When people perform a task as part of a joint action, their behavior is not the same as it would be if they were performing the same task alone, since it has to be adapted to facilitate shared understanding (or sometimes to prevent it). Joint performance of music offers a test bed for ecologically valid investigations of the way non-verbal behavior facilitates joint action. Here we compare the expressive movement of violinists when playing in solo and ensemble conditions. The first violinists of two string quartets, professional and student, were asked to play the same musical fragments in a solo condition and with the quartet. Synchronized multimodal recordings were created from the performances, using a specially developed software platform. Different patterns of head movement were observed. By quantifying them using an appropriate measure of entropy, we showed that head movements are more predictable in the quartet scenario. Rater evaluations showed that the change does not, as might be assumed, entail markedly reduced expression. They showed some ability to discriminate between solo and ensemble performances, but did not distinguish them in terms of emotional content or expressiveness. The data raise provocative questions about joint action in realistically complex scenarios.

The present contribution provides readers from diverse fields of psychology with a new and comprehensive model for the understanding of the characteristics of music ensembles. The model is based on a novel heuristic approach whose key construct is resilience, intended here as the ability of a system to adapt to external perturbations and anticipate future events. The paper clarifies the specificity of music ensemble as an original social and creative activity, and how some mechanisms, at an individual (cognitive) and group (coordination) level, are enacted in a particular way that endows these groups with exceptional resilience capacity. There is now a wealth of evidence isolating the psychological mechanisms involved in these processes. However, there is much less focus on conditions in which the group has to face unexpected and potentially performance-disruptive events. The resilience approach offers a more thorough explanation of the regulatory strategies that musicians may resort to in order to maintain their performance at an optimal level. Musical ensembles of different size are presented as case studies of how such systems (and their individual members) resist error and maintain joint performance. Three hypothetical scenarios are further proposed that epitomize resilient or non-resilient musical teams. The present contribution further proposes hypotheses and formulates predictions on which combinations of individual and group factors foster team resilience. This model further accommodates the most recent findings in neuroscience and experimental psychology. Beside highlighting the potential of music ensemble for psychological research, it gives hints on how resilience could be trained.

By Donald Glowinski, Sélim Yahia Coll, Naëm Baron, Maëva Sanchez, Simon Schaerlaeken and Didier Grandjean

Can we measure the impact of the presence of an audience on musicians’ performances? By exploring both acoustic and motion features for performances in Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs), this study highlights the impact of the presence of a virtual audience on both the performance and the perception of authenticity and emotional intensity by listeners. Gestures and sounds produced were impacted differently when musicians performed at different expressive intents. The social factor made features converge towards values related to a habitual way of playing regardless of the expressive intent. This could be due to musicians’ habits to perform in a certain way in front of a crowd. On the listeners’ side, when comparing different expressive conditions, only one congruent condition (projected expressive intent in front of an audience) boosted the participants’ ratings for both authenticity and emotional intensity. At different values for kinetic energy and metrical centroid, stimuli recorded with an audience showed a different distribution of ratings, challenging the ecological validity of artificially created expressive intents. Finally, this study highlights the use of IVEs as a research tool and a training assistant for musicians who are eager to learn how to cope with their anxiety in front of an audience.