Decomposing a Composition: On the Multi-layered Analysis of Expressive Music Performance

Abstract

Abstract. In our engagement with music, not only the physical experience of sound is important. Also the interplay between body movements, musical gestures and the cognitive processes of performers and listeners is part of our experience. Yet, this multimodal aspect is not always fully considered when analyzing music performance. In this paper, we want to establish a framework for a multi-layered analysis of music performance, building on data retrieved from quantitative and qualitative procedures and involving the perspectives of composer, performer and musicologist. The performance of a classical guitarist was analyzed in detail, using both a 'bottom-up' approach (audio-analysis and motion-capture) and a 'top-down' perspective (annotations from video-footage by composer, musician and researchers). These different analytical layers were compared and evaluated, which pointed out that multiple perspectives can reinforce each other in detecting musical targets and can help detecting mismatches between qualitative and quantitative data.

Method Development for Multimodal Data Corpus Analysis of Expressive Instrumental Music Performance

“…A multimodal representation of a piece of music can contain several synchronized layers such as audio, symbolic representations (score, MIDI data), and audio descriptors (Briot et al, 2020); videos of the performance, physiological and motion data describing the performers' movements; and semantic labeling and annotations describing expressivity and other high-level qualities of the music (Coorevits et al, 2016). The data contained in these concurrent layers can be used to individuate segments in the music, that is, parts that form its structural and temporal unfolding across multiple modalities.…”

Investigación artística en tránsito

“…Se doctoró en la Universidad de Lund con un trabajo en el que reflexionaba sobre los procesos colaborativos entre instrumentistas y compositores, y en el que aplicó una metodología cualitativa digna de estudio (Östersjö 2008). Es un profesional de la investigación artística que enseña en la Academia de Música de Malmö, investiga en el Orpheus Institute y publica de manera incansable (Frisk y Östersjö 2006;2013a;2013b;Coessens y Östersjö 2014;Coorevits et al 2015;E. Clarke et al 2017; Th y y Östersjö 2020 y Östersjö 2013).…”

Untitled

“…Se doctoró en la Universidad de Lund con un trabajo en el que reflexionaba sobre los procesos colaborativos entre instrumentistas y compositores, y en el que aplicó una metodología cualitativa digna de estudio (Östersjö 2008). Es un profesional de la investigación artística que enseña en la Academia de Música de Malmö, investiga en el Orpheus Institute y publica de manera incansable (Frisk y Östersjö 2006;2013a;2013b;Coessens y Östersjö 2014;Coorevits et al 2015;E. Clarke et al 2017; Thủy y Östersjö 2020 y Östersjö 2013).…”