The communication of musical metre in piano performance

Six pianists of varying levels of experience were required to give repeated performances of a note sequence presented for sight-performance under two conditions. The two conditions differed only in the location of metrical stresses signified by the notation. In condition (b) the bar-lines and beams were shifted one note to the right in comparison to condition (a). Details of note duration and intensity were recorded by computer. This allowed the discovery of significant differences in expressive treatment between the two conditions. There were significant agreements between subjects concerning the position, nature and direction of expressive variation. The more experienced players, however, made greater use of expressive variation than did the less experienced players. In a second experiment listeners were asked to identify the metre of each performance from the first experiment. They achieved greatest success at this with the most experienced player, least success with the least experienced player. A detailed examination of between-performer agreements and disagreements, and their effects on listeners, allowed the isolation of a proposed set of generally effective procedures for signalling stress. These procedures imply the existence of an internal representation guiding performance which identifies the major metrical subdivisions of a bar in the absence of notational symbols specifically marking these subdivisions.