On Determining the Basic Tempo of an Expressive Music Performance

Abstract

In an expressive music performance, the local tempo varies continuously and often asymmetrically around an implied (nominally constant) basic tempo. This preliminary study explored how pianists organise the expressive timing structure around an intended basic beat rate, how listeners judge the basic tempo of such a modulated performance, and what objectively measurable property of the performances the intended and/or judged tempi might correspond to. Two pianists played Robert Schumann's Traumerei three times at each of three intended tempi cued by a metronome. Tempo judgments (metronome settings) for the initial 8 bars of each performance were subsequently obtained from listeners who were pianists themselves. The judged tempi were generally slower than the intended tempi, which was attributed to a tendency of the performers to play slower than intended, especially at the faster tempi. The timing microstructure of each performance was quantified in terms of the frequency distribution of (raw or transformed) beat inter-onset intervals (1OIs). The judged tempi were generally close to the reciprocal of the mean of this distribution (transformations had little effect on the mean tempo), which thus seems to be the parameter that best corresponds to the perceived beat rate of an expressively modulated performance, at least when there are no extreme ritardandi.