André Teixeira

The belief that imagination’s engagement and emotional connection with what I play enhance my performance propelled me to do this research. However, these are not systematically integrated in instrumental practice. Thus, it seemed to me that the twentieth century theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski’s ‘system’ would be the perfect basis for such a quest. The starting point were acting techniques from his first book "An Actor Prepares": the "given circumstances", imagination-related ("supposed circumstances", “inner visions”, "magic if”) – and emotion-related ("emotion memory", "sensation memory", "surroundings"). Partly supported by existing literature, these techniques were linked with the instrumentalists' work and tested out in a self-case study through three interventions. The process consisted of making video recordings of the 'before' and the actual interventions, which were guided by the filling out of intervention forms designed by me. The techniques were applied on three distinct piano passages of Richard Strauss’ melodrama for narrator and piano "Enoch Arden". Furthermore, I did interventions’ reports to provide more palpable insights about the experience, namely the effects of each technique on the performer. The outcome was evaluated through a questionnaire filled in by a group of listeners, comprising musicians and non-musicians, and by me. The responses generally show that the techniques were effective. However, the recordings were perceived as very similar. Also, the listeners’ perception sometimes differed from mine. Nevertheless, the reports allow us to conclude that these techniques might affect the performer’s focus, creativity, self-confidence, knowledge about the works and also self-knowledge.

Results

Although the grades were from 0 to 10, participants rated with high values, so it I opted to start the graphics from 5.

Each dot on the graphic represents a video where a different technique is applied:

Video 1 - Pre-interventions (Pre-int.)

Video 2 - Given circumstances (Given Circ.)

Video 3 – Imagination (Imagin.)

Video 4 - Magic if

Video 5 - Emotion memory

Video 6 - Surroundings 1 (Surr. 1)

Video 7 - Surroundings 2 (Surr. 2)

5. QUESTIONNAIRES

There were three questionnaires, one for each passage. Each questionnaire had seven different recordings of the same excerpt. Each video corresponded either to the ‘pre-interventions’ or the interventions’ recordings, comprising one of the Stanislavski’s techniques. The participants were not told to which technique corresponded each video, so that it did not affect how they perceived it.

For the allegretto questionnaire there were 23 participants (11 musicians and 12 non-musicians) and for the langsam and the agitato questionnaires 17 participants each (10 musicians and 7 non-musicians).

The participants had to answer six or three questions, depending if they were musicians or non-musicians, respectively, on a scale from 1 to 10, in which 1 meant "not at all"/"bad" and 10 meant "completely"/"good".

These were the questions:

1. How engaged by the performance did you feel?

2. How musically convincing was the performance (for instance, in terms of character, sound quality, structure, etc.)?

3. How do you evaluate the clarity in sound and rhythm in my playing?

4. How do you evaluate the phrasing?

5. How do you evaluate the sound quality in terms of tone (timbre/colours)?

6. How do you evaluate the timing (i.e., agogical choices, rubato)?

Is there anything else you’d like to highlight? (optional)

Final question: Do you have a clear order of preference between the recordings? (optional)

At last, I also filled in these questionnaire, so to compare my perception to the other participants’.

Finally, in the chart below we have the techniques in the columns and the questions and passages in the rows. The questions were abbreviated as follows:

1. Engagement

2. Musicality

3. Clarity

4. Phrasing

5. Timbre

6. Timing

Average of participants' grades per technique in each question:

Blue – highest grade(s) of the passage in that question

Light orange – highest technique average in that question

Grey – 2^nd highest technique average in that question

Bold – 2^nd highest passage average

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From these graphics, we can observe that:

the average preference was the use of the 'magic if', followed by 'given circumstances'
the musicians preference was the 'magic if'
the non-musicians preference was the 'surroundings 1'
my preference was different, it was 'suroundings 2', but my second choice was also 'magic if'

Here we can observe that:

the musicians and non-musicians' average preference was 'given circumstances'
the average and the musicians' second choice was 'surroundings 2'
my preference was the 'pre-interventions video' and my second choice coincided with the average and musicians' second choice: 'surroundings 2'

In agitato we see that:

the average and musicians' preference was 'emotion memory'
the non-musicians' preference was 'given circumstances', which is the average's second choice
my preference did not coincide with those, it was 'magic if'