Instrumental music students' cognitive and performance understanding of musical expression

The purpose of this study was to ascertain students' expressive performance and perceptual skills at different age levels. Questions that were addressed included: Do musicians with more experience vary different factors than musicians with less experience? What do musicians vary in a performance when they are asked to play a melody 'expressively'? What are the musicians' perceptions of their expressive performances, that is, are they cognizant of the performance changes that they make? The subjects were 30 7th-grade, 30 10th-grade, and 30 collegiate music major instrumentalists. The musicians were asked to play one researcher-composed melody on their primary instrument two times, one time steady and devoid of any expression and one time expressively. The musicians were then asked to describe the expressive aspects that they added to the melody in the second performance. Three judges listened to each performance and documented whether they did or did not hear expressive changes from the first to the second performance. Results suggest that (1) musicians with more or less experience seem to vary the same types of factors, just to different degrees, (2) there are some commonly accepted places musicians tend to add expression to a melody, and (3) less experienced musicians are less reflective of their expressive choices than are more experienced musicians.