Achieving Togetherness in Ensemble Performance

Creativity in music performance requires contributions from performers, who generate musical output, and an audience, who judges its creative quality. During music ensemble performance, creativity is distributed across ensemble members. Coordination of new ideas is largely the result of real-time interaction between performers, as they respond incrementally to the gradually evolving musical output. Under optimal performance conditions, ensemble musicians experience heightened togetherness -- the feeling of being in cognitive synchrony with others. Some study has been made of performers` experiences of togetherness (as a component dimension of group flow), but little is known about its behavioural correlates or how audiences perceive it. This project investigates togetherness and its behavioural correlates from performers and audiences perspectives. We test the hypothesis that interperformer interaction manifests differently during periods of high and low performer-rated togetherness. Characteristics of highly-interactive performers (e.g., strong responsivity and expressivity) are expected to encourage co-performers` creative responses. Certain performance conditions and performer characteristics are hypothesized to promote togetherness, including high performer empathy, audience presence, the opportunity for visual interaction, and relatively few constraints imposed on the musical structure. Audiences are expected to be sensitive to differences in performer-rated togetherness, informed by a range of interaction cues. We expect audience ratings of aesthetic quality to relate positively to both audience and performer ratings of togetherness. Some interaction cues are expected to help structure audience members memory for music, providing evidence that audiences derive meaning from interaction dynamics. The project team will address these hypotheses with a series of empirical studies. Using duo performance paradigms, we will investigate the manifestation of interperformer interaction and performers` experiences of togetherness under different performance conditions. In a separate study using a human-computer interaction paradigm, we will test how performers willingness to engage creatively with a co-performer varies according to the co-performer`s responsivity, expressivity, and motor engagement. Finally, several studies will assess audiences perception and memory for interaction cues, and their judgements of ensemble togetherness and aesthetic quality. An open repository of ensemble performance recordings (including audio/MIDI and motion capture) will be established using data collected throughout the project. This project constitutes the first large-scale empirical investigation of togetherness in ensemble performance. The project will yield methodological and technological innovations, including a system for testing human- computer musical interaction and new procedures for studying group flow in a laboratory setting.

How does it feel as a musician to participate in a successful ensemble performance? What effect does that success have on the social connections between co-performers? Are audience members sensitive to how together ensemble members feel themselves to be? The aim of this project was to investigate musical togetherness from the perspectives of performing musicians and audiences. Musical togetherness refers to the sense of being and acting together that arises during musical interaction. It is characterized by feelings of social connection and pleasure, and supported by interpersonal alignment in body rhythms, shared aesthetic experiences, and a sense of shared contribution to the performance. This project was highly interdisciplinary, bringing together music psychology, social cognition, music technology, and music physiology. We carried out a series of studies to determine how ensemble musicians' body activity and coordination affect their experiences of performing together, as well as audiences' evaluations of their performance. One of our studies focused on empathic perspective-taking abilities. We examined performances by classical singing-piano duos and found that singers' empathy abilities influenced leading and following patterns in the performers' head motion. A study with singers showed that their body motion was more periodic and their posture was more open when they sang in unison with a pre-recorded partner than when they sang in a canon. We also showed that singing-piano duos feel more together when their head motion is strongly coordinated than when coordination is weak. In this study, strong coordination was also associated with greater cognitive effort (indexed through pupil size), indicating that performers are more cognitively engaged when their bodies are aligned. A collaborative study that we carried out with researchers from the mdw Department of Music Therapy showed that complementarity and contrast can be important components of shared experience during music therapy improvisations. Some of our studies are still ongoing, including an investigation of how rehearsal affects synchronization in breathing between duo partners, and a study examining musicians' experiences of togetherness in detail through interviews. This project has led to the development of a theoretical framework for musical togetherness. The framework brings our findings together with other state-of-the-art research on creativity and coordination in music ensembles, human-computer interaction, and the cognition of musical interaction. Our findings have important implications for music technology and the development of interactive music systems. We showed that factors like visual communication and flexibility in musical understanding are important preconditions of musical togetherness. These factors should be prioritized in the development of new systems if people are to find them rewarding to use. It will also be valuable to apply our framework to practical settings, with the aim of promoting rewarding experiences in musical activities and thereby encouraging music participation.