Chain of Decisions in Musical Performance

Abstract

In musical performance there are countless and different instances of decision-making (internal/external to the performer) or links that determine different interpretive sound results. This research shows the creation of a chain of decisions –this one can vary according to the musical genre and its artistic objective– which is based on communication/production processes conceived by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Richard Schechner, Guerino Mazzola, Nicholas Cook, Antoine Hennion and Juan Pablo González. The main objectives are to describe and thoroughly explain these processes to avoid loss of information when analyzing the performances (and their contexts) and, by doing so, improve the understanding of the individual sound results achieved by performers. All these aspects are approached from the perspective of interdisciplinary performance studies.