ABSTRACT
Just as performance requires a performer, it also demands a listener. Research into music performance oen turns its attention to those for whom music is played, how their physiological and psychological states are aected, and in some cases, how they make decisions based on what they have heard and seen. Such knowledge can inform the activities of a wide variety of music practitioners. Performers can anticipate their audiences’ expectations to cra performances that are better received and assessed. Teachers can prepare their pupils for the realities of a career on the stage. Composers can gain insight into how well their programmatic or aective intents are communicated. Musicologists, psychologists, and other researchers can investigate how tastes and traditions of listening change over time and across cultures, and those concerned with social policy, whether in education, public health, or the creative and digital economies, can capture the benets that exposure to music performance can have on people’s lives. To understand the audience is to understand the impact of the performance.
