Musical Expression

Abstract

“Playing with feeling” is central to music making and is referred to more formally as playing with “expression.” This chapter organizes expressive playing into three components: Knowledge (K); Performance (P—the act of making music in an expressive manner); and Affect (A—the reception of the music by the listener) (KPA). Knowledge is paramount for the musician seeking to understand and improve their capacity to play music expressively, and the chapter catalogues the scientific and psychological literature that provides insight into the knowledge component. Notation, skill acquisition, proprioception, and extramusical knowledge types are discussed. This is followed by a presentation of the sources of musical expression knowledge—individual, situational, cultural, and universal. The author then critiques key theories of musical expression, contrasting the idea of musical expression arising from deviation or modulation of the norm against the empirical but contradictory evidence that optimal musical expression is perceived when a performance is the most average (prototypical). Finally, individual differences in musical expression are discussed, with the proposal that some individuals may prefer to understand musical expression through a performance stance, while others in terms of an affect stance, with both stances being simultaneously possible. The KPA process model of musical expression presents a convenient way for the musician to better understand how to perform from a performance science perspective, without losing the nuances offered by approaches offered by philosophy, pedagogy, and intuition.

Expressive goals for performing musicians: The case of clarinetists

“…The concept of musical expression, more nebulous than that of emotional expression, has been extended in recent work by Schubert (2022). Listeners' responses to musical expression are not the same as their responses to the expression of emotions such as sadness, happiness, fear, and anger (Schubert et al, 2016).…”