Toward Empirical Analysis for Stylistic Expression in Piano Performance
摘要
In the performance of Western art music, musicians apply various strategies to manipulate the sound performed and communicate their musical interpretations through these subtle acoustic variations. It is a common practice for musicians to use typical conventions to express each compositional style (e.g., Baroque, Classical, or Romantic compositions). However, such stylistic expressive conventions have yet to be fully discussed in previous research. In this initial foray, we systematically compare the expressive strategies for different piano compositions. A series of piano performances are recorded in a controlled experimental setting (3 compositions \(\times \) 8 pianists \(\times \) 3 repeated trials = 72 recordings), and expressive acoustic elements are derived using Music Information Retrieval techniques. In our analysis, we reveal that expressive manners in music performance exhibit stable and systematic features corresponding to each music composition, and those stylistic trends serve as empirical observations for typical performance conventions in different music styles.