Alchemy : Qualitative Transformations in Chamber Music Performance

Alchemy in the Spotlight:
Qualitative Transformations in Chamber Music Performance

The Alchemy project concerns investigating the cognitive and affective processes involved in performing live in public in the context of a professional piano trio, which has been specifically established for this project (the Marmara Trio). One of the aims of the project is to identify and explore the qualitative transformations performers experience during live performance. The term 'transformations' is used to indicate certain processes that are peculiar to live performance contexts as distinct from the processes involved in rehearsals and practice sessions. During a live performance, the cognitive/affective world of the performers and consequently the interpretation of the music they perform often undergo certain qualitative transformations. These transformations are related to such phenomena as increasing expressive freedom, increasing affective involvement, unplanned creative interpretative choices, and certain alterations in time-consciousness. The Alchemy project will explore the conditions of emergence of such transformations in the context of a professional piano trio preparing and performing selected works from the Classical, Romantic and Contemporary repertoire; it will compare and contrast the processes that take place in rehearsals/practice sessions with those that unfold during a live performance. It will also examine the broader issue of the acquisition of new insights and knowledge during live music performance by identifying how performers continue to learn on stage about the music they perform. One further aim is to identify the conditions under which live performance becomes a site for positive affective experiences.

To investigate the cognitive and affective processes that are involved in live public chamber music performance, and to compare and contrast these processes with the ones involved in rehearsing and practicing chamber music.
To identify and investigate the nature of the qualitative transformations that take place during live public performance in the context of expert professional classical chamber music performance practice, and to explore their relationship with the cognitive and affective processes that shape a live performance.
To identify the conditions of the emergence of the qualitative transformations in question.
To benchmark live performance as the object of research, and to document and analyse the acquisition of new insights and knowledge during live performance.
To contribute to performance pedagogy by exploring the positive affective dimensions of live music making and thereby counter-balancing the exclusive emphasis in recent research on negative affective experiences grouped under the term 'performance anxiety'.
To counter-balance the focus on solo performance practice in the majority of contemporary performance studies by addressing issues that arise in the context of piano trio (piano, violin, cello) practice.

I would like to acknowledge the financial support given to the ‘Alchemy Project’ from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, without which the project could not have been undertaken. I would also like to thank Dr Stephen Boyd Davis from the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University, for his assistance in designing and maintaining this site.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information on this site is correct at the time of publication, but the University cannot accept responsibility for errors.