Performances by expert pianists of works by Bach, Chopin and Beethoven were computer recorded. The timing and dynamic of performance were examined in relation to analyses of the musical structure. Comparisons of structure and expression enable us to consider performance as both elucidating structure and inventing a musical character. Character is the patterning of expression in response to large-scale structures and moods perceived in the music, and as such it is essentially an imaginative construct. This concept is needed for a full epistemology of performance, which hitherto has tended to concentrate on the structural aspect of interpretation.
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