CAPÍTULO 1. INTRODUCCIÓN BIOGRÁFICA
VI. Los últimos proyectos (1983-2002)
For young musicians’ learning of expressive performance, it seems likely that instruction related to musical character and structure can be effective. It is possible to discuss phrasing of a musical work and to ask questions about the perceived affect or musical character with a child or teenager. Contrastingly, it does not seem practical to discuss the expressive intensity or musical tension with a child, as these concepts might be difficult to comprehend for an 8 or 9-year old. Therefore, for this doctoral project and thesis an expressive music performance is defined as one in which the musician conveys their interpretation of the compositional structure and musical character convincingly to a listener. Musical meaning refers to the musical character and
structure of a work. Musical character relates to the affects, atmosphere, characters,
emotions, feelings, moods, motions, ideas or imagery represented in a musical work (Brendel, 2011; see Shaffer, 1992, 1995). Although music does not necessarily communicate emotions, it can be helpful to describe music’s expressive character with metaphors referring to emotions, feelings, imagery or ideas during the learning process (see Langer, 1957; Leech-Wilkinson & Prior, 2014). Overall expressiveness describes the expressive intensity of a performance and will be used in assessments.
Expressivity can be defined as the quality of expressive performance and includes
expressiveness and appropriate stylishness. A detailed discussion of expressiveness in music performance across styles and cultures can be found in Fabian, Timmers & Schubert (2014).
2.4. The foundation for young musicians’ learning of expressive
performance
As mentioned in the introduction, teachers and parents might assume that an innate musical talent is required for learning expressive performance. The belief that talent is required to become an excellent musician can already be found in Quantz (1752) who
wrote that ‘the first quality required of someone who wishes to become a good musician is a particular good talent, or natural gift’ (Quantz, 1752, p. 13). For decades the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate dominated thinking around musical development. Some scholars proposed that musical excellence is determined by environmental factors, such as early experiences, opportunities, vast amounts of deliberate practice, and training (e.g. Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993; Howe, Davidson, & Sloboda, 1998; Sosniak, 1990). Conversely, others have pointed out that the enormous differences in skill development among individuals that have been observed cannot be explained by extensive deliberate practice alone (Gagné, 1999; McPherson, 2005; Williamon & Valentine, 2000). According to the geneticist Alexander (2017) ‘the dichotomous language of nature and nurture is completely inadequate’ for understanding human development. Alexander proposed the DICI acronym for describing the complementary interaction between genotype and environmental factors on human development and identity. DICI, which stands for Developmental Integrated Complementary Interactionism, illustrates how genetic information and environmental information are integrated at every stage of human development. Although Alexander did not examine the development of artistic skills, it seems likely that DICI is relevant for the development of musical abilities too; thus, environmental factors and genetic information are integrated in ‘nuanced narratives’ influencing musical development (cf. McPherson & Hallam, 2016; Tan, McPherson, Peretz, Berkovic, & Wilson, 2014).
Exposure to music starts very early in life, as research has shown that new-born infants react to tunes they heard regularly during the last trimester of pregnancy (Granier-Deferre, Bassereau, Ribeiro, Jacquet, & DeCasper, 2011; Hepper, 1991; Tafuri, 2008). Parncutt (2016) suggested that prenatal hormonal interactions between mother and foetus might form the physiological foundation for experiences of emotion in music later in life. According to Krueger (2011) music is perceived as an affordance- laden8 construction from birth. Honing and colleagues found that newborn babies
8 Krueger (2011), referring to work by James J. Gibson, defines an affordance as “a relational property of
the animal’s environment perceived by that animal as having a functional significance for that animal” (ibid.: 4). Krueger describes musical affordances as “the qualities of a piece of music that a sensitive
possess some basic listening skills that are necessary for musical development, such as beat perception (Háden, Honing, Török, & Winkler, 2015; Honing, Ladinig, Háden, & Winkler, 2009; Winkler, Haden, Ladinig, Sziller, & Honing, 2009). Musical communication and development are based on these innate listening skills and infant- directed (ID) speech and song (Trevarthen, 2002) in which parents convey affective intentions, modifying infant behaviour and arousal levels (Trehub, Hannon, & Schachner, 2010; Trehub & Nakata, 2001; see Trehub, 2016 for a review). Parents’ speech to infants is music-like and characterized by elevated and exaggerated pitch contour, slow tempo, rhythmicity and repetitiveness (e.g. Fernald et al., 1989). ID- songs may consist of lullabies with soothing intentions, or energetic play songs (Trehub, 2016). Trehub & Degé (2016) describe infants as musical connoisseurs because of their precocious listening skills, excellent memory for music and intense interest in expressive musical performances, especially in songs sung by caregivers (e.g. Trehub, 2003). Young children enjoy improvising songs and playing with musical instruments (Hargreaves, 1986; Moog, 1968; Moorhead & Pond, 1942; Tafuri, 2008). Toddlers’ songs are experimental in character, conveying thoughts and feelings (e.g. Campbell, 2003); ‘A child may sing a running account of his inner imaginative life’ (Moorhead & Pond, 1942, p. 7). According to Davies (1986; 1992) children have an intuitive awareness of harmony and musical form to symbolize affects in music. She observed that children seem to have ‘an instinctive feeling for minor colours to express solemn, intense or mysterious words’ (Davies, 1986, p. 287).
Several studies found that children start recognizing happiness and sadness in music from a young age. In a study with 12- and 20-month old infants from Cantonese speaking families, Siu & Cheung (2017) found that the 20-month-olds, but not the 12- month-olds, seemed surprised by emotional incongruence between musical and facial expressions, as they looked longer at incongruent displays. This suggested that these 20-month olds were sensitive to musical emotion. In a study by Kastner and Crowder (1990) 38 children (aged 3-12) were presented with 12 short accompanied and unaccompanied musical phrases in major or minor modes. The participants were asked
listener both perceives and appropriates in the process of constructing and regulating different emotional experiences and in organizing different social contexts and interpersonal relations” (ibid.: 5).
to match each extract with a cartoon-like drawing of a positive (happy or contented) or negative (sad or angry) facial expression. Results indicated that all children in their sample demonstrated a statistically reliable mode-emotion association of positive for major and negative for minor mode. Additionally, there was a modest positive correlation for age and overall scores; older children tended to give more correct answers than younger children. Interestingly, tunes in major mode were more often perceived as happy or neutral when unaccompanied than accompanied, while the accompaniment helped identifying the corresponding affect in minor modes. Furthermore, Dolgin & Adelson (1990) asked 128 children aged four, seven and nine years old to match sung and instrumental (viola) melodies to four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear). They found that even 4-year olds can recognize such emotions above chance level in sung performances. Accuracy increased with age and was highest for recognizing happiness, followed by sadness, while accuracy rates were lowest for melodies expressing fear. When making mistakes, children tended to confuse ‘frightened’ and ‘sad’ melodies; while ‘angry’ melodies were sometimes confused with ‘happy’ extracts, but not vice-versa. Likewise, Stachó (2006) and colleagues found that children as young as 3 and 4-years old could identify happiness and sadness based on performance cues above chance level, but recognition of angry and fear in music was harder for participants of all age groups in their sample. Conversely, Dalla Bella (2001) and colleagues found that 3-4-year olds in their sample could not distinguish between happiness and sadness in music above chance, while 5- year olds were able to recognize these emotions based on tempo but not mode. The 6- 8-year olds in their study could perceive happiness and sadness in music when communicated via tempo or mode. Contrastingly, Franco, Chew and Swaine (2017) found that children can reliably recognize happiness and sadness in music from the age of 4, and that even 3-year-olds can recognize musical emotion in ‘happy’ tunes above chance. Children’s accuracy scores were higher for recognition of ‘happy’ than ‘sad’ extracts, and identification accuracy increased with age. Children’s verbal abilities were positively correlated with musical emotion recognition scores. Franco and colleagues used child-directed music that was composed for the study combined with photos or situational drawings expressing happy or sad emotions instead of facial
drawings. Although findings in the literature are sometimes inconsistent regarding the earliest age that pre-school children start to recognize basic musical emotions (see Cespedes-Guevara & Eerola, 2018; Franco, Chew, & Swaine, 2017), this body of research demonstrates that the ability to recognize basic emotions such as happiness and sadness in music is generally well established before, or around the time children tend to start instrumental music lessons at 6 or 7 years old (see Dalla Bella et al., 2001; Kratus, 1993).
Adachi and Trehub (1998) found that children can portray contrasting emotions in songs, by modulating gestural, vocal, linguistic and musical devices. They asked 160 Canadian children (aged 4-12) to sing a familiar song in such a manner that a listener would feel either sad or happy, and also to convey the opposite emotion. Additionally, children were asked to improvise two songs, one with and one without words, to make a listener feel happy or sad. The children in this study could convey happiness and sadness contrastingly through their sung performances by using facial, gestural, linguistic, musical and vocal devices. Furthermore, the researchers found that Canadian children (aged 6-12) used dotted or syncopated rhythms to express happiness and isochronous rhythms, legato articulation and lyrics with negative affect to convey sadness (Adachi & Trehub, 2011 referring to Adachi & Trehub, 1999a; 1999b). The expression of emotion in song seems to be influenced by cultural background, as a later study revealed that Canadian pre-schoolers were more likely to respond with improvised songs in an experimental setting than Japanese pre-schoolers. Canadian pre-schoolers’ happy melodies showed influences of major modes, and dotted or syncopated rhythms, whereas their sad songs showed limited melodic range or contour. Japanese pre-schoolers were reluctant to sing sad songs, tended to reproduce familiar songs, and used fewer emotion-evoking words in improvised songs than the Canadian children. Overall, the pre-schoolers in this study were able to convey happiness and sadness in their singing, either by improvising songs or by performing familiar songs (Adachi & Trehub, 2011).
In summary, if musicality is defined as the ability to perceive, appreciate and produce music, we can assume that every child is musical (cf. Hoeschele, Merchant, Kikuchi, Hattori, & ten Cate, 2015; Honing, 2009; McPherson & Hallam, 2016). It seems
likely that young musicians’ learning of expressive performance is rooted in their experience with music from a young age, through ID-speech and song (see Juslin & Timmers, 2010; Trehub, 2003), expressive musical vocalizations and improvisatory musical play. All these experiences facilitate the development of a repertoire of expressive intentions and gestures (cf. Sloboda & Davidson, 1996; Sloboda, 2005) forming the foundation for learning expressive music performance.