Previous research has found that listener evaluations of ensemble performances vary depending on the expressivity of the conductor’s gestures, even when performances are otherwise identical. It was the purpose of the present study to test whether this effect of visual information was evident in the evaluation of specific aspects of ensemble performance: articulation and dynamics. We constructed a set of 32 music performances that combined auditory and visual information and were designed to feature a high degree of contrast along one of two target characteristics: articulation and dynamics. We paired each of four music excerpts recorded by a chamber ensemble in both a high- and low-contrast condition with video of four conductors demonstrating high- and low-contrast gesture specifically appropriate to either articulation or dynamics. Using one of two equivalent test forms, college music majors and non-majors (N = 285) viewed sixteen 30 s performances and evaluated the quality of the ensemble’s articulation, dynamics, technique, and tempo along with overall expressivity. Results showed significantly higher evaluations for performances featuring high rather than low conducting expressivity regardless of the ensemble’s performance quality. Evaluations for both articulation and dynamics were strongly and positively correlated with evaluations of overall ensemble expressivity.

Vision serves a fundamental role in the human experience of musical performance. In conducting, this particular heuristic influences both expressive and coordinative aspects of musical activity. Ensemble conductors present a special case of musical gesture, as their activities are coordinative rather than directly sound-producing. While the influence of vision on evaluations of musical expressivity has been well studied, less attention has been paid to the temporal aspect of conductors’ gestures. Given anecdotal observations of a flexibly congruent relationship between conductor gesture and ensemble response and the ability of entrainment to promote preference, we theorize that alterations to natural action-sound congruence in conductor-to-ensemble settings may influence evaluations of conductor quality. Naturalistic performance video of five conductors was left intact or adjusted to an audio- or video-lead condition by a percentage of each excerpt tempo (intact, ±15%, ±30%) and fully crossed into stimuli orders. Participants were asked to rate the quality of the conductor, the ensemble, and the performance overall using a Likert-type scale bound by “ poor” and “ excellent.” Our results indicate that any offset, whether audio- or video-led, resulted in a lower level of conductor quality than intact, unaltered performance. While our effect size was small (η p2 = .02), participant ratings reinforce the role of action-sound congruence on observers’ perceptions and overall evaluation of conductors’ activities.

Group musical performance, especially large instrumental ensembles, present the outward appearance of an asymmetric, temporally immediate stimulus-response relationship between conductor and ensemble. Interestingly, anecdotal reports from both conductors and performers indicate a degree of variability in the timing of orchestral response to the conductor’s gestures. This observation is not present in anecdotal accounts of other instrumental ensemble settings, like wind bands, but commonplace occurrence among orchestral musicians indicates the potential presence of greater complexity in the observed relationship. This study investigates both the quality and quantity of temporal lag between conductor and ensemble in two common instrumental ensemble configurations – wind bands and orchestras – in an effort to describe the interplay present within conducted group performance. The findings indicate that the anecdotally identified lag is present within all ensemble types, and that it presents a flexible, dynamic temporal relationship between conductor and ensemble. Additionally, both the quantity and quality of lag values are significantly different between ensemble types, experience levels, and musical content. Several avenues for future research are identified, and confounds within the sampled ensembles are examined for their potential roles in the observed relationships.