Shaping music in performance

(Daniel Leech-Wilkinson – King's College London)

Project overview | Performers' perspectives | Representations | Visualisations | Mechanisms | Recruitment for current studies | Workshops | Music and Shape conference

Performers' perspectives

This strand of the project is led by Helen Prior and explores musical performers' experiences of shaping music in performance. So far, investigations have taken three main approaches. First, a search was undertaken for documentary evidence of the use of the word 'shape' in relation to music. The discovery of many examples of the use of the words 'shape' or 'shaping' by musicians in masterclasses, by critics in Gramophone, by musical performers in articles, books, and news reports, and by musicologists, confirmed that both the word and the idea of musical shape have been used by musicians for at least a century, and are still widely used today. This overview revealed that shape is used by musicians in a variety of ways, with meanings ranging from overall form to musical expression and phrasing. It also confirmed that we were not introducing an easily accepted but novel metaphor to musicians. These data will be explored further at a later stage, but some examples may be seen in the notes and slides relating to Helen Prior's presentation at the first project workshop.

The second main approach involved an online questionnaire with over two hundred participants, who had a range of ages and musical experience. Many of our participants were of professional standard as musicians. We found an extremely positive response to the idea of shape being used in relation to music: participants reported using the term when practising, in rehearsals, and when teaching; also in relation to music from a wide range of genres. We also found that the term was considered to be linked to several other ideas – from musical structure to musical expression, emotion, and tension – and in relation to specific musical features such as phrasing, the melodic line, and dynamics. Overall, then, shape has been found to be highly versatile and multi-faceted. A report of the main findings from the questionnaire was prepared for questionnaire participants, and may be viewed here. Further outputs are available here, while others relating to the documentary evidence and questionnaire data are planned.

The third approach involves in-depth interviews with a relatively small number of participants. Five professional violinists were interviewed and were asked to discuss and demonstrate various aspects of musical shaping. Careful consideration was given to the appropriate method of data analysis, which formed the focus of the second project workshop. The main method being used to analyse the data is Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, or IPA, along with other supporting approaches such as the analysis of musical excerpts using Sonic Visualiser. An overview of the initial findings was presented at the Performance Studies Network conference in July 2011, and can be viewed here. Outputs from these data are envisaged to relate to three main ideas. First, one participant appeared to show particularly close and interesting links between his decisions about musical shaping and his personal and musical identity. Second, participants discussed a range of more or less technical approaches to their control of the musical shape, and these are currently being explored in detail. Thirdly, participants used movement- related metaphors and physical gestures to aid them in their descriptions of musical shaping.