Expression, communication and affective involvement

Hallam and Gaunt (2012) suggested that for communication in music performance to occur ‘the listener’s understanding of the work must be similar to that which the composer and performer intended’. The question is whether this is possible, and whether it matters if the meaning that is expressed by the performer is different to the composer’s intention or the listener’s perception (see Shaffer, 1992, p. 265). In preparation for performance musicians develop their interpretation to convey the musical meaning of the composition to their audience (e.g. Cook, 1998). It seems likely that most musicians aim to communicate the composer’s intentions to their audiences in their performances, but unless the composer is present, it is impossible to verify whether this communication from composer via performer to the audience is successful or not. Performers may have differing views on the musical character of a composition, and musicians ‘have the freedom to shape its moods’ (Shaffer, 1992, p. 265). From a musician’s perspective there cannot by one ‘prototypical’ or ‘model’ performance of a composition (cf. Fabian et al., 2014; Timmers & Honing, 2002) as there can be various appropriate interpretations within stylistic constraints. It is highly likely that performers’ perspective on the musical meaning of a work is influenced by their culture, experience, expectations, training and situation, and this leads to the

existence of ‘a multitude of equally acceptable performances of a single piece’ (Timmers & Honing, 2002, p. 2). Several scholars have highlighted that listeners’ experiences are subjective too, and dependent on their experience, expectations and situation (e.g. Cespedes-Guevara & Eerola, 2018; Doğantan-Dack, 2014; Gabrielsson, 2001; Honing, 2009). Therefore, a listener’s perception might be different to the character the performer was aiming to convey, and it is feasible that both are different to the composer’s intentions. The notion of performance expression ‘does not require that there is any correspondence between what the listener perceives in a piece of music and what the composer or performer intends to express’ (Juslin, 2013, p. 2).

The pianist and philosopher Mine Doğantan-Dack (2014) proposed that a salient and universal aspect of expressive music performance might be that it elicits

affective involvement in the performer as well as the listener; ‘Affect as the subjective

feeling component of an experience, is necessary for anyone to identify a music performance as expressive’ (ibid., p. 15). She suggests that such an affective involvement is not necessarily a recognized emotion or the communication of emotions in performance; listeners might have a special experience while listening without recognizing such feelings as emotions. This view is contrasting to Kivy who wrote that he might perceive ‘the most intense and disquieting emotions in a work of art while he himself is “not moved in the least”’ (Kivy, 1989, cited in DeBellis, 2005, p. 670). This view is also different to Juslin's (2003), who suggested that ‘occasionally the perception of an expressive performance will also evoke an emotion in the listener (…), or even an aesthetic response (…), but such a response is not required for a listener to hear the music as expressive’ (Juslin, 2003, p. 276, referring to Davies, 1994). It might well be that most people have an affective experience when hearing an expressive performance, but the difficulty with labelling affective involvement as a universal characteristic of performance expression is that there could also be negative affective feelings involved for either the performer or the listener, or both. A performer might experience some performance anxiety that negatively influences their perception of their own playing, or a listener might undergo feelings of frustration when hearing a

performance that is played very convincingly in a style that they do not appreciate, for example the ensemble Red Priest7 _{playing works by Vivaldi in a manner to impress the}

audience with virtuosity while ignoring historic performance conventions. Can we still speak of an expressive music performance in such situations? It might well be that occasionally a performance is perceived as highly expressive by some, while being completely unconvincing for others (cf. Fabian, 2014; Schubert & Fabian, 2014).

Doğantan-Dack proposed that another key element of expressive performance could be that it elicits an evaluative judgement and discussion among listeners, based on their affective experience; ‘one of the important functions of performance expression may be that it creates a social opportunity for the practice of evaluative judgements’ (Doğantan-Dack, 2014, p. 17). However, one might object that such evaluations could be attributed to a human trait to evaluate and criticize, rather than to the expressiveness of a performance; depending on the circumstances, a performance with limited expressiveness might attract as much critical evaluation as an excellent performance with high expressive intensity.

2.3.4. Summary expressive music performance

Based on the music psychology literature and philosophers’ views described above, it becomes apparent that performance expression is a multifaceted phenomenon that is extremely difficult to define adequately (e.g. Doğantan-Dack, 2014; Juslin, 2003; Schubert & Fabian, 2014); any definition could highlight certain aspects of expressivity while obscuring others (Timmers & Honing, 2002). Therefore, a description of various charcteristics can provide a pragmatic perspective for understanding and investigating teaching and learning of expressive music performance.

Music can express, refer to, or symbolize, non-musical events such as affects, atmosphere, characters, emotions, feelings, moods, motions and ideas and may induce an affective experience in performers and/or listeners. Conveying the expressive character and structure of a work convincingly are key aspects of performance expression, as well as stylishness, musical tension and forward movement. Musical

tension and forward movement contribute to the expressive intensity or expressiveness

7 _{https://redpriest.com/home}

of a performance. Additionally, the interaction between performer and audience affects the communication of expression in music performance (e.g. Doğantan-Dack, 2014). Performers’ and listeners’ affective involvement is not necessarily a hallmark of expressivity as their evaluation and affective response is subjective and shaped by their experience, expectation and preference. Understanding these aspects of