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Performance as Experience: the problem of assessment criteria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Peter Johnson
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Abstract

Examination criteria, as distinct from guidelines regulating content and presentation, are problematic as applied to musical performance. Given the epistemological gap between musical and conceptual thought, forms of words are not readily available to distinguish objectively between the good and the mediocre performance. Criteria need therefore to be designed to complement the examiner's subjective response rather than substitute for it, and analytical concepts prove to be less reliable than ‘aesthetic terms’ (Sibley). In the context of Western art-music, the ‘good’ musical performance will be one that proposes its own ‘possible world’ (Bruner), situated within the larger ‘world’ of culturally contingent aesthetic values. Aesthetic terms provide the best means we have of access to the experiential world of performed music.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Music Education , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , November 1997 , pp. 271 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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