Musical Participation and Performance

PRESENTATIONAL / PARTICIPATORY MUSIC

PRESENTATIONAL

Music

• There are no participants;
• PERFORMERS: emphasis on technical accuracy (telic), expressivity, immersion and spontaneity (paratelic) and virtuosity
• AUDIENCE: listen attentively, don't talk / dance; appreciate virtuosity; applaud at end of performance;
• EXAMPLES:
• classical ensemble

PARTICIPATORY

Music

• PARTICIPANTS: Everyone is participating, by singing, playing or dancing - focus on joining in and having fun (paratelic);
• There are no 'performers' or 'audience' - everyone participates;
• EXAMPLES:
• pub singalong
• community celebration,
• Drumming circle
• Mandela memorial (see video)
• Performance rehearsal

• Short, open, redundantly repeated forms
• ‘feathered’ beginnings and endings
• Intensive variation
• Individual virtuosity downplayed
• Highly repetitive
• Few dramatic contrasts
• Constancy of rhythm / meter / groove
• Dense textures
• Piece as a collection of resources refashioned anew in each performance like the form, rules and practiced moves of a game

• Closed, scripted forms, longer forms and shorter performances of the form available
• Organised beginnings and endings
• Extensive variation available
• Individual virtuosity emphasised
• Repetition balanced with contrast
• Contrasts of many types as design
• Variability of rhythm / meter possible
• Transparent textures / clarity emphasised; varied textures and density for contrast
• Piece as set item (although exceptions such as small ensemble jazz and Indian classical music exist)

• PERFORMERS: Encourage participation (e.g. Emotional displays, physical movements)
• AUDIENCE / PARTICIPANTS: recognise material; defined 'peripheral' audience participation / join in e.g. sing along, move your body, applaud solos
• EXAMPLES:
• anthemic rock
• dance band
• DJ
• Covers / standards band

PARTICIPANTS / PERFORMERS: account for audience; increased focus on presentational standards; manage interference arising from additional heightened arousal

AUDIENCE: support friends, family, community members

EXAMPLES:

• jam session,
• Karaoke
• Community choir
• Ceilidh

Participatory

Presentational

Music

"musical performances are activities brought about by human agents with certain abilities and with certain intentions about their activities and beneficiaries."

"Every performance necessarily has sound as a constituent, but no sequence of sounds, considered purely as sound, constitutes a performance."

Other dichotomies: http://prezi.com/k4ksdfegwo0q/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

"performances are not mere occurrences, but actions undertaken by agents."

"Performances are deliberate, intentionally caused sound sequences."

Agents (performers)

Sounds

Intention

Causation

Stan Godlovitch (1998)

"Four aspects of agency are pertinent to performance:"

Performances:

• "are a complex network of relations connecting musical agents, works, sound, and listeners
• "are occasions of musical sound intentionally brought about by musicians for listeners.
• "requires skilled agents causing specific intended sound sequences for the intended benefit of an audience."

Skill

Intended audiences

"the power to cause repeatedly at will certain intended sound sequences reliably and consistently."

Listeners

Works

"Performances are not reflective activities savoured by their agents in solitude. Performances reach out for listeners. They are other-directed, or, in the idiom, ‘given’. Unlike rehearsals, exploratory sight-reading, recreational practice, and other player-centred activities, performances are specifically and directly intended, designed, or meant for audiences."

"performances [require] present and attentive listeners. Unless the intended product is experienced by the listener as a sound sequence with certain key aesthetic features, that sound sequence does not count as a performance."

PERFORMANCE-AS-PARTICIPATION

PARTICIPATION-AS-PERFORMANCE

Whose Quality Is It Anyway?

"Works are independent of performers and come with bundles of properties. How is performance constrained by such properties? How is this constraint manifested? Which properties are to count? The constraints works impose upon performances cannot be read off a priori from the scores of works. Such constraints, rather than being impressed upon performances through the works without the mediation of practice conventions, are, rather, encapsulated in changing sets of performance conventions (called ‘constraint models’) which are stable enough at a time to determine what passes as an acceptable reflection of the work in performance.

http://prezi.com/zb0bh8s2zs7b/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

David Byrne (2012)

Venues

"We unconsciously and instinctively make work to fit preexisting formats. In a sense, we work backward, either consciously or unconsciously, creating work that fits the venue available to us. Music is written that sounds good either in a dance club or a symphony hall (but probably not in both). In a sense, the space, the platform, and the software “makes” the art, the music, or whatever. After something succeeds, more venues of a similar size and shape are built to accommodate more production of the same. After a while the form of the work that predominates in these spaces is taken for granted—of course we mainly hear symphonies in symphony halls.

DICHOTOMIES

resolved through

dialogue

http://prezi.com/k4ksdfegwo0q/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy