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Introduction: Expressiveness in music performance

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This is the pre-proof version of the Introduction of our edited book,
Expressiveness in music performance: Empirical approaches across styles and
cultures, soon to be published by Oxford University Press (April 2014)

Dorottya Fabian, Renée Timmers, Emery Schubert

What does it mean to be expressive in music performance in diverse historical and cultural domains?
What are the means at the disposal of a performer in various time periods and musical practice
conventions? And what are the conceptualisations of expression and the roles of performers that
shape expressive performance? When we ask someone to play a piece with ‘more expression’, it
seems that most musicians understand the request, and many are able to fulfil it. But is this a
question that only a subset of listeners can hear (perhaps musically sophisticated players and
listeners), and even more important, is it a question that is locked into a western art music
perspective? Perhaps there is no equivalent to the western concept of musical expressiveness in
some other cultures or styles of music.

In this book, our goal was to bring 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.

To give an impetus, we provided authors with a definition and explanation of expressiveness in the
way we were planning to apply the term for the book. However, after some discussion among
authors and editors, we decided that the definition we provided could be a point of departure rather
than a dictate – where authors could adopt, but also question, or reject our definition. Here is the
relevant extract of our initial letter to the authors:

We are writing to provide information about our plan for unifying the content in the book.
In particular, we are asking authors to be conscious of their definition of expressiveness in
the context of the book, and to be cognizant of the audience for whom they are writing.

A. When the term expressiveness is used in the book, please adhere to the following
definition and delineations:

Expressiveness
1. refers to the effect of auditory parameters of music performance (loudness, intensity,
phrasing, tempo, frequency spectrum, etc.)—covering acoustic, psychoacoustic
and/or musical factors.
2. refers to the variation of auditory parameters away from a prototypical performance,
but within stylistic constraints (e.g. too much variation is unacceptable, and does not
fall within the gamut of expressiveness).
3. is used in the intransitive sense of the verb (no emotion or mood or feeling is
necessarily being expressed. Rather the music performance sounds ‘expressive’ to
differing degrees).

B. Delineations

1. Expressiveness does not refer to compositional features.

Expressiveness does not refer to deviations from a written score, but rather the sound
world that the score attempts to represent (should a score of the music exist). So, rather
than comparing a deviation in auditory parameters against a musical score (if that is
possible), it should be compared against the most typical sounding performance of that
piece. Of course, this will not always be possible to do, and this is why comparison of
performances is to be encouraged (two different performances of the same work), or that
comparisons against a musical score be made with the acknowledgement that it is a
simplification, in terms of our definition of expressiveness.

2. Expressiveness is not the same as emotion.

A prototypical (and/or neutral) expression of a piece of music may well express an emotion
(in the transitive sense of the verb ‘to express’). For example, in western music, a piece
composed with slow tempo and in a minor key may be judged as sounding sad. However, it
is the fluctuation from the typical performance of such a piece that constitutes its
expressiveness. One performance may be played slower than another, or with a greater
ritardando at the end of the phrase. This is what makes the performance of the piece more
or less expressive, regardless of the emotion that the musical features may in and of
themselves appear to express. This does not deny the possibility that the emotion the
piece expresses is also changing, but in this book, we are not specifically interested in this
kind of ‘expression’ (emotional expression), and any such meaning should be minimized or
clearly justified in the context of the book.

3. Expressiveness is dependent on historical and cultural context.

 Notwithstanding our ‘perceptual’ definition of expressiveness (variation with respect to a
prototypical performance), we acknowledge that different cultures and historical periods
(and individuals) will have different definitions and agendas regarding musical expression.
We ask authors to be sensitive to those, while at the same time keeping in mind our
suggested definition. Some compromises may be necessary, but the key issue is that they
be made explicit and justified.

Based on this information and on the range of authors/disciplinary specialities invited we had two
main aims: (1) to provide a comprehensive account of the state of scholarship regarding
expressiveness in music performance and (2) to foster dialogue between diverse disciplinary
approaches and varied repertoires. For this reason we wanted to give voice to not just the doyens of
music performance research but, perhaps even more so, to younger, upcoming researchers and
those colleagues whose work may be lesser known in the empirical world of music performance
science and music psychology. We were hoping that such an approach would also map possible
future directions and prove useful for graduate students, scholarly researchers, as well as others
interested or already working in the field, for instance practice-based researchers. Although some
obvious names are missing from the contributors lists, their work is amply referenced in many
chapters indicating their strong and lasting contribution to the field which this book celebrates and
builds upon.

The book explores expressiveness in music performance in three interlinked parts. Starting with the
philosophical and historical underpinnings crucially relevant for western classical music performance,
it then reaches out to cross-cultural issues and finally focuses attention on various specific problems,
including extensions of performance measurement techniques to assist the teaching of expressive
performance skills.

Of specific interest is the promotion of interdisciplinary approaches, including computational

modelling, across cultural and stylistic domains. The book shows how the disciplines and their
findings interlink and may benefit from renewed dialogues. Investigations of historical recordings beg
for expansion of psychological studies whereas systematic-statistical techniques could branch into
popular and non-western musical performance to uncover regularities that have so far been mostly
intuitively explained. Examples of such approaches are provided by Ashley with respect to funk
(chapter 9), van der Meer examining a classical Indian performance (chapter 10) and Marandola
investigating performances of Bedzan pygmies (chapter 12), for instance. Additionally, we argue that
cognitive-empirical approaches may be enriched by stronger practical integration of the recognition
that expressiveness in musical performance depends on time and culture.
The expressive qualities of music and how these can be enhanced in performance have been a
major topic of discussion in the western classical tradition since the 1600s. Since Descartes’ Les
Passions de l’âme (1649) philosophers and musicians have debated and opined about music’s
ability to express emotional or affective states. Werckmeister (1700, p.11, cited in Bartel 1997,
p.29) even claimed that music was ‘ordered to arouse, correct, alter, and calm the passions’.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and then again, although with a different
underlying aesthetic outlook, the nineteenth century, treatises were written that instructed
vocalists and instrumentalists as to the correct reading and execution of notated scores to
achieve the desired expression, to communicate the expressive meaning of the music.

Both a scientific and historical interest in the expressive qualities of music and its performance
started in the late nineteenth century (e.g. Binet and Courtier 1895; Dannreuter 1893; Dolmetsch
1915; Gilman 1892a-b; Gurney 1880; Helmholtz 1863; Hornbostel 1910; Lussy 1874; Riemann
1884a-b; Riemann and Fuchs 1890; Sears 1902; Stumpf and Hornbostel 1911) with the first
extensive systematic investigations involving experiments pioneered during the 1920s and 1930s
by Seashore and his colleagues (1923; 1925; 1927; 1933; 1938/1967), but also researchers in
Germany (e.g. Heinitz 1926; Heinlein 1929, 1930; Guttmann 1932), including the music historian,
Arnold Schering (1931, 1938).

Since the 1980s-1990s, improved technology and renewed interest in cognitive processes have
generated a rapid development in music psychology research that probed and codified the
apparent underlying regularities of expressive music performance. To give an indication of the
extent of this research one should note the sheer number of references in Alf Gabrielsson’s
encyclopaedic review of the field in 1999 (with around 550 publications listed) and then again in
2003 (with about 250 additional references). Similarly, Caroline Palmer’s (1997) review covers
168 publications, the majority of which were published in the 1980s and 1990s.

Although very successful and influential, this Euro-centric and overtly experimentally orientated
research agenda has started to draw criticism from researchers and practitioners in other
disciplines who, while acknowledging achievements of empirically or experimentally obtained
results, brought their own historically, culturally or socially based perspectives and experiential,
phenomenological knowledge to bear upon the research questions under investigation. Basic
assumptions were questioned, for instance the definition of expressive performance, which
tended to be seen as governed by underlying compositional structures (see Clarke in Grove Music
Online); or formulated in terms of deviation from the score (following Seashore 1938) or from
some sort of norm or standard, representative performance (Repp 1997; Goebl 1999), possibly
established by general consensus and exposure to convention. Several chapters in this book
tackle this very problem of what exactly we mean when we say that a performance is expressive
or not. What does it mean to be expressive when performing a newly composed or improvised
music? In what ways do manners of performance contribute to the meaningfulness of music in
other cultures? Can we decode what may be regarded the expressive qualities of a performance
that is in a style or genre with which we are unfamiliar? Does expressiveness implicitly entail
emotional expression? How do we distinguish between the music’s properties and the
contribution of the performer? Or is such a distinction artificial? Is being expressive in our
western classical music sense of the word important or even relevant in all types of music-
making?

Consider, for example, Bartók’s words in relation to folk singers’ performances published in 1906-
7:

... we must not believe that every song must have its own tempo defined by law: folk-people
often perform the very same song at widely different tempi. … The folk-people do not
recognize dynamics. Their singing is louder or softer on different occasions, but there is no
variation [within a performance] other than the inherent changes that occur with rising or
falling pitch. … Yet, we do not suggest that the only proper rendition of a folk song would be
the strict imitation of its folk-performance... it is not all inconceivable that the true song artist
should reveal to us elements of beauty in a folk song that remain hidden in its performance
by the folk. (Vol.2, Notes, last column).

Listening to old peasants singing in an apparently ‘neutral’ style of performance one is

nevertheless often deeply moved, perhaps by the text, perhaps by the fragility of the voice,
perhaps by something else. The performance is experienced as expressive, even though there
may be no ‘artistic’ manipulations of tempo and dynamics, no explicit ‘deviation from a norm’.
Rather it may be the result of linguistic attributes, related to prosody as suggestion by the
chapter on Estonian folk singing. Lippus and Ross (chapter 11) examine whether durational
variations are related to linguistic duration contrasts, emphasising the relevance of expression of
lyrics through performance. Making a link with adapting pitch height in songs in tonal languages,
they highlight the variation in the degree to which the performed music reflects linguistic
duration properties, making this a musical choice or performance decision rather than an
obligation.
Of course this book is not the first or only publication that highlights the limitation of the
conventional definition of expressiveness in performance. Several people have recognized the
problem and suggested new definitions that are explored and at times adopted by authors of the
chapters in this book (e.g. Clarke and Doffman, chapter 6). Among researchers of western
classical music, a definition that seems appealing to many was put forth by Daniel Leech-
Wilkinson (2009, 8.1, para 15). Accordingly, an expressive gesture is ‘an irregularity in one or
more of the principal acoustic dimensions (pitch, amplitude, duration), introduced in order to give
emphasis to a note or chord—usually the start of a note or chord.’ In this formulation it is the
change, the difference from ‘what we’ve come to expect’ that creates expressiveness. This
definition is appealing because it appears to be quite broad and implies that even when listening
to performances in unfamiliar musical styles we may perceive and appreciate expressiveness
simply because we develop aural expectations that are either fulfilled or halted to positive
aesthetic effect. Yet such a definition is still very reliant on a western classical music perspective
because of its emphasis on change, change from the norm in pitch, loudness and duration. But as
our folkmusic example already indicated, change may not be necessary for experiencing music
making as expressive (consider the range of music used to induce trance that relies on
repetitiveness, for instance).

From a purely physical point of view all musical performances may consist simply of acoustical
signals which, if generated by humans necessarily include micro fluctuations (a.k.a. change),
when reading the chapters in this book one becomes increasingly aware of the psychological and
cognitive dimensions at play: we as listeners may pay attention to a timbre, the pronunciation of
a word, the smoothness or quirkiness of a line, our extra musical associations etc., whereas the
musicians may be focussing on telling a story, imitating some extra musical sound, delivering a
virtuoso passage or high note, communicating with each-other or just fitting in with the others,
at times leading, at times following and imitating. While tempo, dynamics (including accent) and
the influence of movement and language, especially prosody, seem to feature in most chapters
as important elements contributing to expression, how their role is understood varies
significantly from style to style. Indeed, the very concept of expressiveness or expression may
show important variations. For example, in Bedzan music, a sense of multitude of voices was
found to be a particularly highly valued characteristic of performance (chapter 12). In funk, on
the other hand, it seems central to expressiveness to be inducing an urge to move and to
enhance engagement with the music by inflecting variations and applying ‘funky’ sounds (chapter
8).

Given our aim to show the important role that history, culture and musical style play in what we
understand by and how we evaluate expressiveness in music performance the book starts with
philosophical reflections on what we have learnt so far from music psychological approaches and
what could be the most obvious limitations of such experimentally controlled paradigms. In
chapter 1 Doğantan-Dack emphasizes the importance of being conscious of our philosophical-
theoretical position as researchers for this has an impact on what we study as expressive
performance and how we study it. She provides a sobering account of where various scientific
methodologies and definitions of expressive music performance led in terms of results and tacit
assumptions, and warns of the discrepancy between scientific theory and human experience; the
danger that what ‘is quantifiable’ may have [become] ‘the phenomenon studied’. Measuring
variations in timing, for example, may end up being defined as expressiveness, rather than seen
as a possible component contributing to the overall perception of expressiveness.

Some of the issues raised by Doğantan-Dack are explored further and in a more analytical, data-
driven manner in the subsequent chapters and we have indicated such potentially fruitful cross-
references throughout the book. Most importantly, two of the ‘universals’ she proposes receive
much support from several contributions covering diverse topics. She argues that contrary to the
focus of much music psychological research on emotional expression, a valorised affective
experience, is more crucial and in fact a universal characteristic of expressive music performance
for such a performance invites evaluative judgment. It is a ‘culturally and individually valued
affective involvement with what expressive performance elicits’, not the experience of some
categorical emotion. This position finds experimentally derived evidence in Schubert and Fabian’s
contribution (chapter 16) in Part 3 of the book and leads to a proposed ‘taxonomy’ of expressive
music performance. The theory of affective, rather than emotional nature of expressive music
performance is echoed by van der Meer’s essay on Hindustani vocal music performance (chapter
10) whereas further supporting evidence is brought to the table by Alessandri’s study of record
reviews of Beethoven piano sonatas published over some 80 years in the Gramophone (chapter
2) and Leech-Wilkinson and Prior’s investigation of musicians’ use of heuristics and metaphors
(chapter 3).

Just as Doğantan-Dack argues for considering expressiveness to be understood as affect, the

‘subjective feeling component of an experience’, van der Meer (chapter 10) points out that
bhava, ‘which is triggered by the expression of the artist’ means ‘that what emerges’ and cites an
authority on Hindustani music, Premlata Sharma who suggested ‘that the abstract nature of
music does not allow for the expression of these mundane sentiments. On the contrary, she
proposes that we can use broader categories to describe the aesthetic impact of music, the so-
called guna-s (qualities). Hindustani theory emphasized already in the eleventh century that this
affective experience has little to do with specific, categorical and identifiable, every-day emotions
or ‘sentiments (rasa-s): the listener is moved, ‘they know by feeling’, not contemplation.
Contemporary performers of Hindustani music uphold this view as van der Meer recounts the
dhrupad singer Uday Bhawalkar stating: ‘Music without emotion is not music at all’ but adding
immediately ‘but we cannot name this emotion, these emotions, we cannot specify them’.

Compared with much music psychology literature where expressiveness is closely linked to
expression of structure and/or discrete emotions, musicians’ and music critics’ very different
relationship to the concept of ‘expressive performance’ is highlighted by Alessandri’s work
(chapter 2) that tallies the use of ‘expressive’ in reviews of Beethoven piano sonata recordings
reviewed in the Gramophone. She identifies four different contexts in which critics used the word
‘express’ or its derivatives (e.g. expressive) and makes some thought-provoking observations
regarding the relationship between expression and the judged value of the performance. For
instance, critics more often than not mention ‘too much expression’ and only focus on those
expressive variations that are relevant in communicating a piece’s aesthetically significant
properties. Rather than linking these to emotion words, they speak of drama, bringing out the
expressive qualities, intensity, soulfulness or power; in other words, closer to the ‘valorized
affective experience’ Doğantan-Dack writes about. Allessandri also found that critics’ usage easily
slipped between two dimensions of expressiveness: the physical (what performers technically did
which she calls ‘performance acts’) and the psychological (expression construed as the
manifestation of someone’s inner state). A similar blurring was also identified by Schubert and
Fabian in relation to the distinction between the perceived compositional and performance layers
of expressiveness (chapter 16).

Similarly, Leech-Wilkinson and Prior’s study of violinists’ and harpsichordists’ engagement with
performance issues finds that musicians tend to use metaphors and heuristics to describe their
interpretations (chapter 3). They tend to speak of shape (including direction, melody, phrase,
gesture, and so on) and style rather than of being expressive, and the various specific performance
details they refer to function as building blocks to higher level heuristics. They are concerned with
intensity, tension, taste, imagery, singing as well as ‘the’ feeling and ‘the’ emotion, usually
unspecified, perhaps meaning the general ‘affect’, the subjective feeling component of the
experience. As Leech-Wilkinson and Prior conclude: [heuristics work] ‘more efficiently and precisely
than technical description to convey precise intentions. But the intentions concern not so much the
sounding means that must be used; rather the expressive effect that the sounds must achieve. In
other words, performers are seeing the end‐product as the listener experience.’
The three historical chapters shed further light onto the changing perspectives on performance
expression that a systematic approach to performance analysis is quick to overlook. The chapters
look at the evidence for changes in performance aesthetics starting from sound recordings and
documented practices, and consider performance focussing on developments in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Fabian’s overview (chapter 4) shows the strong relationship between
performance conventions and culturally developed taste, underscoring the challenge formulated
in the philosophical chapter (chapter 1) and elsewhere in recent publications (e.g. Cook 2010)
regarding the assumed universal validity of certain ‘rules’ of expressive performance. The chapter
provides concrete examples of the relationship between changes in metaphorical concepts about
composers and compositions and changes in expressive practice.

Although Fabian’s chapter discusses examples of baroque music performance, the book does not
venture deeply into music of the western canon composed earlier than 1800. The one chapter
that is dedicated to a thorough overview of historical performing conventions focuses on the
nineteenth century (chapter 6 by Peres da Costa and Milsom). We don’t wish to imply that
expressiveness was not important in earlier time periods in European history, as the contrary is
true for at least the seventeenth century. However, because empirical-experimental research
into music performance has focused predominantly on the performance of nineteenth-century
piano music, we considered it appropriate to direct the spotlight to the music historical picture of
this particular period to highlight the very different views, preoccupations and aesthetics ideals
that beg for renewed and refined experimental investigations. For example, Peres da Costa and
Milsom emphasise the variety of expressive devices that performers may employ according to
treatises (including arpeggiation, asynchrony of hands, tremolo, glissando and shadings by the
bow) and their local application rather than global modulation. This not only provides
suggestions for performance practice, but has implications for manners of analysis as well.

How limited is the validity of the best known results and claims of empirical performance
research is further discussed by Clarke and Doffman’s in chapter 7. Can it be useful to discuss ebb
and flow of dynamics and tempo in music that has no tonality or melody to clearly mark phrase
boundaries and in which rhythm is too complex to perceive as inflected or shaped through timing
variations? And if not, what is it that makes a performance of such music ‘expressive’? Or is
‘expressiveness’ not even relevant here? Clarke and Doffman conclude ‘Many of the same
parameters of musical expressiveness that apply to music of the common practice period
continue to remain in force (variations in timing, dynamics, articulation, timbre), but the shaping
and functions of those parameters may in some cases be significantly affected.’ New possibilities
emerge, partly due to extended techniques and the use of electro-acoustic and computer
technologies bringing expressiveness in European concert music closer to practices in popular
music genres (cf. chapters 7-9).

Similar questions are raised in the chapter on expressiveness in western popular music. In some
popular music, the mechanic and robotic is the desired aesthetic aiming to minimise human-like
variations, as Dibben argues in chapter 7. In other popular music, expressive gestures do seem to
be added at particular structural moments in line with findings in performance of western
classical music. The gestures differ however from those found in classical performance and may
include for example audible sighs, glissandi or variations in the spatialisation of sounds.

The case studies of expressiveness in funk and jazz are also in dialogue with many of the issues
already mentioned. In chapter 9 Ashley’s focus on rhythm and timbre and how they vary in funk
provides an important emphasis on parameters other than tempo and dynamics and underscores
the problem with Seashore’s perspective. He considered performances that are unchanging in
dynamics, tempo and articulation to be non-expressive. Yet in many African (as well as other folk
music) traditions it is the stable, repetitive structures and need to adhere to tradition that
provide the opportunity for the artist to craft something new, to create ‘tiny variations that make
the same into something different’ (Ashley citing Danielson 2006)—which, if put this way is of
course not that different from the practice in western classical music where the performer makes
‘tiny variations’ to the notated values of rhythm, pitch, dynamics, and articulation and thus
adheres to tradition and standard repertoire (a.k.a. repetitive structure). Nevertheless, the origin
may rather lay in African oral traditions of highly flexible polyphony within a repetitive rhythmic
framework as also argued by Bauer in relation to jazz performance (chapter 8). He discusses at
length the manipulation of the groove and the relationship between the rhythm section and the
soloist features prominently as well. Bauer focuses on the legacy of Louis Armstrong and shows
how his manipulation of vocal gestures as well as his vocalisations (or ‘narrative utterance’) on
trumpet created a tradition or vocabulary of expressive gestures that many jazz musicians have
developed further since.

Marandola’s fascinating account of the singing habit of Bedzan Pygmies (chapter 12) leads
perhaps the furthest from our western sense of what expressive music performance might be. He
shows this music to be immensely variable yet with clear boundaries that the Bedzan Pygmies
recognize freely and enthusiastically. Marandola distinguishes two levels of expressiveness, the
individual and the collective level. His analytical and experimental findings highlight the social
significance of their singing and the social-cultural values that contribute to their ‘valorized
affective experience’ of performed songs. For the Bedzan Pygmies – hardly 400 people living in
small communities 40-60kms from each other – what seemed to have a really positive effect
among the various tested manipulations was when the researcher managed to create ‘the
illusion of a full choir thus reproducing the inherent variability of their usual performance’.

Despite the criticisms of the empirical methods of investigating musical expression, the last
decade has seen an explosion in development of methods for measuring expressiveness,
including technological advances, the collection of psychometric data and using technology for
learning. To reflect this progress the third part of the book gives a stronger voice to empirical-
experimental approaches. First an overview of quantitative methods and measuring techniques is
provided by Goebl, Dixon and Schubert (chapter 13) that shows the continued development and
refining of tools and approaches and clearly sets out limitations and problems that need to be
solved to obtain more robust results and a more comprehensive understanding. One area that
provides new insight is motion capture technology that enables a closer examination of motor
control and the physical, performed or bodily as opposed to the perceptual aspects of expressive
performance. Although expressive movement is not a focus of the book (for a recent review, see
Palmer, 2013), this chapter provides a tribute to the growing interest in studying expressive
movements and gestures, given the advances in equipment able to track movement. Another
approach that has advanced considerably in recent years is continuous response data collection,
with a case study provided in chapter 16 by Schubert and Fabian). This has the potential to
provide insight into a more direct relationship between particular musical moments and
listeners’ reactions.

The overview of methods by Goebl, Dixon and Schubert is complemented by chapter 14 on

devising rules of expressive performance based on measurements as well as knowledge from
music theory. Briefly explaining the conceptual framework behind algorithms to artificially
produce expressive performances, Friberg and Bisesi then demonstrate the efficacy of the system
through case studies from 3 different styles: baroque (J. S. Bach), romantic (Chopin) and
modernist (Webern). They demonstrate that the rules proposed are ‘a set of tools that are in
their basic formulation independent of musical periods or styles’. In response to some recent
criticism (Fabian in chapter 4, Cook 2010), Friberg and Bisesi suggest that the ‘phrase arch rule
represents a general principle, possibly derived from gestural dynamics, which potentially can be
used for signalling phrases in any style. The decision whether or to what extent to use it or not
may then be mainly derived from stylistic/personal preference or the rhythmic character of a
piece’ the latter is shown to be quite crucial when the various tested examples are compared.

Keller’s contribution (chapter 15) spotlights the issue of creating and studying expressive
ensemble performances and concludes that apart from basic similarities with solo performance,
the behavioural cues of ensemble musicians are ‘imbued with additional communicative
functions related to ensemble cohesion’ which highlights the need of specialized training to make
these skills and strategies more automated and less effortful.

Training is the focus of chapter 17 by Timmers and Sadakata. They explore the efficacies of
various enabling technologies by providing an overview of available tools and systems from
simple audio and video recording to automated computer feedback and also musicians’ attitudes
towards using these. They acknowledge the difficulty in establishing ‘what measure and
visualisations are best to capture expressive characteristics of performance’ and the danger of a
biasing effect by visualising particular performance features rather than others.
While technologically mediated feedback may improve the performance on targeted exercises, it
is not entirely clear how technology can assist in the acquisition of more complex and holistic
skills, like playing expressively. Designing systems that evaluate music performance in an
integrated manner is still a considerable challenge. The concern that such systems would
encourage uniformity through mimicking (a criticism often levelled at the Suzuki method)
remains relevant. But perhaps more importantly, one may argue that it is strategies that should
be taught rather than feedback given in isolation. Nevertheless, according to the on-line survey
they conducted involving over 100 participants, ‘Performers seem open-minded to use
technology if the effectiveness and usability of the technology is ensured, whether this includes
feedback related to movement control or related to expressive interpretation.’

Given the book’s multidisciplinary coverage of expressiveness in music performance we thought

it appropriate to invite key contributors to the field to comment or reflect on the emerging
lessons from their theoretical or methodological perspective. These short Prospectives provide
further thoughts and overviews as well as initiatives for future research that could advance the
study of the fascinating and complex phenomenon that is expressiveness is music performance.
In our Afterthought we also reflect on what we think we have achieved and what lessons we
learnt for future developments.

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