ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of empirical findings on musical ensemble performance, discusses underlying psychological processes with a particular focuses on adaptation, anticipation and leadership in ensembles for attaining musical coherence. Musicians perform together and strive for temporal synchronization, shared expressive musical intentions, and sound qualities or greater intensity through a higher number of instruments or voices. Individuals also make music with others for nonmusical purposes relating to social cohesion in a community, fostering friendships or further psychosocial benefits. In most cultures, music is indeed performed with others in various places, social contexts and for different functions. The psychological underpinnings of ensemble performance have been studied in controlled laboratory paradigms involving simple movements or, at the other end of the spectrum, real musical performances with audience interactions. A crucial yet simple way of differentiating between ensembles lies in the number of musicians involved. The view of musical ensembles as social microcosms has attracted researchers from management and business studies.
