The Relationship between Musicians' Expectations and Their Perception of Expressive Features in an Aural Model

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine whether musicians' perception of expressive features in an aural model is related to pre-existing expectations for the piece of music. Twenty-four advanced musicians gave `normal musical performances' (or default performances) of two short musical excerpts, indicating their expressive expectations for the excerpts. Subjects then heard expressive performances of the excerpts that contained several expressive dynamic variations (i.e., crescendos, decrescendos, accents). Subjects' ultimate task was imitating these expressive models as exactly as possible, but before giving their imitative performances, the musicians verbally reported the expressive dynamic features they perceived in the models. Results indicated that subjects' default performances were significantly more similar to models' idiomatic features (reflecting expressive performance conventions) than nonidiomatic (musically inappropriate) features. More importantly, expressive features that went unidentified by subjects were significantly more similar to their default performances than identified features. When applied to a music classroom situation, the results suggest that student musicians' current performance (before modeling) can influence their perception of a teacher's model.

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