This Afterword to the special issue on Virtuosity takes the main contributions to the issue as a starting-point for a discussion of the normality of virtuosity, the anxieties it creates for performers, and the politics of virtuosity. Conclusions from Izabela Wagner’s (2015) study of the training of violin virtuosi are outlined. The relationship between virtuosity and conformity is considered. And suggestions are offered for increased virtuosity of creativity in the performance of western classical scores.
CookN. (2013). Beyond the score: Music as performance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
2.
JuslinP. N.TimmersR. (2010). Expression and communication of emotion in performance. In JuslinP. N.SlobodaJ. A. (Eds.), Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications (pp. 453–489). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
3.
Leech-WilkinsonD. (2016). Classical music as enforced utopia. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 15(3–4), 325–336.
4.
Leech-WilkinsonD.PriorH. M. (2018). Music and shape. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
McCormickL. (2015). Performing civility: International competitions in classical music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
7.
ScottA. (2014). Romanticizing Brahms: Early recordings and the reconstruction of Brahmsian identity (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.
8.
StachóL. (2012). Structural communication and predictability in Bartók’s and Dohnányi’s performance style. Studia Musicologica, 53(1–3), 171–186.
9.
WagnerI. (2015). Producing excellence: The making of virtuosos. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
