Expressiveness in Music Performance : Empirical Approaches Across Styles and Cultures

What does it mean to be expressive in music performance across diverse historical and cultural domains? What are the means at the disposal of a performer in various time periods and musical practice conventions? What are the conceptualisations of expression and the roles of performers that shape expressive performance?

This book brings together research from a range of disciplines that use diverse methodologies to provide new perspectives and formulate answers to these questions about the meaning, means, and contextualisation of expressive performance in music. The contributors to this book explore expressiveness in music performance in four interlinked parts. Starting with the philosophical and historical underpinnings crucially relevant for Western classical musical performance it then reaches out to cross-cultural issues and finally focuses the attention on various specific problems, including the teaching of expressive music performance skills.The overviews provide a focussed and comprehensive account of the current state of research as well as new developments and a prospective of future directions.

This is a valuable new book for those in the fields of music, music psychology, and music education.

Dorottya Fabian, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales,Renee Timmers, Lecturer in Psychology of Music, Department of Music, University of Sheffield,Emery Schubert, Co-leader of the Empirical Musicology Group, Faculty of the Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales