Heuristics for Expressive Performance

Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel; Prior, Helen M.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659647.003.0003

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…As music notation cannot represent all the intuitive aspects of music, questions and problem-solving activities can facilitate the development of children's understanding of, and reflection on, musical character and structure. It can be helpful to consider the musical character using metaphors referring to emotions, imagery or ideas during the learning process (see Langer, 1957;Leech-Wilkinson and Prior, 2014).…”

Section: Background: Teaching Young Musicians Performance Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young Musicians' Learning of Expressive Performance: The Importance of Dialogic Teaching and Modeling

Meissner

Timmers

2020

Front. Educ.

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Until recently little was known through systematic research about effective teaching methods to enhance children's expressiveness in music performance. A previous experimental study indicated that a dialogic teaching approach, consisting of questions and dialogue, improves pupils' expressive performance. Developing from this, a participatory action research study was conducted with the following objectives: (1) To explore how dialogic teaching and learning of expressiveness can be used in weekly individual instrumental lessons; (2) to investigate whether instrumental tutors find a dialogic teaching approach useful for facilitating pupils' learning of expressiveness; and (3) to explore what other complementing instructional modes tutors would like to employ. (4) To investigate pupils' views on their learning of expressiveness; and (5) pupils' views on the instructional strategies used for teaching expressiveness. Five instrumental music tutors participated in this research with two or three of their pupils (11 girls in total, aged 8-15, playing various instruments) for 4 months. Pupils played in informal performance sessions at the start, middle, and end of the project. Lessons and performances were video-recorded. Music diaries, questionnaires and video-stimulated recall interviews were used to collect information about participants' views. Participating tutors used mainly dialogic teaching, modeling, and playing along with pupils. Tutors thought that teaching and learning expressiveness is a complex process wherein "everything is intertwined"; several methods can be used within a dialogic teaching approach for working on various teaching aims. Aural modeling combined with dialogic teaching was seen as especially useful. Pupils' accounts indicate that they had learned to think about the musical character and how to convey this in performance. Tutors' questions had stimulated pupils' reflection and raised their awareness of the musical meaning, while teachers' modeling had helped to build up an aural picture of the music which had facilitated pupils' learning. The dialogic teaching approach supported by modeling had generated improved expressiveness in lessons and contributed to a growing sense of achievement, confidence, self-efficacy, and musical agency. These findings demonstrate the importance of dialogic teaching supported by modeling for meaningful instrumental music education as this can stimulate pupils' thinking, thus facilitating their learning and enhancing their expressiveness.

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Section: Background: Teaching Young Musicians Performance Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young Musicians' Learning of Expressive Performance: The Importance of Dialogic Teaching and Modeling

Meissner

Timmers

2020

Front. Educ.

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“…The writer tells us how the piece should sound -"should" because the conception is attributed to the composer as performer. According to Leech-Wilkinson (2012), as soon as we start thinking about the relationships between notes, we have to imagine those notes sounding and our linguistic translation does not refer to an abstract musical performance, but to a particular performance style, the performance style current around us (Leech-Wilkinson and Prior, 2013).…”

Section: Background 21 Music and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Is Vivaldi smooth and takete? Non-verbal sensory scales for describing music qualities

Murari

Rodà

Canazza

et al. 2015

Journal of New Music Research

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Studies on the perception of music qualities (such as induced or perceived emotions, performance styles, or timbre nuances) make a large use of verbal descriptors. Although many authors noted that particular music qualities can hardly be described by means of verbal labels, few studies have tried alternatives. This paper aims at exploring the use of non-verbal sensory scales, in order to represent different perceived qualities in Western classical music. Musically trained and untrained listeners were required to listen to six musical excerpts in major key and to evaluate them from a sensorial and semantic point of view (Experiment 1). The same design (Experiment 2) was conducted using musically trained and untrained listeners who were required to listen to six musical excerpts in minor key. The overall findings indicate that subjects’ ratings on non-verbal sensory scales are consistent throughout and the results support the hypothesis that sensory scales can convey some specific sensations that cannot be described verbally, offering interesting insights to deepen our knowledge on the relationship between music and other sensorial experiences. Such research can foster interesting applications in the field of music information retrieval and timbre spaces explorations together with experiments applied to different musical cultures and contexts

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“…This ‘bubble’ was thought to be at odds with the realities of a much more diverse industry for which our respondents thought preparation was absolutely vital, and a closed cycle of conservatoire and elite industry voices was considered unhelpful. Beyond curricula issues, programmes also need to permit students the opportunities to challenge the contextual norms in which they operate and the assumptions underpinning their education (Broad & Duffy, 2014; Leech-Wilkinson, 2020).…”

Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classical soloists’ life histories and the music conservatoire

Palmer

Baker

2021

International Journal of Music Education

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This article explores the life histories of virtuoso classical music soloists with particular reference to conservatoire provision. Detailed life-history interviews were conducted with six virtuosi between May 2018 and January 2019. These participants were three singers, two cellists and a concert pianist. Resultant qualitative data were stored in an NVivo software database and understood through a process of analytic induction. Key findings spotlight the significance of Higher Education, a connection between broad creative and cultural interest and musical excellence, and a significant role for conservatoires in diversifying their training and easing transition into the career. The soloists also warned of dangers relating to controlling teachers, loss of autonomy and a need to convey their career realities to students.

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Heuristics for Expressive Performance

Cited by 18 publications

References 28 publications

Young Musicians' Learning of Expressive Performance: The Importance of Dialogic Teaching and Modeling

Young Musicians' Learning of Expressive Performance: The Importance of Dialogic Teaching and Modeling

Is Vivaldi smooth and takete? Non-verbal sensory scales for describing music qualities

Classical soloists’ life histories and the music conservatoire

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