Shared performance cues: Predictors of expert individual practice and ensemble rehearsal

Abstract

Research into expert musicians ’ preparation for perform-ance has hitherto focused on individual musicians: classi-cal and jazz pianists, a cellist, and singers. Musicians’ practising strategies have been analysed in terms the fea-tures of a piece of music that are attended to in perform-ance (performance cues) and the goals that are identified – and met – by singers memorizing the words as well as the music of songs. This paper reports data from an investiga-tion of a singer working with a conductor – who was also the rehearsal pianist – towards a public performance of the first Ricercar from Stravinsky’s Cantata for solo soprano with a small instrumental ensemble. The singer and con-ductor recorded their individual and joint practice ses-sions. Following the performances, they reported their un-derstanding of the compositional structure of the piece, the decisions they made during practice, and the cues to which they attended, independently and together, in performance. The singer and conductor’s ten individual practice ses-sions and joint rehearsals were transcribed, coded and analysed. Regression analyses show the concerns that were stable and those that changed over the course of practice and rehearsal. The roles and requirements of conductor and singer are different: the conductor has to have an overview of the whole score while the singer performs from memory, aware of, but relying only intermittently on infor-mation from the other musicians. Nevertheless these dif-ferent conceptualisations – and those they must resolve during the rehearsal process – combine so that ultimately the musicians give a performance that is experienced by both of them, and by their audience, as entirely unanimous.

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