Introduction: what performers do

Musical performance at its highest level demands a remarkable combination of physical and mental skills. It is not uncommon for concert pianists to play at speeds of ten or more notes per second in both hands simultaneously, in complex and constantly changing spatial patterns on the keyboard, and with distinct patterns of rhythm, dynamics and articulation. Equally, a performer has to have an awareness and understanding of the immediate and larger-scale structure of the music itself, an expressive ‘strategy’ with which to bring the music to life, and the resilience to withstand the physical demands and psychological stresses of public performance. Abilities such as these do not develop overnight, and by the time the best performers have reached the age of twenty-one, they are likely to have spent over 10,000 hours practising their instrument, quite apart from the time devoted to other aspects of formal music education and the more informal components of what can be termed ‘musical enculturation’. The message of even these simple observations is that musical performance represents a striking human achievement and is the result of a massive investment of time and effort.

What, then, do performers do? At one level the answer to this question is obvious: they produce physical realisations of musical ideas whether these ‘ideas’ have been recorded in a written notation, passed on aurally (as in a non-literate culture) or invented on the spur of the moment (as in free improvisation).