Can researchers help artists? Music performance research for music students

1
Can researchers help artists? Music performance
research for music students

• Richard Parncutt
• University of Graz, Austria

Teaching, Learning and Performing Music Royal
Northern College of Music, 1-2 July 2006
2
Character of this talk

• explorative not conclusive
• questioning not answering
• progressive not conservative
• applied not theoretical
• political not academic

3
Academic courses at music academies?

• Music history, music theory/analysis
• Introduction to music psychology
• Introduction to music performance research
• Physics, physiology, psychology of own instrument
• Efficient practice
• Structural and emotional expression
• Improvisation
• Performance anxiety
• Music medicine
• Educational and developmental psychology
• Psychology of theory/analysis/composition

4
What for?

• Who benefits?
• What do they get?
• What do they want?

5
What performance students want

• Interesting, useful information
• Enjoyable, meaningful participation
• Plausible, authoritative presentation
• Teachers who also perform
• Employment prospects
• Transferable skills

6
What administrators want

• Success indicators
• reputation
• funding
• e.g.
• Successful graduates
• ? (inter-) national performers
• Good entry students
• based on academys reputation

7
What the general public wants (taxpayers ?
politicians)

• A rich cultural life
• across social groups and stata
• age, sex, income
• A stable, bright future
• excellent, forward-looking institutions
• active, capable, caring young people

8
Success indicators of music academies

• Visible
• (inter-) nationally known performers
• Concealed
• indirect contributions to cultural life

9
Aims of music academies

• Visible
• Produce excellent performers
• Concealed
• Contribute to musical and cultural life
• applies also to academic courses

10
Changing contexts of music academies

• Academic context
• pressure ? degrees, research
• parallel development of performance research
• Political context
• transparent mission
• cost efficiency
• Social/career context
• changing demands on musicians/educators
• flexibility of job markets

11
A neo-liberal aim Improve efficiency of
music academy?

• efficiency output / input
• Input time, effort, costs
• invested by teachers, students, state
• Output graduate achievement
• enjoyed by society (pays the taxes)
• enjoyed by country (international status)

12
Planning students time

• Performance skill depends primarily
• on practice time
• Common knowledge
• Expertise research
• Academic work should take
• relatively little time

13
Curricular balanceRatio of performance to
academic work

• depends on the institution
• history
• orientation
• culture
• depends on the individual student
• career aims
• personality and approach to learning

14
Remainder of this talk

• Course content
• What is interesting and useful for students?
• Practical and political issues
• Why not currently taught?
• Anticipated effect
• Strategies

15
Piano physics, physiology, psychology

• Timbre mechanics and psychology
• key velocity, noise, pedals, balance, onset
  timing
• Fingering physiology and psychology
• constraints physical, anatomic, motor, cognitive
• dependencies expertise, interpretation
• Expression of structure and emotion
• with limited expressive possibilities

16
Voice Physics, physiology, psychology

• VoceVista Visual feedback for instruction in
  singing

17
Efficient practice

• Diversity of approaches
• study and analysis of scores
• mental versus physical practice
• listening to recordings / concerts
• Metacognition
• organization, goal orientation
• intrinsic motivation
• Timing and concentration
• short morning sessions with breaks
• duration depends on task, alertness

18
Expression I Structural communication

• Structure
• phrasing, meter, melody, harmony
• Accentuation
• Performed accents reinforce immanent accents
• Analysis for performance
• simple, clear
• supports performance of own repertoire

19
Expression II Emotional communication

• Emotional cues by size variation of
• tempo, dynamic, articulation (attack /
  duration), timbre, durational contrast,
  intonation/vibrato
• Redundancy and ambiguity of message
• Relation to structural analysis
• Effectiveness of feedback training
• (Patrik Juslin)

20
Performance anxietyHigh incidence, low
awareness, little treatment

• Main causes
• personality, mastery, situation
• Further issues
• perfectionism and control
• optimal arousal versus panic
• Prevention and cure
• physical (relaxation)
• cognitive (realism, desensitization,
  restructuring)
• combined (Yoga, hypnotherapy, Alexander
  technique)
• self-efficacy

21
Music medicine High incidence, low awareness,
little treatment

• Common problems
• muscular
• chronic tension, reduced elasticity
• pelvis, lower spine, back of neck
• instrumental
• technique, repertoire, physique
• Student musicians need
• knowledge
• relevant anatomy, physiology
• strategies
• exercises, sport, nutrition avoiding overload
• treatments
• active interventions

22
Student-teacher interaction

• Theory
• Metacognition and attribution
• childs, teachers, parents explanations of
  success and failure
• Results
• teachers dont discuss failures or feel
  responsible
• girls attribute more than boys to uncontrollable
  factors
• Strategies
• attribution training, self-efficacy, stress
  management, motivational feedback
• (Margit Painsi)

23
Learning notation Sound before sign

• Psychology of language acquisition
• hear, understand, imitate, improvise, write, read
• Historical and pedagogical context
• improvisation died out in 19th century
• modern music teachers feel inadequate / dont
  improvise
• Strategies
• start early (plasticity), one skill at a time,
  improv. against accomp., notate improvs.,
  multiple representations
• (Gary McPherson)

24
Improvisation

• Stepwise approach to skill acquisition
• set limits (dynamics, articulations, pitches,
  durations)
• expression first syntax through semantics
• work on individidual structural elements
• Psychological theory of creativity
• knowledge, risk, evaluation, motivation, flow
• balance group and individual work

25
Frequent objections

• Source of objections
• successful teacher-performers
• pedagogical tradition
• Content of objections
• course content
• pedagogical tradition

26
Objections to course content

• Foreign ideas and teachers interfere with
  teaching!
• Ideas, not truth
• Eminent performers had many teachers
• Students learn to evaluate ideas
• Students have rights and freedoms
• Analytic thinking inhibits spontaneity!
• Analytic thinking is confined to practising
• Analytic thinking is promoted by eminent
  performer/teachers
• We never learned or needed this material!
• Music and music performance is constantly
  changing
• No specialist keeps track of all relevant
  developments
• Students may become better than their teachers.

27
Objections based on pedagogical tradition

• Why change a successful pedagogical tradition?
• Improve procedural-episodic-semantic balance
• Every student generation has new influences and
  expectations
• A strong teacher-student relationship is
  important!
• Contact time can include applied research and
  co-teaching
• Students respect teachers who are open to outside
  influences
• Practice time is important!
• Optimal amount is clearly less than 100 of
  curriculum
• Practice time is physiologically and cognitively
  constrained
• We cannot foresee the benefits!
• Evaluate a trial course
• Trust other experts

28
Strategies to promote teaching of performance
research

• Engage with administration
• Understand democracy
• Maintain excellence through innovation
• Support students analytic thinking
• Promote interdisciplinarity
• Optimize course content
• Be flexible about course content
• Inform and involve teachers
• Empower students
• Vary presentation formats
• Introduce new courses gradually
• Expand and diversify teaching staff

29
Engage with administration

• to build understanding and support for
• academic courses in general
• music performance research specifically

30
Understand democracyEntrenched majorities
minority rights

• Music academies
• performers vs academics, theorists, composers
• performance as primary aim of music academies
• idea of genius performer
• Cf. musicology
• historical vs systematic ethnological
• 19th-century position of musicology within
  humanities
• idea of art/music historians as aesthetic
  arbiters

31
Excellence, tradition and innovation

• Past preserve tradition and continuity
• Solid basis, no sudden changes
• If its not broke, dont fix it
• Future be pro-active
• anticipate new developments
• take advantage of currently available means
• ? new balance?

32
Support students analytic thinking

• Musicians and artists
• holistic, intuitive, qualitative, right brain?
• Nonmusicians and researchers
• analytic, logical, quantitative, left brain?
• Everyone needs both!

33
Promote interdisciplinarity

• Difficult boundaries
• humanities
• sciences
• practice
• Necessary
• specialism
• openness, respect, curiosity
• Unnecessary
• specialist knowledge outside specialism
• ? mission statement?

34
Optimize course content

• illustrate all theory with examples
• balance lecture and workshop styles
• monitor student priorities and thinking
• adapt research to teaching

35
Inform and involve performance staff

• Information
• posters
• events
• literature

• ? Ownership
• identification
• promotion

• Involvement
• research
• teaching
• advice

36
Empower students

• Student evaluations
• individual courses
• whole programme
• Student recommendations
• mentors reports
• elective design

37
Vary presentation formats

• Occasional guest lectures
• Electives for all students
• Compulsory courses

38
Be flexible about course content

• research literature
• individual teachers activities
• research
• performance

39
Introduce new courses gradually

• Year 1 or 2 (or later)
• general introduction
• music psychology
• music performance research
• Year 2 or 3 (or later)
• specialized options
• primarily directed at non-researching performers
• may be prerequisite for doctorate

40
Expand and diversify teaching staff

• Scenario 1
• director applies for new position
• find suitable person
• Scenario 2
• change curriculum
• temporary staff teach new units
• evaluate
• apply for permanent staff

41
Patience, politeness, persistence

• the tortoise and the hare

42
Acknowledgements

• Graduate students in Graz
• Gasenzer, Goebl, Holming, Lassnig-Waldner, Jost,
  Painsi
• London
• Aaron Williamon, RCM
• Manchester
• Jane Ginsborg, Gunter Kreutz, Antonia Ivaldi
• UK music psychology
• John Sloboda, Jane Davidson, Eric Clarke
• Melbourne
• Diana Weekes, pianist

43
Enriching the curriculum

• Possible academic courses
• Music history, music theory/analysis
• General intro music psychology / music
  performance
• Physics, physiology, psychology of own instrument
• Efficient practice
• Expression
• Improvisation
• Performance anxiety
• Music medicine
• Educational / developmental psychology
• Psychology of theory/analysis/composition

44
Strategies

• Engage with administration
• Understand democracy
• Maintain excellence through innovation
• Support students analytic thinking
• Promote interdisciplinarity
• Optimize course content
• Inform and involve teachers
• Empower students
• Vary presentation formats
• Introduce new courses gradually
• Expand and diversify teaching staff

45
Abstract

• How might music performance research best be
  introduced into music performance teaching? Many
  music students could benefit from more theory in
  areas such as emotional communication,
  performance anxiety, music medicine, general
  health (including fitness and nutrition),
  educational psychology, psychology of music
  theory and composition, and the physics,
  physiology and psychology of performance on
  specific instruments and such material can be
  presented in a wide variety of different
  educational and musical contexts. If the main
  goal of an institution is to generate the best
  performers - or perhaps the largest number of
  professional performers - the content and
  proportion of academic work in the curriculum
  should adjusted to achieve this goal. Since
  musical skill depends primarily on the amount and
  quality of practice, students should spend
  relatively little time on academic work and
  regard it as an interesting and useful diversion
  that in turn motivates their practice and gives
  it meaning, gives them ideas on how best to
  practice, and prevents them from adopting
  counterproductive practice strategies. But given
  that only a minority of music students go on to
  earn their living primarily from performance,
  academic aspects of music curricula should also
  enrich the educational experience and help
  students to transfer and multiply their knowledge
  and experience, both during and after their
  studies. This can happen in the context of a
  diversity of musical activities, including
  teaching, planning and support of musical events,
  composition, musicology and so on. An additional
  argument is that the excellence of an educational
  institution can be threatened by cultural changes
  such as the diversity of new influences and
  experiences to which every new generation of
  music students is exposed. Excellent educational
  institutions should therefore welcome and
  implement new research and educational
  developments.