Engaging the Audience: a Matter beyond Music?

Gustavo Abela Cruz

Despite knowing that music and emotions have a lot to do with each other, sometimes it is hard to articulate which relationship they have. Since the emotional impact seems to be one of the biggest appeals for an audience, do we, the musicians (specifically the performers), pay and draw enough attention to it? After reviewing the relevant literature about the processing of emotions, I came across the philosophical approaches of emotions in and through music by Peter Kivy, Jerrold Levinson, and Stephen Davies, proposals that could serve as inspirations for an audience and for performers. Then, I decided to carry out a series of experimental sessions to test the impact of these three approaches, as well as the performer's role, and components that could also affect a performance, such as set-ups, musical manipulations, or what I have called 'extramusical' items or elements. In addition to my research question “How can a performer affect or manipulate the emotional engagement of an audience?”, I sought to explore another inquiry. Is engaging more with the public nowadays strictly a musical matter?

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The handicap(s) of Prokofiev's recitando:

As you can see, the results are quite negative with Prokofiev's recitando fragment of the Violin Concerto. I tried to figure out why this happened. For example, I noticed that it was the first disrupting music played, beforehand everything was much more conventional and melodic. However, Saariaho's acceptance was much better, and even the valoration of the repetition of this Prokofiev's recitando fragment was worse. For the first version, I also thought that being the first piece where the listeners were allowed to choose between the three philosophical approaches could have provoked a worse reception. But then, finally, I realized that, together with Mozart's fragment and Bach's fragment in D Major, it was the only one that did not belong to the beginning of a piece. So entering a complex musical world like Prokofiev's not having a comfortable start (in fact, the beginning of this section is quite abrupt) could have impaired its engagement.

6. I) COMMENTS and REFLECTIONS (regarding results and experiments)

The differences between subgroups:

Also related to the importance of live performance, contrasts in the reception of different groups of sessions can be detected by studying the data collected. The reasons may be varied too: the length of each performance, the atmosphere in every group, how persuasive the introductions were, etc. Some adaptative measures I adopted had an impact for sure, like changing the explanations or skipping a piece.

The importance of the execution:

I did not pay attention during the analysis of the sessions to one of the most relevant factors: the performance itself, in other words, the quality (technical and musical) of each execution. After seeing some of the results and trying to remember how each session occurred, I have to say that there is still some connection between how 'well' I played and the level of engagement of the audience, especially in the music-conoisseur public.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The 'danger' of a picture:

I relate the limited acceptance of the picture as an extramusical element to the fact that it was the most concrete one: it was a well-known building, for instance, in a specific atmosphere (a really beautiful cloudy sunset). All this was already a choice done by myself, attending to what I thought could suit the piece. Whereas the other extramusical items were a lot more generic, this one needed the acquiescence of each listener. He/she had to agree that the photo was as suitable as I expected in order to be convinced. Next time I would try to extend the possibilities with more than one picture.

Musicians discern more between the elements and the engagement:

A quite revealing result of the non-musicians sessions is that the liking of the extramusical aspect affects proportionally the engagement. The better the reception of that extra element was, the higher the level of satisfaction of the piece was as well. On the other hand, musicians could discern better if they were convinced or touched by the global performance, and how convincing the several manipulations were. There is no apparent connection between the extramusical elements, setting, or musical manipulation with the general engagement of the piece.

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