This book is a first sketch of what the overall field of performance
could look like as a modern scientific field but not its stylistically
differentiated practice, pedagogy, and history. Musical performance is
the most complex field of music. It comprises the study of a
composition's expression in terms of analysis, emotion, and gesture, and
then its transformation into embodied reality, turning formulaic facts
into dramatic movements of human cognition. Combining these components
in a creative way is a sophisticated mix of knowledge and mastery, which
more resembles the cooking of a delicate recipe than a rational
procedure.
This book is the first one aiming at such comprehensive coverage of the
topic, and it does so also as a university text book. We include
musicological and philosophical aspects as well as empirical performance
research. Presenting analytical tools and case studies turns this
project into a demanding enterprise in construction and experimental
setups of performances, especially those generated by the music software
Rubato.
We are happy that this book was written following a course for
performance students at the School of Music of the University of
Minnesota. Their education should not be restricted to the canonical
practice. They must know the rationale for their performance. It is not
sufficient to learn performance with the old-fashioned imitation model
of the teacher's antetype, this cannot be an exclusive tool since it
dramatically lacks the poetical precision asked for by Adorno's and
Benjamin's micrologic. Without such alternatives to intuitive imitation,
performance risks being disconnected from the audience.
