ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the cognitive processes that are understood to underlie musical performance in oral and improvising traditions. It considers variations in music's roles and functions and the varying demands and expectations these impose on music performance, as well as variations in performance contexts. Ethnomusicologists and music sociologists have demonstrated the multiplicity of music's social and personal functions. The varied sociocultural contexts of music-making draw attention to the multiple ways that participants within a musical culture acquire their skills, through both formal and informal means. Performance context affects the organization of interpersonal interaction within a performance event, and therefore it is likely to impact on the psychological demands for performing musicians and audience alike. Ethnomusicological examples of secular music performance describe the extent to which context and audience role may shape the outcome of the musical performance. Psychological research into music performance provides a picture of various interlinked cognitive systems, which account for the extraordinary and wide-ranging feats of memory.
