Performers’ discourses on listening to recordings

Georgia Volioti · Aaron Williamon

41 citations0/0 files storedResearch Studies in Music Education

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Diverse Music Education Insights Musicology and Musical Analysis Music Education and Analysis

Abstract

How we listen to music and respond to its media and contexts has changed significantly since the invention of sound recording. Today’s musicians have countless opportunities to listen to others’ interpretations given the vast availability of past and contemporary repertories through the global reach of recordings. This study investigated the extent to which the growing archive of recordings provides a valuable resource for performers’ creativity. Although musical performance is a particularly porous domain for influence through either deliberate or spontaneous assimilation of expressive variation from other aural sources, little empirical research exists on influence in performance and specifically on the influence of recordings. Qualitative data were obtained via an online questionnaire to identify how and in what ways the use and influence of recordings have changed over the course of classical performers’ training or professional careers. Respondents’ ( N = 130) comments were analysed using a thematic inductive approach. The emerging themes reveal an overall increased level of use of recordings now relative to the past, a largely positive contribution of recordings in shaping musical development, including the role of recordings in self-regulated learning, a largely positive attitude to the influence of others’ interpretations, a means of developing expressions of self-identity in relation to others and a route to acquiring a more critical and discerning mode of listening to recordings. Implications for music education are discussed in terms of how listening to recordings, in both formal and informal learning contexts, could support advanced musicians’ learning through trial and error, enhance creative insight, strengthen self-efficacy, foster metacognitive skills and nurture individuality.

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References

2006Using thematic analysis in psychology 1999Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control 2012Seeking Qualitative Rigor in Inductive Research 1993The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.2000Music in Everyday Life 1974The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry 2003The Audible Past 1992Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.

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