances, one can imagine a positive circle similar to that outlined by Lerman, in which the artist is impelled to further creative practice as a result of audience . Baym does not deal with the question of negative or aggressive coming through social media; it is to be hoped that future research will provide musicians with tools for managing negative or even abusive online . In the cases mentioned above, the audiences in question were not previously known to the performers, but it is also evident that significant and influential often comes from personal friends or acquaintances of performers. Future research could usefully explore the influence of this sort of informal on musicians’ creative practice.

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Alternative rock singer Amanda Palmer has developed a new business model out of online communication with her audiences. Palmer’s story brings to light the potential that new forms of audience-to-performer have to underpin the development of an artist’s practice. Potts (2012) explores Palmer’s use of social media to develop the artist–fan relationship. By publicly participating in debates about artists’ work, fans can exert pressure on labels, promoters and producers, constituting an alternative authority: according to Palmer, ‘Twitter empowers artists and audiences by cutting out the middleman’ (Palmer 2009, cited in Potts 2012: 372). Palmer’s Kickstarter campaign, in which she raised over $1 million to record an album independently, demonstrated the effectiveness of her approach. Palmer uses Twitter to arrange impromptu meetings with fans, to find places to stay on tour, to engage fans in acts of co-creation and to give fans insight into her personal life. In her 2013 TED talk, ‘The art of asking’, Palmer (2013) elaborated on the enhanced relationship that she has developed with her fans through seeking personal connections with them. Potts’ exploration of Palmer’s social media interactions reaches conclusions similar to those of Baym: the distinction between the public and the private faces of the artist blurs, as do the distinctions between fans and friends, as social media facilitates intimate emotional exchanges between artist and audience member. These exchanges sometimes provide a validation of the artist’s creative practice, leading to an impetus towards further artistic work. Although many classical musicians are active on Twitter, Facebook and so on, none that we know of has yet adopted social media as the underpinning of a radical new business model founded on fan culture. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether the blurring lines between fans and friends described in Potts’ and Baym’s work will arise in the classical music world as well. Given the importance of the familiar to audiences, we might suggest that performers could use social media to enhance the audience experience.

FORMAL AND INFORMAL REVIEWING Press criticism is intended for a readership of potential audience and as such is distinct from artist-directed ; however, artists, promoters and producers also use reviews to find out what aspects of a performance are coming across to audiences. Wesley Shrum (1991: 348) has written: ‘the idea that reviews mediate the relationship between performers and audience has never been put to an empirical test’, and there does not seem to be any scholarly material considering the effect of reviews on creative practice. Future research could usefully build on anecdotal reports from performers as to the effect that press reviews have on them and their work. For example, the critic Guy Dammann (2013) observes that press reviews are most likely to influence the creative practice of performers at the start of their career.


Box office success is a fundamental marker of how audience influences creative work. According to Shrum, ‘the audience, not the stars, or the critics, or the promoters, is the final arbiter of the success of a show’ (1991: 349). Audience have the powerful tools of attendance and word of mouth at their disposal; Shrum’s study focuses on the role of the critic in influencing attendance, thereby determining market successes in theatre. If the critic is important in influencing attendance (and Shrum’s conclusions are ambivalent on this point), then reviews are an important part of an overall structure in determining creative practice, since popularity is a key indicator of creative success, even in the noncommercial sector. Increasingly, the role of critic is taken on by of the public writing online reviews. These non-professional critics are the subject of Vannini’s (2004) study of music fans’ reviews. Vannini focuses on non-professional online reviews of Canadian singer Avril Lavigne, examining the ways in which these contribute to the creation of Lavigne’s persona and image.7 Dammann (2013) suggests that non-professional reviewing is easier for artists and managers to dismiss and is therefore generally considered to hold less weight than formal press reviews. However, he proposes that this situation is changing as the perceived significance of critical reviews in newspapers declines.

Conclusion Our survey of the existing research has revealed that while much is known about listener and audience response to music, the issue of how this response may affect creative performance has been less extensively studied. However, we feel it important to conclude with some tentative suggestions for how the research reviewed above can best assist musicians and those who teach them to enhance and enrich creative performance. These conclusions are necessarily provisional, but they may enhance the reflective practice of those performing musicians who want to deepen their relationship with their audiences, as well as providing some pointers to where further research effort may usefully be expended. A sense of involvement and a feeling of connection are essential parts of a successful performance for both performers and audience, and these feelings can be enabled or facilitated by factors such as the architecture of the performance space, the choice of repertoire and the behaviour of performers during a performance. We propose that audience-focused decisions could usefully inform a performer’s creative practice in each of these areas. For example, to the extent that it is possible and in the performers’ power, we suggest making audience-focused decisions about the layout of the performance space, according to the type of audience engagement that is sought. Performers should reflect on the effect of their physical movements, gestures and facial expressions

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on their audience. These aspects of performance greatly influence both an audience’s perception of musical structures and the potential for an audience to undergo a strong musical experience. Video-recording practice sessions and discussing the video with a trusted advisor could become part of rehearsal and practice for performers. Furthermore, performers directly interacting with their audience both during and between performances can help to develop an audience’s familiarity with aspects of performance such as repertoire, the performers themselves and the ‘rules of engagement’ of the concert tradition. The evidence suggests that formal, post-concert sessions can both enrich artistic practice and create a more engaged and committed audience, in particular when such is put at the service—and under the control—of the practising musician. It is important, therefore, for performers to engage with the process of eliciting and receiving formal in order to maximize the potential benefits for their own creative practice. This chapter is concerned with the relationship between intrapersonal and interpersonal musical experiences, whereas most research deals with just one of these. Perhaps because it is more accessible, the intrapersonal seems to be the more examined of the two. Equally, research into musical experience tends to focus on either the performers or the audience. However, our survey of this research demonstrates that some of the experiences of one group overlap with or are equivalent to the experiences of the other. Thus, while we tend to privilege playing music as the active part of the performer–audience relationship and to regard listening as the ive part, in fact the listener goes through many of the same mental processes as the performer. Both basic musical understanding and strong musical experiences are very similar in listeners and performers, and from this we might conclude, however tentatively, that the nature of a communal musical experience such as a concert is far more deeply shared than might be apparent from a simple specification of the diverse activities of the participants (playing, singing, listening, dancing). For a more complete understanding of the relationship between the two, we await future research into the collective, rather than the individual, experience of musical performance.

References Auslander, P., 1999: Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Abingdon and New York: Routledge). Barker, M., 2013: Live to Your Local Cinema: The Remarkable Rise of Livecasting (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Baym, N. K., 2012: ‘Fans or friends? Seeing social media audiences as musicians do’, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 9/2: 286–316. Becker, J., 2001: ‘Anthropological perspectives on music and emotion’, in P. N. Juslin and J. A. Sloboda, eds., Music and Emotion: Theory and Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 135–60.

Responding to performers Brand G., J. Sloboda, B. Saul and M. Hathaway, 2013: ‘The reciprocal relationship between jazz musicians and audiences in live performances: a pilot qualitative study’, Psychology of Music 40/5: 634–51. Chanan, M., 1994: Musica Practica: The Social Practice of Western Music from Gregorian Chant to Postmodernism (London and New York: Verso). Clarke, E. F., 2003: ‘Music and psychology’, in M. Clayton, T. Herbert and R. Middleton, eds., The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 113–23. Clayton, M., 2012: ‘What is entrainment? Definition and applications in music research’, Empirical Musicology Review 7/1–2: 49–56. Cook, N., 2003: ‘Music as performance’, in M. Clayton, T. Herbert and R. Middleton, eds., The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 204–14. Dammann, G., 2013: email communication with the authors. Davidson, J. W., 1993: ‘Visual perception of performance manner in the movements of solo musicians’, Psychology of Music 21/2: 103–13. Davidson, J. W., 1994: ‘Which areas of a pianist’s body convey information about expressive intention to an audience?’, Journal of Human Movement Studies 26/6: 279–301. Davidson, J. W., 2001: ‘The role of the body in the production and perception of solo vocal performance: a case study of Annie Lennox’, Musicae Scientiae 5/2: 235–56. Davidson, J. W. and J. S. Correia, 2002: ‘Body movement’, in R. Parncutt and G. E. Mherson, eds., The Science and Psychology of Music Performance (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 237–53. Deutsch, D., ed., 2013: The Psychology of Music, 3rd edn (New York: Academic Press). Dobson, M. C., 2010: ‘New audiences for classical music: the experiences of non-attenders at live orchestral concerts’, Journal of New Music Research 39/2: 111–24. Dobson, M. and J. A. Sloboda, 2014: ‘Staying behind: explorations in post-performance musician–audience dialogue’, in K. Burland and S. E. Pitts, eds., Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 159–74. Dolan, D., J. A. Sloboda, H. Jeldoft-Jensen, B. Cruts and E. Feygelson, 2013: ‘The improvisatory approach to classical music performance: an empirical investigation into its characteristics and impact’, Music Performance Research 6: 1–38. Gabrielsson, A., 2011: Strong Experiences with Music: Music Is More Than Just Music, trans. R. Bradbury (New York: Oxford University Press). Huron, D., 2006: Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Jones, M. R. and M. Boltz, 1989: ‘Dynamic attention and responses to time’, Psychological Review 96/3: 459–91. Lerdahl, F., 1988: ‘Cognitive constraints on compositional systems’, in J. Sloboda, ed., Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation, and Composition (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 231–59. Lerman, L. and J. Borstel, 2003: Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process: A Method for Getting Useful on Anything You Make, from Dance to Dessert (New York: Dance Exchange). Mackintosh, I., 1993: Architecture, Actor and Audience (London and New York: Routledge).

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Musicians in the Making Malloch, S. and C. Trevarthen, 2009: ‘Musicality: communicating the vitality and interests of life’, in S. Malloch and C. Trevarthen, eds., Communicative Musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1–11. Minassian, C., C. Gayford and J. A. Sloboda, 2003: ‘Optimal experience in musical performance: a survey of young musicians’, paper presented at a meeting of the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research, London, UK, March 2003. Palmer, A., 2009: ‘NINJA BEACH SHOW TODAY IN LA!!! / REGINA VIDEO PIX / LEFSETZ LETTER’, http://www.amandapalmer.net/blog/ninja-beach-show-today-inla-regina-video-pix (accessed 15 February 2017). Palmer, A., 2013: ‘The art of asking’, TED, http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_ the_art_of_asking (accessed 15 February 2017). Phelan, P., 1993: Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (Abingdon and New York: Routledge). Phillips-Silver, J. and L. J. Trainor, 2007: ‘Hearing what the body feels: auditory encoding of rhythmic movement’, Cognition 105: 533–46. Pitts, S. and C. P. Spencer, 2008: ‘Loyalty and longevity in audience listening: investigating experiences of attendance at a chamber music festival’, Music and Letters 89/2: 227–38. Potts, L., 2012: ‘Amanda Palmer and the #LOFNOTC: how online fan participation is rewriting music labels’, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 9/2: 360–82. Reason, M., 2004: ‘Theatre audiences and perceptions of “liveness” in performance’, Participations 1/2, http://www.participations.org/volume%201/issue%202/1_02_reason_ article.htm (accessed 15 February 2017). Shrum, W., 1991: ‘Critics and publics: cultural mediation in highbrow and popular performing arts’, American Journal of Sociology 97/2: 347–75. Sloboda, J. A., 2010: ‘Music in everyday life: the role of the emotions’, in P. N. Juslin and J. A. Sloboda, eds., Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 493–514. Sloboda, J. A., 2013: ‘How does it strike you? Obtaining artist-directed from the audience at a site-specific performance of a Monteverdi opera’, paper presented at the Performance Studies Network Second International Conference, Cambridge, UK, 4–7 April 2013. Available at http://www.cmp.ac.uk/wp-content/s/2015/11/PSN2013_ Sloboda.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). Small, C., 1998: Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press). Trost, W. and P. Vuilleumier, 2013: ‘Rhythmic entrainment as a mechanism for emotion induction by music’, in T. Cochrane, B. Fantini and K. R. Scherer, eds., The Emotional Power of Music: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Musical Arousal, Expression, and Social Control (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 213–25. Vannini, P., 2004: ‘The meanings of a star: interpreting music fans’ reviews’, Symbolic Interaction 27/1: 47–69.

Insight

On artistic adventures and connecting to audiences Susanne van Els

As an instrumentalist, I have found that working closely with composers, trying to understand what they think and hear, offering them possibilities and being challenged by what they ask of you and your instrument is one of the best ways to be involved in music-making. My collaborations with living composers started when Louis Andriessen was writing a piece for me: Zinc Garden for viola, electronics, tape and fountain. The fountain consisted of a large zinc bucket filled with zinc leaves (among which waterproof microphones were hidden). Water dripped and floated into the bucket from plastic tubes above, thereby creating a gorgeous instrument. Zinc Garden is a masterpiece, the associative sounds of rain and string pizzicato leading to a simple song on the viola. Andriessen has created a narrative with many film-like qualities, and he tells a universal story through an intimate musical language. More pieces were written for me after this, and I began to feel responsible for ing these on and for defining new possibilities for other performers. J. S. Bach of course set new standards by composing six solo pieces each for violin and cello that stretched the possibilities of the two instruments; similarly, Mozart extended the upper range of the oboe in his oboe quartet after being inspired by one player in his orchestra in Vienna, and from then on all oboe players had to follow suit and expand their own range. Depending on the players, every new piece that is written can do something in the same vein. Consequently, I felt the importance of bringing the pieces that had been written for me to masterclasses that I gave. And once the scores were published and I felt I had reached a proper level of understanding of the pieces through studying and performing them, I decided to record some of them, namely, four solo pieces for viola, with a view to producing a CD. I realized that while I might buy a CD of ‘contemporary music for viola from the 21st century’, I would be unlikely to listen to it much; rather, the whole idea of such a CD would lead me to approach it from an analytic, musicological

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perspective rather than a personal, aesthetic one. I therefore faced a dilemma in of how to ‘programme’ the pieces, knowing also that a CD is very different from a concert. I settled on the idea of a Sergeant Pepper–like album aiming to take the listener on a journey, connecting, for example, the tears of Britten’s Lachrymae to the raindrops of Andriessen’s Zinc Garden; the mournful Against Time extracted by Klaas de Vries from the viola solo part in his opera, interwoven with elegies by Glazunov and Stravinsky; and Willem Jeth’s disquieting Elegy, juxtaposed with the soul-comforting ‘Andante’ from Bach’s second Violin Sonata. This was how the CD Waterworks started to be made. An issue arose, however, about how to deal with the fountain in Zinc Garden. The fountain brought a theatrical element that I did not want to lose. So I turned to people from the world of film, hoping they could help with a small visual reference. A television specialist, a video artist and a film maker were all captivated by this music, and each decided to make an individual film based on Zinc Garden, resulting in material for a further project: a DVD comprising the three films, itself with the title Zinc Garden. This DVD also included additional footage of Andriessen in the studio, during the process of making the rain sounds for the piece. Taken together, the four films created a rich context in which to experience Zinc Garden. The producers of the CD were so excited by this project that they began to consider releasing a t CD/DVD uniting Waterworks and Zinc Garden. At the same time, it became clear that their motivation and thinking were completely different from mine: whereas they were concerned only about which music would sell, I was driven by a desire to find and connect with new audiences. For example, I could not understand how someone looking at the CD/ DVD cover would get a sense of the contents if the image was a classical Dutch painting from the Golden Age, which is what the producers had in mind. And why would the sleeve notes contain only biographies of the living composers with programme notes added by a musicologist, rather than contributions from the composers themselves and from the film makers? In this context I found myself not only raising funds to add the DVD to the CD and negotiating with the record company about the budget, but also doing interviews with the composers and film makers so that I myself could write the sleeve notes, in addition to working with both the designer to transform the booklet notes into a poster and the photographer on the look and feel of the cover. And I had to pose for the cover image: wet and freezing in the rain, tears on my face. (Fortunately my instrument, a beautiful Testore, was photoshopped in!) The whole project turned out to be enormous fun, and I learned a great deal from it. I acquired many practical skills, but most of all it inspired me further as a musician, in two particular ways. First, every creative decision in producing the CD/DVD evolved out of the music itself, and through this I came to understand and love the pieces even more. For me, this experience has some similarities to what happens when you play a first-night performance of a newly

Insight: Susanne van Els

composed piece: of course as a performer you already know the piece through all the practice you have done, and as a musician you know whether you like it and think it is a good piece, but when you perform it for the first time and hear it through the ears of the audience, you finally hear and understand the piece, what it’s like, and what it means. Secondly, having done this project, I found that my self-confidence had grown, not just as a practical producer but as a creative musician. I could then give myself permission to go on and develop ideas for further CDs. A second solo CD followed Waterworks. For a Christmas CD I arranged Bach and Chopin and edited all of the recordings myself. This also contained a compilation of Christmas songs sung by children and mixed in the studio with multiple viola tracks, and I commissioned a Polish grandmother to sing a traditional lullaby, combining her voice with Claron McFadden’s soprano voice. Another CD, Sonata, included Shostakovich’s swan song, his viola sonata. Here I was accompanied by Reinbert de Leeuw, and we combined the music with the Dutch Poet Laureate Ramsey Nasr reciting his long poem based on the Shostakovich sonata; I prepared the montage of poetry and music myself. A fifth CD took its inspiration from an era in which women started to leave their private domain and develop a public voice; it placed Milhaud’s viola concerto between sonatas by Hindemith and Ysaÿe, flanked by Milhaud’s portraits of women, Quatre Visages, as a mirror. Looking back, I feel proud of the personal inspirations behind this series of CDs, which sit alongside my prize-winning recording of the Ligeti viola sonata. As well as demonstrating my capacities as a viola player, I see them clearly as products of my whole musical outlook, of the desire to collaborate with other creative artists and makers, and of the need to reach out to new audiences. As head of the classical music department, previously at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and now at Conservatorium Maastricht, I tell our students that they are responsible for everything that is required and possible in presenting the scores that they perform to the audiences who are listening. This goes beyond mere ‘function’, in the sense that composers need musicians to convey their compositions to listeners, whereas writers can sell their books directly. Rather, I believe that by taking responsibility in this manner the students become better musicians. Using their instruments and voices to recreate the notes of the score in the most informed and inspired ways becomes the starting point for all kinds of artistic adventures, allowing them to make creative statements of their own that will also underpin a satisfying career as a professional.

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Beyond convention: listening to one’s inner voice s-Marie Uitti

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I’ve always been fascinated with the bow. When I was very young I used to climb onto my father’s desk, open the violin case and bask in the scent of rosin. I loved the bow’s magical gestures, the powdery whiteness and graininess of the hairs on the strings. I begged to play the violin like my father and sister, but to begin with my parents started me on piano lessons. Only later was I given a cello, and although it was too big and the strings too high, I somehow managed to bow the strings. Heaven! My father used to help me with practising and, in particular, with reading music. But I preferred playing by ear, and so I tricked him into playing a age on the violin that I needed to learn. Still, the day of reckoning soon came and I was forced to open my eyes and learn to read music. I had a classical training, working through the sonata and concerto repertoire with core teachers Leslie Parnas and George Neikrug. I won a scholarship to Meadowmount (Juilliard’s summer school), and towards the end of my studies I worked on the Kodály solo sonata with André Navarra in Siena. During this time in Italy I was asked to play Anton Webern’s Op. 11 miniatures. Giacinto Scelsi attended the performance and soon invited me to play his first solo cello piece Triphon, a seventeen-minute monster of a work both musically and technically, filled with quarter tones, obsessive rhythms, thundering dynamic contrasts and a metallic resonator that divided the instrument into two voices, one gruff, the other classical. Out of this experience came a ten-year collaboration on the forty-five-minute Trilogia which in turn led to us improvising together to create new pieces for cello. I was hooked… A world had opened up that offered me new expressive possibilities and myriad sounds. My teachers had warned me against playing microtones, saying I would lose my ear, and that the rougher sound world of contemporary music would ruin my ‘tone’. But I guess saying that to someone who was already addicted to this musical language was useless, and before long I found myself

Insight: s-Marie Uitti

premiering many new works from the Italian scene, collaborating with such composers as Sylvano Bussotti and Domenico Guaccero. The transparent sound palette of Salvatore Sciarrino’s harmonics was a magical discovery, working with Paolo Renosto’s powerful electronics was exciting, and collaborating in Scelsi’s improvisatory and mystical world was a revelation. What more could a cellist want? Little could I anticipate the adventure that followed. While in Rome I met Frederic Rzewski and Alvin Curran, both supreme improvisers. I began to collaborate with them as well as Giancarlo Cardini and Fernando Grillo, masters of absurdist music theatre and gestural expression. Through all this work I returned to solo improvisation, where chordal playing and explicit harmony gradually took on more importance. Because of this I found myself longing for a way to sustain more than two strings simultaneously. I commissioned a radically curved bow from a Roman luthier so that I could access all the strings at once. For several months it seemed the perfect solution, but gradually I realized that it was too limited: I could play four adjacent strings together, but only adjacent strings. The attacks on all four strings were simultaneous, and the tone colours achievable between the bridge and fingerboard were homogeneous. Accessing the outer strings meant putting more pressure on the middle strings, which limited the dynamic freedom of my voicing. Musically I wanted to have the polyphonic possibility of playing any string of my choice in any combination with the others, to be able to control the timbre of each voice, and to change dynamics and articulations for each string independently. One bow would not suffice. In this situation I proceeded to experiment, and finally I developed a way of using two bows in the right hand, leaving the left hand free to play chordally as well as melodically. Using this technique, I discovered that two bows can enable you to bow the strings in any combination, and to play with a large and independent gamut of dynamic and expressive possibilities. I premiered my own two-bow pieces at the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, and at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. Later, I demonstrated this approach to Luigi Nono, who featured it in his Diario polacco n. 2. Soon after, György Kurtág took interest and wrote a perfect jewel of a piece, Message to s-Marie. Giacinto Scelsi went on to adapt Sauh in a transcription on which we worked collaboratively. Many other composers then explored the versatile possibilities of the two bows, including Jonathan Harvey, Guus Jansen, Lisa Bielawa, Jay Alan Yim, Richard Barrett and Vinko Globokar. Rodney Sharman wrote wonderful works interweaving two-bowed cello with the spoken and singing voice. While exploring the cello with two bows, I also had the chance to work at STEIM, the electronic music centre in Amsterdam. There I investigated the world of microphones, sensors and computer programs. I designed a controller to fit onto the cello so that I would not have to look at the computer during performance. This then led me to co-design a six-string eCello with Eric Jensen in Seattle that enabled independent voicing between the strings, with

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a high bridge that could accommodate two bows. Later, with from a Regent's Fellowship at CNMAT at the University of California, I explored a setup of sensors on the eCello with Adrian Freed that allowed me to change and modify preset programs on the computer in real time, and seamlessly to interface with acoustic cello technique. Getting rid of computer screens and being able to play by ear was essential to my way of deeply engaging with the sounds of the moment. The CNMAT collaboration was so interesting that we decided to go further by building a totally new instrument. My idea was to create an instrument that would have no sound of its own, that would function only as a trigger for synthesized and pre-recorded sounds, and that could be played (in of the left hand) ergonomically like a cello and with one or more normal bows. We extended the principle of a bowed rotating spindle sensor (already tested in 2005) to an array of virtual strings, using their endless spinning to measure speed and direction. I realized during our brainstorming session that we could more than double the ‘strings’ intersected by my two-bow technique by constructing a mirror bridge directly underneath the original high one. This created an oval shape that allowed me to intersect three sets of four-string groupings, plus all the non-adjacent combinations of three- and two-string groupings. The wide, flat fingerboard was covered in six long linear-position and pressure-sensor strips on the front and six on the back, giving me twelve virtual strings. The lower bout is equipped with an infrared sensor to measure bout width as an alternative to a foot pedal controller. To make it properly usable, I decided to get my hands dirty, and I subsequently rebuilt the instrument myself from scratch at FabLab in Amsterdam with electronic assistance from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Lex van den Broek and Johan van Kreij.1 All of this yielded musical possibilities far beyond the conventional, allowing me to realize a quite personal artistic vision through sound, gesture and focus of mind. While teaching at Oberlin Conservatory, I was particularly proud that none of my cello students sounded either like me or like one another; each student developed his or her own sound. Even in classical music, with a more codified sound world, there is a vast canvas for musical expression and exploration— which is to say, for finding one’s own voice. Were I to emphasize one thing for young talents, it would be to underscore the importance of exploring that wordless realm that we all have if we allow ourselves to become really quiet so that the inner voice can speak. This in turn means allowing ourselves to experience and nurture our differences rather than our similarities; to celebrate the edges and corners, the extremes; and not to waste time by imitating others. My personal inner voice tells me, ‘If you’ve heard it, don’t repeat it.’ Let the adventure begin!

Insight

Learning to take time Melvyn Tan (with John Rink)

Learning is a lifelong thing, and when you start, you don’t realize what you’re letting yourself in for.1 I began to play the piano when I was four, but I had no idea what it would entail. I had no idea where it would take me. I just went from week to week, learning my daily exercises, and it wasn’t until my adolescence that I knew I wanted to continue more seriously with my studies. Being a musician means hours of dedicated practising, but a lot of time is wasted by unnecessary practice. Even students of Grade 8 standard or similar have no real idea how to practise. It is always important to have an aim, a goal, a light at the end of the tunnel whenever one practises so that one can concentrate on technical issues, articulation or the other musical aspects that one would like to improve on in that particular piece. A concentrated three hours can achieve much more than six hours of unfocused effort. Practising when I was a student at the Royal College of Music was extremely problematic. There was a severe shortage of practice rooms, and booking these rooms was almost always impossible. The only time when rooms seemed to be free was from 7:00 to 9:00 am, so I would go every morning to try and get some work done. Learning new repertoire was something I managed to do quite well when I was at the College, however. I had not managed to learn many of the pieces before at school, including those of classical and early romantic composers. Learning does not stop once one ceases to be a student: in fact, quite the reverse. As a novice professional performer, one starts to really learn and gauge one’s performances. Every time it is different, and every time one learns. This is very difficult to explain in a masterclass or even in a lesson. A teacher should steer the pupil in the right direction and in my opinion not impose his or her ideas. This also implies a respect for the pupil as a person, something certain teachers tend to ignore. As with many students, I was happy to go with the flow during my studies. In my case, a chance introduction to the world of the early piano led me to

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pursue further my fascination for these instruments. Later this led to numerous recordings which revealed the wonderful sound world of the classical and early romantic composers, a sound which was still relatively strange to many ears. The pianos from that era are radically different from the modern piano in sound and touch. Beethoven as a young man wrote for a keyboard with only five octaves. As one of the first real virtuoso pianists, he began demanding much more from the instruments he played on, and in a way he accelerated the development of the piano from a five- to a six-octave instrument in the early 1800s and later to six-and-a-half octaves in the 1820s, thereby paving the way for composers like Czerny and Liszt to take the instrument even further, to what we now know as a modern piano. As a student I had no inkling that these wonderful earlier instruments existed. A piano was a piano, a violin a violin. So working with these instruments led me to relearn a lot of the classical and early romantic repertoire and to unlearn many of the technical aspects of modern piano playing which I had been taught as a student. This was a long process as the lightness of the earlier instruments, both in sound and in touch, meant that one could phrase, articulate and even pedal differently, not to mention the issue of tempo! Occasionally I would stray back into ‘old’ habits, particularly when nervous, but one can learn to overcome such tendencies. As students, we studied the history of music as a history of composers and compositions, learning why the great works are great but nothing about the historical instruments the composers wrote for, particularly the keyboard. So discovering this whole new world was a complete revelation for me. I had found my own voice. After many years of performing exclusively on old pianos, I decided to return to the modern piano, largely because I realized that I missed certain repertoire and felt ready to come back to it. I had been taught that repertoire as a young student by some teachers who actually knew the composers in question—including Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen, to name but a few. It was a gradual process, but like anything with age, one returns to these things (one hopes) with more sagacity and more experience to help. When you’re a student, or when you’ve just graduated, you’re young and optimistic and it doesn’t really matter what you’re playing, but when you get older, your attitude is different; your whole psyche is different; the whole physical thing of how you present yourself, how you play, is different, because it evolves all the time. The older you get, the more sensitive you become at picking up the different vibes that an audience gives you. That sort of radar becomes much more acute when you get older. I have always told students that they have to learn to take failure. When you’re embarking on a musical career, it’s not all about success. You have to take the rough with the smooth. You have to learn to take bad criticism; you have to learn to accept second prize in a competition. And if somebody keeps

Insight: Melvyn Tan (with John Rink)

telling you when you’re learning that it’s lovely and that’s wonderful, then, when something bad happens, it really is a shock, whereas if somebody prepares you a little bit more, it’s still a disappointment, it’s still awful, but you just leave it and go on to the next thing, which you have to do. I always say when I’m teaching a masterclass, ‘Just take more time: if you can’t play it, it doesn’t matter—just take time!’ And then, of course, when they do take time, it starts to sound right. I think that as you get older as a player, you realize there is a lot of time that you can take, particularly in a performance. One always has to that music needs to breathe to come alive. Time is of the essence in making music—and in sustaining a professional career in music too.

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NOTES Preface 1. The ensuing six paragraphs are adapted from James, Wise and Rink (2010).

Insight: John Wallace 1. John Wallace was Principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (formerly Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama) from 2002 to 2014.

Chapter 2 1. The framework was developed by Linden Learning, a specialist provider of consultancy, training and coaching across the education sector. Jane Cook, chief executive of Linden Learning, leads a mentoring–coaching skills development initiative at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London.

Chapter 3 1. See Chapter 2 for a critical discussion of ‘apprenticeship’ as understood within the context of one-to-one instrumental and vocal teaching.

Chapter 5 1. For example, such concerns have been expressed by performance teachers at the authors’ institution, resulting in performance courses now being two semesters in duration, with a 25 per cent technical assessment at the end of the first semester and a 60 per cent recital assessment at the end of the second semester. The remaining 15 per cent is allocated to a Performance Studies Portfolio (7.5 per cent each semester) containing students’ critical reflections on their learning. 2. The Critical Response Process includes a dialogue between responders (or assessors) and the artist which relies heavily on the asking of open-ended neutral questions. 3. See for example http://assessmentinmusic.com.au (accessed 15 February 2017) and Polifonia (2014). 4. More details on this process can be found on the Assessment in Music website at http://assessmentinmusic.com.au (accessed 15 February 2017) and in Lebler (2007, 2008, 2012, 2013b).

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Chapter 6 1. See for example work by Bennett (1980), Finnegan (1989), Cohen (1991), Berliner (1994), Lilliestam (1996), Monson (1996), Berkaak (1999), McCarthy (1999), Green (2002) and O’Flynn (2009), among many others. 2. The new data come from Tim Smart’s current PhD research (identified in what follows as ‘Smart n.d.’), in which essential issues concerning ethical procedures, research methods and methodologies are explored in much more detail. Here the names of the musicians have been anonymized. Other sources discussing a variety of musicians’ views of what is valued, and how they learn, include those in note 1 above, as well as, for example, Becker (1963), Nettl (1995), Kingsbury (1988), Cottrell (2004), Bennett (2008), Karlsen (2010) and Creech et al. (2013a, 2013b). 3. We recognize of course that the amateur–professional divide in music is a vexed and highly complex issue (see e.g. Keene 2015 for an interesting examination of this). Discussion of exactly what it means would be the topic of another chapter, however, and here we use the loosely in an ‘everyday’ sense. 4. Musicians use this term flexibly to describe knowledge, skill or ability relevant to a certain situation or context. 5. See e.g. Green (2002), Smilde (2012) and Smart (n.d.). The literature in the psychology of music on early childhood musical development is extensive; for overviews see e.g. Chen-Hafteck (1997) and Welch (2002). 6. These include http://www.learnchoralmusic.co.uk, https://www.choraline.com and many others (accessed 15 February 2017). 7. See, among many more examples, Green (2002, 2008a, 2008c, 2014), Rodriguez (2004, 2009), Jaffurs (2004), Davis (2005), Nielsen (2006), O’Flynn (2006), Seifried (2006), Väkevä (2006, 2009, 2010), Westerlund (2006), Lebler (2007, 2008), Hallam et al. (2008), Lines (2009), Mans (2009), Feichas (2010), Finney and Philpott (2010), Karlsen (2010), Woody and Lehmann (2010), Wright and Kanellopoulos (2010), Abrahams et al. (2011), Andrews (2013), D’Amore (2011), Jeanneret, McLennan and Stevens-Ballenger (2011), Vitale (2011), Wright (2011), Cayari (2013), Chua and Ho (2013), and Mhail (2013).

Insight: Ricardo Castro 1. This Insight was devised by Helena Gaunt using comments made during a twohour discussion with Ricardo Castro on 28 February 2015 at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. Although the text has been editorially polished and streamlined, it is nevertheless a faithful representation of the views put forward during the discussion. 2. Inspired by the Venezuelan programme El Sistema, NEOJIBA—Núcleos Estaduais de Orquestras Juvenis e Infantis da Bahia—aims to generate social integration via collective practice and excellence in music. Founded by Ricardo Castro in 2006, it is led by the Human Rights and Social Development Secretariat of Brazil, and is managed by the Instituto de Ação Social Pela Música (IASPM), a nonprofit organization. For further detail, see http:// neojiba.org (accessed 15 February 2017). 3. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq0D5kq9ePE/ (accessed 15 February 2017). 4. See http://mim.org/exhibits/collection/geographical-galleries/recycled-orchestraexhibit (accessed 15 February 2017).

Notes

Chapter 7 1. The relative balance between solitary and group practice varies with the type of musician, including both singers and instrumentalists, and also the predominant genres of musical activity (including professional work) in which they are involved. For example, a pianist is likely to spend far more time in solitary practice than, say, a violinist primarily engaged in orchestral work. 2. As described later in the chapter, musicians in our study retrospectively identified important aspects of their practising when they reviewed video recordings of practice sessions in the wake of the public performance of a designated piece. Their reflections of the spontaneous decisions that they had made during the performance pointed to the same types of interactive process as the ones they identified for the practice period leading up to the performance (see the discussion below). These significant commonalities between the practice phase and the performance led us to conclude that the latter should not be understood only as an endpoint or a final outcome of practice: rather, the musicians operated on a continuum from practice to performance, with the performance itself and their reflections on it in effect becoming part of the preparation for the next performance. This perceived relationship between practice and performance chimes with Sloboda’s (1985) notion of a continuum as described in the section below on creativity in existing practice literature. 3. J. Williams, 2008: How to practise, http://www.jenevorawilliams.com/wp-content/ s/2012/10/How-to-practise.pdf (accessed 15 February 2017). 4. http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/how-many-hours-a-day-should-you-practice (accessed 15 February 2017). 5. The study was part of a three-year project entitled ‘Creative learning and “original” music performance’, which was conducted under the auspices of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (see http://www.cmp.ac.uk/research/projects/creative-learning-and-original-musierformance for further information; accessed 15 February 2017). The project as a whole had several phases and constituent work packages, including student questionnaires, focus groups with teachers and an observational study of one-to-one lessons involving video-recall interviews. 6. See James, Wise and Rink (2010) for details of the video-recall method used in these interviews. 7. ‘Creative episodes’ are defined as ‘chunks of meaning or units which are comparable to nodes in the analysis of learning environments, and which are “judged to be a significant happening in the learning context” (Barab, Hay, and Yamagata-Lynch 2001: 74). An episode can refer to a state of mind or to actions of different lengths’ (James et al. 2010: 9). 8. Following analytical processes described by Braun and Clarke (2006), first-level themes represent a reading of the data that stays close to the semantic content of participants’ s. Second-level themes move to a deeper level of interpretation, and in our analysis they represent a different reading and not a simple aggregation of first-level themes. 9. The notion of ‘ownership’ of an interpretation derives from our study of one-toone teaching (James et al. 2010), in which participants described a process whereby the suggestions of their teachers and the solutions that they proposed were taken into the practice room by the students, who then reflected upon and internalized them as they developed interpretative approaches that in effect made their teachers’ ideas ‘their own’. (See Chapter 6 in this volume.)

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Notes 10. Although expressivity is not the same as creativity, it is arguably central to a performing musician’s creative practice. In our study, there was much slippage between the concepts of creativity, expression and interpretation in teachers’ talk. (See Chapter 14 in this volume.) 11. See however Chapter 6 in this volume. 12. This study deliberately concentrated on soloists, and it should be noted that performers who work with other musicians to prepare a performance do not proceed directly from solitary practice to the stage.

Chapter 8 1. For example, nearly two decades elapsed between the Lindsay Quartet’s first and second recordings of the complete Beethoven String Quartets, while at the other end of the spectrum some performances (although perhaps not of Beethoven quartets) are given after just one rehearsal. 2. Some may claim that two people do not constitute a group, but I would argue that the duo exhibits all the characteristics of a group as defined by Hartley (1993): interaction between performers, perception of each other, leader-and-follower relationships, feelings about each other, and norms and goals—shared or otherwise. 3. Davidson and King (2004: 109) quoted a age from the novel in their chapter on strategies for ensemble practice, and it is worth repeating here: Every rehearsal of the Maggiore [String] Quartet begins with a very plain, very slow three-octave scale on all four instruments in unison: sometimes major, as in our name, sometimes minor, depending on the key of the first piece we are to play. No matter how fraught our lives have been over the last couple of days, no matter how abrasive our disputes about people or politics, or how visceral our differences about what we are to play and how we are to play it, it reminds us that we are, when it comes to it, one. We try not to look at each other when we play this scale; no one appears to lead… When I play this I release myself into the spirit of the quartet. I become the music of the scale. I mute my will, I free my self. (Seth 1999: 10) 4. Cf. Chapter 15 in this volume. 5. For the purposes of this chapter, the coding framework reported by Ginsborg et al. (2006a) has been simplified in Table 8.1 so as to combine decisions and performance cues, since it is the musicians’ changing focus on various aspects of the work that is under consideration. 6. The other sessions involved the pianist alone, a session in which the singer wrote out as much as she could of the piece from memory, and rehearsals and runthroughs with the instrumental ensemble.

Chapter 9 1. For example, see Cook (2007), Leech-Wilkinson (2006) and Repp (2000), among many others. 2. The work of Sawyer (2003, 2006) is one exception to this general rule. 3. See Pace (2012) for a list of the developing sizes of nineteenth-century European orchestras.

Notes 4. For more discussion of the importance of gestures and glances in ensemble performance, see Chapters 8 and 15 in this volume, as well as Margaret Faultless’ ‘Insight’. 5. Broadcast as part of a Channel 4 documentary titled The Phil in 1999, cited in Cottrell (2004: 108). 6. For more on styles of leadership in relation to orchestras, see Lewis (2012: 18–34) and Logie (2012: 7–33). 7. Simon Rattle, The South Bank Show, London Weekend Television, 25 June 2000. 8. I am grateful to Tim Hooper for discussions which helped inform this section. 9. Seifter and Economy (2001). 10. For more on the trust relationships that exist within the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, see Khodyakov (2007).

Chapter 10 1. The work reported in this chapter was ed in part by the Peter Sowerby Foundation. 2. Imreh’s practising behaviours are also discussed in Chapters 7 and 12 in this volume.

Chapter 11 1. This chapter is based on ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews that were conducted with professional musicians in 2012–13 and funded by the European Research Council (see Hill, in press). I chose Helsinki as the primary case study because of its flourishing artistic innovation, which has been fostered by progressive attitudes and pedagogies, artistic research, and significant state funding for the arts and arts education. I chose my hometown of Los Angeles as a comparative case study. Details of the dates and locations of the interviews are given after the list of references at the end of the chapter. 2. Interviews revealed that musicians experience creativity as comprising six components: agency, nonconformity, generativity, interaction, recycling and flow. See Hill (in press). 3. For a general overview, see Nettl et al. (2014). For more details, see, for example, Sanguinetti (2012) on partimento and Treitler (2003) on medieval plainchant. 4. For theories on why improvisation declined from the mid-nineteenth century through the twentieth century, see Moore (1992) and Sancho-Velasquez (2001). 5. For online audio examples, listen to ‘Improvisation with Robert Levin’, NPR’s Performance Today, http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/milestones/991124.motm. improv.html (accessed 15 February 2017); Robert Levin, ‘Improvising Mozart’, Lecturerecital, University of Cambridge, 29 October 2012, http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/ 24560 (accessed 15 February 2017); and the recordings posted on http://www.david-dolan. com (accessed 15 February 2017). See also Dolan (1996–97, 2005) and Levin (1992, 1997). 6. Watch examples of Junttu’s performances by entering the search phrase ‘Kristiina Junttu piano’ at http://www.youtube.com. 7. Listen to examples from the KUULE! (Listen!) Helsinki Music Centre education project at http://www.musiikkitalo.fi/en/article/kuule-listen-helsinki-music-centre-educationproject (accessed 15 February 2017) and the Kuule, Minä Sävellän (Listen, I’m Composing)

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Notes project at http://www.siba.fi/art-and-research/audience-participation/kuule-mina-savellan/ sheet-music (accessed 15 February 2017). 8. For examples, visit http://www.karikriikku.com (accessed 15 February 2017). 9. For examples, visit http://www.christophbull.com/christophbull.com/Welcome.html and https://www.youtube.com//orgue99 (accessed 15 February 2017). 10. To protect their anonymity, many of the musicians quoted in this section have been given pseudonyms. 11. The impact of teacher expectations on student outcomes has been well demonstrated in education research (see Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968 and Rosenthal 1994).

Chapter 12 1. Stephen Broad collected the student data from his courses at RCS in academic years 2011–12 and 2012–13, and Mary Hunter did the relevant portion of the interview study in Maine in 2012–13. 2. See Kerman’s (1983: 113ff.) distinction between the idea of a ‘standard repertory’, which is a list, and a ‘canon’, which is a more broadly construed discourse. 3. See Creech et al. (2008) for comparisons between students studying classical, jazz, ‘rock’ (by which the authors mean a variety of popular styles) and Scottish traditional music. The differences are quite minimal and, where they exist, fairly predictable (classical students worry more about exactness, and they spend more time alone in the practice room and less time with ensembles), but the questions that the authors ask mostly involve the immediacies and practicalities of practising, rehearsing and performing, rather than the ideologies of interpretation. 4. We have changed the names of all students and other respondents. 5. Although in casual usage we may talk about a performer’s own interpretation of a given popular song, interpretation as a subject of serious and extended consideration, especially in the academic world, concerns classical music almost exclusively. For example, Krausz’s (1995) collection of philosophical essays entitled The Interpretation of Music is devoted entirely to classical music. 6. The quasi-moral concerns about too much of the performer’s self in classical music ideology map nicely onto psychological research by Repp (1997) and Clarke (2011), which suggests that listeners like best the performances which are closest to what is perceived as the ‘average’ in of ‘expressive’ deviations from a norm. 7. Stravinsky, from the Poetics of Music, quoted by Dunsby (1995: 88). 8. See note 1 above. 9. For example, Adorno’s unfinished treatise on performance was published with the title Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (Adorno 2006). 10. Goodman’s famous assertion that one wrong note or dynamic disqualifies a performance from representing the work, but that a vast latitude in areas not specified by the score is permissible, is a purely philosophical exercise of no interest or importance in the musical world (Goodman 1976: 186). However, Urmson (1995: 160–1) takes a more practical if also philosophically stern line in suggesting that performers have an ethical obligation to proffer the audience something as true as possible to what they believe is (e.g.) Handel’s Messiah if that is what is promised on the programme. 11. For further discussion, see Chapter 7 in this volume.

Notes 12. For discussion, see Woody (2002). 13. By way of contrast, consider the De Pue brothers, who play violin in the Philadelphia Orchestra on the one hand and bluegrass as professionals on the other. See Liuzzi [n.d.]. 14. Quoted material from Brendel (1976: 37; underlining added).

Chapter 13 1. This is what Brendel calls ‘the kind of music-making that fancies itself in the garb of a penitential hair shirt’ (1976: 25). 2. See discussion below of the informants and their contribution to the research for this chapter. 3. Our informants were Allan Badley (University of Auckland), Jason Bae (Young Steinway Artist), Laurence Dreyfus (Phantasm), Amanda Glauert (Royal College of Music), John Harris (Red Note Ensemble), Neil Heyde (Royal Academy of Music), Graham Mhail (University of Auckland), Ian Pace (City, University of London), Edith Salzmann (Pettman National Junior Academy of Music, Auckland), Peter Sheppard Skærved (Royal Academy of Music), W. Dean Sutcliffe (University of Auckland), and Henry Wong Doe (Indiana University of Pennsylvania). 4. For further discussion, see Chapter 7 in this volume. 5. Mhail (2010) has developed performance and practice modes as conceptual ways of working. 6. Two further figures—Ian Pace and Laurence Dreyfus—serve as examples of how different kinds of ‘academic’ and ‘performance’ study can yield the creative solutions that are central to their output. Pace—who is a pianist, author, and lecturer at City, University of London—displays interesting elements of convergence across contrasting types of output. His writing, lectures and approach to programming works by contemporary composers (arguably) share certain common themes or attitudes, that is, to challenge established hierarchies, promote new outlooks in academic enquiry, and or foster innovative approaches in creative practice. And in his teaching at City, Pace encourages a broad view and an integrated approach to study in the musically eclectic student body. Not only are Dreyfus’ publications on music well-known, but so too is the viol consort, Phantasm, that he founded in 1994. Winning awards for his scholarly outputs and recordings, Dreyfus has also had a significant impact on the conservatoire and university sectors in the UK by establishing environments where students deliver high-level musicological research and equally high-level performances. For example, in the early 1990s, Dreyfus played a leading role in establishing the BMus and MMus courses at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM). In these programmes students took academic modules at King’s College London while pursuing performance training leading towards the conservatoire’s highest postgraduate qualification, the DipRAM. Dreyfus commented: ‘In teaching for over twenty years in Britain, I was struck by how well students fared when they could be challenged to approach both academic study and performance with a genuine curiosity regarding traditional authorities and received ideas so as to develop innovative views of music and its praxis.’ 7. For example, the PhD thesis of one of the authors—which was among the first to be written within a conservatoire environment—invoked ancient and modern approaches to

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Notes rhetorical theory as a means of adding structure to an in-depth study of the performance practice of the second violin and second violinist in a string quartet (Harrop 2006). In doing so, much of the anecdotal material from the ‘coffee-table books’ written by performers about their own working process could then be invoked within a robust theoretical discussion. This aimed to shed light not only on the performance practice of second violinists, but also on how they actually spoke about their work.

Chapter 14 1. The argument about whether music communicates specific ideas or is, in fact, confined to a nondiscursive, decorative function is centuries old, but it has a contemporary articulation in Kivy’s assertion that we must stop seeing [the musical artwork] as a linguistic entity and start seeing it, horribile dictu, for what it really is: a product of the arts of decoration. Then the performer is not, by consequence, the slave to the composer’s message but one in whose hands lies the task of presenting, for his or her generation and in the best possible version, this decorative structure. (1995: 284–5) 2. The play between these various positions can be observed in musics around the world. For example, personal authenticity is a key issue in popular music in the west, where the singer/songwriter has become the rule. Tracing its root back to the early 1930s, Barker and Taylor, in their book Faking It, identify Jimmy Rodgers’ 1931 recording of his T.B. Blues as a starting point (Barker and Taylor 2007: 119–22). This was the first time that an autobiographical song was recorded by a celebrity singer. Since then, personal authenticity has worked itself into the aesthetics of popular music, up to the waves of punk and grunge music, when it emerged either as a moral and aesthetic value or as a requirement. 3. The idea of historically informed performance can be traced back to the late nineteenth century and the work of Arnold Dolmetsch. In the 1950s, a wave of ensembles specializing in performance on period instruments and attempting to revive historical performance practice also became embroiled in a debate on the notion of historical authenticity that was to rage for forty years. After a culmination in 1995 with the publication of Taruskin’s collection of essays Text and Act (Taruskin 1995) and Kivy’s Authenticities (Kivy 1995), terminologies have shifted from ‘authentic’ to ‘historically informed’, and presentday early music ensembles have adopted a more pragmatic and practice-oriented approach to historical evidence. 4. The AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM; http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk) was established in 2004 and completed its work in 2009. Specific tools and practices for audio analysis came into common use during the project, among them Sonic Visualiser (http://www.sonicvisualiser.org; accessed 15 February 2017). 5. ‘Shaping in musical performance’, led by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, was one of five research projects hosted by the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (http://www.cmp.ac.uk; accessed 15 February 2017). For further information, see the volume Music and Shape in this series. 6. In 2002, Juslin, Friberg and Bresin published an initial paper on the same model, though discussing only four of the five dimensions.

Notes

Chapter 15 1. See Mithen (2006) for a theory of communication as mimetic and holistic. 2. Whereas a signal arises before the event, markers delineate an event as it occurs, such as a conductor’s baton movement. 3. The ‘reaction’ and ‘inter-reaction’ should not be confused with the references in the previous discussion to predictive and reactive behaviour in ensemble performance. 4. See Schwab (2013) for descriptions of representative approaches.

Chapter 16 1. See, for example, Auslander (1999), Phelan (1993), Reason (2004) and Barker (2013). 2. See Sloboda (2010) for an extended discussion of the comparison between the ‘everyday’ and the ‘special’ in music experience. 3. In Chapter 15 of this volume, King and Gritten explore issues of co-performer attunement, entrainment, and reciprocity in the context of ensemble performance. 4. A future research project might analyse them in more depth. 5. For example, in January 2014, the London-based opera company The Opera Group collaborated with King’s College London in using the CRP as part of a three-week festival of creative work-in-development. 6. Chapter 5 in this volume considers the question of assessment of performance in more detail. 7. Future research could investigate the effects of online reviews on the creative persona of classical musicians.

Insight: s-Marie Uitti 1. See the photographs at http://www.uitti.org/Inventions.html (accessed 15 February 2017).

Insight: Melvyn Tan 1. This Insight was prepared by John Rink on the basis of comments made by Melvyn Tan during a one-hour discussion on 12 December 2013 at the Royal College of Music in London. Although the text has been editorially polished and tightened, it nevertheless faithfully represents the views expressed during the discussion.

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INDEX Abbott, A., 25 Abeles, H. F., 42 absolute music, 291 abstract conceptualization, 71–2 academic studies, 271 influence of, on creativity, 279–80 performance and, 271, 277–8, 280–6 portfolio career and, 282 achievement potential for, 8 routes to, 9 standards for, 98–9 active listening, 62, 67, 307 active musical experimentation, 71, 72 Adams, D., 58 adjourning stage, 62, 171 Adorno, T. W., 188–9 Advanced Musical Performance (Papageorgi and Welch), xxvi affordance, 324 agency, 144, 237, 262, 266–8, 291, 297, 300 AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMP), xxi, 353n5 alignments, 20–3 Allmendinger, J., 190 amateur performers, status change for, 293 Andriessen, L., 341, 342 Angel of Death, The (Reynolds), 334 anxiety. See performance anxiety apprenticeships, 28, 31–3, 87 approaches to, 37 group work and, 63 performance and, 29, 31–3 reexamination of, 33 aptitudes, development of, 9 ARIA (Cage), 129 Armstrong, L., 20–1, 23–4 art, meaning and, 133, 289 Artificial Neural Networks, 297 artistic expression, desire for, 22 artistic research, 295 artistic voice, personal, xxiii, 33, 40, 131–5, 241, 243 artistry, assessment of, 97–8 art-making, contingency of, 132

art music, 290, 291 Art of Practicing, The (Br), 148 assessment. See also ; self-assessment aligned with learning objectives, 104–5 communications and, 94 consequences of, 101–2 continuous, 103 criteria and standards for, 98–9, 103–4 efficacy of, 104 for ensemble performance, 96 factors in, 99, 101 focus of, 97–8 frequency of, 94, 99 illustrated seminar, 279 integrated, 278 international context for, 104 music learning and, 93, 97–8 norm-referenced, 97 performance and, 97, 99–100, 165 qualitative judgements and, 98 questions about, 96 reliability and validity of, 99–100 standards for, 98–9 types of, 93–4 Atik, Y., 187, 190, 195, 197 attunement, 313, 317 audience-focused decisions, 337–8 audiences as co-creators, 302 concern for, 215 enculturation of, 329 expressive cues for, 298 familiarity of, with performers, 325 improvisation and, 233, 236 interacting with musicians, 30, 31, 332, 334–6 mental processes of, 338 ive, 325 positive experiences for, 325–6 proximity of, to performance, 324–5 response of, 127, 322–3 responsibility to, 274 audio data, research into, 297 auditions, 76, 104, 166–77, 229, 237 auditorium, styles of, 324–5 Auer, L., 262–3

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Index aural tradition, learning in, 28 Australian Qualifications Framework, 96 Authenticities (Kivy), 358n3 authenticity, 301–2, 358n2 authority, 262 autocratic leaders, 193, 194 autonomous mode, for facilitators, 64 autonomy, 18–20, 40–1, 77 Bach, C. P. E., 273 Bach, J. S., 31–2, 265–6, 341 Badura-Skoda, E., 263 Bae, J., 282, 283 Bahle, J., 153–4 Balanchine, G., 34 Bandura, A., 77–8, 85, 86 Barratt, E., 100 Barrett, R., 345 Barthes, R., 293 Bartók, B., 225 basic response, 327–30 Bass, B. M., 195 Baxter, G., 1 Baym, N. K., 335, 336 Becker, J., 332 Beethoven, L. van, 348 Beghetto, R. A., xxiv Ben-Or, N., 283 Benson, B. E., 258 Berberian, C., 129 Berio, L., 129 Berman, B., 30–1, 32, 40 Berry, W., 297 Biasutti, M., 58–9 Bielawa, 345 Big-C creativity, xxiv Biggs, J., 58 biographical factors expressive skill development and, 16 musical success and, 12–14 Birtwistle, H., 129 Blacking, J., 310 Blank, M., 167, 169 Blom, D., 88, 100 Bloxham, S., 99 Boden, M., xxiv Borodin Quartet, 170 Borthwick, S. J., 11 Boud, D., 101 Boulez, P., 129 Boult String Quartet, 313, 314 Bourdieu, P., 82 box office success, 337 Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education, 96–7 Brahms, J., 134, 225, 291

Brand, G., 331, 334 Brändström, S., 41–2 Braque, G., 34 brass bands, competition and, 2 Bream, J., 166 Brendel, A., 264, 273 Brewer, M., 199 Brinner, B., 311–12, 313 Britten, B., 166 Britten Sinfonia, 200 Broad, S., 278 van den Broek, L., 346 Brown, C., 224 Brown, O. H., 215 Br, M., 148 Bull, C., 233–6 Burland, K., 19, 25 Burns, J. M., 195 Burr, E., 232 Burwell, K., 41 Bussotti, S., 345 Butt, J., 274 cadenzas improvising, 223, 224, 230–3 performance of, 262–3 Cage, J., 129 Campbell, J., 2 Cantata (Stravinsky), 172–5 Cardini, G., 345 Carthy, E., 166 Castro, R., 352n2 (Castro Insight) catharsis, musicians’ need for, 29–30 cello, two-bowed, 345–6 Chaffin, R., 147–8, 155, 171, 172, 210, 211, 259 chamber ensembles coaches of, skills for, 67, 68–9 egalitarianism of, 196 leadership in, 194 chamber orchestras, conductors and, 200 Chamorro-Premuzic, T., 196 Chanan, M., 324 chance giftedness/talent and, 9 outcomes and, 20 Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 265 choirs conductors and, 198 creative performance in, 198–200 improvisational exercises and, 199 musical creativity in, 198–200 vocal blends of, 199–200 vocal scores and, 199 choral singing, learning resources for, 118–19 chorus master, facilitators’ perspective on, 66 church environment, improvisation in, 234

Index Clarke, E., 261, 323, 324 classical music. See also classical musicians canon of, 254, 275, 290–1 entrainment and, 328 first-time concertgoers and, 326 ideologies of, 253, 260–1, 263–4, 266 improvisation, incorporated into, 222–5 interpretation and, 356n5 musicians’ egos and, 256, 257, 258 oral traditions of, 257 reflective practice in, 254–7, 259–61 separateness and, 332 verbal discourse of, 255 vitality of, 268 young musicians’ approach to, 262–8 classical musicians. See also musicians aesthetic limits on, 132 artistic voice of, 131–5 challenges for, in improvising, 236–8 creativity of, 223 critical thinking and, 133–4 expressive freedom of, 131–5 performance perceptions of, 215 practice experiences of, 143 profession of, 131 rehearsal activities of, 164 socioeconomic challenges for, 132 stress on, 206–7 CMP. See AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice CNMAT, 346 coaching, 36–7, 40, 180 Cochrane, A., 1 co-creation, 31, 302 coherence, 311 collaboration. See also ensembles; groups creative process and, 33, 34, 35 creativity and, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, 62, 63, 69 integrative, 34 interdisciplinary, xxv internal, 34–5 collaborative group working, 57 collaborative learning, 33, 35–7, 58–9 Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (ed. Gaunt and Westerlund), xxv–xxvi collaborative outreach work, 230 collective engagement, 35–6 College Music Society (USA), 276 Collens, P., 40, 43 Collins, D., 25 communication, 307, 327. See also musical communication; nonverbal communication; verbal communication assessment and, 94 in ensembles, 167–73, 182–3, 306–14

and live performance, interaction during, 307 in performance, stages in, 313–14 reciprocal, 308 transmission in, 314 communities of practice, xxv, xxvii, 34, 35, 45, 59, 80–2, 190, 241 competence coping and, 19 as psychological need, 18 competitiveness, 2 Compleat Conductor, The (Schuller), 191–2 complementarity, in artistic partnerships, 34 composers appreciating performers’ creative input, 232–3 authority of, 256 characteristics of, 29 faithfulness to, 132, 237–8, 255, 256 intention of, 158, 294 composition improvisation and, 242, 243. See also improvisation performance and, 29–30 computer-generated expressive performance, 297 Computer Systems for Expressive Music Performance (CSEMP), 297 concert attendance, as social phenomenon, 325 concert halls culture of, 291–2, 293 development of, 324–5 concerts preparing for, 80. See also practice; rehearsals as shared experiences, 338 concrete musical experience, 71 conductors as arbiters of musical interpretation, 191 choirs and, 198 expectations of, 195 function of, 245–6 leadership and, 191, 193, 195 musicians’ relationship with, 186–7, 194, 197 necessity of, 202 rise of, 188–9 roles of, 191–3 silent, 245–6 skills of, 202 Connaughton, D., 207 conscious learning, 109 consensus moderation, 98, 100 conservatoires convergence of, with university courses, 272, 285 creation of, 189, 275 curriculum in, 100, 132 defining characteristic of, 99, 278 development in, students’ perception of, 39, 68–9 groups in, 69–70

363

364

Index conservatoires (cont.) immersion in, 2 masterclasses in, 84, 90, 228–9 one-to-one lessons in, 36 principal study teachers in, 81 rise of, 189–90 separate from university music departments, 275 students in, culling of, 81–2 teachers in, xxiii, 41–2, 68–9, 154–5, 158 working in, 2 content dimension of learning, 59 convergence, 271–2, 275, 285–6 conversation, music-making and, 310 Cook, J., 351n1 (ch. 2) Cook, N., 192, 273, 297, 323–4 Cooper, I., 29–30 cooperation, creative process and, 35 cooperative learning, 58–9, 110 cooperative mode, for facilitators, 64 coping modelling of, 86 strategies for, 19, 80, 86, 207 Cox, J., 276 craft assessment of, 97–8 transmission of, 32. See also apprenticeship Crawford, M., 147–8 creative class, managing of, 196 creative dialogue, 65 creative episodes, 353n7 creative industries, standardization in, 132–3 creative learning, lifelong process of, xxvii creative musicianship courses, 229–30 creative performance. See also performance definition of, 272 goal of, xxi historical awareness and, 274 identity and, xxvii meaning of, xxii pathways to, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxvii, 28, 30, 33, 35, 39, 41, 45, 48, 104, 164, 317 creative process, xxiv, xxvii creativity, 29 academic studies’ influence on, 279–80 classical musicians and, 223 collaboration and, xxiv collective expression of, 28 components of, 311, 355n2 (ch. 11) composition and, xxiii cultural values and, xxiv definitions of, xxiv development of, xxi, 32 empathetic, 57 enabling of, xxiii, 139

forms of, interest in, 29 hindering of, xxiii historical, xxiv improvisation and, xxiii inhibition of, 247 interaction and, 136 meaning of, xxii–xxiii performance and, 136 practice and, 143 problem-solving and, 150 processes of, xxiii, 157 psychological, xxiv socially inscribed, 202 technical excellence and, 155 understanding of, 196 Creech, A., 40, 41, 43, 79, 80, 84, 85 criteria for assessment, 98–9 defined, 98 critical incidents, 71 Critical Response Process, 95, 333, 334, 351n2 (ch. 5) critical thinking, 133–4, 253 Cross, I., 310 CRP. See Critical Response Process CSEMP. See Computer Systems for Expressive Music Performance cues, 168–9, 172–3, 195, 197, 296, 298, 312 cultural capital, 82 Cumming, N., 300–1 cummings, e. e., 127 curiosity, 31 Curran, A., 345 Czerny, C., 348 Dammann, G., 336, 337 Daniel, R., 87, 100 Davidson, J. W., 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 167, 169, 170, 298, 308, 310, 315, 316–17, 328–9 Davidson-Kelly, K., 283 Davies, Harvey, 166 Davies, Helen, 166 Deci, E., 18 DeLay, D., 33–4 democratic leadership, 194 De Pue brothers, 357n13 detail, attention to, 31 development, interdependence and, 36 deviation, musical expression and, 296 dialogue, 307 patterns of, triggers for, 312 principles of, 61–2, 65 shifts in, and transformations, 306 Diario polacco n. 2 (Nono), 345

Index Dickinson, M., 166 Dickinson, P., 166 Director Musices, 297 Doane, S., 258 Dobson, M. C., 190, 326, 333 Doğantan-Dack, M., 238, 316, 317 Dolan, D., 225, 328 Dolmans, D., 58 Dreyfus, L., 357n6 Dunsby, J., 271, 273, 274 duos, 166–7. See also small ensembles nonverbal communication and, 169–70 verbal communication and, 171 eCello, 345–6 education, xxvi content of, and musical competency, 14–15 processes for, xxvii quality assurance in, 274–5 social values and, 8 for specialists, xxiv–xxv Eerola, T., 297–8 Ehnes, J., 262–3 Elliott, D., 285 embodied knowledge, 294, 307, 313, 314, 318, 319 Embodied Knowledge in Ensemble Performance (McCaleb), 313 embodiment, 314, 318–19 emotions practice and, 152, 153 vocal expressions of, 298 empathetic attunement, 168, 317 empathy, 317 creativity and, 114 music and, 166 encoding, 313 Enlightenment, classical style of, 246 ensembles, 166. See also duos; large ensembles; orchestras; small ensembles assessments, 95–6 cognitive load of, 308 communication in, 167–73, 306–14 conceptual model of interaction for, 314–17 conductorless, 200–1 empathy in, 317 expansion of, 187–8 group cohesion for, 316 interaction as learning mode for, 314 interactions of, during performances, 310–14, 318–19 leadership in, 201, 247 lifetimes of, 166–7, 354n1 (ch. 8) musical creativity of, components of, 311 musical and social dialogues in, 310–11

participatory process in, 201 performance breakdowns in, 313, 318 performance profiling and, 214 performances by, 57–8, 100–1, 315–16, 319 power and, 187 practice for, 35, 354n3 (ch. 8) preparation time for, 167 rehearsals of, 306, 307–10, 314–15, 318–19 rules for, 196–7 social factors of, 187, 246–7, 308, 317 success of, 308 as task performance systems, 306 entrainment, 327–8 environment, stimulation of, 9 Equal Music, An (Seth), 167 Ericsson, K., 144–5 E17 Jazz Collective, 243–4 examinations, achievement and, 93. See also assessment experiential learning, 119–20 Experiential Learning Cycle, 71 expression, 288–9 expressive freedom, 131–5 expressive performance, 289, 297 expressivity, 354n10 development of, 16, 260 rules of, 16 technical fluency and, 155 FabLab, 346 facilitators reflection by, 71–2 strategies for, 67–72 styles for, 62–4 Falchikov, N., 87 family, influence of, 11–14, 21–3, 60, 133 Faulkner, R., 9, 20, 186–7, 190 . See also assessment customized, 93–4 guidelines for, 101 online, 334–6 during a performance, 334 poorly framed, 101 for students, 43–4 transmissive, 94 verbal, 95 fellow travellers, facilitators as, 62–4, 67 Fitts, P. M., 147 Florida, R. L., 196 flow, state of, 223, 327 forethought, 209, 210 formal assessment, 93, 95 formal , 332–4 formal learning, 108–11, 116, 117, 120–1 formative assessment, 93, 94

365

366

Index forming stage, 60–1, 171 Foucault, M., 189 Freed, A., 345–6 free music, 242 Freer, P. K., 199 free-riding peers, 61 Freiberg, H. J., 65 Frydén, Lars, 297 Fuller, F. F., 215 Furtwängler, W., 273–4

psychodynamic perspectives on, 60 rehearsal for, 164 stages of, 60–2, 171 systems framework for, 60 Gruson, L. M., 145, 147 Guaccero, D., 345 Guarneri String Quartet, 312 Guildhall School of Music & Drama (London), 76–9, 229 Guillaumier, C., 280, 283

Gabrielsson, A., 296, 330–1 Gagné, F., 8–9, 12, 20 Gallowey, W. T., xxiii garage bands, 110 Garfunkel, A., 166 Garnett, L., 199–200 gatekeepers, facilitators as, 62–3, 64, 66 Gaunt, H., x–xxvi, 39, 41, 42, 79, 159, 160, 190 generative dialogue, 34 generative rules, 297, 299 GERMS model, 298–9 gestures, 298, 306, 308, 309, 329 Gholson, S. A., 33, 36, 37 giftedness, 8–11 gifts, 7, 9. See also ability Gilboa, A., 314, 315 Ginsborg, J., 87–8, 95, 100, 164, 171, 173 Glauert, A., 283, 284 Globokar, V., 345 Godlovitch, S., 258 Goehr, L., 290 Good, J. J., 169 Goodman, N., 356n10 (ch. 12) Green, B., xxiii Green, L., 110, 113, 118 Grillo, F., 345 groove, 59, 65, 168, 318 groups, 35, 57–8. See also ensembles; large ensembles; orchestras; small ensembles avoidance in, 61 breakup of, 60 cohesiveness of, 60 creativity of, xxiv, 57, 186 critical incidents in, 71 dialogue in, 69 distraction in, 61 facilitators in, 60–4, 67, 69–72 interactive process in, 59 interpersonal climate of, 65–6 intersubjective engagement in, 58 learning in, 58, 59, 63–4, 69–70, 110 music work and, 57 performance preparation by, 164 personality of, 59 power relations in, 57–8

Hackman, J. R., 190, 191 Hagegård, H., 84 Hakkarainen, K., xxv Hallam, S., 32, 40, 41, 83, 145, 147, 153, 154, 159, 160, 161 halo effect, 42–3 Hamm, M., 58 Hanken, I. M., 39, 78–82, 84, 86, 88 Hanslick, E., 291 Hanton, S., 207 Harper, E., 127 Harris, J., 281 Harrison, S., 96, 103 Harvey, J., 345 Hatton, E., 89 Haydn quartets, annotated, 257 h-creativity, xxiv Heron, J., 64 Heyde, N., 281, 283–4 hierarchical mode, for facilitators, 64 higher education assessment schedules in, 94 for music, quality assurance in, 274 regulation of, 96 HIP movement. See historically informed performance historical awareness, 284, 293 historically informed performance, 271, 273, 274, 290 creative performance and, 274 debates over, 274 straight and crooked performances of, 274 Hultberg, C., 259, 260, 262 Hunter, D., 87, 100 identity, xxvii Illeris, K., 59 illustrated seminar, 279 Ilmonen, K., 230–1 imagination, 31, 10, 14, 29, 30, 31, 51, 83, 126, 182, 242, 262, 283, 302 imitation, 77–8 improvisation, xxiv, 25, 118 affecting relationship with the audience, 233 approaches to, 230–1, 235, 242–3

Index challenges related to, for classical musicians, 236–8 in classical and romantic eras, 223–4 composition and, 242, 243 continuous, 258 criticism of, 235–6 cross-arts contexts for, 235, 242 definition of, 222–3 as development tool, 225–30 fear of, 228–9 on, 237 influences on, 14 lessening performance anxiety, 229 musical tradition and, xxv myths about, 223 outcomes of, 225–7 as pedagogical tool, 225, 228–30, 242 in performance, 231–6 preparing for, 231–2 psychological benefits of, 226 reaction to, 235–6 reasons for, in classical music, 222 rehearsals and, 227 skill set for, 223, 236–7 training in, 226–7, 229–30, 234 Imreh, G., 147–8, 158, 211, 259 incentive dimension of learning, 59 individual performance, assessment of, 99–100 infants, singing by, 12–13 inferring, 313 informal , 334–6 informal learning, 1, 2, 108–11, 116–17, 120 lifelong learning and, 111–12 outcomes of, 111 popular/vernacular musicians and, 111 spaces for, 16 undervaluing of, 111–12 value systems associated with, 120–1 innovation, xxii, 35, 78 instruments historical, 348 learning away from, 159–61, 283 musicians’ relationship with, 248–9, 300–1 integrated assessment, 278 intention, 298 interaction, 3, 28, 31–9, 43–5, 58–60, 76, 148, 165, 168, 171, 186, 188, 190, 195, 245–7, 298, 307, 310–14, 318, 323, 325–7, 332, 334–6 conceptual model of, 37, 40, 42, 50, 314–17, 318 creative process and, 35, 119 physical knowledge and, 307 interactional forces, 311 interaction dimension of learning, 59

interdependence, 58 interdependent peer learning, 72 internal musicians, 113 International Centre for Music Studies (ICMuS), 67–9 interpretation, 290, 356n5 fear of, 157 musicians’ approaches to, 153–5 inter-reaction, model of, 314 intrinsic motivation, 214 invention, 311 Italian Concerto (Bach), 259 Jackendoff, R., 297 Jaffurs, S., 120 James, M., 39, 41, 44 Jansen, G., 345 Jaques, D., 57 Järviö, P., 227–9 Játékok (Kurtág), 225 jazz assessment and, 100–1 collaborative nature of, 243–4 group facilitators and, 64–5 improvisation in, xxiii, 310–11 interactional options in, 311 Jensen, E., 345 John-Steiner, V., 34, 35, 36 Jones, G., 62–4, 67, 207 Jørgensen, H., xxv, 148, 160, 210 Joukamo-Ampuja, E., 229–30 Junttu, K., 225–7 Juslin, P. N., 296, 298–9 Kageyama, N., 146 Kaufman, G., xxiv Kennell, R., 38 Kenny, D. T., 206–7 Kerman, J., 271, 273, 274 Kid Ory Band, 20–1 kinesic gestures, 309 King, E., 164, 169, 171 King Harald’s Saga (Weir), 129 Kingsbury, H., 81–2 Kirke, A., 297 Kivy, P., 301, 358n1, 358n3 Klickstein, G., 148, 161 knowledge, embodied, 294, 307, 313, 314, 318, 319 Kokotsaki, D., 307 Kolb, D. A., 71 Koopman, C., 40–1 Krampe, R. T., 144–5 van Kreij, J., 346 Kriikku, K., 231–3 KTH-rule system, 297

367

368

Index Kurkul, W., 309 Kurtág, G., 225, 345 Labèque, K., 166 Labèque, M., 166 Lalli, R., 75 Lamont, A., 166 Landfill Harmonic (Paraguay), 138 large ensembles, 186–7. See also orchestras alternative organizational models for, 200–1 creative practice and, 196 failure in, 196 function of, 190–3 logistical requirements for, 197 performance standards for, 189 Latukefu, L., 85, 86–7 Lave, J., 80, 81 Lavigne, A., 337 leadership, styles of, 193–4 learner-centred approach, 69–70 learning aural traditions for, 28 catalysts in, 7 communities of, 1–2 conscious, 109 dimensions of, 59 dislocation in, 276–7 experiential, 119–20 exposure to, 8 imitation and, 132 improvisation and, 225 away from the instrument, 159, 283 as interactive process, 59 lifelong, 36, 87, 95, 111–12, 121, 347 maturation and, 119–20 motivation for, 17–19, 85 nonconscious, 109, 110 overlapping types of, 109–11 performance profiling and, 214–15 psychological needs for, 18–19 repetition and, 132 slow approach to, as beneficial, 94 tripartite model of success and, 19 Lebler, D., 42, 87 Leech-Wilkinson, D., 238 de Leeuw, R., 343 Lehman, E. V., 190 Lehmann, A. C., xxiii, 308, 317 Leman, M., 298, 314, 317 Lerdahl, F., 297 Lerman, L., 95, 333, 334, 335 Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke), 133 Levin, R., 225 Lewis, L., 192 Lhévinne, J., 166 Lhévinne, R., 166

Light, G., 67 Lindberg, M., 233 Linden Learning, 351n1 (ch. 2) Lindsays, the (Lindsay Quartet), 167, 354n1 (ch. 8) Lindström, E., 296 linear models, 297 listeners, 322. See also audience listening active, 307 agents’ impact on, 302 ecological view of, 324 skill of, 168 Liszt, F., 225, 348 little-c creativity, xxiv liveness, 323 Loft, A., 312 Logan, T., 259 Long, M., 76–7, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 90 Lukes, S., 43 Mackintosh, I., 324, 325 Malloch, S., 328 van Manen, M., 314 mannerisms, 258 Marable Band, 21 markers, 312 masterclasses, 79, 88–9, 132, 349 attendance at, 85 audience for, 79, 82–8, 90 benefits of, 78–82, 89 challenges of, 76, 81–4 concert preparation and, 80 conflicting instructions in, 228 cultural capital and, 82 defined, 76 during, 82–5, 87–8 initiating students into music profession, 80–2 master teacher’s interaction styles in, 76–8 peer learning and assessment in, 85–7 principal study teacher and, 89 reactions to, 75 student-centred, 79 students’ hopes for, 78–9 teaching methods for, 85–6 trust in, 83–4 types of, 76 master-dominant approach, 77, 79 master teachers challenges for, 83–4 pedagogical skills of, 89–90 representing the profession, 81 masterworks, 275 Maxwell Davies, P., 127–9 McCaleb, J. M., 170, 313–14 McFadden, C., 343

Index McGrath, J. E., 207 McLaughlin, J., 166 Mhail, G., 283, 285 Mherson, G. E., 9, 14–16, 209–10 Medium, The (Davies), 127–9 Mellers, W., 275 mental practice, 160–1 mentoring, 36–7, 40 Message to s-Marie (Kurtág), 345 metaphors, teachers’ use of, 39 metastrategies, 210 Michie, P., 1 midwives, facilitators as, 62–3, 64 Miklaszewski, K., 260 Mikrokosmos (Bartók), 225 Miller, J., 2 Mills, J., 39, 42 Miranda, E. R., 297 mirror neurons, 329 Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot (Davies), 128 mistakes embracing, 34–5 fear of, 189, 229–30 Mithen, S., 310 modelling, 77–8, 85–6 Moment Musical Op. 16 No. 3 (Rachmaninoff), 133 Monkhouse, H., 99, 101 Monson, I., 310–11, 313 Moore, A., 69 Moore, G., 260–2, 266, 268 Moore, H., 100 Moran, N., 317 motivation linked to content and context, 59 observational learning and, 85–6 practice and, 145 mourning stage, 62 Mozart, W. A., 32 MPA. See Music Performance Anxiety multiplicity, 2 Munro, G., 278 music as activity, 324 as art, 228 auditory representations of, 15 careers in, 42, 131, 241, 282, 348–9 children’s participation in, 11 as communication, 138. See also musical communication emotion and, 297–9 empathy and, 166 expressive elements of, practice and, 154–7 generating meaning, 289 as human necessity, 138 improvisational exercises for, 226–7

interpretation of, xxiii–xxiv learning process of, xxv mapping of discipline of, 275 perception of, 298, 323 prioritization of, 23 psychology of, 295–6 social mobility and, 3 as social process, xxvii, 11–12, 165, 258, 328–33 technical elements of, practice and, 154–7 time and, 1, 349 topography of, 297 visual representations of, 15 youth participants in, 7–8 musical awareness, 113 musical body, model of, 314 musical choices, as mannerisms, 258–9 musical collectives, 243–4 musical communication, 59, 298, 327 musical competency, 7, 12–17, 20–3, 214 musical creativity, process of, 281 musical development, stages for, 23–5 musical engagement fulfilment from, 26 giving up, 18–19, 22, 25 independence and, 18 motivations for, 17–19 threshold for, 17–23 musical expression, 288–9 agency and, 297 approaches to, 291, 293, 295, 299 communicating about, 289–90 contemporary understanding of, 290 contextualization of, 294 deviation from the score as, 296 emotions and, 294–6 holistic approach to, 300 intertextuality and, 300 listeners’ responsibility for, 302 power of, 294 realization of, 290 revised model for, 299–302 teaching of, 299 technology and, 297 musical groups. See duo; ensembles; large ensembles; orchestras; small ensembles musical guilds, 31 musical identity, fluidity of, 41 musical information, neurology and, 11 musical interaction, 311–12 musical language, acquisition of, 242–3 musical parameters, as focus in practice, 152–3 musical performance. See also performance architecture and, 324–5 assessment and, 97 gestural elements of, 298

369

370

Index musical performance (cont.) perfection in, 292 reception of, 294 social nature of, 323 as systematic skill, 16 temporality of, 315 musical product, assessment of, 100 Musical Structure and Performance (Berry), 297 musical theatre, continuous assessment in, 103 Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (Brendel), 273 musical works expressive fields for, 301 as fields of action, 300 production chain for, 288 music analysis, text-focused, 323–4 Musica Practica, 293 music computing, 295 music history, 295 musicians authenticity and, 301–2 co-creating, with composers, 341 collaboration among, 137 collective of, 241 competition and, 136–7 contextual behaviour of, 114–15 creative input of, 232–3 critical thinking for, 253 dedicated to improvement, 119 egos of, 256–8, 283 emotional output of, 113–14, 296 empowerment of, 246–7 enculturation of, 329 entrepreneurship of, 137 for, 332–7 identity of, 241–4 independence of, 137 influence of, in orchestras, 192, 194 influences on, 117 injuries to, 248–50 inner selves of, in performance, 130 interacting with audience , 332, 334–6 interaction of, 136 internal aspects of, 113 interpretative decisions of, 152–3 learning factors for, 210 limited contribution of, 293 optimal performance experiences for, 331 physical exercises for, 249 physical proximity of, 188 playfulness of, 226 preparation of, 137–8 relationship of, with their instrument, 300–1 skills acquisition by, 112, 116–20, 146–7, 214–16 skills valued by, 112–16

social media and, 335–6 social skills of, 115, 131 tools for, 138–9 visible movements of, and audience response, 328–9 writing on performance, 273 musicianship studies, 285–6 Musician’s Way, The (Klickstein), 148 music learning, assessment’s role in, 97–8 music-making, competencies and, 9 Music Matters (Elliott), 285 musicology, 295, 297 music performance, apprenticeship in, 29–33 Music Performance Anxiety, 206–7. See also performance anxiety music profession, initiation into, masterclasses and, 80–2 music psychology, 325, 329 music study compartmentalization and, 276 convergence in, 275 creativity and, 277 curriculum for, 271, 276, 277 holistic approach to, 275–7 interconnections in, 272 interdependence in, 275 reflective practice in, 280 music technology, 295 music theory and analysis, 134, 295 Muti, R., 265 narratives practice and, 153 teachers’ use of, 39 Nasr, R., 343 Navarra, A., 344 Neikrug, G., 344 Nenia: The Death of Orpheus (Birtwistle), 129 NEOJIBA (Núcleos Estaduais de Orquestras Juvenis e Infantis da Bahia; Brazil), 138, 139–40, 352n2 (Castro Insight) Nerland, M., 39, 81 neurology, musical information and, 11 new compositions, singer’s performance of, 127 Nicholson, G., 171 Nielsen, K., 259 Night Shift, The (OAE), 325, 326 nonconscious learning, 109, 110 nonformal learning, 109–11, 120, 121 Nono, L., 345 non-professional reviewing, 337 nonverbal communication, 38, 59, 168–70, 191, 245, 306, 308–10 norming stage, 60, 62, 171 norm-referenced standards, 97 novelty, creativity and, xxiv

Index OAE. See Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment O’Bryan, J., 103 observational learning, 85 Office for Learning and Teaching (Australia), 97 Ofsted, 8 O’Hora, R., 30, 31, 34–5, 36, 43–4 Oistrakh, D., 166 Oistrakh, I., 166 O’Neill, S. A., 61–2, 63, 69 one-to-one lessons, 28, 30–1, 276 complexity of, 44–51 developmental environment for, 33 dynamic framework for, 45–51 ensemble work and, 35–6 expectations for, 39 in, 43–4, 94 focus of, 155 interaction types in, 42 language use in, 39, 41 linear progression in, 39 modelling in, 39 mutuality in, 43 nonverbal communication in, 38 objective-setting in, 41 ive approach to, 31, 41 power dynamics in, 43 reconceptualization of, 37 reflective processes in, 42 relationships in, impact of, 39–40 significance of, 38 student autonomy and, 40–2 students’ iration for teachers in, 42–3 students’ responsibility in, 41–2 teacher’s agility in, 48 teacher’s responsibility in, 40 verbal interactions in, 38, 41 online reviews, 337 On Playing the Flute (Quantz), 29 oral composition, 224, 231 oral culture, 223–4 Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, 325, 326 orchestral scores, 191–3 orchestras. See also large ensembles collaboration in, 192–3 contemporary music styles and, 196 expense of, 189 function of, 190–3 growth of, 187–8 high profile of, 186 industrialization of, 188–9 leadership in, 190, 193–5 management strategies and, 186–7 music education and, 189, 191 musicians’ creative contributions to, 191, 192

nonverbal communication in, 191 outreach and education programs by, 196 relationships in, 192–3 self-governing, 194 as social organism, 190, 245 spontaneity in, 247 variety and stimulation in, 196 working relationships in, 191 Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, 200, 201 Pace, I., 357n6 Palmer, A., 336 Palmer, C., 296, 298 Papageorgi, I., xxvi paralinguistic gestures, 309 parents, involvement of, 12–13, 23, 40. See also family, influence of Paris, S. G., 209 Parnas, L., 344 participatory assessment, 95, 97, 102–3 participatory leadership, 194, 201 partnerships, artistic, success in, 34–5 Pasadena Roof Orchestra, 242 Pask, G., 147 path analysis, 14–15 p-creativity, xxiv peak experience (response), 327, 330–3 Pears, P., 166 pedagogical strategies, xxv peer assessment, 85, 87–8, 95–6 peer-directed learning, 110 peer learning, xxv, 85–6 peer-to-peer exchange, 137 peer review, 97 peer ties, musical engagement and, 18 Pekinel sisters, 166 Peluso, D. C. C., 62, 63, 69 Pentecostal religious services, music in, 331–2 perfectionism, emphasis on, 237 performance. See also self-regulated performing academic studies and, 271, 280–6 analysis and, 297 assessment of, 93–5, 99–102, 165 authenticity in, 301–2 bodily sensations during, 318 catharsis and, 29–30 challenges of, 206, 207 co-creation and, 30 composition and, 29–30 conceptual model of, 311 conditions of, 206–8 continuum of, 147 conventions of, challenges to, 30 coordination in, 312

371

372

Index performance (cont.) decisions about, 273 development of, 29 dual roles for, 290 environmental demands of, 207 event of, 290 expressive, 289 failure in, 228, 318 focus on, and musical training, 294 goals for, 164 historical practices of, 224 humanity and, 30 improvisation during, 222–3, 230–6 interpretative decisions and, 147 as learning experience, 211, 217 meanings in, 266 musicians’ writings on, 273 musicology’s interest in, 297 as process of re-creation, 273 practice and, 146–8, 154, 159, 164, 208, 353n2. See also practice; rehearsal proceeding to, from rehearsals, 306 skills for, acquisition of, 146–7 social aspects of, 292, 337 success in, qualities for, 30 temporality of, 318 training for, 280 unpredictability in, 58 performance analysis, 324 performance anxiety, 83, 206–8, 229, 255 performance cues, 296 performance education, 208 performance examinations (assessments), 93–5 performance expression, 296 performance profiling, 209, 211–17 performance science, 295 performance studies, 271–2, 295, 308–9, 316 Performance Studies Portfolio, 101 performance/volition control, 209, 210 performers. See also musicians creativity and, 136, 223 success of, xxiii performer–scholars, 282, 285 Performing Music: Shared Concerns (Dunsby), 271 performing stage (for groups), 60, 62, 171 periodicity, 328 Perry, G., 147 person, as component of creativity, xxiv personal agency, 32. See also agency Personal Construct Theory, 211 personal enjoyment, 17–19 personal expression, 31 Persson, R., 38 Philip, R., 190 Phillips-Silver, J., 328 philosophy, critical thinking and, 134

physical imagery, performers’ use of, 262 piano, expansion of, 348 Picasso, P., 34 Pierrot lunaire (Schoenberg), 126–7 Pitts, S., 326 place, as component of creativity, xxiv place attachment, 326 playing by ear, 14–16 Polanyi, K., 32 Polifonia Assessment and Standards project, 104 Polifonia Working Group on Assessment and Standards, 99–100 Poole, K., 88, 100 porosity, partnerships and, 35 portfolio career, 241, 282 Potts, L., 336 power ensembles and, 187 group relationships and, 57–8 one-to-one lessons and, 43 practice, 143–4 activities for, 159–61, 225 amounts of, 13, 145, 176, 283 approaches to, 152–3 behaviour during, 259 creative episodes and, 150, 156, 159 creative process and, 143–4, 149–59 creativity and, 146 cultural context for, 260 diaries of, 149, 159–60, 164, 253, 262–8 evaluation of, 148 and expertise, development of, 144–5 on, 158–9 focus, 249 goals of, 155–6, 177, 179, 347 improvisation and, 225–8 influences on, 158 away from the instrument, 159–61 interactive processes in, 150 interpretative decisions and, 149–50 mental, 160–1 motivation and, 145 performance and, 146–8, 154, 353n2 problem-solving and, 150 progression of, 155, 157 purpose of, 146 recording preparation and, 147–8 self-regulation and, 210 social dimensions of, 158–9 solitary, 158–9 stages of, 147–8 strategies for, 145–6, 148, 151, 177, 179, 181, 210, 283 turn toward, 289–90 value of, 176 video recordings of, 149

Index practice as research, 273, 278, 279–80 practice rooms, solitary nature of, 143, 144 Prague Chamber Orchestra, 200 Pratt, D. D., 32 predictive behaviour, 312, 313 press reviews, 332, 336 principals influence of, 191 rotation of, 201 principal study teachers, 79, 81 printed music, production of, 290 problem-solving, musical approaches to, 153–4 balancing technical and expressive aspects, 154–7 creativity and, 150 ephemeral nature of, 157 process, as component of creativity, xxiv prodigies, 8 product, as component of creativity, xxiv professional life, preparation for, 32–3 programme notes, 326 projection, 60, 80 prompts, 312 proxemic gestures, 309 PSP. See Performance Studies Portfolio psychodynamics, 60 psychology of music, 295–6 qualitative transformation, 306, 308, 316, 317–18 quality assurance, 274 Quantz, J. J., 29, 31 Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (Australia), 97–8, 102 Rachmaninoff, S., 133 Ramnarine, T. K., 186–7 Rattle, S., 195 Ravel, M., 191 RCS. See Royal Conservatoire of Scotland reactive behaviour, 312, 313 reciprocal communication, 308 reciprocity, in teacher–student relationship, 33 recital assessment, 97 recordings homogeneity of performing styles and, 132 as learning resources, 117–19 listening to, 129 playing along with, 117–18 preparing to create, 147–8 transcribing, 118 reflection, 71–2, 253 reflection-in-action, 71, 83 reflection-on-action, 71 Reflective Conservatoire, The (ed. Odam and Bannan), xxv

reflective observation, 71 reflective practice, 33, 253, 254–7, 259–61, 268, 280 rehearsals, 147 coaching sessions and, 180 creativity of, 173 diaries on, 164 for ensembles, 167–70 goals for, 165, 178–80 improvisation and, 227 nonverbal communication and, 168–70 objectives of, 314–15 post-performance and, 333 practice behaviour during, 173–5 strategies for, 175, 178–81 talking during, 308, 309 time spent in, 176 utterances during, 172–3 value of, 176 relatedness, learning and, 18–20 relaxation, 249 Renosto, P., 345 resilience, development of, 32 responses interdependency of, 330 types of, 327–32 reviews, 336–7 Reynolds, R., 334 Rilke, R. M., 133 Rink, J., xxi, 39 risk, xxvii, 31, 34, 48, 57 Rodgers, J., 358n2 Rogers, C., 65 romantic symphonies, concert hall design and, 324–5 Rosen, C., 256, 257, 269 Rostropovich, M., 42 Rowland-Jones, S., 257 Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, 253–4, 277–8 Royal Institute of Technology (KTH; Stockholm), 297 Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), 67–8 Ruhleder, K., 83 rule systems, 297 Russ, M., 87 Ryan, R., 18 Rzewski, F., 345 Sabey, P., 103 Sadler, D. R., 98, 104 Salmon, G., 57 Sauh (Scelsi), 345 Sawyer, K., 59, 63, 311 scaffolding, 63, 64 Scelsi, G., 344–5 Schenker, H., 273 Schön, D., 76, 77, 83

373

374

Index Schubert, F., 261 Schugurensky, D., 110 Schuller, G., 191–2 Schumann, C., 291 Schumann, R., 273 Sciarrino, S., 345 score agency of, 300 deviation from, as musical expression, 296 faithfulness to, 294 physical descriptions read into, 261–2 primacy of, 290–1 realization of, 290 value of, 256–7, 268 Seashore, C., 296 section leaders, influence of, 191 Seddon, F. A., 57–9, 168 self-assessment, 87–8, 94, 95, 102–3, 117, 209, 216 self-awareness, 211, 214 self-belief, 129 self-criticism, 43–4 self-determination. See autonomy self-determination theory, 17–19, 25 self-efficacy, 86, 209 self-to-other ratio, 199 self-reflection, 209, 210 self-regulated learning, 208–11, 217, 259 self-regulated performing, 209, 211–16 self-reliance, 2 self-teaching, 109, 117–18 Sessions, R., 271 Seth, V., 167, 169 shape, musical, 296, 297 shared peak experiences, 331–2 Sharman, R., 345 Shaw, R., 128 Sheppard Skærved, P., 279, 281, 282 Shrum, W., 336–7 Sibelius Academy (University of the Arts Helsinki), 95, 102–3, 229 Sicca, L. M., 168 sight-reading, 14–16 signals, 312 Simon, P., 166 singers. See also voice demands made on, 127 preparations of, 127–9 presentation of, 130 stamina of, 127 task of, 126 technical work of, 128 vulnerability of, to criticism, 129–30 skill preoccupation, 215–16 Sloboda, J. A., xxiii, 16, 18, 146–7, 260, 308, 333 small ensembles. See also duos; ensembles

communication of, 182–3 lifetime of, 164, 165 rehearsal activities, 167–70, 178–81 roles in, 170 types of, 164 small groups. See also groups interaction in, 60 interpersonal styles in, 60 learning in, 67 Small, C., 187, 191, 258, 266, 324 Smart, T., 352n2 (ch. 6) Smith, J., 39 social control, conservatoires and, 190 social familiarity, 169–71, 176 social loafing, 61 social media, 334–6 social mobility, 3 solo performance, psychological demand of, 35 Solti, G., 194 specialist music training, xxiv–xxv Spencer, C. P., 326 spontaneity, 31 sports performance anxiety in, 208 performance profiling in, 212, 214 sports psychology, 23 Sprechstimme, 126, 128, 129 Stabell, E. M., 79, 80, 82, 84, 85 stagecraft, 329 State Centre of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Bahia (NEOJIBA; Brazil), 138, 139–40 STEIM, 345 Stetson, N. E., 62, 67 stillness, coordination of, 328 Stoltzfus, F., 83 storming stage, 60, 61, 171 Stravinsky, I., 34 strong musical experiences, 330–3 Stubley, E. V., 300 student-centred learning, 284 students anxiety of, 82–3 as audience in masterclasses, 84–8 autonomy of, 77 collaborative skills of, 87–8 performance diaries of, 175 playing for, 82–3 rehearsal diaries of, 175, 177–9 testing of, 80–2 Studies in Performance module (University of Huddersfield), 278–9 studio recordings, 114–15 Style in Performance module (RCS), 277–8 Subject Benchmark for Music (UK), 274–6

Index Sufi religious ceremonies, music in, 331 summative assessment, 94, 101 Sutcliffe, W. D., 281, 282, 285 Suzuki, S., 8 systems theory, 60 syzygies, 9, 20–1, 25–6 talent, 7, 138 acquisition of, 9–11 catalysts for, 9 differentiated model of, 10 performance and, 9 public perception of, 11 talented, as description, 8–9 Talent Education method, 8 Tal-Shmotkin, M., 314, 315 Tarkovsky, A., 133 Taruskin, R., 274, 291, 358n3 task involvement, 214 task-oriented performers, 214 teacher-dominant approach, in masterclasses, 77 teachers cooperative learning and, 58 creating safe environment, 229 influence of, 14, 137 practice and, 158 skill preoccupation in, 215 strategies of, 136 training of, 215 technical issues, primary focus on, 259 technical mastery, 112–13 technique, maintenance of, 117–18 Ternström, S., 199 Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Australia), 96 Tesch-Römer, C., 144–5 Text and Act (Taruskin), 274, 358n3 thinker/doer dichotomy, 271, 274, 275, 285 Thomas, M., 128 Threshold Learning Outcome statements, 97 Tiensuu, J., 232–3 timekeeping, 312 Tomes, S., 258–9 tonal music, 297 Toscanini, A., 194 Trainor, L. J., 328 transactional leadership, 194, 195, 198, 202 transcendence, 292–3 transformational leadership, 194, 195, 202 transformations, qualitative, 306, 308 transmitting, 313 Trevarthen, C., 328 trial and error, 16 tribute bands, 255 Trilogia (Scelsi), 344 Triphon (Scelsi), 344 Trost, W., 329

trust, 40 environment of, 36–7 masterclasses and, 83–4 Tuckman, B., 60–2 Twitter, 336 university music departments, 275 University of Huddersfield, 278–9 Urmson, J. O., 256, 265, 356n10 (ch. 12) Vannini, P., 337 Venda culture (South Africa), 11, 17 Vengerov, M., 42 verbal communication, 168, 171–3, 245, 308 vicarious reinforcement, 85 virtuoso tradition, 292 visual communication, 306 vocational education, 98 voice. See also singers individuality and, 129 as instrument, 126, 129–30 training of, 126 Vuilleumier, P., 329 Vuoskoski, J., 297–8 Vygotsky, L., 39 Wallace, J., 351n1 (Wallace Insight) ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’ D. 768 (Schubert), 261 Warren-Green, C., 193 Waterson, N., 16 Waterworks (van Els), 342 Webern, A., 344 Weir, J., 129 Welch, G., xxvi Wenger, E., 80, 81 Werktreue [fidelity to the work], 259, 290–2, 302 Werner, K., xxiii Werquin, P., 108, 109–10 Westerlund, H., xxv–xxvi Weston, N. J. V., 212 Williamon, A., 9, 170, 308 Winograd, P., 209 Wise, K., 39 Wistreich, R., 95, 100 Wöllner, C., 87–8 Wong Doe, H., 282–5 Woody, R. H., xxiii, 39, 308 works, above performances, 257. See also score Wrigley, B., 103–4 written reports, used for assessment, 94–5 Yinm, J. A., 345 Yourn, B. R., 215 Zimmerman, B. J., 209–10 Zinc Garden (Andriessen), 341, 342 zone of proximal learning, 39

375

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