Educational applications of scientific research on music performance

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Educational applications of scientific research
on music performance

• Richard Parncutt
• University of Graz, Austria

• Invited presentation at the International
  Symposium on Psychology and Music Education
  (PME04), Padova, Italy, November 2004

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Some issues

• Academic pressure on music academies
• Changing demands on musicians/educators
• Flexibility of job markets
• Cost efficiency versus structural conservatism
• Communication education ? psychology
• Intuitive versus logical thinking

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Aim

• Improve efficiency of music education
• Efficiency output / input
• Input students time and effort costs
• Output musical or educational quality

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Some inadequately taught topics

• Improvisation
• Expression
• Performance anxiety
• Music medicine
• Physics, physiology, psychology of performance
  (own instrument)
• Efficient practice
• Student-teacher interaction

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Common Objections and Answers

• O We never learned or needed that stuff!
• A1 Our students will be even better than we
  are.
• A2 Beethoven had no Bachelors degree.
• O Foreign ideas interfere with teaching!
• A1 Its about ideas, not truth.
• A2 Communicate with other teachers.
• O Analytic thinking inhibits spontaneity!
• A1 Music theorists are music lovers, too.
• A2 Analytic thinking is confined to practice.

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Approach

• Survey of practically promising research
• Practical and political issues
• why not currently taught?
• anticipated effect of introduction
• strategies to encourage introduction

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Sound before sign (Jost, McPherson)

• Psychology of speech acquisition
• hear, understand, imitate, improvise, write,
  read, share
• successively interactively
• European history
• improvisation died out in the 19th century
• Modern teachers
• feel inadequate, dont convince parents or play
  with students
• Sound before sign
• start early (plasticity), one skill at a time,
  improv. against accomp., notate improvs.,
  multiple representations

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Teaching improvisation (Lassnig)

• Order
• imitate ? improvise ? notate ? transcribe
• Balance
• group / individual improvisation
• Approach
• set limits (dynamics, articulations, pitches,
  durations)
• expression first syntax through semantics
• combine structural elements with musical skills
• Psychological theory of creativity
• knowledge, risk, evaluation, motivation, flow

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Structural communication (Friberg)

• Students cant describe how they express!
• Structure phrasing, meter, melody, harmony
• Good theories simple and applicable
• Expression and accentuation
• Immanent versus performed accents
• Principle performed reinforce immanent
• Meaningful analysis of repertoire

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Emotional communication (Juslin)

• Students have little analytical knowledge of
• Cues
• size/variation of tempo, dynamic, articulation
  (attack / duration), timbre, durational contrast,
  intonation/vibrato
• Redundancy and ambiguity of message
• Relation to structure
• Effectiveness of feedback training

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Performance anxiety (Wilson)

• High incidence, low awareness / treatment
• Optimal arousal versus panic
• Personality, mastery, situation
• Perfectionism and control
• Treatment
• physical (relaxation)
• cognitive (realism, desensitization,
  restructuring)
• Yoga, hypnotherapy, Alexander technique

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Music medicine (Gasenzer, Erlitz)

• High incidence, low awareness / treatment
• Common problems
• chronic tension, reduced elasticity of muscles
• pelvis, lower spine, back of neck
• specific to instrument, technique, repertoire,
  physique
• Student musicians need
• knowledge (relevant anatomy, physiology)
• strategies (exercises, sport, nutrition)
• treatments (active interventions, avoiding
  overload)
• information specific to children
• Why important for students?
• Prevention is better than cure!

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Physics, physiology and psychology of piano
(Troup, Holming)

• Students know surprisingly little about
• Relevant mechanics, acoustics, physiology
• Timbre
• key velocity, noise, pedals, balance, onset
  timing
• Fingering
• constraints physical, anatomic, motor, cognitive
• dependencies expertise, interpretation
• Structural and emotional communication
• with limited expressive possibilities

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Efficient practice (Barry)

• Diversity of approaches
• Study and analysis of scores
• Mental and physical practice
• Metacognition, organization, goal orientation
• Intrinsic motivation
• Listen to recordings and concerts
• Many short sessions with breaks

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Student-teacher interaction (Painsi)

• Research
• childs, teachers, parents attributions 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
• Aims
• realism, confidence, motivation, progress

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Analytic versus holistic thinking

• Brandler Rammsayer (Psychol Mus 2003)
• Musicians
• - verbal memory holistic/intuitive
• Nonmusicians
• - series, classifications, matrics, topologies
  analytic/logical
• Nature/nurture
• - unclear, irrelevant
• Implication
• Musicians need support in analytical thinking

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Implications

• Compulsory units for all students
• improvisation
• expression
• performance anxiety
• music medicine
• physics, physiology, psychology of performance
  (own instrument)
• efficient practice
• psychology of music teaching
• Bachelors 3 ECTS/unit 12 of course

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Aims of individual units

• Formulate musically relevant aims, e.g.
• Physics, physiology, psychology of piano
• minimize cognitive and physical load
• realistically achieve interpretive goals

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Changing the system

• Politics majority rules or minority rights?
• - Musicology historians versus systematic,
  ethnomusicologists
• - Academy performers versus academics,
  theorists, composers
• How did it get like this?
• - Musicology 19th-century faculties of
  humanities
• - Academy performance as genius
• Solution arguments not opinions
• - Cite research
• - Quality focus plus diversity
• Example
• - Musicology in Graz (planned) 6 modules

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Getting academic staff

• Change curriculum
• New units temporary staff
• Success of curriculum ? new permanent staff
• Quality international orientation of staff may
  teach in English or French

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Musical interdisciplinarity

• Humanities
• Sciences
• Practice
• Necessary
• - specialism
• - openness, respect, curiosity
• Not necessary
• - specialist knowledge outside specialism

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Thank you for your attention

• and special thanks to all who helped with the
  Italian translation!
• Maddalena Forti
• Luigi Frezza
• Silvia Boccato
• Bintou Traoré
• Silvia Risato
• Nicoletta Chiggio
• Matteo Mattarello