Expressiveness in Music Performance: Empirical Approaches Across Styles and Cultures - Fabian, Dorottya; Timmers, Renee; Schubert, Emery (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2014)
What does it mean to be expressive in music performance in diverse historical and cultural domains? What are the means at the disposal of a performer in various time periods and musical practice conventions? And what are the conceptualizations of expression and the roles of performers that shape expressive performance? For the first time, a wide variety of perspectives are assembled in one volume investigating expressiveness in performance in various styles and cultures, including the ways in which the improvisations of Louis Armstrong, studio-fashioned electronic dance music, and the songs of Bedzan Pygmies can be considered expressive. The volume is unique in combining historical, systematic, computational, and phenomenological approaches to performance, and in including empirical investigations of western and non-western classical music as well as western and non-western popular and folk music. The highlighted conceptualizations and materializations of expressiveness in performance are as diverse as one would hope them to be. More awareness of and focus on oral traditions and player interaction are needed for performance research to break away from the dogma of notation. While this challenges existing methods, computational and empirical approaches are nevertheless not only crucial, but also may become central to furthering our understanding of what makes music performance expressive.This book brings together research from a range of disciplines that use diverse methodologies to provide new perspectives and formulate answers to these questions about the meaning, means, and contextualisation of expressive performance in music. The contributors to this book explore expressiveness in music performance in four interlinked parts. Starting with the philosophical and historical underpinnings crucially relevant for Western classical musical performance it then reaches out to cross-cultural issues and finally focuses the attention on various specific problems, including the teaching of expressive music performance skills. The overviews provide a focussed and comprehensive account of the current state of research as well as new developments and a prospective of future directions. This is a valuable new book for those in the fields of music, music psychology, and music education.Readership: Students and researchers in music, music psychology, music education, ethnomusicology, performance, musicology
Keywords: Performance; Musical expression