ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some issues related to the analysis, perception and production of gestures in music-making. Although it will touch on the most obvious modality through which gestures are viewed by audiences, the visual, it will take a more poietic approach to defining gestures themselves, rather than an esthesic approach: for the purposes of this chapter, gestures will be considered to be certain movements made by musicians. Such movements may complement or indeed express other kinds of 'gestures' and may be perceived through a range of modalities and media. The focus here will be on the bodily gestures made by musicians, the nature of the traces these gestures leave on the environment, and how these traces might be picked up and interpreted by audiences. Throughout, the theoretical underpinnings of my arguments are drawn from perceptual psychology, in particular the work of the 'ecological' psychologist James Gibson.
