The Science and Psychology of Music Performance: Creative Strategies for Teaching and Learning

401 Pages·2002·17.03 MB·english

by  Richard Parncutt

The Science & Psychology
of Music Performance:
Creative Strategies for
Teaching and Learning
Richard Parncutt
Gary E. McPherson,
Editors
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE SCIENCE & PSYCHOLOGY
OF MUSIC PERFORMANCE
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&
THE
SCIENCE PSYCHOLOGY

OF
MUSIC PERFORMANCE
CREATIVE STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
Edited by
Richard Parncutt &

Gary E. McPherson

1

2002
3

Oxford New York
Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
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and an associated company in Berlin
Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

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,

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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The science and psychology of music performance : creative strategies for teaching and

learning / Richard Parncutt and Gary E. McPherson, eds.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-19-513810-4

1. Music—Performance—Psychological aspects. 2. Music—Instruction and study.
I. Parncutt, Richard, 1957– II. McPherson, Gary E.

ML3838 .S385 2002

781.4—dc21 2001036292

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments
The first draft of each chapter was independently reviewed by four people: the
two editors, another author from the book, and an anonymous external reviewer.
Regarding the latter, we are grateful to: Margaret Barrett, Colin Durrant, Jane
Ginsborg, Thomas W. Goolsby, Donald Hall, David Hargreaves, Daniel Kohut,
Gunter Kreutz, Leopold Mathelitsch, Jeff Pressing, James Renwick, Bruno H.
Repp, R. Keith Sawyer, Stanley Schleuter, Emery Schubert, and William Forde
Thompson for making their expertise available to us and to the authors.
We take this opportunity to thank the various representatives of Oxford Uni­
versity Press with whom we came in contact during the long process from sub­
mission to publication. We especially thank our acquiring editor, Maribeth Payne,
and our production editor, Ellen Guerci, for their support and guidance.
Most of all we, the editors, are grateful to the authors for their patience in the
face of all those guidelines, bulletins, reviews, comments, recommendations, and
deadlines that we sent around by e-mail. At times they must have seemed end­
less! Now that the authors can see their chapters in the context of the whole book,
we hope that they agree with us that it was worth the effort.
December 2001 R. P.
G. E. McP.
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Contents

Introduction ix

I. THE DEVELOPING MUSICIAN
1. Musical Potential 3

Anthony E. Kemp & Janet Mills
2. Environmental Influences 17

Heiner Gembris & Jane W. Davidson
3. Motivation 31

Susan A. O’Neill & Gary E. McPherson
4. Performance Anxiety 47

Glenn D. Wilson & David Roland
5. Brain Mechanisms 63

Eckart Altenmüller & Wilfried Gruhn
6. Music Medicine 83

Alice G. Brandfonbrener & James M. Kjelland
II. SUBSKILLS OF MUSIC PERFORMANCE
7. From Sound to Sign 99

Gary E. McPherson & Alf Gabrielsson
8. Improvisation 117

Barry J. Kenny & Martin Gellrich
9. Sight-Reading 135

Andreas C. Lehmann & Victoria McArthur
viii | Contents
10. Practice 151

Nancy H. Barry & Susan Hallam
11. Memory 167

Rita Aiello & Aaron Williamon
12. Intonation 183

Steven J. Morrison & Janina Fyk
13. Structural Communication 199

Anders Friberg & Giovanni Umberto Battel
14. Emotional Communication 219

Patrik N. Juslin & Roland S. Persson
15. Body Movement 237

Jane W. Davidson & Jorge Salgado Correia
III. INSTRUMENTS AND ENSEMBLES
16. Solo Voice 253

Graham F. Welch & Johan Sundberg
17. Choir 269

Sten Ternström & Duane Richard Karna
18. Piano 285

Richard Parncutt & Malcolm Troup
19. String Instruments 303

Knut Guettler & Susan Hallam
20. Wind Instruments 319

Leonardo Fuks & Heinz Fadle
21. Rehearsing and Conducting 335

Harry E. Price & James L. Byo
Contributors 353

Author Index 363

Subject Index 373
Introduction
How fluently do music psychologists, music educators, and practicing musi­
cians communicate with one another? Circumstances do not always favor an
easy interaction. Each group has its own language, and the specialist ways of
communicating that exist within each group may not always work across group
boundaries. Moreover, cross-disciplinary interactions are not always explic­
itly encouraged by the institutions within which music researchers and prac­
titioners work. These everyday limitations help to explain why music educa­
tors and practicing musicians have not benefited as much as they could from
the past few decades of music psychology research and why music psycholo­
gists often neglect to cite, and so benefit from, relevant studies published in
the mainstream research journals of music education.
In this book, we attempt to bridge the interdisciplinary gaps that currently sepa­
rate music psychologists, music educators, and practicing musicians by develop­
ing new approaches to teaching, learning, and making music that are informed
and inspired by the results of recent research in music psychology, music educa­
tion, and acoustics—whether that research is published in music psychology or
in music education journals. In this way, we aim to produce something fresh—a
book that is without precedent in either music psychology or music education.
To help achieve this aim, each chapter is coauthored by two internationally
recognized scholars: one a scientist (psychologist, acoustician, physiologist, or
physician) and the other a performer or music educator. Authors who are well
versed in both music education and music psychology are coupled with collabo­
rators with relevant complementary expertise in the area of the chapter. These
collaborations, many of which are entirely new (some coauthors have not, at the
time of writing, met face to face!), have at times been inspirational and at other
times frustrating. The artistic authors wondered why the scientific authors some­
times indulged in virtuosic scientific methodology and terminology with little
or no meaning for practicing musicians; referred so often to the literature as to
give an impression of insecurity; made simplistic generalizations in areas that
obviously involved complex cognitive, artistic, and judgmental processes; or
ix