This edited volume aims ‘(1) to provide a comprehensive account of the state of scholarship regarding expressiveness in music performance, and (2) to foster dialog between diverse disciplinary approaches and varied repertoires’ (p. xxii). The result is remarkable because not only does it successfully compile a broad range of perspectives on the topic of expressive music performance, but it is also a self-reflective work that invites and promotes debate across the disciplines represented within. Such interdisciplinarity necessarily juxtaposes different methodologies, calling into question the very notion of what is meant and understood to be expressive in music performance.
The editors open the book with an unusually frank account of what turned into a form of academic disobedience on the part of some contributing authors. Their original definition and delineation of expressiveness in music performance was not unanimously accepted, with authors questioning and even rejecting aspects of their conceptualization. For instance, expressiveness should refer ‘to the variation of auditory parameters away from a prototypical performance, but within stylistic constraints’ (p. xxi), but not every author compared versions of a performance against a typical interpretation, or even restricted themselves to a consideration of auditory parameters. The editors concede that their initial framework was shaped by research in classical western music, and in light of this the dissenting authors make a valuable contribution to our understanding of expression by challenging and extending traditional ideas.
The book is divided into four sections, addressing first the ‘Reception and Aesthetics of Western Classical Music Performance’, ‘Expressiveness across Styles and Cultures’, and ‘Models and Quantification of Expressive Performance of Western Classical Music’. The final part, ‘Prospectives’, features invited chapters by key figures in music performance research, and is devoted to discussing in turn the implications of the preceding chapters for Music Studies (Nicholas Cook), Cognitive Studies of Musical Expressiveness (Kate Stevens), Ethnomusicology (Jonathan Stock), Empirical Expressive Music Performance Research (Jane Davidson), and Education (Aaron Williamon). A useful website accompanies the book, complete with audio and video material referenced within the chapters.
This collection is successful in ‘showing the important role that history, culture, and musical style play in what we understand by and how we evaluate expressiveness in music performance’ (p. xxv). It communicates a clear sense of its place in the history of research in music expression, from its initial dedication to pioneers in the field, to the succinct account in the ‘Introduction’ of philosophical, musical, scientific, historical, and cognitive research trajectories of the past 400 years. Empirical research in music expression has been dominated by its focus on western classical music, and its use of experimental methods. This book makes some progress towards redressing the balance by placing ‘Expressiveness across Styles and Cultures’ at its centre, and by involving a wealth of different empirical methods ranging from audio analysis to ethnographic approaches.
A notable feature of this volume is the selection of forward-looking ‘Prospectives’. Written by authorities in their discipline, the short chapters in this final section provide thoughtful reflections on salient threads from the preceding chapters, questioning what we understand by the term ‘expression’, examining the importance of the contexts in which empirical research in music performance is undertaken, and pointing to new agendas for the study of expressiveness in music performance. For instance, Williamon writes about the ‘Implications for Education’ of the preceding chapters. Referencing a study of the views of 135 music students (classical and jazz) on expressivity (Lindström et al., Reference LINDSTRÖM, JUSLIN, BRESIN and WILLIAMON2003), he asks how expressive skills might be learned, before drawing on research within the present book to illustrate how it might inform and direct the learning of such skills. The present research includes efforts to improve our understanding of how expressiveness is perceived, work on the development of methods to study expressive performance, and research into techniques to help acquire expressive performance skills. Williamon concludes by arguing that research should be embedded in learning. His optimism in this regard is bolstered by the recent rise in the interest in music research by teachers and performers, at the same time as researchers have begun to recognise the potential for interdisciplinary approaches to music making.
For those with an interest in music education, a chapter by Leech-Wilkinson and Prior on heuristics for expressive performance is of direct relevance. The authors present empirical evidence from two studies with the aim of understanding the metaphors used by musicians as heuristic devices in teaching and performing. The first study examines the words that musicians use to talk about the concept of ‘shape’ in performance, while the second is a more detailed interview study of expressive performance. Their work describes a rich resource of heuristic devices, including vocabulary and images, which musicians use in the service of teaching and performance.
Musicians who are concerned with understanding and teaching historically informed performance, particularly at tertiary level, would do well to read Milsom and Peres Da Costa's enlightening chapter on ‘Expressiveness in Historical Perspective: Nineteenth-Century Ideals and Practices’. Countering the ahistorical treatment of musical expression as a static phenomenon, they highlight some of the ways in which it has changed since the nineteenth century. At that time, implicit and explicit links were made between the expressive properties of oration and musical expression, with a vocal ideal influencing the expressive devices used in performance on instruments such as the violin and piano. The authors describe some of the challenges they faced in preparation for experimental performances in which they endeavoured to adopt expressive devices from the period.
The skills needed to perform expressively in a musical ensemble are described by Keller. Providing a useful summary of the psychological literature, he underscores the importance for performers of developing cognitive models of the musical structure to facilitate the sharing of performance goals among co-performers. Similarly, familiarity with the expressive intentions of one's co-performers can facilitate interpersonal coordination. Keller concludes by arguing that cognitive, motor and social constraints on ensemble skills might be overcome, at least partially, by the accumulation of substantial ensemble performance experience alongside specific training in expressive ensemble performance.
Timmers and Sadakata take up the subject of expressive performance training, providing a survey and review of existing and potential ‘external augmented feedback’ systems. The advantages of such systems are their ability to augment a performer's knowledge of the results of their performance (e.g. a visual indication of the intensity of a produced note), and their knowledge of how they achieved their performance (e.g. information about the trajectory of a physical gesture). While visual feedback has been used to improve the accuracy of performance skills, we know less about its application to expressive parameters of performance, and this chapter makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of its potential.
We hear from the editors once more in an ‘Afterthought’. Here they remind us of their initial guidance to the authors that expressiveness should be ‘used in the intransitive sense of the verb (no emotion or mood or feeling is necessarily being expressed; rather the music performance sounds “expressive” to differing degrees)’ (p. xxi). Such a focus was designed to distinguish the book from the more extensive literature devoted to empirical approaches to emotion in music. Nevertheless, and perhaps inevitably, some chapters concern the expression of affect, although it is noteworthy that even in such instances, the expression is of intended affect rather than felt affect. Missing from this book, and the field in general, is a theoretical and empirical grasp of the performer's experience of self-expression. By continuing to expand research beyond western classical music, our understanding of what it is to express through music performance should be enhanced.
