Georgia Volioti

Bio: Georgia Volioti is an academic researcher from University of Surrey. The author has contributed to research in topics: Music education & Active listening. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 10 publications receiving 29 citations. Previous affiliations of Georgia Volioti include Royal Holloway, University of London.

Recordings as Learning and Practising Resources for Performance: Exploring Attitudes and Behaviours of Music Students and Professionals

Abstract: This article examines how musicians use recordings as learning resources in preparing for performance. While previous research has partially acknowledged the contribution of external factors to self-regulated learning, the specific impact of recordings on performers’ approaches to practising remains largely uncharted. A survey was designed to assess the use and importance of recordings on musicians’ listening and practising behaviours, their preferences when choosing recordings, and the type of influence exerted by recordings over self-regulatory processes. Respondents (N = 204) completed an online survey, and the data were analysed according to level of expertise: advanced music students (n = 147) and professional musicians (n = 57). The results show clear differences between students and professionals in the frequency of use and level of reliance on recordings, with students consistently exhibiting a greater preference for these resources. Students were more likely to listen to recordings and, consequently, change aspects of their interpretations in the early stages of practising. Additionally, students were influenced by other people’s recommendations, especially their teachers’, and by other performers’ reputations when choosing recordings. The need to develop a distinct style had a positive influence on students’ practising and performing habits. The study shows that listening to recordings forms an integral part of selfregulated learning activities and contributes to musicians’ development by increasing musical knowledge and stylistic awareness.

Playing with Tradition: Weighing up Similarity and the Buoyancy of the Game

Abstract: This paper seeks to interrogate some of the common uses and assumptions surrounding the musicological concept of tradition and its empirical study from recordings. In particular, I take issue with certain style-analytical approaches for investigating performance traditions from recordings. From a theoretical perspective, I consider how the operation of tradition resides beyond the substantive content of performance style, and how such an understanding of tradition fares against quantitative measurements of style and the historical periodization of performance practice. Through a series of empirical case studies based on two of Grieg's Lyric Pieces I investigate the relevance of tradition as an analytical category for studying the transmission of performance practices from recordings. Using beat tempo data extracted from these recordings as an empirical marker of transmission processes, the case studies illustrate how stylistic kinship between performers captures the operation of tradition in different con...

Performers’ discourses on listening to recordings.

Abstract: How we listen to music and respond to its media and contexts have changed significantly since the invention of sound recording. Today’s musicians have countless opportunities to listen to others’ interpretations given the vast availability of past and contemporary repertories through the global reach of recordings. This study investigated the extent to which the growing archive of recordings provides a valuable resource for performers’ creativity. Although musical performance is a particularly porous domain for influence through either deliberate or spontaneous assimilation of expressive variation from other aural sources, little empirical research exists on influence in performance and specifically on the influence of recordings. Qualitative data were obtained via an online questionnaire to identify how and in what ways the use and influence of recordings has changed over the course of classical performers’ training or professional careers. Respondents’ (N = 130) comments were analysed using a thematic inductive approach. The emerging themes reveal an overall increased level of use of recordings now relative to the past, a largely positive contribution of recordings in shaping musical development, including the role of recordings in self-regulated learning, a largely positive attitude to the influence of others’ interpretations, a means of developing expressions of self-identity in relation to others, and a route to acquiring a more critical and discerning mode of listening to recordings. Implications for music education are discussed in terms of how listening to recordings, in both formal and informal learning contexts, could support advanced musicians’ learning through trial and error, enhance creative insight, strengthen self-efficacy, foster metacognitive skills, and nurture individuality.

Re-imagining Operatic "Objects": Commentary on Neumann's Phenomena, Poiesis, and Performance Profiling: Temporal-Textual Emphasis and Creative Process Analysis in Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera

Abstract: Objects come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and forms. The notion of musical works as objects, represented by their written scores, has proved to be effete and limiting to the study of music as diverse social-cultural practice and performed craft. The past two decades have witnessed considerable efforts to renew conceptual and methodological tools, and Neumann’s study makes a valuable contribution to this effect. This commentary responds to some issues raised by Neumann’s article in relation to the notion of musical “object”. Specifically, I retrace the shift from a score-based to a process-oriented musicology geared towards performances, placing the concerns of contemporary opera studies within this broader disciplinary change. I consider some implications of technology in mediating new operatic objects for discourse. Finally, I reflect on some of the inherent dangers of objectifying performance in empirical analyses.

Reinventing Grieg's Folk Modernism: An Empirical Investigation of the Performance of the Slåtter, Op. 72, No. 2

Abstract: Performance traditions are constantly evolving entities Some musical traditions purposefully look to the past to reinvent and consolidate a sense of national-cultural identity in the present, a compelling case for which is provided by the performance practice of Grieg's Slatter, Op 72, No 2 An investigation of this practice in piano and Hardanger fiddle recordings of this repertoire, by means of new empirical techniques for the comparative analysis of beat tempo and dynamics, traces the mechanisms of stylistic recombination in the performance of this music Cultural-historical and ethnographic contextual evidence reveals tension between discourse and actual performance practice in (re)constructions of Norwegian cultural identity, with broader implications of reinventing the performance practice of this repertoire on contemporary Norwegian cultural memory

Musical Excellence Strategies And Techniques To Enhance Performance

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A Musicology of Performance: Theory and Method Based on Bach's Solos for Violin

Abstract: This book examines the nature of musical performance. In it, Dorottya Fabian explores the contributions and limitations of some of these approaches to performance, be they theoretical, cultural, historical, perceptual, or analytical. Through a detailed investigation of recent recordings of J. S. Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, she demonstrates that music performance functions as a complex dynamical system.