Monday, May 8, 2023, 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
You are cordially invited to the Defense of PhD thesis
titled
The Sound of Teaching Music: Transmitting expressive skills in piano performance
by
Atsuko Tominaga
Primary supervisor: Natalie Sebanz
Secondary supervisor: Gunther Knoblich
Thesis submitted to:
Central European University, Department of Cognitive Science
Abstract
Social learning plays a pivotal role in human skill acquisition and is an integral part of cultural transmission. This dissertation aims to investigate the role of teaching in transmitting expressive musical skills that require learning how to perform actions to implement particular expressive techniques. In the first chapter, I discuss how people use movement kinematics to convey pedagogical intentions and how these intentions may be detected by observers. I then report three empirical studies. Our first study examined whether and how expert pianists modulate their playing when they have the intention to teach musical expressive techniques such as articulation (smoothness of sound) and dynamics (loudness of sound) compared to when they perform to an audience. We found that expert pianists exaggerated relevant aspects of the techniques to be taught (e.g., they exaggerated dynamics contrasts between forte and piano when teaching dynamics). Our second study investigated whether and how expert pianists adapt their playing depending on novices’ demonstrated skills. The results showed that expert pianists highlighted articulation-related aspects when novices did not implement articulation as notated. Lastly, our third study investigated what makes musician listeners infer pedagogical intentions based on listening to recorded performances. We demonstrated that musician listeners were sensitive to cues distinguishing recordings produced for teaching from those produced for performing to an audience. Performances with slower tempo and relevant exaggerations (e.g., exaggerated legato and staccato when performing the piece with notated articulation) were likely to be considered as performed for teaching purposes. In the last chapter of the dissertation, I discuss the implications and the limitations of our approach by considering ostensive communication in skill transmission, interactivity between experts and novices, and the goal of expressive performance in music. Additionally in Appendix, I explore creative aspects of expressive performance by conducting semi-structured interviews with music teachers and students. The findings of this dissertation reveal the importance of action-based communication between experts and novices to transmit expressive skills in piano performance.