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Emotion, Imagery and Metaphor in the Acquisition of Musical Performance

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Article  in  Music Education Research · September 2002

DOI: 10.1080/1461380022000011920

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Music Education Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2002

Emotion, Imagery and Metaphor in the

Acquisition of Musical Performance Skill

ROBERT H. WOODY, School of Music, University of Nebraska,

354 Westbrook Music Building, Lincoln, NE 68588–0100, USA
(E-mail: [email protected])

ABSTRACT In teaching music students to perform expressively, many instructors use

imagery and metaphors to call attention to the emotional qualities of music. This article
examines existing theories of emotion, imagery and metaphor in music performance, and
reviews empirical studies of expressive performance that have considered these topics.
Also presented are the results of a small-scale study of the imagery and metaphors used
by college music instructors. Several conclusions are drawn. First, motional aspects of
music, seen in imagery using terms such as ‘ owing’ or ‘bouncy’, are considered crucial
in the connection between performed music and felt emotion. Additionally, among
advanced musicians, there appears to be a shared and relatively limited affective
vocabulary used to elicit expressive performance, perhaps largely drawn from the
compositional structure of the piece of music being performed.

Introduction
The relationship between music and emotion has been the topic of philosophical
contemplation since the time of Aristotle, who claimed that music supplies images that
imitate feeling and ‘moral character’ (Sörbom, 1994). A more recent philosopher used
the music–emotion connection to explain humankind’s general fascination with music, as
well as their excessive involvement in it, which, he claimed, exceeds that in all other arts
combined (Addis, 1999).
Ideas about the emotional aspects of music have mostly considered the perspective of
listeners. More recently, however, scholars have paid increasing attention to the role of
emotion in the preparation and production of musical performance. In the Western art
music tradition, the context of this paper, music performance entails producing, in sound,
the notes prescribed by a written musical score. Musicians often rehearse compositions
over a period of many months, during which time they work to achieve reliable technical
performance (i.e. accuracy of pitches and rhythms) adding expressive qualities to the
ISSN 1461-380 8 print; ISSN 1469-9893 online/02/020213-1 2 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/146138002200001192 0
214 R. H. Woody

music, heard as variations from uniformity in elements such as loudness and timing. This
type of endeavor is, of course, distinct from the more improvisatory performance of jazz
and popular genres, as well as the music of many non-Western cultures.
Expressive performance instruction in this tradition often includes extensive use of
imagery and metaphors as teachers attempt to make students aware of the emotional
content of a piece of music, or even to feel certain emotions while performing. In a
review of music instructional strategies, Tait (1992) suggested connecting musical
knowledge to students’ personal experiences through a teaching vocabulary that includes
imagery, metaphors and analogies. In fact, such an approach is often promoted as more
effective in eliciting musical expression from students than direct verbal strategies,
which focus on the physical sound properties of performance. Consider one author’s
advice to music teachers:
Simply put, music is modeled on, and expressive of, the human condition … .
So rather than just saying ‘louder,’ or ‘crescendo here,’ or ‘make the ninety-
Ž ve decibel light go on’ a la paint-by-numbers, it may be more instructive and
likely to produce musical results to elaborate with something more in the realm
of human experience or imagination: Try projecting, expanding your sound as
though you were evolving into a tower of strength, growing into a giant
weightlifter … now raise that weight … gradually. (Haack, 1982)
Although the music teaching profession is largely committed to the use of imagery and
metaphors, there is little empirical research to attest to its effectiveness or to explain how
it works. The lack of research may re ect a general aversion among musicians to
scientiŽ c study of music, especially when related to topics such as emotion, expression
and aesthetics. In a discussion entitled ‘Measuring Moonbeams’, Swanwick (1994)
re ected on some musicians’ belief in the incompatibility of scientiŽ c research and the
intuitive nature of musical experience. He effectively argues, however, for the need for
empirical study and analysis. ‘An analysis of musical experience is not a substitute for
that experience and the reverse is also true: intuitive musical experience can tell us
nothing about itself without analysis’ (p. 66).

Felt Emotion and Perceived Expression in Music

Music is considered communication in that listeners generally Ž nd ‘meaning’ in music
by responding emotionally to the expressive qualities they hear. The entire musical
communication process can consist of numerous sequential components, including a
composer’s inspiration, the resultant written score, a performer’s expressive interpret-
ation of it, the resultant sounded music, and a listener’s perception and emotional
response (Gabrielsson & Juslin, 1996; Kendall & Carterette, 1990). Even when consid-
ering only the communication between performer and listener, there remains much room
for imprecision. Strong emotion or poignant mental imagery might incite a musician’s
expressive interpretation, but such ideas are only communicated to an audience if they
are translated into discernible acoustic sound properties. Research has shown that
professional musicians are able to accomplish this translation process reliably, especially
with broad moods or emotions such as joy and sadness (Gabrielsson & Juslin, 1996;
Shaffer, 1992; see Thompson & Robitaille, 1992, for similar results with composers).
Performers make music expressive by deviating from mechanical uniformity in the
elements of loudness, tempo, articulation and intonation. Musicians refer to such
expressive devices as, for example, crescendos and diminuendos (gradual increases and
 Emotion, imagery and metaphor 215

decreases in loudness), staccato and legato articulation (degrees of connectedness or

detachment between successive tones), and vibrato (slight  uctuations or ‘wavering’ of
sustained pitches). In real musical performances, the types of deviations that ‘make
sense’ musically are considerably limited and often carried out according to the
compositional structure of a piece of music (Palmer, 1997; Repp, 1992b). For instance,
musicians tend to perform tempo changes at the boundaries of musical phrases, that is,
accelerating slightly at the beginning of phrases and slowing at the end (Palmer, 1992).
Research has yet to adequately explain the cognitive processes that mediate expressive
performance. More speciŽ cally, there is little agreement about the deliberateness or
consciousness involved in translating felt emotion into performed musical sound. Some
studies have found that explicit planning results in more proŽ cient, expressive perfor-
mances (e.g. Woody, 1999). Many musicians, however, contend that the expressive
interpretation process is intuitive, natural and generally inaccessible, even to the
performers themselves. In a study by Hallam (1995), one professional musician sug-
gested that musical interpretation gradually evolves and ‘is not consciously planned and
is probably learned subconsciously as practice continues’ (p. 120).

Theories of Emotion, Imagery and Metaphor in Music

Most scholarly consideration of music and emotion has been carried out by philosophers
and aestheticians rather than empirical researchers. Langer (1953, 1957) was one of the
Ž rst modern philosophers to advance a theory to explain the relationship between
musical sound and human emotional experience. Pointing to properties that occur in both
realms, such as tension, resolution, expectation and fulŽ llment, Langer (1957) deŽ ned
music as ‘a tonal analogue of emotive life’ (p. 22). Langer’s philosophical offerings,
later followed by the work of Kivy (1990) and more recently Addis (1999), have
continued to in uence the empirical efforts of music psychologists. For example,
Sloboda (1998) explained that human beings understand music through dynamic feelings
that are analogous to ‘agents in action’ or motions experienced in the physical and
biological world (p. 21). Additionally, and somewhat reminiscent of the philosophical
perspective of Meyer (1956), Sloboda proposed that such dynamic feelings are not
emotions per se, but can engender emotions in some listening circumstances.
The music psychology community was recently reintroduced to the theoretical
contributions of Alexander Truslit (1938, as cited in Repp, 1993). This early German
scholar criticised his contemporaries for concerning themselves with only the surface
manifestations of artistic shaping (e.g. changes in loudness or tempo) and for failing to
consider the underlying force that shapes them. He believed that the most essential
characteristic of music was its expression of ‘inner motion’, the dynamics of which
musicians acquired through extramusical life experiences. Although he believed that the
common expressive performance characteristics of musicians could be described as rules
of interpretation, he insisted that ‘simple application of these rules does not result in
living expression’ (p. 65). Truslit theorised that inner motion manifested itself outwardly
by affecting the bodily movements made to physically play a musical instrument (or
sing); these movements, in turn, determine the sound of the performed music. For
example, muscular movements that are inhibited and abrupt yield sonic events of the
same style. While noting a general lack of empirical support, Repp (1993) suggested that
the work of Truslit is a valuable source of hypotheses for more precise empirical study.
216 R. H. Woody

Greater description was offered by Clynes (1977) who proposed that basic emotions
are linked to characteristic brain patterns. These brain patterns are manifested in similar
dynamic forms or shapes, regardless of the mode of expression, be it bodily gesture,
facial countenance or musical expression. Much of Clynes’ research was conducted
using a sentograph, a device that measures Ž nger pressure on a pushbutton. When
subjects were asked to ‘press in a way that Ž ts the music’ or ‘express the pulses in the
music’, the resulting pressure patterns supported the notion of characteristic shapes for
different broad emotions (Clynes & Walker, 1982; see also Gabrielsson & Lindström,
1995). The notion of likeness between different modes of human expression is also
supported by the research of Sundberg (1993), who reported ‘striking similarities’
between the characteristics of expressive music performance and the prosody of spoken
language (p. 251).
Based in part on these works of philosophers and psychologists, other scholars have
advanced theories about the role of emotion, imagery and metaphor in the development
of expressive performance skills. Music instructors frequently exploit the similarities
between musical sound and human emotion or movement through the use of Ž gurative
language marked by imagery and descriptive metaphors. Referring to the ‘motor-affec-
tive’ elements of emotion and music, Barten (1998) described heuristic imagery as a
means of communicating to students the desired target experience for the physical skills
required in music performance or the produced sound itself. Such information is often
more easily expressed metaphorically than any other way. For example, Barten suggests
that it is more efŽ cient to tell a beginning  ute student to imagine a hot potato in the
mouth, rather than giving more anatomically based instructions about an open mouth
cavity. Additionally, Ž gurative language is pedagogically effective because it can help
students understand the music at a broader functional level (i.e. not as discrete notes or
phrases). Others have similarly emphasised a teacher’s use of an experiential vocabulary
of images, metaphors, and life analogs for articulating to students deeper meaning in
music; such terminology might include the following words: determined, growth,
nervous, stability, surprised, violent (see Tait & Haack, 1984, for these and other
examples).
In addition to giving verbal instruction, music instructors have an important role in
providing aural models of expressive performance for imitation by their students.
Davidson (1989) argued that modeling alone is insufŽ cient for teaching expressive
performance, but suggested that the combination of modeling and metaphor ‘helps the
student attain a multidimensional grasp of the music … . The metaphor creates an
affective state within which the performer can attempt to match the model’ (p. 95). A
theory by Sloboda (1996) offers a more detailed account of expressive performance
development. He proposed that musicians use ‘extramusical templates’ to store in
memory expressive deviations. When a teacher performs an expressive model (with no
additional verbal information), a listening student would be required to process and
remember a vast amount of aural performance information. This is made more manage-
able by abstracting the expressive information into fewer extramusical analogies, perhaps
bodily gesture, vocal intonation or other expressions of emotion.
Sloboda and Davidson also suggested a means, apart from a teacher, through which
musicians effectively learn the relationship between expressive performance and felt
emotion (1996). They theorised that a ‘structure-emotion link’ is developed as student
musicians experiment with alternative expressive devices. Through trial and error,
musicians discover which devices elicit emotional responses from listeners (including
themselves) that match their original expressive intent. ‘For instance, a performer might
 Emotion, imagery and metaphor 217

attempt a crescendo-decrescendo over a particular structure, monitor the emotional

impact of this, and, if inappropriate, try another type of gesture’ (p. 185).

Empirical Studies of Expressive Music Performance

Most of the research done in this area has focused on identifying speciŽ c expressive
performance devices and the conditions in which they commonly occur in music.
Empirical research has established that, especially among expert musicians, musical
expression is entrenched in performance, perhaps suggesting the existence of implicit
rules of expressivity (Repp, 1992b; Sloboda, 1996). What remains unclear is how
performers acquire such expressive rules, thus allowing for much speculation about
musical intuition and conscious control (or lack thereof) in expressive performance. For
example, advanced musicians are largely unable to produce expressionless performances;
their attempts to do so retain reduced features of otherwise normal expressive perfor-
mances (Gabrielsson, 1988; Palmer, 1992). Additionally, experiments have shown that
listeners prefer the natural timing characteristics (e.g. expressive hesitations or anticipa-
tions of notes) of real pianists’ recordings over temporal shapes generated by alternative
synthetic means (Repp, 1992a). Although microanalysis of musicians’ performances has
yielded insight into the relationship of musical structure to expressivity, this approach
often fails to consider any underlying emotional intentions of performers. Shaffer (1992)
noted that ‘although the expression players use in a performance can be objectively
described in terms of deformations of notated values of pitch and time, doing so may
miss the point that the sounds shaped by these gestures often seem related to the gestures
people make when they feel emotion’ (p. 264).
Special attention was paid to extramusical emotional factors in a recent study of mine
that questioned college musicians about how they had previously learned and continue
to develop expressivity in their musical performance (Woody, 2000). Several results of
this research relate to the topic at hand. First, a number of subjects cited extramusical
sources (e.g. ‘life situations’) as contributors to their learning to perform expressively.
Also, when asked how they themselves might teach younger musicians about expressiv-
ity, many subjects endorsed an instructional approach of encouraging felt emotion or
extramusical meaning; vocalists were signiŽ cantly more likely to endorse this approach,
perhaps indicating the in uence of lyrics in vocal music. The results also introduced the
possibility of a two-stage process of learning expressive performance; that is, the initial
execution of prescribed expressive devices gives way to ‘spontaneous’ implementation
of expressivity induced by strong moods, mental imaging or external emotionalising.
Finally, this study offered support for Sloboda’s (1996) theory of extramusical
templates, in that subjects with modeling-oriented teachers, as compared to those with
verbal-oriented instructors, reported spending a greater proportion of practice time on felt
emotion. Consider, for example, a teacher who models an expressively correct way to
perform a piece of music, with no accompanying verbal description. The performance
includes discernible changes in sound properties such as loudness and tempo, but the
student focuses on more simple elements of emotion and gesture (e.g. the teacher’s facial
expression and body movement). Thus, by ‘mustering up’ the same emotions and
gestures in subsequent individual practice, the student is able to retrieve from memory
an image the teacher’s model.
Barten (1992a) focused on the use of metaphor in college music instruction in a
three-part study that included observations of ensemble rehearsals and private lessons,
interviews with 24 advanced music students and interviews with 11 college music
218 R. H. Woody

instructors. One stated area of interest was the extremeness of metaphors, or their
distance from literal language. Observations revealed that the use of explicit metaphors,
those furthest from literal instruction about concrete musical or physical properties, was
quite high. The content of metaphors was categorised, with most metaphors being
described as motor-kinesthetic (re ecting motion) or attitudinal.
Persson (1996) questioned the effectiveness of imagery-based music instruction as a
result of a case study of an acclaimed concert pianist who outlined her teaching strategy
as ‘pictures and images’ (p. 28). The research included observations of the teacher in
individual lessons and separate interviews with her and her students. Both she and her
students acknowledged past incidents of teacher–student con ict, some centering around
the use of imagery, but they disagreed about the underlying reasons. The teacher insisted
that students were intimidated by her use of vivid imagery and were afraid of expressing
themselves. Her students, however, cited the teacher’s lack of organisation and structure
in her teaching. Critical students recognised her proŽ ciency at expressive interpretation,
but thought she was not encouraging or supportive in guiding students to acquire this
ability for themselves. The teacher realised that her vivid metaphorical language left
many students confused, but always demanded that her students try to ‘conjure up the
same imaginative world’ (p. 29). In general, this study indicated potential signiŽ cant
problems with a metaphor-intense teaching approach. The researcher concluded that
‘freedom of choice and expression is probably an essential ingredient in artistic training,
but allowing freedom without knowing how to foster it may be as detrimental to artistic
development as never allowing any freedom at all’ (Persson, 1996, p. 34).
Perhaps due to such potential hazards of imagery and metaphors, some music
instructors implement alternative methodologies in their teaching of expressive perform-
ance. One such approach (alluded to earlier) is aural modeling, in which a teacher
performs a musical excerpt in order for a listening student to imitate the expression of
the model (see Dickey, 1991, for a review). Alternatively, teachers can also use verbal
instruction that focuses on concrete sound properties (e.g. instructing students where in
the music to slow the tempo or to increase in loudness). Past research has established
that these approaches can be successful in improving musicians’ expressive perfor-
mances (Clarke, 1993; Johnson, 1998; Woody, 1999).

A Study of Imagery and Metaphors Used by Music Performance Instructors

Recently, I embarked on a research project with the ultimate purpose of comparing the
three different modes of expressive instruction mentioned above: (a) verbal instruction
focused on concrete musical (acoustic) properties, (b) verbal instruction based on
extramusical metaphors and imagery, and (c) non-verbal aural modeling and imitation
(Woody, 2001). To establish the internal validity of this experiment, it was crucial to
assure equivalent instructional content in the three modes (i.e. the same quality
imagery-based or metaphorical instruction as concrete musical instruction and aurally
modeled examples). This was accomplished by gathering high-quality examples of
imagery or metaphors used in expressive performance instruction, the best of which
would be used by an expert musical performer to create the equivalent aural model.
Then, based on precise measures of the performance properties of the expert’s model, a
verbal description would be written for concrete verbal instruction.
The comparison study required a single imagery or metaphor example for each of
three melodies (Figure 1). In order to arrive at high-quality examples, I decided to
assemble a pool of examples from which to draw. I enlisted a number of college music
 Emotion, imagery and metaphor 219

FIG. 1. The three melodies used in the study.

performance faculty members to create such a pool. Their contributed examples were
ultimately judged by a panel of expert music educators, asked to rate how effective they
believed each would be in eliciting an expressive performance from a college music
student. The highest rated example (for each melody) was used in the comparison study.
In effect, the majority of the examples were eventually discarded. I decided, therefore,
that I would be remiss not to somehow share the insights afforded from examining all
of the imagery and metaphor examples collected. Even in light of the limited scale of
this analysis, the Ž ndings are of sufŽ cient interest to report here.

Method
Participants were music performance faculty members at the researcher’s institution (at
the time). Ten music professors received a sheet of paper that contained three melodies
(Figure 1) and instructions asking them to provide examples of imagery or descriptive
metaphors that they might use to teach the melodies. All three melodies have been used
in previous studies of expressive music performance. Melody 1 was written for use in
an experiment by Clarke and Baker-Short (1987). Melodies 2 and 3 are from the
Schubert song cycles Die Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin, respectively, and were
220 R. H. Woody

both used in research by Clarke (1993) and Woody (1999). (Die Winterreise was also
speciŽ cally mentioned by Barten, 1992b, in a discussion of extramusical imagery in
music instruction.) The participating professors received the following directions:
For each of the melodies below, imagine that you’re working with a student
on performing the melody. Your student is playing the melody technically
perfect, but the performance is lacking expressively. Your goal is to improve
the student’s performance in terms of its expressiveness—especially through
dynamics. Consider how you would do this using imagery or a descriptive
metaphor. That is, without addressing dynamics speciŽ cally with terminology
such as louder, softer, bigger, weaker, etc., what descriptive image or metaphor
might you use to elicit a more expressive performance. Please try to think of
examples of imagery or metaphors that you’ve used before and have found to
be effective. Be as detailed and descriptive as possible; imagine that you’re
working with a student who really needs to be stirred and inspired in order to
give an intensely expressive performance!
Participants wrote their examples on the sheet in their own time (i.e. not in the presence
of the researcher) and independent of each other. Seven of the ten professors returned
the sheet.
Although no speciŽ c effort was made to control for participants’ familiarity with the
melodies, several points should be noted. First, Melody 1 was originally written for a
previous experiment in music cognition and therefore was very likely unfamiliar to all
participants. Further, the Schubert melodies (Melodies 2 and 3) were from song cycles
and all of the participants were teachers of instrumental music performance. The
participants who provided imagery and metaphor examples represented brass, woodwind,
string and keyboard specialisations.
In the analysis of participants’ responses, each was assigned one of the following
broad categorisations: (a) mood, in which a static atmosphere, feeling, or emotional
character is described, (b) context-free motion, in which movement of some kind is
described without identiŽ cation of the object in motion (i.e. who or what is moving), and
(c) contextual motion, in which an object in motion is speciŽ ed. Additionally, in case of
contextual motion, attention was given to whether the type of object speciŽ ed was
human, animal, mechanical or some other form (Barten, 1992a).

Results and Discussion

Melody 1. All but one of the responses were classiŽ ed as mood descriptions (the lone
exception was considered contextual motion). For example, one participant wrote:
[S01] Play with sadness and intensity as you would when expressing the loss
of a loved one. There’s a bittersweet remembrance of great tenderness and
great loss.
The majority of responses matched the mood of the above example. In fact, four of the
responses included a form of the words ‘sad’ or ‘mournful’ and three of those
speciŽ cally referred to re ection or remembering. Furthermore, three of the mood
descriptions alluded to a context-free motion (e.g. ‘a sad lilt’, ‘the direction is forward’),
although not strongly enough to warrant full classiŽ cation as such.
Melody 2. Similar results were found for Melody 2. All but one of the responses were
judged to fall under the mood category. Interestingly, the one exception, again a
 Emotion, imagery and metaphor 221

contextual motion, came from the same participant who offered the sole divergent
response with Melody 1. Again, there was considerable agreement about the kind of
mood appropriate for Melody 2, although it differed slightly from Melody 1. This is seen
in the following examples, the Ž rst of which includes an allusion to context-free motion:
[S01] Flowing. Somewhat weighty or serious, as if pondering some matter of
concern.
[S07] Think of saying goodbye to a close friend who is leaving, never to
return.
Generally, the mood-category responses were consistently marked by descriptive words
such as ‘serious’ (occurred twice), ‘weighty’ or ‘heavy’ (twice), ‘sad’ (twice), ‘pensive’,
and ‘brooding’.

Melody 3. There was remarkable agreement among the images and metaphors provided
for Melody 3. In this case, however, all but one of the responses described contextual
motion, as seen in the examples below:
[S06] Somewhat carefree, like a child skipping down a sidewalk on a sunny
day.
[S01] Bouncy and happy. Rustic, as if you’re a happy peasant, with no cares
or worries, strolling along, singing a song.
All of the contextual motion responses clearly described forms of walking that are lively
and upbeat. Three of the responses speciŽ cally included the word ‘skipping’ and others
included the terms ‘high stepping’ and ‘walking briskly’. Communication of the
motion’s character was clearly important, as seen in the prominence of terms such as
‘happy’ (twice), ‘carefree’ or ‘with no cares’ (twice), ‘sprightly’ and ‘laughing’.
Across all three of the melodies, there was considerable agreement among the seven
participants. Melody 1 elicited mainly descriptions of a sad and re ective mood, with
some allusions to context-free motion. Melody 2 responses were even more restricted to
the mood category (very little mention of motion), with general agreement on feelings
of seriousness or weightiness. Melody 3 had near unanimity in the contextual movement
category, with respondents agreeing on an image of lively walking. The consistent
agreement suggests a fairly well deŽ ned base of imagery and metaphors shared among
advanced musicians.
Furthermore, just as research has shown that performing musicians draw from the
compositional structure of a piece of music when choosing individual expressive devices
for performance (e.g. a ritardando to be executed at the end of a musical phrase), the
music instructors in this study seemingly drew from the musical structure when
determining imagery and metaphors for teaching the melodies. Recall that the partici-
pants were not provided with general tempo markings for the melodies or with any other
indications of musical style or character. The resulting imagery and metaphors were
nevertheless remarkably similar. One compositional element that likely in uenced this
was the harmonic mode of major or minor. The traditional western musical associations
of major tonality with happiness (Melody 3) and minor with sadness (Melodies 1 and 2)
were afŽ rmed in this study, as they have been in previous research (e.g. Gregory &
Varney, 1996; Kastner & Crowder, 1990)
It is also important to note that many of the imagery and metaphor examples were not
limited to being either a description of mood or a description of motion, but included
elements of both. For example, the imagery of ‘laughing and skipping like children’
222 R. H. Woody

suggests both movement and a particular affective state. Barten (1992a) also noted such
combinations of properties within instructional metaphors.

Conclusions
Established theories about the relationship between music and emotion tend to emphasise
motion in explaining the link between the two. Perhaps this is because music and motion
occur across time, as do emotions and other ‘states of consciousness’ (see Addis, 1999,
for a compelling philosophical discussion of this fact). Accordingly, it is reasonable to
expect that the use of imagery and metaphors would be an effective way for students to
make the music–emotion connection when learning expressive performance. Related to
this is the widely held idea that unique life experiences of motion and emotion can
in uence greatly a musician’s ability to perform expressively (e.g. Truslit, 1938). In
addition, verbal descriptions of emotion, mood and motion, or the physical gestures
themselves, appear to effectively complement the aural modeling of an instructor.
If a grasp of the motional aspects of music is so critical in learning expressive
performance, one might therefore expect teachers to include student movement exercises
in music lessons (Taylor, 1989). Related to this issue, one prominent music educator
concluded that ‘free movement to music seems to focus attention toward the detail and
quality of expressive character and appears to create an enduring and lively impression
in the mind, not only helping to construe expressiveness but also in following structural
changes’ (Swanwick, 1994, p. 134). When motional depiction is not the goal, music
instructors alternatively use imagery and metaphors to create static emotions or feelings
in their students. In doing so, they may in fact be applying principles of mood
congruency, which state that material learned while experiencing a particular mood is
best recalled and conveyed later while in the same mood (Waterman, 1996). This could
account for how some musicians are able to give expressive performances by merely
focusing on their own felt emotions. Because of the lack of research on expressive
performance education, however, it is largely unknown how much music instructors use
student movement and mood congruency in their teaching.
Past research on the use of imagery and metaphor in music conŽ rms it as a prevalent
broad instructional approach (Tait, 1992). Additionally, the results of the small-scale
study reported in this article, showed remarkable similarity among the music instructors’
chosen images and metaphors. In general, the preliminary Ž ndings regarding use of
imagery and metaphors mirror the more established Ž ndings in expressive performance.
That is, musicians apparently share a relatively limited repertoire of expressive perform-
ance devices (i.e. rules of interpretation), as well as a limited affective vocabulary to
describe them. In both of these activities, musicians seem to draw from the composi-
tional structure of the piece of music being practiced or performed. Perhaps this re ects
a general belief of Ž rst ‘being true’ to the music or the emotional intentions of the
composer before imposing the expressive prerogative of the performer.
There is still much to learn about the use of imagery and metaphor in music
instruction. In fact, not only has research failed to explain exactly how this general
approach works, it really has yet to establish the effectiveness to warrant extensive use.
Although many musicians are committed to imagery and metaphor based teaching
techniques, such approaches can be problematic when used with some students (e.g.
Persson, 1996). Future research will provide insight into additional variables that interact
with this type of instruction to determine its effectiveness. Inasmuch as the existing
research points to the in uence of emotion-related factors more than musical ones, it is
 Emotion, imagery and metaphor 223

imperative to discover how student characteristics such as life experiences, emotional

disposition and creativity can affect the results of music instruction that makes heavy use
of imagery and metaphors.

REFERENCES
ADDIS , L. (1999) Of Mind and Music (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press).
BARTEN, S.S. (1992a) Like a single crocus in Holland: the power of metaphor in music instruction , Paper
presente d at the Second Internationa l Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Los Angeles,
California.
BARTEN, S.S. (1992b) The language of music, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 26, pp. 53–61.
BARTEN, S.S. (1998) Speaking of music: The use of motor-affectiv e metaphors in music instruction ,
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