ResearchPuzzles FOR MUSIC TEACHERS
William I. Bauer, PhD FMEA Research Committee Chairman, University of Florida
Relationships Among Five Types of Musical Performance
A
seminal study on various factors that impact the ability to
ries through factor analysis, a statistical process that allows
from notation) and creatively (i.e., improvising original music)
premise being that the variables that make up these groups
perform music re-creatively (i.e., playing rehearsed music
continues to have curricular and pedagogical implications for
music teachers today. Researcher Gary McPherson and col-
leagues worked with 101 Australian high school students to test a theory regarding the influence of 16 environmental factors that had been identified in previous studies on five differ-
ent aspects of musical performance. To facilitate the analysis, the 16 environmental factors were collapsed into four catego-
42 F l o r i d a
Music Director
multiple variables to be condensed into fewer groups, the have common factors. Factor analysis yielded four categories: (a) early exposure—the quality and quantity of the students’
exposure to music as young children; (b) enriching activities— how frequently students played by ear, improvised, and com-
posed, as well as whether they were enrolled in school music classes that, in Australia, involved composition; (c) length of study—how long a student had been playing their instru-
