TWO of the three target articles in this issue involve piano performance: whereas Grundy and Ockelford use a pianist shadowing task to investigate structural expectations formed while listening to music, Ohriner investigates the way expressive timing in performance is a manifestation of the relationship between performers and listeners. Grundy and Ockelford investigate expectations in music by analyzing the attempts of a musical savant to reproduce a novel composition on the piano at the same time as hearing it. Data gathered from the performance support the idea that structural regularities in music suggest future continuations with different perceived likelihood of occurrence (zygonic theory). Poulin-Charronnat's commentary questions the extent to which conclusions drawn from musical savants can be generalized to a broader population, and critiques aspects of the methodology. Ohriner's article presents a novel perspective on expressive timing in music, arguing that performers choose durations to facilitate or inhibit listener-performer synchronicity. The article explores two "narratives" of listener-performer synchronicity as evidenced in tapping data from listeners' attempts to synchronize to two passages of Chopin's mazurkas. In his commentary on this paper Goebl re-analyses Ohriner's tapping data to test two hypotheses presented in the original paper, showing, in doing so, an alternative way to process and analyse the data. Gringas situates Ohriner's research in a broader context, highlighting the relevance of studying musical genres in which the metrical structure is more obscure or even absent, and questioning the idea that a lack of synchronicity is necessarily associated with negative emotions. A controlled experimental design to disentangle the effects of tempo and rubato is proposed. The third target article by Shanahan and Huron presents an analysis of the sociability of opera characters and its relationship to pitch tessitura. It investigates an association between high and low pitch, the valence of the characters, and their submissiveness or aggressiveness. Commentaries to this target article are welcomed to be submitted for publication in future issues. The book review of Experience and Meaning in Music Performance foreshadows the forthcoming special issue on Music and Embodiment.
Empirical Musicology Review (EMR) aims to provide an international forum promoting the understanding of music in all of its facets. In particular, EMR aims to facilitate communication and debate between scholars engaged in systematic and observation-based music scholarship. Debate is promoted through publication of commentaries on research articles.
Scope
EMR publishes original research articles, commentaries, editorials, book reviews, interviews, letters, and data sets. Suitable topics include music history, performance, theory, education, and composition -- with an emphasis on systematic methods, such as hypothesis-testing, modeling, and controlled observation. Submissions pertaining to social, political, cultural and economic phenomena are welcome. Theoretical and speculative articles are welcome provided they contribute to the forming of empirically testable hypotheses, models or theories, or they provide critiques of methodology.
History
EMR was founded by David Huron and David Butler in 2004 and began publishing in January 2006. The editorial process for EMR pioneers a new "Public Peer Review" practice that is intended to encourage scholarly dialog and reward reviewers for timely and thoughtful engagement with submissions. Previous editors include David Butler, William Forde Thompson, Peter Keller, Nicola Dibben, Renee Timmers, and Daniel Shanahan. The current editors are Niels Chr. Hansen and Daniel Müllensiefen.