Publications

Abstract

The selection of repertoire is a critical component of ensemble music, especially in educational contexts. Accredited music education systems often rely on required, recommended, or prescribed music lists to assist in these selections. Nonetheless, previous content analyses have primarily focused on questions of creative quality, artistic merit, and educational appropriateness while overlooking crucial demographic factors such as gender identity, ethnicity, race, and vital status of included composers. I examined gender and ethnic diversity within wind band repertoire lists from 10 states representing five geographical regions. The lists contained 17,281 total works by 1,221 identifiable composers, predominately White (92.63%) and male (95.58%). K-means clustering revealed two unequal composer groups, with the smaller, predominantly White and male subgroup accounting for 40.82% of works and a high per capita representation across lists. Principal components analysis showed composer ethnicity, gender, and vital status interrelated across data dimensions. Despite latent list differences, composer diversity across and within lists was extremely limited. If ensemble directors are to meaningfully engage in diversifying the repertoire their students perform, expanding beyond the existing collection of predominantly White and male composers is a necessity.

Abstract

Group musical performance, especially large instrumental ensembles, present the outward appearance of an asymmetric, temporally immediate stimulus-response relationship between conductor and ensemble. Interestingly, anecdotal reports from both conductors and performers indicate a degree of variability in the timing of orchestral response to the conductor’s gestures. This observation is not present in anecdotal accounts of other instrumental ensemble settings, like wind bands, but commonplace occurrence among orchestral musicians indicates the potential presence of greater complexity in the observed relationship. This study investigates both the quality and quantity of temporal lag between conductor and ensemble in two common instrumental ensemble configurations – wind bands and orchestras – in an effort to describe the interplay present within conducted group performance. The findings indicate that the anecdotally identified lag is present within all ensemble types, and that it presents a flexible, dynamic temporal relationship between conductor and ensemble. Additionally, both the quantity and quality of lag values are significantly different between ensemble types, experience levels, and musical content. Several avenues for future research are identified and confounds within the sampled ensembles are examined for their potential roles in the observed relationships.

Abstract

Vision serves a fundamental role in the human experience of musical performance. In conducting, this particular heuristic influences both expressive and coordinative aspects of musical activity. Ensemble conductors present a special case of musical gesture, as their activities are coordinative rather than directly sound-producing. While the influence of vision on evaluations of musical expressivity has been well studied, less attention has been paid to the temporal aspect of conductors’ gestures. Given anecdotal observations of a flexibly congruent relationship between conductor gesture and ensemble response and the ability of entrainment to promote preference, we theorize that alterations to natural action/sound congruence in conductor-to-ensemble settings may influence evaluations of conductor quality. Naturalistic performance video of five conductors was left intact or adjusted to an audio- or video-lead condition by a percentage of each excerpt tempo and fully crossed into stimuli orders. Participants were asked to rate the quality of the conductor, the ensemble, and the performance overall using a Likert-type scale bound by “poor” and “excellent.” Our results indicate that any offset, whether audio- or video-led, resulted in a lower level of conductor quality than intact, unaltered performance. While our effect size was small, participant ratings reinforce the role of action-sound congruence on observers’ perceptions and overall evaluation of conductors’ activities.

Introduction

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the body of research that has investigated conducting in musical contexts, especially instrumental ensembles. This dissertation contains three papers on the topic of conducting, including one literature review and two quantitative studies. While the central focus of this dissertation is instrumental ensemble conducting, the manifestations of entrainment and the performer’s interactions with aural and visual stimuli emerge as consistent themes throughout. A brief summary of each paper in the dissertation is provided below. 

Paper One: This review contextualizes empirical literature and existing conducting pedagogy, focusing on the role of the conductor in ensemble coordination and expressive communication. The paper organizes its findings thematically, highlighting the conductor’s twin roles of coordination and expressivity through gesture. Through synthesis of research and pedagogical literature, I highlight that both conductor and ensemble are responsible for ensemble coordination and cohesion through the interlinked processes of visual and aural entrainment. The paper also provides implications for conducting pedagogues, practitioners, and future music researchers. 

Paper Two: The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of ensemble response to conductor gesture from a temporal perspective. I examine the general tendencies of sonic offset from conductor gesture, as well as differences between ensemble type (orchestra, wind band), ensemble experience level (beginner, intermediate, advanced), and development over time. Findings reveal a general tendency for ensembles to lag behind the conductor’s gesture, but I identify that this lag is dynamic and demonstrates change between ensembles, between experience levels, and over the course of a selected excerpt. Additionally, I identify performance tempo and phrase structure as contributing factors in the variance observed. 

Paper Three: The dissertation author is the primary author of this paper, joined by co-authors Steven J. Morrison and Deborah A. Confredo. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of action-sound congruence on perceptions of conductor efficacy. Through a quasi-experimental design, musicians (N = 110) evaluated ten videos of conductors during concert performance. Some of these videos were manipulated to offset audio and video by percentage of the ensemble's tempo (no offset, ±15%, ±30%) that would not register as unsynchronized with viewers. The videos appeared in one of five fully-crossed stimuli orders for evaluation. Participants evaluated offset of any kind as negative when compared with unaltered performance and identified greater offset values as more negative overall. Within this study conductor evaluations were generally more negative than ensemble evaluations.

Abstract

Previous research has found that listener evaluations of ensemble performances vary depending on the expressivity of the conductor’s gestures, even when performances are otherwise identical. It was the purpose of the present study to test whether this effect of visual information was evident in the evaluation of specific aspects of ensemble performance: articulation and dynamics. We constructed a set of 32 music performances that combined auditory and visual information and were designed to feature a high degree of contrast along one of two target characteristics: articulation and dynamics. We paired each of four music excerpts recorded by a chamber ensemble in both a high- and low-contrast condition with video of four conductors demonstrating high- and low-contrast gesture specifically appropriate to either articulation or dynamics. Using one of two equivalent test forms, college music majors and non-majors (N = 285) viewed sixteen 30 s performances and evaluated the quality of the ensemble’s articulation, dynamics, technique, and tempo along with overall expressivity. Results showed significantly higher evaluations for performances featuring high rather than low conducting expressivity regardless of the ensemble’s performance quality. Evaluations for both articulation and dynamics were strongly and positively correlated with evaluations of overall ensemble expressivity.

Abstract

Classroom engagement and student learning are two educational topics that garner great conversation within traditional classroom settings but are included less often in considerations of school music ensemble and their rehearsals. Student development within these settings is often evaluated only through musical output, yet both a growing body of research and concern for student retention support a broader consideration of the topic. This paper explores three examples of non-traditional rehearsal practices - conductor-facilitated collaboration, peer mentoring, and collaborative ensemble autonomy – viewed through both theoretical and practical lenses.  The overarching goal is to provide research-supported expansions and extensions to existing methods and techniques as well as consider the positive effects of increased student autonomy on the musical and personal growth within ensembles.