Preparing for memorized cello performance: the role of performance cues

Abstract

An experienced cello soloist recorded her practice as she learned and memorized the Prelude from J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 6 for solo cello and gave 10 public performances over a period of more than three years. She described the musical structure, decisions about basic technique (e.g., bowing), interpretation (e.g., dynamics), and five kinds of performance cues she attended to during performance (expressive, interpretive, intonation, and basic technique separately for left and right hand). The 38 hours of practice provide the most comprehensive empirical account to date of preparation of a new piece of music for performance. The cellist repeatedly took the piece apart section-by-section and then re-integrated the sections into practice performances in each of five stages: exploration, smoothing out, listening, reworking and preparation for performance. The location of starts, stops and repetitions identified the changing focus of practice in each stage. The cellist organized her practice around the musical structure, developed interpretation before working on technique and practised memory retrieval at each stage. When she wrote out the score from memory, better recall of expressive and structural performance cues showed that they served as landmarks in a hierarchical memory retrieval organization.

Attentional flexibility and memory capacity in conductors and pianists

“…Musicians likely need to use multimodal memory as they integrate sound with movement with visual notation (cf. Chaffin, Lisboa, Logan, & Begosh, 2010;Wöllner & Williamon, 2007). However, outside of some studies on the interactions of verbal and musical WM (Schendel & Palmer, 2007), not much is known about musicians' use of multimodal memory (cf.…”

Estudio comparativo de métodos de aprendizaje de violonchelo utilizados en conservatorios de música españoles. Implicaciones para el profesorado

“…2) Parámetros físicos, factores sensomotores que influyen directa o indirectamente en el desarrollo de una práctica musical eficaz, y que incluyen la disposición corporal del violonchelista (CarpinteyroLara, 2014;Wiklund, Grip, Andersson, Karlsson, & Sundelin, 2004), los movimientos de las manos derecha (Baader, Kazennikov, & Wiesendanger, 2005;Mantel, 1995) e izquierda (Wurtz, Mueri, & Wiesendanger, 2009), el trabajo con el arco (Verrel, Woollacott, & Lindenberger, 2014), y la respiración en la interpretación (Bardins, 2014;Hildebrant, 2010;Lee, Carey, Dubey, & Matz, 2012). 3) Aspectos psicológicos que intervienen en la práctica violonchelística, en especial la concentración (Beaty et al, 2013;Cosano, Zych, & OrtegaRuiz, 2017;Gregg, Clark, & Hall, 2008) y el desarrollo de la memoria musical (Chaffin, Lisboa, Logan, & Begosh, 2010;Herrera & Cremades, 2012). 4) Sensibilización musical, con especial atención hacia la afinación (Baker & Green, 2013;Varvarigou, 2014;Varvarigou & Green, 2015), el sentido rítmico (Ibeas, 2015;McPherson & Renwick, 2011), y los hábitos de estudio (Ballantyne & Packer, 2004;Cain, 2012;Lisboa, 2008).…”

Deciphering and Embodying Contemporary Piano Scores: A Commentary on Huisman, Gingras, Dhondt, and Leman (2017)

“…Bringing out patterns that are already inherent in the notation, whether it be by marking different voices or editing fingerings or hand distribution, is ultimately a practical help to performers who are unfamiliar with contemporary scores. It may also help in memorization of the material such that features are already organised into performance cues (Chaffin et al, 2010). The question arises as to whether there are beneficial processes at work during this translation stage that are being sidelined.…”