Recapturing the musical performance data in Seashore’s published performance scores

Abstract

In the first half of the 20th century, Carl Seashore and colleagues undertook extensive work in performance analysis of a variety of instruments. Their data were embodied in so-called performance scores, which still exist as illustrations of laborious work undertaken by the early pioneers of music performance research and, in their original form, offer today's researchers the opportunity to only visually examine the experimental data. This article describes the use of image-processing methods to accurately convert the visual data in Seashore's performance scores into data points. This use of technology offers researchers the opportunity to directly engage with the data collected in Seashore's laboratory, either for the purposes of validation or performing analyses for which the researchers in Seashore's time did not have the computational facilities or algorithms to perform.

Confronting ethical and social issues related to the genetics of musicality

“…35,41,48 Barely a century ago, tools such as music aptitude tests were used to promote a racist agenda against African-Americans. 37,64 These tasks were designed in a culturally biased manner and then used to perpetuate the false narrative that people of African ancestry somehow had musical abilities that were less sophisticated due to genetic differences. Those study design decisions are not disconnected from current work; Seashore's assessments and subsequent similar instruments 65 have been used to characterize musicality in a very significant portion of individual differences studies of musicality, even now in the first two decades of the 21st century.…”

“…First, we must again remind the scientific community that the study of human genetics and individual differences has been historically intertwined with racism, classism, ableism, sexism, and eugenics 35,41,48 . Barely a century ago, tools such as music aptitude tests were used to promote a racist agenda against African‐Americans 37,64 . These tasks were designed in a culturally biased manner and then used to perpetuate the false narrative that people of African ancestry somehow had musical abilities that were less sophisticated due to genetic differences.…”

“…Researchers could demonstrate this knowledge by being explicit about the context in papers and grant proposals, citing work that has covered links between eugenics and music cognition (e.g., Refs. 37, 64, and 95), and covering this history when teaching introductory music cognition and music history coursework.…”

Perception of violin performance expression through expressive musical terms

“…Expressive performance does not necessarily represent a strictly accurate execution of the musical text (Seashore, 1938) and "it is not obvious that there is a limit on the number, or nature, of viable performance options, whether these are informed by historical precedent, structural interpretation, rhetorical effect, or personal taste" (Cook, 2013, p. 402). It involves small variations of parameters such as timing, loudness, intonation, timbre, and articulation, not explicitly indicated by the notated score, but leading to different conveyed expressions (Canazza et al, 1998;Devaney, 2015;Gabrielsson, 2003). In this sense, there exists a parallel between music performance and vocal expression (Juslin & Laukka, 2003;Scherer, 1995) as both involve the translation of a text into sounds that convey an expressive message.…”