This study is an examination of musicians' expressive performances, in an aural modeling task, paying special attention to the skills of goal imaging and motor production. Twenty-five university musicians heard expressive piano excerpts preceded by expressionless “deadpan” versions to use as the bases of comparison. After giving imitative performances of each expressive model, subjects indicated the perceived dynamic and tempo contours of the model by drawing on a chart. Multiple regression analyses were used to explain the dynamic variations of subjects' expressive performances. A theoretical model designated “contextual goal image” consisted of (a) subjects' previous attempts at performing in a deadpan manner (indicating the expressive conventions automatically applied to the excerpts' musical contexts) and (b) their line drawings of what they perceived in the models. Overall, the contextual goal image model explained a large proportion of the variance in performance, indicating the importance of supplementing automatically applied performance conventions with an explicit goal performance plan.
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