Michael T. Sanders, Music Instructor
Musical Performance is the musical process during which musical ideas are realized and transmitted to a listener. In Western music, performance is most commonly viewed as an interpretive art, though it is not always merely that. Performers to some degree determine aspects of any music they play. Issues of tempo, phrasing, dynamics, and, in some types of music, pitches and instrumentation are subject to a performer’s discretion. Because the pleasure people derive from sounds has always been closely related to the pleasure they derive from making the sounds themselves, it is difficult to conceive of the origin of music as separate from an act of musical performance. Models for the establishment of rhythm may be found in heartbeat and breathing, and in the inflections of speech and cries of grief, pleasure, and desire are found the source of what became song. |