Enjoyment and Anxiety in Music Performance ‘Teaching music in Secondary education’ Teacher Conference, 2016

Professor Nicola Dibben

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Aims •  Define Music Performance Anxiety and its

components •  Distinguish adaptive and pathological anxiety •  Explain and exemplify multiple sources of MPA •  Reflect on your own and pupil’s experience of

emotions in performance •  Identify strategies for enjoying performance and

diminishing MPA

Some examples…

…who experiences emotions in performance? …what are those experiences like?

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Steven Osborne

“About ten years ago, during a performance of Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto, he suddenly started worrying that he was about to forget the next note. ‘The feeling got stronger and stronger… I didn’t actually forget anything but it felt like the water was rising and lapping just under my nose.’ Then, a few years later came the real bombshell, during a performance of Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto. ‘This was like an earthquake because this time I really did have some memory lapses, and this made me think the whole performance was about to go off the rails. It was so disturbing, and it kept happening. I really began to wonder whether my career was over.’”

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Adele

“I have anxiety attacks, constant panicking on stage, my heart feels like it’s going to explode because I never feel like I’m going to deliver, ever… I will not do festivals. The thought of an audience that big frightens the life out of me.” “The more successful I get, the more insecurities I’m getting, it’s weird… I don’t know if it’s because I’m so blown away that people like what I do, but I just feel that I’m never going to live up to it.”

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Definitions Fear: Emotional and adaptive reaction to present threatening stimuli.

Anxiety/stress: Anticipatory, usually irrational fear. Detrimental effects on health.

…definitions

•  Music Performance Anxiety (MPA): an anxiety disorder (social phobia) if the performer demonstrates significant impairment.

Is high arousal always detrimental to performance?

Yerkes-Dodson model (1908)

…is high arousal always detrimental to performance?

Catastrophe model (Hardy 1990, 1996)

How does MPA effect performance?

Your experience… 1.  How do emotions in music performance

impact on your own or your students’ performance experience? a.  Do you/they enjoy music performance? (Under what

circumstances?) b.  Do you/they deliberately do anything to better enjoy/cope

with performance? c.  What meaning and value do your/their musical

performances have for you/them?

2.  Compare with the person next to you. 3.  Report back.

Components of emotion

Physiological •  Bodily responses

similar to fear reactions

•  Activation of autonomous nervous system: release of adrenaline hormones into bloodstream

•  Examples: racing heart, sweating, butterflies in stomach, muscle tension.

Behavioural

•  Observable actions or tendencies to act out the anxiety.

•  Examples: not sleeping, facial expressions, making mistakes while playing.

Cognitive (thoughts and beliefs)

•  Negative thoughts about the situation and self.

•  Examples: thinking the performance will be a disaster, assuming that the audience will be looking for mistakes, assuming past success was luck.

Sources of Musical Performance Anxiety

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The musician’s personality •  Trait anxiety •  Introversion •  Neuroticism •  Perfectionism •  Implicit theories of

musical talent: incremental v. entity

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The situation •  Circumstances that

intensify a performer’s sense of threat.

•  Relative to the musical culture

•  Number and significance of people in audience, co-performers.

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The musical task

Difficulty of piece/performance versus task mastery

MPA as fear of negative evaluation

Personality traits

Perception of a threat

Cognitive-behavioural interventions

Music performance

Enjoyment of Musical Performance

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Flow Mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement which is reported as highly enjoyable (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).

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Narratives •  Self-oriented •  Transcendent •  Other oriented (Perdomo-Guevara, 2014).

Prevention and treatment of MPA

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Managing MPA •  Treating physical

symptoms •  Deep breathing •  Muscle relaxation

techniques •  Biofeedback training •  Alexander Technique •  Medications: Beta-

blockers

•  Dealing with situational stress •  Mental rehearsal •  Practice performance •  Systematic

desensitisation •  Combining solo and

ensemble pieces

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…managing MPA •  Dealing with the musical

task •  Choice of repertoire •  Allocating enough

rehearsal time before performance

•  Dealing with irrational thoughts •  Cognitive restructuring

therapy •  Constructive self-talk •  Establishing process and

task-oriented goals •  Learning to accept a

degree of anxiety and errors

•  Finding meaning in performance

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27 References •  Kenny, D.T., Davis, P., Oates, J. (2004). Music performance anxiety and occupational stress among opera

chorus artists and their relationships with state and trait anxiety and perfectionism. Anxiety Disorders, 18, 757-777.

•  Kenny, D. T. (2005). A systematic review of treatments for music performance anxiety. Anxiety, stress and coping, 18, 183-208.

•  Kenny, D.T., and Osbourne, M. (2006). Music performance anxiety: New insights from young musicians. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2. 2-3, 103-112.

•  Lehmann, A.C., Sloboda, J.A., & Woody, R.H. (2007). Psychology for musicians: Understanding and acquiring the skills. Oxford: OUP. Ch.8.

•  Perdomo-Guevara, E. (2014). Is music performance anxiety just an individual problem? Exploring the impact of musical environments on performers’ approaches to performance and emotions. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 24(1), 66-.

•  Salmon, P., & Meyer, R. G. (1998). Notes from the green room: Coping with stress and anxiety in musical performance. Jossey-Bass.

•  Steptoe, A. (2001). Negative emotions in music making the problem of performance anxiety. In P. Juslin and J.A. Sloboda (Ed.) Music and Emotion (pp. 291-308). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [NB. This is the original version of the book, but new edition will do just as well]

•  Thompson, W.F., Dalla Bella, S. & Keller, P.E. (2006). Music performance [special issue]. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2.

•  Tod, D., Thatcher, J., Rahman, R., (2010) Performance Anxiety. In Tod, D., Thatcher, J., Rahman, R., (Ed.) Sport Psychology, Palgrave Insights in Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan.

•  Valentine, E. (2002). The Fear of Performance. In J. Rink (Ed.) Musical performance A guide to understanding (pp.168-182). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

To Discover And Understand.