ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some established ideas about Western art music performance in order to determine the extent to which existing performance literature can account for how a performance may be heard. It deals chiefly with how the relationship between performance and musical work has been perceived, and explores the act of performance itself. The chapter moves from examining writings which tend to focus on performance to those which tend to focus on the performer, with the relationship of these writings to the listening experience being of particular concern. Musical expression is a feature of performance that can establish an artist's personal authenticity whilst at the same time can project an apparent lack of authenticity to an unsympathetic hearer. The expression may reflect a structural point in a work, but it may also reflect the perceived 'shape' of a melodic line, musical intensity, a mood, an atmosphere, a raw emotion, and no doubt much else besides.
