Performance Studies (Music)

Music Performance Analysis Annotated Bibliography

by Linda Kaastra

I include this for the benefit of graduate students currently designing documents for advancing to candidacy, and any others who may be interested in the topic.

This document was created in preparation for my comprehensive exam on the topic, "music performance... more This document was created in preparation for my comprehensive exam on the topic, "music performance analysis" for the Individual Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program at the University of British Columbia. The bibliography presents the major works addressing the interplay between analysis and performance. Based on this document, my committee designed a written exam for me to complete in 24 hours. The written exam is not included here.

"Relatively Live: How to Identify Live Music Performances"

by Melanie Fritsch

Co-authored with Stefan Strötgen
"Music and the Moving Image" Vol. 5 No. 1, 2012 (March)
Peer-reviewed

Introduction available as preview: more Introduction available as preview: www.jstor.org/discover/10.5406/musimoviimag.5.1.0047?uid=3737864&uid=2129&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=55840154893

Tango like a Tanguero: Five little tips to help a classical flute player perform tango music

by Jessica Quiñones

Published in Flute- The Journal of the British Flute Society, 30 (2), 49-53.

Go beyond the written notation as Quiñones digs deeper into tango music to explore other ways that this music can be... more Go beyond the written notation as Quiñones digs deeper into tango music to explore other ways that this music can be interpreted. Written for flute players, yet applicable to all musicians interested in performing tango music.

Performing your self? Autonomy and self-expression in the work of jazz musicians and classical string players

by Melissa Dobson

Music Performance Research, Special Issue: Music and Health, 3(1), 42-60 (2010).

Meanings of Songs and Meanings of Song Performances

by Theodore Gracyk

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, accepted and forthcoming in special issue on Song, Songs, and Singing

Focusing on Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” explains how pragmatic contextual... more Focusing on Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” explains how pragmatic contextual supplementation permits a song with a fixed work meaning to have distinct performance meanings during different performances.

'The Singing Vice: Music and Mischief in Early English Drama'

by Maura Giles-Watson

Early Theatre 12.2 (2009), 57-90.

A Live Performance System in Pure Data: Pitch Contour as Figurative Gesture

by Richard Graham

Present at the annual Pure Data Convention 2011 in Weimar, Germany. Published in proceedings.

The implementation of real-time music technology
within an improvisatory performance practice raises amore The implementation of real-time music technology
within an improvisatory performance practice raises a
series of issues concerning perceptual relationships
between the performer, musical gesture and resultant
sound structure. The following paper presents a live
performance system constructed in Pure Data which
exploits a polyphonic or multi-channel audio output of
an electric guitar in order to create dense polyphonic
music structures. The system provides pitch data for
each string in order to construct relevant pitch class
contour (figurative gesture) information in real-time.
The contour information is then interpolated and
assigned to a series of spatial and timbral synthesis
parameters in order to create a series of new gestural
relationships between the performer and resulting
sonority. Overall, the presentation will highlight the
salience of contour in the construction and perceptual
auditory organisation of polyphonic music structures.

Synaesthetic Traces: Digital Acquisition of Musical Shapes

by Mats Küssner

Co-authored with Nicolas E. Gold, Dan Tidhar, Helen M. Prior, and Daniel Leech-Wilkinson

In this paper we describe two projects aiming to shed light on the notion of shape, a concept widely used by musicians... more In this paper we describe two projects aiming to shed light on the notion of shape, a concept widely used by musicians to refer to various musical characteristics but one that has so far been almost entirely neglected by the research community. Project 1 is a study examining how musicians and non-musicians represent sound visually, making use of an electronic graphics tablet and tailored capturing software to gain insight into visualised musical shapes and the processes that produce that visualization. Project 2 aims to measure people’s shaped responses to music as expressed through hand, arm and whole body movements using Microsoft’s® KinectTM technology and a WiiTM remote controller. The digitally acquired data and methodologically advanced analyses from both projects have already influenced and will continue to inform other, humanities- and social science-driven projects, to the same extent as the latter have enhanced the progress of the former. We are convinced that the overarching investigation of ‘Shaping music in performance’ can only benefit from such a collaboration.

Interkey timing in piano performance and typing.

by Mark Schmuckler

The performance of global expectations

by Mark Schmuckler

Survival of the fittest or the most talented?

by Roland S Persson

Persson, R. S. (2000). Survival of the fittest or the most talented? The Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, Vol. XII, No. 1, Fall 2000, pp. 25-38.

Note that this is the manuscript form of the article, which was eventually published by Prufrock Press.

This article reviews the literature and anecdotal data charting potential problems in the training of gifted musical... more This article reviews the literature and anecdotal data charting potential problems in the training of gifted musical performers. The objective of this article is to feature a conceptual framework that evaluates the role of a musical maestro (or master performer as educator) in the development of talent. Although research into the training of performers in music conservatories is scarce, clinical psychology and performance art medicine report evidence that musicians may suffer from the expectations, psychological paradoxes, and traditions inherent in the so-called "conservatory culture." The literature suggests that musical maestros, themselves highly gifted performers, may at times be unsuitable teachers and mentors.

The" I" of the Other: Opera and Gender in Vienna 1900-1918

by Carola Darwin

The extraordinary richness of musical life in early twentieth-century Vienna coincided with an increasingly confident... more The extraordinary richness of musical life in early twentieth-century Vienna coincided with an increasingly confident movement for the emancipation of Women. While these two areas have attracted considerable academic attention as separate phenomena, this thesis is the first to consider, in detail, connections between the two. In particular, it investigates the way that opera contributed to the discourse on gender in early twentieth-century Viennese culture.

After a brief discussion of the existing literature on gender and opera, and of the methodology adopted, the thesis examines the discourse on gender in Vienna at this time, drawing on writings by a variety of authors. These represent a spectrum of attitudes to the women’s movement, from those actively involved in it to those who strongly opposed it.

The analysis identifies three main themes in the gender discourse: the way that power shapes relationships; the nature of gender difference; and the experience of autonomy, which is central to a person’s sense of self. These are then used as a starting point in the investigation of the operatic life of the period.

Three operas are used as case studies: Zemlinsky’s Der Traumgörge, Strauss’s Salome and Schoenberg’s Erwartung. Detailed analysis of each libretto and score reveals how these operas reflect and contribute to the contemporary discourse on gender. It becomes clear that opera provides a particularly powerful way to explore a character’s autonomy, through an expression of her internal life as she develops and changes.

Finally, the way that ideas about gender appeared in operatic performance is discussed, through an analysis of the life, work and writings of the singer Marie Gutheil-Schoder. Her descriptions of her preparation of a role demonstrate a preoccupation with the internal life of the character, which is absolutely consistent with the themes developed in the rest of the thesis.

Creating shapes: musicians' and non-musicians' visual representations of sound

by Mats Küssner

to be published in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus11)

Visualising sound and music can give rise to valuable insights into music cognition. In this experiment, musicians and... more Visualising sound and music can give rise to valuable insights into music cognition. In this experiment, musicians and non-musicians were presented with pure tones, systematically varied in pitch, loudness and tempo, as well as two short musical excerpts. Visual responses were captured using an electronic graphics tablet, and continuously acquired data of the position and pressure applied to the pen were checked for correlation with characteristics of the sound stimuli. Based on participants’ verbal reports it was revealed that pitch was represented with height on the tablet, and loudness with the thickness of the line. Although both musicians and non-musicians rated themselves as fairly highly consistent in applying these strategies, and did not find the tasks too difficult, correlation analysis revealed that musicians were more accurate than non-musicians. Results are discussed in terms of perceptual and motor skills in musicians.

Ritmo e Poesia em Performance: Uma análise das relações entre texto e música no rap dos Racionais MC’s

by Marília Gessa

Gessa, M. Ritmo e Poesia em Performance: Uma análise das relações entre texto e música no rap dos Racionais MC's. In: Fernandes, Frederico Augusto Garcia [et al.] (orgs.). Anais do I Seminário Brasileiro de Poéticas Orais: Vozes, Performances, Sonoridades. Londrina : UEL, 2011.

O presente trabalho dedica-se ao estudo do rap como um gênero poético oral, atual e corrente na sociedade brasileira.... more O presente trabalho dedica-se ao estudo do rap como um gênero poético oral, atual e corrente na sociedade brasileira. O rap traz em comum com outras poesias orais a sua natureza performática, que prescinde da co-ocorrência de multisemioses e, fundamentalmente, da voz. Na performance dos raps dos Racionais MC’s, tecnologias sonoras, como scratches e samples, combinadas ao uso da linguagem verbal, teatralizam
as situações narradas pelo canto. O artigo empreenderá uma breve análise de “To ouvindo alguém me chamar”, um rap em que as bases instrumentais utilizadas não conferem apenas acompanhamento musical ao canto e nem servem de mera ilustração àquilo que é expresso pela palavra, mas recobrem a música de sentidos que não estão necessariamente dados no texto verbal.

Shaping music visually

by Mats Küssner

to be published in Proceedings of Annual Meeting of German Society for Music Psychology ("Kreativität - Struktur und Emotion" Würzburg, 2010)

Listening to ourselves - conference paper

by JOOST VANMAELE

The Timing of Grace Notes in Skilled Musical Performance at Different Tempi: A Preliminary Case Study

by Luke Windsor

Co-authored with Rinus Aarts, Peter Desain, Hank Heijink and Renee Timmers; Psychology of Music, Vol. 29, No. 2, 149-169 (2001)

An empirical study is reported which investigates the relationship between musical structure and the timing of 11... more An empirical study is reported which investigates the relationship between musical structure and the timing of 11 grace notes in 45 performances by the same performer of a short Beethoven piano piece at a range of tempi. These performances were recorded and analysed so as to extract timing measurements, and the pianist was interviewed to gain insights into his conscious performing strategies. Significant differences in the relative length of different grace notes were found: the two grace notes with a large descending pitch interval were played significantly longer than the others. Additionally, the grace notes were timed such that they did not "take time" from the note they are nominally attached to, but from the preceding time interval. Close attention to interview data provided by the pianist reveals that the relative timing of the grace notes corresponds to his claims that he was mimicking the motor constraints of vocalists and string players. Lastly, the data provided additional evidence against the notion that changes in overall tempo always leave the relative proportion of adjacent events invariant. Grace notes with a longer mean duration tended to deviate significantly from proportional duration, whilst shorter grace notes were roughly invariant over tempo.

Effects of Tempo on the Timing of Simple Musical Rhythms

by Luke Windsor

Co-authored with Bruno Repp and Peter Desain; Music Perception Summer 2002, Vol. 19, No. 4, Pages 565–593 , DOI 10.1525/mp.2002.19.4.565 Posted online on December 4, 2003.

We investigated whether and how the timing of musical rhythms changes with tempo. Twelve skilled pianists played a... more We investigated whether and how the timing of musical rhythms changes with tempo. Twelve skilled pianists played a monophonic eight-bar melody in 21 different rhythmic versions at four different tempi. Within bars, the rhythms represented two isochronous patterns and all possible ordered pairs and triplets of different note values with ratios from the set {3, 2, 1}. The three-note rhythms also occurred in each of two meters (3/4 and 6/8). Significant deviations from the notated interval ratios were observed in performances of most rhythms, even at the slowest tempo. The observed ratios of the two-note rhythms changed little with tempo. By contrast, those of the three-note rhythms showed increasing assimilation of the two longer intervals as tempo increased, while the relative duration of the short interval was barely affected by tempo. These results replicate previous findings of Fraisse (1956), obtained in a nonmetrical and non-musical context. At fast tempi, the distinction between three different interval durations seems difficult to maintain.

A structurally guided method for the decomposition of expression in music performance.

by Luke Windsor

Co-authored with Peter Desain, Amandine Penel and Michiel Borkent, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 119, Issue 2, pp. 1182-1193 (February 2006)

A method for separating, profiling, and quantifying the contributions of different structural components to expressive... more A method for separating, profiling, and quantifying the contributions of different structural components to expressive musical performance is described. The method is demonstrated through its application to a set of expert piano performances of a short piece from the classical period. The results show that the output of the method aids in the understanding of how the different structural components in a piece of music combine in the generation of an expressive performance. A second demonstration applies the method to performances at different tempi to illustrate its effectiveness in pinpointing the structural features responsible for small but statistically significant differences between performances. The method is compared with other approaches to the analysis and modeling of musical performance, and a number of potential applications are identified.

©2006 Acoustical Society of America

Gestures in Music-making: Action, Information and Perception

by Luke Windsor

In Anthony Gritten & Elaine King (Eds.) New Perspectives on Music and Gesture (pp. 45-66). Ashgate: Farnham (2011).