The Role of Accompaniment Quality in Band Directors’ Evaluations of Solo Instrumental Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this replication study was to examine the effects of accompaniment on evaluations of solo instrumental performances. Although previous findings have indicated that instrumental music education majors’ evaluations of soloists were not independent of accompaniment, it is unknown whether more experienced evaluators are similarly affected by accompaniment. In addition to using a new population (in-service band directors), we also extended the previous study by asking participants whether they believed their evaluations of a soloist were influenced by the accompaniment provided. Participants (N = 58) listened to six excerpts of Haydn’s Concerto for Trumpet, which we created by pairing different recordings of solo trumpet performance (good or bad) with piano accompaniment (good, bad, or none). Participants evaluated the accuracy and expressivity of the soloist in each excerpt. Similar to the previous study, results indicated that participants discriminated between good and bad solo performances successfully, but a significant three-way interaction among solo, accompaniment, and order indicated that these differences were further influenced by the quality/presence of accompaniment and order. Most participants (72.4%) believed that their evaluations of the soloist were not influenced by the piano accompaniment, primarily because they were able to focus on the soloist or because they followed the instructions provided.

Keywords

accompaniment perception performance quality solo and ensemble solo performance

Music performance evaluations can be considered “one of the most essential aspects related to music performance” (Cooksey, 1982, p. 198), yet there are inherent challenges with the objective assessment of musical performances (Zdzinski, 1991). For secondary school instrumentalists, adjudicated solo festivals are common forms of assessment (Bergee & Platt, 2003; Meyers, 2012). At these events, musicians usually perform a solo work with an accompaniment for one or more adjudicators (Pope & Mick, 2015) who evaluate the performances using a common rating scale (Boyle & Radocy, 1987). Results of festival ratings are important because they can serve as indicators of the success of school instrumental music programs (Zdzinski, 1991) and influence students’ choice of whether to pursue music teaching as a future career (Bergee, Coffman, Demorest, Humphreys, & Thornton, 2001).

Researchers have examined various aspects of musical performance as a function of accompaniment. For example, instrumentalists who practiced with computer-generated accompaniment were given slightly higher performance ratings than metronome-only practice (Klee, 1999), and instrumentalists in another study claimed that practicing with computer-generated accompaniment expedited and improved their preparation of solo music (Tseng, 1996). Other researchers (Brittin, 2002; Brittin, Sheldon, & Lee, 2002) found that secondary school instrumentalists preferred solo performances that were accompanied by compact disc more than unaccompanied performances or performances accompanied by piano.

Results of previous performance evaluation studies have indicated that college musicians successfully discriminated between good and bad tone quality regardless of whether the music was accompanied or unaccompanied (Madsen, Geringer, & Heller, 1993), discriminated between good and bad intonation in both accompanied and unaccompanied conditions (Madsen & Geringer, 1999), and rated certain performance elements (dynamics, rhythm, and phrasing/expression) higher when the music was accompanied even though their ratings of other elements (intonation and tone quality) were not influenced by accompaniment (Geringer & Madsen, 1998). Likewise, listeners of collaborative duo performances were influenced by accompaniment, providing higher overall expressivity ratings to performances in which the pianist played expressively rather than unexpressively (Geringer & Sasanfar, 2013). The use of accompaniment is common in formal solo performance contexts. Although the performance of a soloist and pianist results in a collaborative “gestalt,” we have observed anecdotally that soloists are often the only members of those collaborations to receive ratings (e.g., at university juries, auditions, and solo festivals/contests). Therefore, an understanding of how the quality of accompaniment performance might influence listeners’ evaluations of instrumental soloists would be beneficial.

In collaborative performance contexts with a soloist and a pianist, Roussou (2013) explained that the pianist performs various roles, including the following:

(1) a co-performer, implying a fellow musical performer; (2) the pianist emerging as a soloist during specific “solo” passages within a work; (3) a coach, seeing the pianist working in a directing role, such as in rehearsal; (4) an accompanist, with the pianist acting in a supporting role; and (5) a collaborator, signifying equality between the two performers. (p. 512, italics added)

In these collaborative performance contexts, musicians use visual cues such as bodily movement and facial expressions to enhance the performance, many of which are easily identifiable and are emblematic of the performer’s expressive intentions (Davidson, 2012; Davidson & Broughton, 2016; Williamon & Davidson, 2002). Previous research findings indicated that pianists performed duets with greater synchrony when their body sway was aligned, and those individuals who were assigned as leaders (the primo part) tended to make exaggerated gestures for their partner (on the secondo part) to follow (Keller & Appel, 2010). Pianists also described how their duo/duet performances improved due to a shared emotional state and joint interpretation of the musical narrative between performers (Williamon & Davidson, 2002). Therefore, collaborative performances seem to involve an intersection of variables that are affected by musical performance traditions, sociocultural issues, and interpersonal relationships between people (Blank & Davidson, 2007).

Given the encouragement to submit high-quality replications to the Journal of Research in Music Education that may “add certainty to findings as well as to uncover areas where additional evidence is needed to substantiate validity” (Morrison, 2016, p. 395), we decided to replicate and extend a previous project that involved the effects of accompaniment quality on the evaluation of solo instrumental performance (Springer & Silvey, 2018). In that study, we explored whether solo performance quality (good or bad) and the quality/presence of a performed piano accompaniment (good accompaniment, bad accompaniment, or no accompaniment) would affect college musicians’ ratings of solo trumpet performances. We found significant main effects for accompaniment condition (good, bad, or none) and solo condition (good or bad) in addition to interaction effects. Results of a Solo × Accompaniment interaction indicated that although participants’ ratings were influenced by accompaniment condition, the effect was moderated by the performance quality of the trumpet soloist. Participants’ ratings were not independent of presentation order, however.

Questioning our choice of college musicians as evaluators, a reviewer from our previous study speculated whether our results would have differed if we had sampled from inservice teachers who possessed greater solo and ensemble evaluative experience. Considering that inservice instrumental music teachers often evaluate these performances, we used this suggestion as an impetus for replicating and extending our previous study. Aside from using a new population, we also added a qualitative element to the present study to gain greater insight into music educators’ beliefs regarding the potential influence of accompaniment. Specifically, we sought to investigate whether they believed their evaluations of the soloists’ performances were influenced by the accompaniment provided because understanding their personal beliefs and/or biases would help music educators mitigate these potential biases in future performance evaluation contexts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of accompaniment quality on in-service band directors’ evaluations of solo instrumental performances. Our research questions were (1) To what extent does the quality or presence of a performed accompaniment (good accompaniment, bad accompaniment, or no accompaniment) affect listeners’ evaluations of a soloist? (2) Is the effect of accompaniment quality consistent in the context of good and bad instrumental solo performances? and (3) How would in-service band directors respond qualitatively about their ability to separate solo performance from the accompaniment?

Method

Participants in the current study were in-service band directors (N = 58) who were recruited through an e-mail invitation sent on behalf of the National Association for Music Education to music educators who had selected “band” as their primary teaching area. As a prerequisite for participation, all participants had to indicate familiarity with solo and ensemble adjudication procedures. Twenty-eight of our participants indicated they had previously served as an adjudicator at solo and ensemble festivals. Additional demographic data indicated our participants’ gender (male, n = 44; female, n = 14), age (M = 38.9 years, SD = 11.1), primary instrument family (brass, n = 31; woodwind, n = 18; percussion, n = 7; voice, n = 3; piano, n = 2; strings, n = 1), and years of teaching experience (M = 15.3 years, SD = 10.7). (Some participants indicated multiple primary instruments, so the sum exceeds the total sample size.)

Before recruiting participants, we conducted an a priori power analysis using G*Power 3.1.9.2 software (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) to determine a minimum sample size needed to identify an effect with an acceptable level of statistical power (Cohen, 1992). Similar to our previous study, we conducted the analysis for a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with repeated measures (within-between interaction), the results of which indicated a minimum sample size of 58 (input parameters included a projected effect size of f = .2, an α level of .05, and a power level [1 – β] of .8).

We used the same stimulus audio recordings of a solo trumpeter and pianist performing an excerpt from the third movement (Allegro) of Haydn’s Concerto for Trumpet in E-Flat Major, Hob. VIIe/1, in two solo quality levels (good or bad) and three piano accompaniment conditions (good, bad, or no accompaniment) that were used in our previous investigation. Hereafter, we refer to stimuli in abbreviated form according to solo (BS = bad solo, GS = good solo) and accompaniment (BA = bad accompaniment, GA = good accompaniment, NA = no accompaniment) conditions. (For a complete description of the stimulus materials and creation, recording procedure, and procedures for validation, please refer to Springer & Silvey, 2018).

Participants completed an evaluation task using Qualtrics, an online survey system. Institutional Review Board–approved consent information appeared first, which was followed by a screen on which the evaluation task was described:

You are about to hear six recordings that were submitted to a solo competition. All of these recordings include excerpts from the third movement of Haydn’s Concerto for Trumpet in E-flat Major. Your task is to evaluate the performance of each soloist in the areas of accuracy and expressivity. Please be honest in your evaluations, as there are no right or wrong answers. Do not rate the performances until each excerpt is complete. At the end of the evaluation task, you will be asked two questions about your participation in this project, along with a request for demographic information.

Definitions of accuracy (“the degree to which the soloist performs with accuracy and precision”) and expressivity (“the degree to which the soloist performs with expression and musicianship”) appeared on each response page. We directed participants’ attention to the trumpet solo performances by explicitly instructing them to evaluate the soloist (“Your task is to evaluate the performance of each soloist in the areas of accuracy and expressivity”) and including a similar prompt in our definitions of accuracy and expressivity. We also provided false information about a solo competition to further encourage them to focus on the soloists’ performance. Participants evaluated the accuracy and expressivity of each solo performance by using 10-point Likert-type scales anchored by 1 (poor) and 10 (excellent). As in the previous study, we created two different presentation orders to help control for order effects, which are displayed in Table 1. These two orders were randomly generated and distributed equally to the participants through Qualtrics.

Table 1.

Presentation Orders for Stimuli.

Order	Excerpts
1	BS/GA, GS/NA, BS/BA, GS/GA, BS/NA, GS/BA
2	GS/BA, BS/NA, GS/GA, BS/BA, GS/NA, BS/GA

Note. Excerpts are labeled by solo and accompaniment condition as follows: BS (bad solo), GS (good solo), BA (bad accompaniment), GA (good accompaniment), NA (no accompaniment). In the first order, participants heard alternating good and bad solo performances without hearing the same accompaniment type on adjacent performances. The second order is the reverse of the first order. Presentation orders were randomly assigned to participants.

At the conclusion of the listening task, participants were asked, “Do you feel like your evaluations of the soloist were influenced by the pianist?” after which they indicated their response by clicking “yes” or “no.” A follow-up question read, “Why or why not?” Participants typed their responses to this question into a text box, which allowed them to elaborate further.

Results

We first screened the data to verify that they met the assumptions for a multivariate analysis, the results of which are summarized in Appendix A (available supplemental material included in the online version of this article). We found evidence of nonnormality with distributions being marked by substantial negative skewness. Therefore, as recommended by Tabachnick and Fidell (2007), we performed a logarithmic transformation with reflection to correct this problem. We used these transformed values in all data analyses, but we also provide observed (i.e., nontransformed) means and standard deviations in this article because “transformed variables are sometimes harder to interpret” (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007, p. 86). Because the transformed means were also reflected, they indicate opposite directionality when compared to the observed means—a trend that is evident in Table 2.

Table 2.

Accuracy and Expressivity Ratings by Order, Solo, and Accompaniment Condition.

			Transformed/Reflected Means^a				Observed Means^b
			Accuracy		Expressivity		Accuracy		Expressivity
Order	Solo	Accompaniment	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD
1	Bad	Good	0.880	0.089	0.851	0.111	3.267	1.507	3.700	1.579
		Bad	0.865	0.109	0.841	0.120	3.467	1.613	3.833	1.683
		None	0.855	0.087	0.811	0.137	3.700	1.442	4.233	1.906
	Good	Good	0.342	0.223	0.424	0.254	8.500	1.383	7.900	1.729
		Bad	0.311	0.200	0.366	0.234	8.733	1.081	8.367	1.245
		None	0.383	0.217	0.517	0.262	8.267	1.484	7.133	2.161
2	Bad	Good	0.823	0.151	0.808	0.139	4.000	2.037	4.286	1.863
		Bad	0.852	0.100	0.848	0.109	3.714	1.536	3.750	1.756
		None	0.837	0.112	0.808	0.125	3.929	1.631	4.321	1.827
	Good	Good	0.246	0.208	0.395	0.242	9.036	0.962	8.143	1.484
		Bad	0.339	0.265	0.572	0.245	8.357	1.929	6.750	1.974
		None	0.191	0.195	0.366	0.203	9.286	0.810	8.429	1.168

Note. Participants rated all performances on a Likert-type scale anchored by 1 (poor) and 10 (excellent).

A logarithmic transformation with reflection was performed on these data. These were the values used in the primary data analyses. Because the transformed values were also reflected, the transformed means will indicate opposite directionality when compared to the observed means (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).

These values are the observed (nontransformed) mean ratings. They are simply provided to help improve interpretation of the data.

To answer the first two research questions, we conducted a MANOVA using the solo condition (good or bad) and the accompaniment condition (good, bad, or none) as within-subjects factors and presentation order as a between-subjects factor. The two dependent variables were participants’ accuracy and expressivity ratings. Results indicated a significant main effect for solo condition, Pillai’s trace = .917, F(2, 55) = 302.879, p < .001, η²_p = .917, as well as the following interaction effects: Accompaniment × Order, Pillai’s trace = .229, F(4, 222) = 7.724, p < .001, η²_p = .122, and Solo × Accompaniment × Order, Pillai’s trace = .185, F(4, 222) = 5.931, p < .001, η²_p = .097. There were no other significant main effects or interaction effects.

Follow-up univariate analysis of variances (with a Bonferroni correction) indicated that these same significant effects were observed with both the accuracy and expressivity variables. For accuracy, significant effects included a main effect for Solo, F(1, 56) = 609.556, p < .001, η²_p = .916; an Accompaniment × Order interaction, F(2, 112) = 8.306, p < .001, η²_p = .129; and a Solo × Accompaniment × Order interaction, F(2, 112) = 5.578, p = .005, η²_p = .091. Similarly, significant effects for expressivity included a main effect for Solo, F(1, 56) = 254.244, p < .001, η²_p = .819; an Accompaniment × Order interaction, F(2, 112) = 16.648, p < .001, η²_p = .229; and a Solo × Accompaniment × Order interaction, F(2, 112) = 12.220, p < .001, η²_p = .179.

We conducted subsequent post hoc tests (with Bonferroni-adjusted p values) to determine the source of the significant effect for the highest order interaction (Solo × Accompaniment × Order). We found no significant differences in participants’ accuracy ratings between conditions in the first order. There were, however, significant differences in participants’ accuracy ratings in the second order between the GS/GA and the GS/BA conditions and between the GS/NA and the GS/BA conditions. With regard to their expressivity ratings, significant differences were found in both orders. In the first order, significant differences were only found in participants’ expressivity ratings between the GS/BA and GS/NA conditions. In the second order, participants’ expressivity ratings demonstrated significant differences between the BS/GA and BS/BA conditions, between the GS/GA and GS/BA conditions, and between the GS/NA and GS/BA conditions. Means and standard deviations for all conditions are displayed in Table 2.

In response to “Do you feel like your evaluations of the soloist were influenced by the pianist?” 42 participants (72.4%) indicated no, whereas 16 participants (27.6%) indicated yes. For the follow-up question, “Why?” we employed a three-part qualitative procedure for analyzing participants’ answers by (a) assigning codes, (b) combining codes into themes, and (c) displaying the data (Creswell, 2007). To establish reliability, the first author examined all the participants’ comments; the second author independently examined 25% of those comments. Reliability was calculated by dividing the number of agreements by agreements plus disagreements (multiplied by 100 to express it as a percentage), resulting in an acceptable interrater reliability of 78.37% (Cohen, 1988). Themes and frequency of comments associated with Question 2 are displayed in Table 3.

Table 3.

Categorization of Participants’ Responses to “Do You Feel Like Your Evaluations of the Soloist Were Influenced by the Pianist? Why or Why Not?”

Responses	If Responding “Yes”		If Responding “No”		Overall Total
Responses	n	%	n	%	%
Focused solely on the soloist	0	0.00	16	27.11	27.11
Followed instructions	0	0.00	14	23.72	23.72
Need to separate judgments of piano and accompaniment when evaluating	3	5.09	7	11.86	16.95
Poor accompaniment detracted from solo trumpet	10	16.95	0	0.00	16.95
Attempted not to be influenced	0	0.00	4	6.79	6.79
Too difficult to separate	3	5.09	0	0.00	5.09
Good accompaniment enhanced trumpet performance	2	3.39	0	0.00	3.39
Total	18	30.52	41	69.48	100

Note. Because some participants provided multiple reasons, the number of responses exceeds the total number of participants.

Of the 59 total comments, 41 (69.48%) were written after participants responded no to the question, “Do you feel like your evaluations of the soloist were influenced by the pianist?” Of those comments, the largest number of participants indicated that they were focused solely on the soloist (n = 16, 27.11%) or had followed instructions (n = 14, 23.72%). Examples of these comments included “I made it a point to try to block the piano and focus solely on the trumpet. But, it definitely was hard!”; “It was tough to listen to the poor pianist, however, I do my best to read all the instructions and they clearly stated to base our opinions on the soloist, not the pianist”; and “I wasn’t asked to evaluate the accompanist so I didn’t pay attention to him/her.” There were fewer comments (n = 18, 30.52%) given by those participants who indicated that their evaluations were influenced by the pianist. A majority of those participants’ comments (n = 10) were related to their belief that poor accompaniment detracted from the solo trumpet performance. Two examples of these comments included “the bad piano performances made it impossible to listen intently to the soloist” and “the poor pianists really hurt the overall impression of a performance.” Participants’ comments (by frequency and percentage) appear in Table 3.

Discussion

Our in-service band director participants’ accuracy and expressivity ratings indicated their ability to discriminate easily between the good and bad solo performances (i.e., with margins from 3 to 6 points for each variable between good and bad conditions), an unsurprising finding that is consonant with results found in our previous study in which college musicians served as evaluators (Springer & Silvey, 2018). One interesting difference emerged in our current investigation that was not found in the previous one—the absence of a main effect for accompaniment condition. As evidenced by the reported effect sizes, this variable had a weak and nonsignificant effect (p = .170, η²_p = .028) on our participants’ ratings compared to the effect of solo condition (p < .001, η²_p = .917). (It should be noted, however, that we did find a significant Solo × Accompaniment × Order interaction, signifying that participants’ ratings were not independent of any of the three variables, but the effect size for this three-way interaction [η²_p = .097] was notably lower than that of the main effect of solo [η²_p = .917].)

It appears that our in-service band director participants—all of whom reported familiarity with solo and ensemble adjudication procedures and nearly half of whom had served previously as a solo and ensemble adjudicator—were able to separate the performances of soloists and their accompanists more easily than the college musicians in our first study. Because adjudicators are not typically asked to evaluate the accompanist as part of solo performances at evaluative festivals (Pope & Mick, 2015), we speculate that our participants were more able to separate the quality of these combined performances than college musicians without similar evaluative experience. Participants’ written comments after responding no to the question, “Do you feel like your evaluations of the soloist were influenced by the pianist?” bolster this assertion. The majority of these comments related to participants’ sole focus on the soloist or having followed the instructions that were provided. When told explicitly and unambiguously to “evaluate the performance of each soloist in the areas of accuracy and expressivity,” several participants reported doing what was asked of them. In some instances, they even mentioned how difficult it was to discount or ignore a particularly bad accompaniment but wanted to follow instructions precisely.

Even though 72.4% of our participants believed that their solo performance ratings were not influenced by the piano accompaniment, the significant Solo × Accompaniment × Order interaction found in this study indicates that their judgments were not resilient to the effects of accompaniment and presentation order. Although the three-way interaction of solo, accompaniment, and order exerted a relatively minimal effect on performance ratings in this study (η²_p = .097), we recognize that even fractional differences in point scores can result in more profound differences in overall ratings or rankings at solo festivals, contests, and auditions. In the present study, participants’ accuracy ratings of good solo performances were higher when the accompaniment was of good quality or there was no accompaniment at all (as compared to a bad accompaniment), but those results were only found in the second order. No significant differences in accuracy ratings were found in the first order based on accompaniment.

Findings related to participants’ expressivity ratings were more complex. Similar to their accuracy ratings, participants rated good solo performances as significantly more expressive in the second order when they had good accompaniment or no accompaniment at all (as compared to a bad accompaniment condition). They also rated bad solo performances as significantly more expressive in the second order when the accompaniment was good rather than bad. These results are largely consistent with our previous study (Springer & Silvey, 2018). Surprisingly, however, in the first order, participants rated the expressivity of good solo performances higher in the bad accompaniment condition than in the no accompaniment condition. We did not predict that result. In our previous study (Springer & Silvey, 2018), collegiate evaluators rated expressivity of good solo performances significantly lower when the accompaniment was of bad quality, yet participants in the present study who heard the performances in the first order rated them significantly higher. Their unexpectedly higher expressivity rating of that performance may be due to the serial placement of the GS/BA excerpt; the GS/BA performance was the last excerpt evaluated in the first order. Perhaps they rated that excerpt more generously because it was near the end of the experience, after they had heard numerous bad solo performances. They may have also rated the expressivity higher because they may have perceived the good solo performance as even more nuanced and expressive when the accompaniment was poor (although participants in the other order did not follow this trend).

We believe the results of this study and our previous study (Springer & Silvey, 2018) indicate a few salient points about solo and ensemble adjudication processes. First, the process of evaluating solo performances appears to be highly complex, a result of numerous variables and their interactions (with many that remain to be examined in future research). Second, the more experienced in-service band directors in this study (M = 15.3 years of teaching experience) seemed to be more successful at focusing their attention on the solo performance than the collegiate students in the former study. We are careful to avoid making longitudinal implications based on these two independent experiments, but we did find evidence that the evaluators with teaching experience in the current study demonstrated different rating trends than the less experienced evaluators in the previous study. Third, participants in both studies seemed to be influenced by accompaniment and presentation order in limited degrees. These findings indicate that when listeners are given the task of evaluating a soloist’s performance in the presence of additional auditory information (i.e., accompaniment), their solo performance ratings may be swayed slightly based on the performed accompaniment. Those effects of accompaniment may be further influenced by presentation order, however, as noted by the order interaction effects in both studies. We note that presentation order is typically a characteristic of the performance evaluation context (e.g., at juries and solo festivals) in that performances are judged in sequence.

There are practical implications for organizers of solo and ensemble festivals based on the findings of our study. Considering that a majority of our participants (n = 42, 72.4%) indicated that their evaluations were not influenced by the pianist because they focused solely on the soloist or followed instructions, the importance of printed instructions on adjudication forms seems evident. Similar to including captions or boxes that highlight specific musical criteria that should be considered by the adjudicator as part of the evaluation process (e.g., tone, intonation, accuracy), festival organizers may want to consider including written prompts that adjudicators should either focus their ratings exclusively on the soloist or consider the combination of both the soloist and accompanist. Highlighting this concern is that 10 of our participants who responded yes to the question, “Do you feel like your evaluations of the soloist were influenced by the pianist?” indicated that the poor accompaniment detracted from the solo trumpet performance. Although we acknowledge the potential concerns of raising or lowering ratings at solo and ensemble festivals based on the collaborative efforts of a soloist and accompanist, adjudicators should be made aware of whether they should (or should not) factor in the accompaniment to their final ratings. Such a practice also would be helpful in priming adjudicators to think about their own tendencies or biases regarding the role of accompaniment before evaluating the performances.

Aside from simply providing clarity of instructions for adjudicators, we recommend that when possible, festival organizers consider instructing their adjudicators to evaluate the collaborative performance rather than trying to evaluate these two sonic aspects separately. (We recognize that there are circumstances in which soloists are not able to rehearse with pianists in advance. In those circumstances, it would not be beneficial to rate the collaborative performance.) When it is possible for soloists to rehearse with their pianists in advance, we believe that doing so would encourage increased collaborative music-making. Given the collaborative nature of these types of duo performances (Davidson & Broughton, 2016), this practice would improve current adjudication procedures by considering each performer equally influential in the total musical performance, which would “reflect the musical, emotional, and psychological partnership involved in collaborative performance” (Geringer & Sasanfar, 2013, p. 162). Furthermore, it would be more indicative of the multiple roles that the pianist fills in these collaborative contexts, such as co-performer, soloist, coach, accompanist, and collaborator (Roussou, 2013).

Results of this replication-and-extension study should be considered with certain limitations in mind. Our participants rated performances in an audio-only condition to isolate the independent variables of interest (solo and accompaniment), a common characteristic of performance evaluation studies focused on the effects of accompaniment (e.g., Brittin, 2002; Geringer & Madsen, 1998; Geringer & Sasanfar, 2013). The use of an audio-only condition allowed us to remove the influence of competing visual variables, which have been reported to be influential in music performance evaluation studies (summarized by Platz & Kopiez, 2012), yet it limits the generalizability of our findings because live performances usually include both audio and visual information. Additionally, our participants listened to the musical stimuli on their personal devices (computer, tablet, or smartphone with headphones), so there were differences in playback equipment for which we were unable to control.

Certain questions related to the evaluation of solo instrumental performances remain to be answered: Does the type of instruction provided to evaluators affect their performance ratings? For example, would evaluators who were instructed to “evaluate the soloist” rate the performance differently than those who were instructed to “evaluate the accompanist” or “evaluate the collaborative performance of the soloist and accompanist”? In future studies, researchers may consider a between-subjects design in which evaluators are given specific instructions to evaluate one of those performing forces (soloist, accompanist, or collaboration). Those results would provide valuable information for instrumental solo performance adjudication organizers. Other studies may be conducted to determine the degree to which the quality of accompaniment might affect the soloists’ performance “in the moment” while performing. Because Geringer and Sasanfar (2013) reported that the expressivity of the pianist influenced listeners’ perceptions of overall expressivity, those effects could extend to the solo performers themselves, who might play more accurately or expressively in the presence of highly accurate/expressive accompaniment. Given the ubiquity of solo performance evaluations (e.g., at solo and ensemble festivals, collegiate juries, and auditions), future research is needed to understand and improve on the adjudication of instrumentalists in these performance settings.

Supplemental Material

DS_10.1177_0022429419878148 – Supplemental material for The Role of Accompaniment Quality in Band Directors’ Evaluations of Solo Instrumental Performance

Supplemental material, DS_10.1177_0022429419878148 for The Role of Accompaniment Quality in Band Directors’ Evaluations of Solo Instrumental Performance by Brian A. Silvey and D. Gregory Springer in Journal of Research in Music Education

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

D. Gregory Springer

Supplemental Material

Appendix A is available in the online version of the article at

Author Biographies

Brian A. Silvey is an associate professor of music education and director of bands at the University of Missouri. His research interests include conducting pedagogy, instrumental music teacher preparation, and music performance evaluation.

D. Gregory Springer is an assistant professor of music education at Florida State University. His research interests include music perception, music performance evaluation, and music teacher education.

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