Constructing Quartets: A Framework for Analysis in Musical Groups

• In Event: Emergent Methods for Studying Spatial and Embodied Dimensions of Learning

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for analyzing group gesture in musical performances, with an eye towards answering the questions: How do musical groups learn to construct a performance? How do interactional cues – including talk, gestures, gaze shifting, and affect – reflect the way metaphorical and conceptual anchors are contested and explored by musicians as they learn a piece together? In order to study the learning that occurred in a series of professional string quartet rehearsals, I developed a set of methodological tools for documenting changing gestures, facial expressions, and other spatial modes, with reference to the temporal and spatial particularities of repeated performances of the same score occurring at different tempi.

When classical musicians put together a piece of music, they assemble a “four-dimensional score space,” in which each element of the music’s structure is reactive and dependent on emergent elements (Stefanou & Antoniadis, 2009). Each repetition of the piece is itself a performance, in which the group functions as a complex dynamical system. Each time, musicians negotiate and change the parameters that will constrain their final performance; simultaneously, they interpret the score, co-constructing a narrative that will itself be a reconstruction of the score’s reality (Bruner, 1991). The group’s assembly process, the score-space in which they move, the roles within the group, and the story they are telling become more coherent with each rehearsal. These phenomena lend themselves to analysis by an adapted version of Goodwin’s embodied participation framework, in which language, gesture, affect, and environmental structure all inform each other (Goodwin, 2007).

This study analyzes two videotaped string quartet rehearsals, in which members of the New Millennium Orchestra prepare a performance of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2. A grounded theory approach yielded “gestural units” as a unit of analysis, similar to the “idea units” or “message units” coded in classroom talk (Van Es, 2008; Sawyer, 2006). By triangulating between individual and group gesture occurrences on multiple passes of the same section of music, alongside a structural analysis of the score itself, this analysis tracks the developing relationships among pulse, musical-conceptual patterns, and group movement. A construct that emerged out of this analysis was “group gestures,” which become visible as the narrative structure of the group’s performance becomes more coherent through negotiation. Preliminary analysis shows evidence of temporal anchoring through group gestures, as players took up or rejected gestures originated by their colleagues over multiple repetitions. Additionally, findings suggest a relationship between number and type of gestures and synchronicity of playing (i.e. how “together” the players are).

Group gestures can include a range of movements, from large body movements traversing significant amounts of space to relatively minor changes in facial expressions. Documentation of these changes, referenced to score-time across rehearsals, was used to identify the emergence of group gestures. This paper presents a set of tools for identifying and analyzing these nonverbal cues, and considers their strengths and weaknesses for studying learning in this interactional context.

Author

• Emma Hospelhorn, University of Illinois at Chicago