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Music notation, as employed by the friars, is explored in this chapter. Notational choices tell us much about the style and interpretation, as well as hinting at who might be singing, how many people are performing, and whether or not instruments are playing. Square- or diamond-shaped notes indicate accompanied homophony, whereas oval note heads indicate a more modern Baroque or Classical style. Each voice follows a different color of notation, thus enabling multiple voices to be indicated on a single staff. Similarly, clefs indicate not only pitch locations but also performance practice, such as transposition. Alternatim performance was a daily occurrence in the missions, in which a long text would be subdivided into alternating subsections that contrasted in style, texture, and density. This chapter deals with instrumental passages—indicated by the terms música or tocata—that often were interspersed with vocal phrases. Finally, the modes and their emotive associations are explored.

The singers and actors of the Belle Epoque are the focus of this chapter, which investigates the French art of diction in theatrical and musical performances circa 1900. The survey of performance practice includes not only sound recordings but also written records — treatises, memoirs, self-help manuals, and musical scores — that reveal how performers thought about the act of speaking French. Evidence from celebrities such as Sarah Berhardt and Marcel Proust, as well as lesser-known personalities such as Léon Brémont and Reynaldo Hahn, provide unique insight into pronunciation habits that defined both the French character and the character of French. The chapter ends with a close reading of the end of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande.

The song Diastematica vocis armonia belongs to an extensive repertoire of songs with which, from the late 11th century on, clerics in France and related areas were accustomed to celebrate the highest feasts of the church year. Comparison of this song and its source, GB-Cu MS Ff.1.17 (the so called Younger Cambridge Songbook), with similar songs, as copied in the later MS I-Fl MS Plut. 29.1 (F), shows that conductus songs of this sort were evidently on the margins of the liturgy in the 11th and 12th centuries, but by the mid-13th century had become an officially supported part of the performance of the Divine Office in many parts of France. The nature of the manuscripts that survive containing the repertory reflects its change in stature.

This chapter investigates those aspects of the interpretation of the Viola Concerto that are predominantly in the domain of the performer. The issues of tempi, dynamics, phrasing, and articulation in the solo part are brought to the fore, and comparisons are made with the performance practice of William Primrose and the differing opinions of the revisionists. The chapter brings attention to the clues left by the composer, both in the manuscript of this work and also in similar parallel passages in other works. As Bartók left almost no precise markings on any of the above aspects, there will always be scope for individual interpretation of his actual intentions. The chapter sets out some of the factors that performers would be well advised to consider when determining their various interpretive ideas.

Following Giovanni Battista Velluti’s London debut in 1825, British sheet-music publishers issued nearly thirty piano-vocal arrangements that claimed to bear traces of the castrato’s performance practice. Several arrangements advertised themselves as souvenirs of Velluti’s performances, drawing on a variety of textual and musical means to suggest that the printed page reflected what had occurred in real time. The bulk of the publications associated with Velluti did not purport to capture an actual performance, however, but instead featured extensive passages of alternative embellishments printed on separate ossia lines. As might be imagined, critics and consumers responded to such publications in distinct ways. The claims made by souvenir scores troubled critics, so much so that some went to great lengths to outline how the castrato’s performance departed from the composer’s original melody—or, indeed, from the souvenir score itself. For their part, amateur and aspiring professional singers envisioned souvenir scores and emended scores less as records of performance than as means of acquiring the castrato’s performance practice. Examining British critics’ and consumers’ reactions to these piano-vocal scores sheds new light on Velluti’s reception in late 1820s London and, more broadly, on the significance of singers’ creativity in the early to mid-nineteenth century.

Joe Heaney came from a regional tradition with a particular style of singing that included complex practices of ornamentation and close attention to poetic rhythm and meter. His performance practice brought those features into public notice both at home and in the United States, whether he sang in the Irish language or in English. This chapter explains some of the governing features of Heaney's choices in ornamentation and performance practice. Heaney's song lyrics often featured aspects of metaphor and implication. Because part of his intention was to instruct his audience members and students on proper performance style, he insisted that using a vocal vibrato was inappropriate; his own voice, however, had a vibrato. In addition, though he presented himself as an Irish-language singer, most of his songs performed in the United States were in the English language.

This chapter discusses the performance of Nor-tec as an interactive event and as a process where role playing is crucial in the staging and construction of multiple identities. It focuses both on performance practice and on its performance character as social and cultural discourse. It examines the musical and extramusical behavior of musicians and audiences, the codes that regulated their performance, and the social interactions among participants in an attempt to get closer to their meaning.

This chapter provides a broader overview of the different musical elements that form the hybrid genre electric folk. This includes adaptations from the tradition (e.g. Child Ballads, broadsides, uneven metric-rhythmic structures), borrowings from modern music (particularly progressive rock), and specifically hybrid elements like the sound combination of electric and acoustic instruments. The complexity of electric folk becomes particularly apparent in the variety of arrangement possibilities employed by the musicians. Another significant characteristic is the integration of traditional singing styles. The physical and ornamental techniques have been adapted from a variety of sources and were combined with new elements (including Bulgarian singing styles). The chapter is completed by a discussion of the performance practices such as rehearsal practices, differences between live and recorded versions, yet also amplification and volume of electric and acoustic instruments.

Sean-nós Singing in Theory and Practice. This chapter explores what it meant to be a sean-nós singer in the 20th century. Based on a foundation of 19th century cultural nationalism, the Gaelic League established the Oireachtas, a competition intended to award the best of Ireland's traditional performance practices, including traditional singing. The musician and composer Seán Ó Riada later set up a series of rules about what he regarded to be proper performance practice, including performance in the Irish language, individual variation between verses, and other factors to which performers and scholars have reacted ever since. Joe Heaney was a product of this era, and his expert performances of his regional style of Connemara singing helped to set a standard that contemporary singers still refer to. The Irish language also appears as a part of the representation of national identity. The chapter closes with a discussion of Heaney's recordings.

Score compliance authenticity in performance is that way of being faithful to a work that consists in obeying the instructions for performing it accurately, as these are recorded in the work’s score. However, scores can be understood only if they are interpreted in light of a set of notational conventions and performance practices. This is usually taken to entail that score compliance authenticity amounts to historical authenticity: on this view, the conventions and performance practices against which scores must be read are those in place at the time of composition; and so accurate performance becomes a matter of performing the work as it would have been performed, under ideal conditions, in the composer’s own time. This historicization of score compliance authenticity is controversial, however: the conventions and practices in terms of which we interpret period scores could be those in place at the time of performance, rather than those with which the composer was familiar. Abstracting away from this issue, the chapter then makes the case that score compliance authenticity is a performance value and, indeed, one that is more fundamental than garden-variety such values. This is because it is valued in performance for its own sake.

This chapter examines the role played by shared capitalism and high performance work policies as a means to achieve innovation outcomes. It also explores a process mechanism, employee alignment, as one way in which shared capitalism and high performance work policies impact innovation outcomes. A culture for innovation can be developed and supported through the use of shared capitalism and high performance work practices. It mentions that moderate support for the importance of pairing shared capitalism and high performance work practices together to achieve the greatest impact on a culture for innovation. Additionally, shared capitalism and high performance work practices work in part by aligning employees around the goals and objectives of the organization. A way to promote employee willingness and ability to contribute innovation ideas is stated to be use of high performance work policies and shared capitalism, both of which had a strong positive relationship with this outcome.

The majority of recent empirical research on performance has focused on material from common practice repertoires, rather than on contemporary music, much of which is marked by radical changes in compositional style, greater flexibility in performance, and increased uncertainty for listeners. This chapter examines how the perceptuo-motor organization of expression may be disturbed or compromised by complex musical materials, but moves beyond a purely psychological approach to consider the influence of histories and style, suggesting ways in which often radical features of notation, composition, and performance practice participate in changing attitudes and approaches to expression. It also examines the significance of developments such as extended techniques and electro-acoustic music in considering what it means to be technically accomplished and expressively appropriate in contemporary performance, and it suggests some implications and future directions for the empirical investigation of expression in new music.

Bartók's fast movements are often believed to express pain and violence and are associated with barbaric-motoric energy. Already in Bartók's lifetime, this interpretation took hold and the performing style, still current today, began to develop. Bartók was dissatisfied with this (as he ironically called it) “Bartókian manner of playing.” This chapter challenges the authenticity of this performing tradition and the image of the “harsh and dissonant” Bartók. The first two parts discuss sections from various pieces (Violin Concerto, Duke Bluebeard's Castle, Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussions, etc.) where authentic recording and/or other data indicate a performing style gentler then what has become the norm. The argument is deepened by the summary-analysis of Bartók's pianistic style focusing on performing solutions that relate to meaning and compositional structure. The last part of the chapter presents a hypothesis with regard to the composer's intention for the performance of the quartets through the case study of the first movement of the Fifth String Quartet.