Musical Excellence: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Performance (review)

In this volume, contributions from more than twenty authors have been brought together with the aim of providing a comprehensive overview for students and teachers of music who wish to enhance and develop performance skills through reflection, informed practice, and meta-performance knowledge. Most chapters start with an overview of theory and research and continue with practical suggestions or case studies. Background information is given on learning, memory, acquisition of skills, and expression through performance, and on the importance of motivation, social context, evaluation and feedback, practice strategies, concentration, and goal-related focus.

The volume is in three parts. The first part, 'Prospect and Limits', provides a background for later chapters. It consists of a general introduction, an explanation of general perspectives on achieving musical excellence, a medical introduction to physical problems that musicians encounter, with possible causes and cures, and a systematic discussion of factors influencing performance evaluation. The second part deals with 'Practice Strategies' for both individuals and ensembles, memorizing music, sight-reading, and improvisation. It gives summaries of research as well as practical suggestions. The final part is called 'Techniques and Interventions' and reports on studies that were specifically meant to enhance performance, through physical fitness, Alexander technique, physiological self-regulation or bio- and neuro-feedback, mental skills training, and feedback concerning musical expressivity. This part closes with a chapter on 'Drugs and Musical Performance', which discusses the use of drugs such as alcohol, coffee, beta blockers, cigarettes, Ecstasy and cocaine, and their use by, or harm for, musicians. The volume ends with a short epilogue by the editor.

A specific secondary aim of the volume is to provide guidance to manage the stress that often accompanies performance. As mentioned, specific chapters are dedicated to physical problems related to performance and how to overcome them through interventions and techniques. It pays specific attention to the mental preparation for practice and concert performance, and emphasizes, for example, the importance of mental and physical relaxation before picking up or sitting down at an instrument.

The general approach adopted is related to research on expertise in sports. It is explained that accomplishments in sports have been improved and monitored using systematic research that has reached a sophisticated level. For music performance, however, research is still in its infancy. The advantages in the sphere of sports suggest that there are potential benefits for music performance, given parallels in specialization, physical endurance, level of motor control, and demands of peak performances at a pre-set time. Still, application of knowledge to music cannot be done directly, so efforts are made to translate insights to the musical domain, using reports of music-specific investigations that have been carried out.

It is noticeable when reading this volume that research into expertise in musical performance is indeed often only in its infancy. Some chapters provide a summary of existing literature and explore new approaches, but lack scientific rigour. This is to some extent inevitable, since some of these studies are among the first of their kind, but it is also a result of the approach to practical guidance that prevails in some chapters, for example the one on individual practice strategies. Such guidance often amounts to no more than the reported experiences of musicians and is more intuitive than thorough.

Nevertheless the volume provides many useful and interesting insights. For example, chapter 2, 'General Perspectives on Achieving Musical Excellence', by Roger Chaffin and Anthony Lemieux, provides in summary many of the insights that return at length later in the volume. It gives a nuanced picture of the factors that contribute to musical excellence and the transitions in mindset that are needed to become a professional. Talent has not yet been demonstrated as genetic; it arises, rather, from an appropriate quantity and quality of practice, external motivation that becomes internal, and appropriate self-efficacy and self-evaluation, in the sense that a musician should trust his or her own capacities...