 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Shostakovich
Date: 2016-04-11 02:56
Attachment: cognition.pdf (505k)
Summary of the key findings:
If the audience can't see the clarinetists movement (such as in an audio recording) then physical expressiveness has little effect on the emotions conveyed.
In performances where the musician is visible, audiences are made "happier" by the music, regardless of the amount of physical expression used by the clarinetist.
"Performers’ movements did not always lead to an increase in positive emotion. For one of the two clarinetists, restraining body movements actually led to an increase in passive-positive emotion. It appears that there is not a linear relationship between the amount of body movement and the intensity of positive emotion that a performance conveys. Instead, the effect of body movement may depend upon idiosyncratic characteristics of each performer, or of each performance."
"Stravinsky’s Second Piece for Clarinet Solo has an ambiguous tonal structure. The musicians’ movements may offer cues that help an observer to resolve the ambiguity in sound by providing further information about the emotional content of the piece. Therefore, the more unfamiliar observers are with the music, the more they may rely on visual cues to determine the emotional content of the work."
"The visual component of musical performance makes a unique contribution to the communication of emotion from performer to audience. Seeing a musician can augment, complement, and interact with the sound to modify the overall experience of music."
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-04-11 04:53
I don't think the effect works, or maybe works the same, on all listeners. Unless the performer has designed, choreographed, and practiced the motions, I doubt they'll support the performer's musical intentions all that well. If moving helps the performer perform better, fine.
Personal observation indicates there may be an effect whereby live performances are experienced more intensely by audience members, compared to listening to a recording. Without knocking it, there are slightly cynical ways one might look at that.
There's likely little a performer could do to make me really enjoy a performance of Stravinsky's Three Pieces. Perhaps if they disrobed.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-04-11 06:10
Philip -
Every good, musical player learns the large (exposition, development, recapitulation) and small (harmonic changes) structure of the piece. Knowing what's happening and responding with physical movement isn't designed, choreographed or specifically practiced. It grows out of the player's understanding and response to the music.
For example, it's hard to imagine not making some kind of movement at the phrase joins in the introduction to Shepherd on the Rock or finishing the phrase before the singer's entrance without visibly breathing or giving a "it's your turn now" glance at the singer.
In the second phrase of the solo entrance in the Mozart Concerto, you must decide whether the two descending thirds are separate units or part of a single phrase. (I think they're separate.) And however you play them, you must make the following suspension and resolution a separate gesture. The short-short-long pattern is one of Mozart's most characteristic ways of writing. It's highly unmusical to play them *without* making the phrase articulation audible, and physical movement is an important part of that.
Your physical movements must correspond with the phrase structure and harmonic rhythm, but how large or small they are doesn't matter much. I've heard Sabine Meyer play the Mozart wonderfully and with a lot of physical movement. Martin Fröst played it with moderate movement. Robert Marcellus sat nearly motionless in a chair. But in each case, there *was* movement, and it corresponded to the phrasing.
I disagree with you about the Stravinsky Three Pieces, where I hear clear harmonic movement. The opening phrase of #1, for example, is the taken from Song of the Volga Boatmen and benefits from the sense of agonized labor of slaves pulling a barge up the river. #2 is polytonic, and you need to shift from one tonality to another. #3 is nearly pure jazz and must be played that way. There are many bad recordings of the Three Pieces, but that doesn't make them bad music. Just my opinion of course.
Finally, there are pieces (such as Stockhausen's Harlekin) that have movement and dance as an integral part of the music.
Ken Shaw
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Author: fskelley
Date: 2016-04-11 07:53
I wonder if it would be possible to deliberately move in a manner completely contrary to the audible musical expression, perhaps as a form of performance art? ...and how disturbing might that be to watch and listen to? Could you do it without disturbing your own musical performance? Easy to do on video (just put it out of sync), much tougher "live". Remember, in today's academic world, all forms of expression are of equal value, except that the weird and off the wall is automatically better.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-04-11 08:09
Stan, in high school we had a trombone player who simply could not march in time to a beat. Other than that he played, well, ok. But in parades or on the football field, all he could do was just lumber along in his usual stride. Which tended to not match the tempo of what we were playing. It had the director tearing his hair. The effect this had on the audience (including some band members) was hilarity. I guess since I've remembered that for 45 years, it somewhat supports the cited study.
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Author: ned
Date: 2016-04-11 14:01
Here's Gabriele Mirabassi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ce3ZzNgJrU
It's great music and Mirabassi is very accomplished, but I felt he may have at any time, come a complete cropper.
He's somewhat distracting to watch and could well warrant a journal article on his own.
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Author: fskelley
Date: 2016-04-11 18:33
Perhaps the finest future performers will have clarinets surgically implanted inside their windpipes, so they are free to move both hands any way they want. In time with the music and the emotions, or not. Might be tough to bend over, however- especially for a bass clarinetist.
I hope someone reading this will be inspired to make a YouTube video showing such future artists in performance mode.
Yet another incentive for someone to be buried with their clarinet.
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
Post Edited (2016-04-11 18:53)
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The Clarinet Pages
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