6.5.1.1 Expressive Playing vs Emotional Playing
Camurri et al. (2004, pp. 1 – 2) write that
in artistic contexts and in particular in the field of the performing arts, gesture is often not intended to denote things or to support speech as in the traditional framework of natural gesture, but the information it contains and conveys is related to the affective/emotional domain.
Anemone Van Zijl and John Sloboda (2013) discuss the importance of the delivery of having technical ability alongside expressive ability, and propose that there is a difference between ‘expressive playing’ and ‘emotional playing’; the former
representing the depiction of authentic (or what appears to be authentic) emotion. By contrast, ‘expressive playing’ is proposed as relating to the musical wishes of the writer and is ‘associated with playing what the score prescribes, with bringing out the structure of the music, and having the technical ability to express the composer’s intentions’ (Van Zijl and Sloboda, 2013, p. 4). The score of the music was found to be of great importance for the delivery of ‘expressive playing’, with the rehearsal process used for interpreting the composer’s wishes. One of the participants of Van Zijl and Sloboda’s study stated that they felt that expressive playing was the result of ‘somebody who’s actually studied the score and worked out what they want to do with each part of the music’ (2013, p.5). Although using the score is a characteristic of performance in the classical genre, familiarity with the part is nevertheless vital to
ensure the potential to deliver an expressive performance.68 If the musician is focussed on unfamiliar or under-rehearsed musical content of the song, then this is likely to have repercussions on the physical delivery of the performance;
concentrating solely on the parametric content means that the expressive content cannot be thought about.
6.5.1.2 Basic and Complex Emotions
P. N. Johnson-Laird and Keith Oatley (2008) write that there is a difference between ‘basic’ and ‘complex’ emotions, and they hypothesise that music (that is ‘pure music’ – which I shall refer to from now on as instrumental music – where no lyrical
narrative is present) ‘creates only the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, anxiety and anger’ (2008, p.106). They describe that (instrumental) music alone does not have any propositional content and that lyrics, like literature, allows and ‘relies on understanding the propositions that the writer expresses’ (ibid, p.103). Therefore, complex emotions, which are unique to humans, involve emotions such as empathy, envy, pride, and embarrassment, which ‘can be experienced only for known reasons’ (ibid, p.104), and as such can only be generated when this propositional context is in place. Although Johnson-Laird and Oatley’s thoughts are applied to the perspective of an audience member, rather than the performer, the same applies – a singer may depict emotion through elements such as facial expressions and gestures in their performance because they may identify with the story of the protagonist, either
68 In popular music performance, the score should also refer to the structure of the music. Whilst there
may not be any notation printed for improvisatory sections, depending on the instrument being performed the performer will still need to have an understanding of aspects such as section length, chord progressions, key signatures and time signatures. Therefore, the performance can still be classed as ‘expressive’, rather than ‘emotional’, because it is related to the musical content of the piece.
directly or by demonstrating empathy (which is a ‘complex emotion’). The
propositional content of the lyrical narrative allows this, whereas an instrumental context does not. Whilst there is a specificity to lyrics, there is a non-specificity to gesture and facial expressions, which contributes to the dichotomy of instrumental music. Although there may not be an obvious lyrical narrative, the individuality and idiosyncrasies of the performer means that there may well be an internalised narrative to the different parameters of the music which cause the generation of different expressive features.
6.5.1.3 Emotional Content in Music
‘There is a general agreement that music (especially instrumental music) lacks clear semantic information but conveys rich emotional content’ (Vaizman, Granot and Lanckriet, 2011, p. 747). The ‘emotional content’ of the music is ‘the character’ of the piece (Stacho, 2006) and the emotional content of the piece is embodied through ‘represented emotions’ which are ‘the emotions the music expresses; the emotional content of a piece of music. These are not emotions; these are cognitive
representations of emotions’ (Brown, 2009; emphasis in original). However, the very nature of the discussion surrounding the sound of the piece leans towards the viewpoint that music performance is an auditory experience, which links with what Delalande (1988) terms as an ‘effective gesture’ (see Section 6.7). It is vital to remember that although the audible requirements are enormously important, the physical delivery by the performer, and the subsequent multi-modal nature of performance, means that the represented delivery needs to equate for both the auditory and visual delivery. The performer has the capacity to represent the audible traits of the emotional content of the music through their physical presence and delivery and Tom Cochrane concurs that expressions of emotions such as facial
expressions and gestures are ‘simply ways in which emotions happen, or surface level modes of the emotion itself’ (2007, p. 50). Although multimodal in nature, the visual and audible entities of the performance of the music are part of the one same experience for the performer and, in addition, the musician is also aware (although perhaps not consciously) of their own proprioceptive systems – which involves a kinaesthetic awareness of our own movements (Romdenh-Romluc, 2011). This may be particularly true for instrumentalists; the delivery of a technically dexterous
performance requires that the performer has an awareness (gained through rigorous practice and instrumental proficiency) of where the hand is going to land, or where the finger is going to move to. Technique and aptitude aside, proprioception also ‘plays a crucial role in our sense of self’ (Kemp, 2012, p. 112) and involves areas such as emotion, gesture, and posture. As discussed in Chapter Five, when
inhabiting a character, it is probable that these facets change to portray the altered persona; creating a very different sense of self.