Musical and social communication in expert orchestral performance

Abstract

Research on orchestral musicians has predominantly used survey methods to measure stress and/or work satisfaction; studies have seldom used in-depth interviews to ask orchestral musicians to reflect on their own practice and have neglected to elicit musicians’ perceptions of the processes involved in expert orchestral performance. Using semi-structured interviews, this research aimed to investigate 20 musicians’ experiences of working in a major London orchestra, focusing in particular on the skills and qualities they feel are required, and on how they negotiate challenges and sustain their careers. The interviews were analysed thematically using a grounded theory approach. The sample emphasized a set of skills which they considered vital for achieving excellence in the orchestral context, encompassing listening to, communicating with, and adapting to those around them at all times during rehearsal and performance. Strong social and interpersonal skills were also cited as important for orchestral work, with participants stressing the significance of maintaining good social relationships with colleagues in order to foster a conducive environment to achieving excellence on stage. These findings are considered in light of their potential implications for conservatoire training and their contribution to research on co-performer communication and collaboration.

Keywords

cooperation communication conservatoire training interpersonal skills listening orchestral musicians

Symphony orchestras – and the performances, recordings and community or educational projects they produce – are one of the most iconic features of the classical music sphere today, with professional orchestras in the UK performing over 3,700 concerts in 2011 (Association of British Orchestras, 2011). However, the past decade has seen a state of change in the activities and business models of orchestras (Cottrell, 2003; Radbourne, 2007; Tepavac, 2010), and although orchestras remain an important source of employment for classical musicians, a recent survey of UK musicians who completed their postgraduate studies between 2004 and 2012 found that ‘a number . . . noted serious worries about their orchestral work in particular, with pay cuts at major orchestras, recruitment freezes and the threat of redundancy’ (Musicians Benevolent Fund, 2012, p. 7). Relatively little research investigates and documents the skills and qualities required by 21st-century orchestral musicians. It is therefore difficult to properly assess the degree to which music training institutions are equipping their students with relevant and adequate skills (cf. Gembris & Langner, 2006, p. 142), not least if they are to find orchestral work in an increasingly competitive market.

There are two main channels providing information about the personal qualities and musical and professional skills required by orchestral performers: first, from research into symphony orchestras and the working lives of their musicians; and, second, from research focusing on the nature and efficacy of musicians’ transitions from higher music education into the music profession. Much of the former research has been conducted within organizational or work psychology, and has predominantly used survey methods to measure, for example, stress and/or work satisfaction amongst professional orchestral musicians (e.g., Allmendinger, Hackman, & Lehman, 1996; Mogelof & Rohrer, 2005; Olbertz, 2006; Parasuraman & Purohit, 2000; Piperek, 1981; Steptoe, 1989). The findings of these studies have indicated a tension for musicians who are highly trained by the conservatoire education system not only as ‘technicians’ but also as ‘interpreters,’ who then must – in the orchestral context – largely put aside their own interpretative ideas to fit in within a section and to give precedence to a conductor’s artistic vision (Gillinson & Vaughan, 2003).

Brodsky (2006) interviewed, on multiple occasions, 54 British musicians from a number of different orchestras. His research creates a picture of the gains, risks and costs of, first, music performance as a career (including pleasure from working within a large group of like-minded people, and the negative consequences of a working pattern which requires much time away from home); and, second, the experience of performing on stage (including the buzz of performing and the long-term effects of performance anxiety and/or stress). The study highlighted a number of important issues relating to the working lives of musicians, finding that a love of music and of working in collaboration with others are primary motivations for embarking on – and staying in – an orchestral career.

However, Brodsky’s work and other studies still provide little information about musicians’ perceptions of the processes involved in expert orchestral performance; that is, their reflections on their own artistic practice and their observations on the skills and approaches required for their work. There is growing evidence that professional musicians require a range of skills (musical and extra-musical) in order to successfully negotiate the transition from higher education to the music profession, with calls for conservatoire training to become better aligned with the demands imposed by professional work. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of interpersonal and communication skills (e.g., Creech et al., 2008; MacNamara, Holmes, & Collins, 2008), and have noted that it is relatively rare for ‘formal training to address the social skills that facilitate collaborations between musicians’ (Lehmann, Sloboda, & Woody, 2007, p. 180).

Channing (2003) describes a shift in orchestral training within conservatoires since the late 1980s, from students being required to ‘pick up certain skills by osmosis’ outside of their principal study lessons (p. 180) to a more systematized approach which might now encompass repertoire orchestra rehearsals (where the sole purpose of the rehearsal is to ‘read through’ a selected work, with no intention of a subsequent performance); orchestral performances produced from short, intensive rehearsal periods; and high-profile conservatoire orchestra concerts, prepared over a period of weeks and often conducted by a visiting, well-known conductor. Students may also compete for programmes which link conservatoires with orchestras, providing opportunities to participate in professional orchestral rehearsals and performances. Drawing on interviews with orchestral musicians and students from two such programmes, Hager and Johnsson (2009) argue that the point of transition into professional work often sees a ‘clash’ between a competitive attitude cultivated by conservatoire training (often placing emphasis on technical accomplishments) and the collaborative attitude needed for success in on-going professional orchestral work (see also Davis, 2004). They emphasize the value of tacit, practice-based learning within the work context, allowing students to develop the ‘craft’ of being an orchestral musician through the development of musical skills (such as contextualizing orchestral excerpts they may have already prepared, or learning to adjust tuning quickly within a section), and through enabling the assimilation of rehearsal/performance etiquette. Indeed, the importance of practice-based learning is not isolated to the orchestral context; Becker, for instance, identifies unspoken codes of etiquette relating to improvisation among jazz musicians, and describes how the only way to learn these codes was by ‘quietly observing, as youngsters, what older players did, and noting what happened when someone (usually a novice or some other unsocialized type) failed to obey those rules’ (2000, p. 172).

This form of tacit knowledge is one of the ten conditions that Sawyer (2007, p. 43) identifies as contributing to ‘group flow,’ defined as a collective ‘peak experience, a group performing at its top level of ability.’ These conditions provide a strikingly useful framework for considering the processes involved in expert orchestral performance. They comprise: the presence of a shared goal; close and responsive listening; complete concentration; being in control yet remaining flexible; the blending of egos through listening and reacting; equal participation; familiarity with the tacit rules of a given context; constant communication; improvising solutions to ‘move things forward;’ and the potential for failure or risk (Sawyer, 2007). Sawyer’s theory indicates a need for colleagues to maintain good working relationships, through which open channels of communication can facilitate the responsiveness and adaptation required for innovative progress.

Studies of co-performer communication in Western classical music have begun to consider the interpersonal dimensions involved in rehearsal and performance: as Goodman (2002, p. 163) notes, ‘ensemble performance is about teamwork […] Half the battle of making music together (and ultimately staying together as an ensemble) is fought on social grounds.’ Studies of group processes in professional string quartets (Blum, 1986; Murnighan & Conlon, 1991; Young & Colman, 1979) have pointed to the interconnections between effective social relationships among performers and their abilities to successfully collaborate musically. However, research on similar processes in jazz (e.g., Monson, 1996) paints a more complicated picture, with accounts of a sense of underlying musical trust and cooperation between musicians taking precedence over their purely social compatibility. Similarly, Moran’s (2013) study of co-performer communication in North Indian classical music demonstrates that effective and meaningful performances in this context are highly dependent on musicians showing an awareness of others (including both co-performers and the audience): ‘musicians who do not get on socially can find affinity during co-performance, and the reverse can also be true’ (p. 11).

Preliminary evidence suggests that the musical and social communication skills required within a symphony orchestra ensemble are co-dependent; Marotto, Roos and Victor (2007) found that group peak performance was dependent on positive interactions and task engagement between group members. Johnsson and Hager (2008) note how learning to work with colleagues – in both social and musical realms – was a key means of ‘becoming a professional’ for recent performance graduates who participated in a professional orchestra’s training programmes. Music graduates participating in German research felt they had not been trained sufficiently in ensemble playing/listening skills or the ability to integrate into an orchestra (Gembris & Langner, 2006), echoing Hager and Johnsson’s (2009, p. 112) conclusion that ‘a Music School [conservatoire] education alone is unable to produce fully-fledged professional orchestral musicians.’

This review has indicated that ensemble practices rely on collaborative and communicative skills, many of which are tacit and embodied. These skills are increasingly important for the conservatoire sector to understand if it is to provide aspiring students with appropriate expectations and competencies for the profession they hope to join. In the present study we draw from a larger project which elicited data from in-depth interviews with members of a UK symphony orchestra. The larger project aimed to build a composite picture of musicians’ routes into, motivations towards, and strategies for staying in, an orchestral career. This article focuses on one question from the larger study: What skills and qualities do orchestral musicians consider to be essential for their work?

Method

Participants

Twenty performers from a major, self-governing symphony orchestra in London agreed to participate in interviews. The orchestra had a membership of 96; the sample therefore comprised just over a fifth of the ensemble. The orchestra’s community and education department acted as intermediaries in the logistics of organizing interviews with a cross-section of the orchestra, using their knowledge of the orchestra’s schedule to approach potential participants and to secure interviews at mutually convenient times. The participants were paid for taking part in an interview at their standard rate of remuneration for education work.

The participants’ ages ranged from 27 to 60 years; years of membership in the orchestra ranged from 5 to 35 years. The full spectrum of instrumental groups was represented, with five participants from the upper strings, five from the lower strings, three woodwind players, and seven from the brass, percussion and harp sections. Overall, 13 participants were male and seven were female. This ratio (65:35) was close to representative of the membership of the orchestra during the period when the interviews were undertaken in 2010–2011, where 71% of players were male and 29% were female. Players from a range of positions were recruited, with nine occupying principal or co-principal positions, and 11 occupying non-principal (or, in the case of string players, rank and file) roles.

Data collection and analysis

Both authors conducted interviews for the project; the interviews all involved one researcher and one participant, and each participant was interviewed only once, using the interview schedule provided in the appendix. The second author, who conducted 13 of the interviews, has a long association with the orchestra, and was already known to some of the participants; the first author was previously known to none. The first five interviews (conducted by the second author) were initially treated as a pilot set of data and the transcripts were read and reviewed by both authors before further interviews took place; no changes to the interview schedule were made following this period of review. The first author studied these transcripts so that, as far as possible, a similar interviewing style to the second author could be employed – particularly in relation to the use of the interview schedule’s prompt questions. It is possible that the differences in status between the two authors may have affected the participants’ responses. However, it is difficult to provide generalizations for the nature of these effects. For instance, some participants may have felt more comfortable talking with the second author because of a feeling of shared experience prompted by their knowledge of her history with the orchestra; others, however, may have preferred the relative feeling of anonymity engendered by an interview with a researcher whom they previously did not know.

The authors’ home institution has a growing association with the symphony orchestra; the research was conducted within a collaborative programme between the institution and the orchestra which aims to promote orchestral training opportunities for advanced conservatoire students. The study was approached primarily as a self-contained piece of scholarly research; once completed, there was a mutual understanding between the authors and the orchestra that the study’s findings may hold potential to inform the development of practice and policy within both the orchestral workplace and higher music education, and especially through the orchestral training programme which the orchestra and the authors’ home institution jointly run. The orchestra approved the interview schedule and assisted in organizing the interviews, but had no other involvement in the research process. Once the analysis was complete, anonymized summaries of the findings were made available to the participants and the orchestra’s management, who considered their implications for future development within the organization.

Before the interviews, the participants were sent a description of the study and an outline of the interview topics. The interviews all took place in meeting rooms either at the authors’ home institution, or at the arts centre in which the orchestra is resident. At the beginning of each interview, the participants were asked to read an extended outline of the study (which specified that all interview data would be treated confidentially and anonymously) before signing a consent form which stated that they were free to leave the research at any time without compromising their professional position. The participants are treated anonymously in the findings which follow, and have each been assigned a number from one to 20 from which they are identified.

The participants were told in advance to expect the interviews to take up to an hour. The majority lasted between 40 minutes and 1 hour; the shortest interview was 30 minutes and the longest 80 minutes. The interviewing approach was semi-structured; the interview schedule comprised eight main questions which each led on to further discussion as appropriate. Every participant was asked each of the main questions, but a semi-structured approach was taken by allowing for the question order to vary in accordance with the flow of the conversation, and through following up on each of the set topics to a greater or lesser degree depending on each participant’s experiences and interests. The sets of interviews conducted by each author spanned a range of lengths; we attribute the variability between the lengths of the interviews to the participants’ individual differences and responses to the interview situation. The interviews started by asking the participants to describe their motivations for becoming an orchestral musician, and to identify any key influences or experiences that they felt had been important in their transition to an orchestral career. They were asked to describe the skills and qualities required for orchestral work, and then to identify what helps them to sustain their careers now. The participants were next asked about their awareness of, and their relationships to, their various audiences (including their home audiences, audiences when on tour, and audiences/participants in education/community projects). The final questions addressed aspects of their work the participants enjoy and find most challenging, before focusing on their hopes and aspirations for the remainder of their careers.

The interviews were audio recorded using an MP3 recorder, and were then transcribed.¹ Each participant was sent their full transcript for approval and given the opportunity to make clarifications, additions or deletions. Although few participants took the opportunity to make amendments at this stage, this process was deemed important given that anonymized summaries of the data analysis had been promised to the orchestra’s community and education department. The final set of approved transcripts was read repeatedly and then coded thematically using a grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Through a process of thematic coding, this method of analysis uses the participants’ responses to generate theory, rather than testing preconceived ideas deductively. Grounded theory analysis follows three stages of coding: open, axial and selective. Open coding involves labelling the data with descriptive, and then interpretative or analytic, categories (Willig, 2008). Through a process of constant comparison between categories and subcategories, axial coding is concerned with refining existing categories and testing out ways in which the categories may interact (Seele, 1999). Emerging from the process of axial coding comes selective coding, where a core category is determined as a ‘central phenomenon around which the categories arising from axial coding are integrated’ (Robson, 2002, p. 495).

In the present study, each transcript was subjected to open coding sentence-by-sentence, using NVivo software as a tool for marking up the transcripts and for providing a visual representation of the coding structure. The coding process was iterative; interviews analysed early in the process were later revisited, so that, where appropriate, material could be recoded using more effective categories which had subsequently been created. After this first level of coding was complete, data coded under each category were read through repeatedly and annotated, organizing groups of subcategories and noting interactions between categories. In particular, attention was paid to drawing out the similarities and differences between responses. A hierarchical structure of categories and subcategories emerging from the data was devised; these were then analysed for further relationships between categories and for the creation of higher-order concepts (axial coding). Relating to this article, open and axial coding produced a structure of higher-level categories relating to the perceived skills and qualities required for orchestral work (see Figure 1). The process of selective coding identified the areas of musical and social communication as the core categories of interest. A further aim of grounded theory is also that it is capable of ‘developing categories into more general analytic frameworks with relevance outside the setting’ (Silverman, 2005, p. 179). In the Conclusions and implications section, we offer some initial insights into the potential theoretical applications of our findings for non-musical settings.

Figure 1.

The most frequently-cited skills or qualities required for professional orchestral work.

Results and discussion

Each participant was asked to reflect on the key skills and personal qualities that they felt were essential for working in a high-level professional orchestra. A broad range of skills and qualities was identified, including organizational skills (e.g., preparation and planning), common sense, a positive approach, and love of music generally and of symphonic repertoire specifically. Figure 1 shows the nine most frequently-cited skills or qualities given in response to this question; each of these were mentioned by more than half of the sample. The three most frequently-cited of these skills and qualities – musical ‘radar’ (defined below), interpersonal and social skills, and working within a team – together indicate an importance of communication, responsiveness and adaptability within orchestral work.

‘RADAR’: Musical communication and adaptability

An extremely prominent theme relating to the skills and qualities required for high-level orchestral work was a set of skills we have termed ‘radar.’ Three-quarters of the participants discussed this skill-set, with many promoting it as the most important repertoire of skills required for achieving excellence in the orchestral context. As a concept emerging from the data, radar encompassed listening to, communicating with, and adapting to other members of the ensemble at all times during rehearsal and performance. Operating in an environment where high technical facility was assumed as a basic requirement, a key attribute of radar was the ability to split one’s focus: rather than simply playing their part, the performer is always informed by listening and then adapting to the multitude of approaches that may be taken by colleagues within the ensemble:

… no matter how good you are at playing yourself, you have to be playing in tune and in time and in the same way as your colleagues. So it’s really, really important to be listening the whole time to everyone else and responding to what everyone else does. And that … leads on to the next thing, which is adaptability, because when you’re playing with a hundred other people you’re not always going to be agreeing with absolutely everything, on the first play through certainly. And so you have to be able to adapt what you think is the way of playing something, in order to fit with everyone else. [Participant 16]

Linguistically, the participants frequently described this set of skills collectively as their ‘radar,’ ‘antenna’ or ‘aerial.’ This skill-set operates both within their instrumental sections – especially through ‘blending’ with immediate colleagues – and then further out across the orchestra, matching timing, pitch, and phrasing through a ‘constant dialogue between sections’ [Participant 6]:

the main thing is using your ears and having your aerial, your antenna be so finely honed, to realize that you’re almost never playing just by yourself. There’s always someone breathing with you and someone phrasing with you and someone to play in tune with, someone to blend with. [Participant 12]

In the context of a large ensemble made up of many smaller sections and sub-sections, an individual player may need to make momentary decisions about where and how to place their notes in relation to other players. For those with non-principal roles, this process involved an extra stage of negotiation between the sometimes conflicting demands of following one’s principal and aligning with the remainder of the orchestra:

[Being] a second player in many ways is more difficult than [being] a principal player. As a principal […] your channels of communication are not as complicated somehow, because […] you probably communicate via the conductor and the string leaders, whereas I have to communicate via these channels, but then also with an extra chain in it via the principal bassoon. [Participant 19]

… even if you’re with the conductor and with the cellos or whatever, … even if I’m right to all intents and purposes as far as the score is concerned […] I’m wrong because I’m not with the first horn. [Participant 8]

There is, therefore, more to the demands of orchestral performance than simply relinquishing one’s interpretative control to a conductor (Mogelof & Rohrer, 2005; Parasuraman & Purohit, 2000), with non-principal players prioritizing cohesiveness within their sections over their own artistic instincts or ideas. An individual’s own actions in performance may be formed as a result of adapting and synchronizing to any number of their colleagues, forming a rapid chain of action and reaction within a complex web of allegiances and hierarchies, of which the conductor’s directions may only form a small part. For example, Participant 8 described the process of gradually realizing, over her time as a member of the orchestra, the importance of the unspoken forms of judgement, negotiation and adaptation that may occur in anticipation of a single note or phrase:

… in theory, all the things would line up, and they don’t always. And it’s knowing who to go with. Or it’s realizing who isn’t going to move, either because it’s a piccolo [sitting] on the top of whatever, and she’s going to be there so we have to do this, or because it’s a guest player or something and they’re probably not aware. […] certainly the people that I really respect, I am aware of them all going ‘right we’re just going to have to adjust now’. […] Listeners wouldn’t be aware … or like the trombones, if they’re not playing, they wouldn’t be aware. But they would hopefully just be aware of ‘oh […] that’s really well in tune, that’s nice.’ [Participant 8]

This account situates radar as a collective, conscious process that arguably develops in subtlety as the familiarity between members of an ensemble increases over time, with the section forming a group consensus about when – and how – to adapt. Participant 8 depicted this development as an internal process which is imperceptible to those on the ‘outside’, involving collective action in order to align with prominent parts within the ensemble for the greater good of the performance. In this sense, an individual’s actions may be swayed as much by the idiosyncrasies of a guest player as by the directions of the conductor, in a working context where ‘speed is of the essence in terms of knowing your part and assimilating what’s going on around you’ [Participant 15] and good performances rely on an ‘amazing connection between the players that just seems to make things happen really fast’ [Participant 15].

Importantly, some participants noted that it was not uncommon for professional musicians to lack the skills encompassed by radar. One string player described ‘the amount of times that fantastic players do wonderful, wonderful auditions and you put them in a section and they cannot count four. They cannot play with anybody else. They’re completely unaware’ [Participant 4]. It is likely for this reason that, while an outstanding technique was viewed as a prerequisite for expert orchestral performance, the participants devoted relatively little time to discussing this part of their skill-set. As Participant 4 suggests, many performers possess the purely technical skills required for orchestral playing, but relatively few demonstrate these skills in addition to the ability and inclination to listen, communicate and respond within the orchestral setting. Indeed, even within the context of the high-calibre orchestra from which this study’s participants were drawn, the sample’s youngest participant described being ‘just amazed by how many people can play all the notes brilliantly and are complete cloth ears. […] They’ll hear one instrument playing one rhythm, and they’ll just go “that must be this and I’m going to lock into it”, to the exclusion of everything else around it. And I’m sat there going “it doesn’t fit with anything”. Because they’ve misjudged it’ [Participant 8].

If not all (otherwise highly-qualified) performers possess these skills, then how and where do performers develop them? Only a small number of the participants explicitly described a process of acquiring the skills encompassed by radar, and none mentioned the role of their tertiary musical training. Of this small sub-set, most described learning what to listen for and how to adapt by experience, often in a post-conservatoire training orchestra or a first orchestral job. One described developing radar since joining the present ensemble, aided by feedback from colleagues; her career until this point had mostly comprised chamber music performance, and conservatoire training had not instilled the specific listening skills required in the orchestral ensemble:

Participant 18: when I first came in I found it incredibly confusing. In fact, quite often I just didn’t listen at all because I didn’t know what I should be hearing or should I be following the conductor, or … all those things are really important to know.

I: OK. So how have you kind of made sense of that?

Participant 18: Just listening to other players and … I think experience is key in learning it. […] Occasionally, a colleague will tap you on the shoulder and whisper something in your ear. That certainly happened to me on trial, which was very helpful.

This quotation serves to highlight a tension between the orchestra’s trial system (in which, following an audition process a small number of shortlisted candidates undertake work with the orchestra, often for years rather than months, until the decision to appoint one candidate is reached; see Gillinson & Vaughan, 2003) and how radar can be acquired: the implication of many participants’ accounts is that radar occurs at a higher quality and speed in a professional orchestra than anywhere that a young player may have previously experienced. Some participants expressed the view that these skills can only be fully learnt in a professional orchestra; yet, without these skills, one may not remain on trial for long enough to develop them.

It is important to consider that the possible emphasis the participants placed on radar may relate in part to their particular orchestral working culture and ethos. Working within a self-governing, British orchestra may have meant that the skills encompassed by radar took on more prominence in this ensemble than in orchestras which adopt different organizational and funding structures, and/or which are based in countries other than the UK (see Cottrell, 2003, 2004). This can be demonstrated through briefly considering two aspects of the participants’ working culture prominent in their accounts: the pace of work, and the importance of ‘risk-taking’ to their orchestral identity. Relentless schedules and an extremely fast pace of work were some of the most significant challenges the participants identified. The pace of work was perceived to be higher in British orchestras than in orchestras elsewhere, with less rehearsal time per programme and more intensive scheduling. Many participants indicated that the conservatoire curriculum did not adequately develop the full skill-set that students would need in professional orchestral life, particularly in relation to working at the required pace:

I sometimes wonder whether we do [in conservatoires] actually replicate our true working environment. I think in a way the in-depth tutoring replicates more how they work on the continent, because they have a much slower pace of learning repertoire over there, and they really can get to the nitty gritty. It has its place, because you should learn how to play the repertoire properly before you get into the orchestra. But also in the same vein, we don’t have that luxury of rehearsal time in this country. And so sometimes you’ll hear the complaint being, ‘well, yes they’re a really good player, but they’re just not quick enough to work with us’. [Participant 2]

It is easy to see how radar emerges as a vital skill-set in this context, where rehearsal time is at a high premium. Therefore, being aware and adaptable without verbal prompting is highly valued, and indeed is presented as necessary for professional survival.

Relating to the orchestra’s ethos, the pursuit of excellence was the most commonly coded sub-theme. The second – and associated – most prevalent sub-theme was a culture of risk-taking, which was perceived to feed into the production of engaging, high-quality performances: one participant described the orchestra as ‘different, in that it takes risks […] everyone is taking a risk because music is all the better for these extremes’ [Participant 7]. This orchestral culture of aiming for excellence and pushing for new interpretations in performance provides another explanation for the importance placed on the radar skill-set: without it, performers could not feel free to take risks in the knowledge that their colleagues will be listening and responding to their actions – whether or not the risks turn out to ‘pay off.’ For example, radar was seen as a vital component for achieving satisfying and high-quality orchestral section playing, acting as a mechanism for facilitating spontaneity of musical expression at a collective level:

one of the skills you develop is awareness of very small movements and changes all around you, […] you need to be able to notice those things in order to adapt what you do. If the tempo from the whole group is minutely different, you’d have to notice that right away, and also do something about it, and try and fit it together again, and really, really good orchestras are really good at doing that, and bad ones don’t seem to either notice or care. […] If as a string player everyone is playing [in] the same part of the bow and going for the same type of sound, the result that comes out is going to be really interesting. If everybody is doing slightly different things, then it won’t be terrible, but it just won’t be as interesting. [Participant 11]

Additionally, the more experienced participants described how the demands of exhibiting radar sustained their motivation and interest when playing repertoire they had performed with the orchestra many times before, through the need to ‘keep an eye out, an ear open for everything that’s going on around you. You can’t relax at all really, because every performance is different’ [Participant 5]. With this perception that a player’s own contribution to the ensemble can always be improved, radar was valued in relation to the importance the players placed on accepting and enjoying their own role within the ensemble (a skill which the majority of participants identified as important for orchestral work). Using the skills encompassed by radar to good effect was seen as one of the primary means of doing one’s job well and contributing to the production of excellent, responsive performances.

Social awareness and interpersonal skills

The majority of the participants (17 of 20) identified social or interpersonal skills when asked about the skills and qualities required for orchestral work. Some discussed these in general terms, stressing the importance of ‘being able to get on with people’ [18], while others identified a range of different qualities, including a sense of humour, humility, and a ‘good’ or ‘positive’ attitude. Four participants (three of whom were section principals, the fourth a member of the orchestra’s board of directors) identified diplomacy as an important skill; and a significant number (8) discussed the importance of tact, or social awareness, when interacting with their colleagues. As Table 1 illustrates, it emerged from the analysis process that sensitivity and an awareness of one’s own actions were related to a sub-theme conceptualizing the interdependence of musical and social awareness. An associated theme of diplomacy and adaptability was also identified, a sub-theme of which was the ability to ‘fit in’ to the ensemble, while simultaneously retaining and (when appropriate) asserting one’s identity.

Table 1.

Social awareness and interpersonal skills, and their effects on group performance.

Sub-theme	Sample quote
Sensitivity; awareness of own actions	Some people don’t want to hear you practise backstage. Some people are funny about it. . . . when you come out of college you assume that everyone is bright and keen and desperate to listen to your amazing warm up that you’ve spent four years perfecting, and they don’t want to. They’re not interested. They just want you to do a good job on stage, so you actually have to almost learn how to be quite discreet about it. I suppose that’s another social awareness thing as well. [Participant 2]
Diplomacy and adaptability	You have to be able to negotiate. . . . talking from the point of being in an orchestra, not necessarily being a musician in an orchestra, I mean being part of a group. [. . .] You talk to people in other orchestras and you realize that being in an orchestra like [this orchestra], orchestral musicians have very strong opinions, but orchestral musicians in [this orchestra] have particularly strong opinions. And they all want them to be listened to. So you have to accept that, you know, other people are going to have very differing opinions to you, almost always there will be somebody who has the opposite opinion to you, and it’s a matter of finding a way of coping with that and seeing how to make a way forward through that. [Participant 3]
Interdependence of musical and social awareness	To be a second player . . . you have to sort of be able to read somebody’s mind, to a certain extent, and also be supportive, because the principal players get under a different kind of stress, and you want to make them feel comfortable. So even if I get nervous about something, I sort of can’t really show that all that much. I think that’s one of the great things about [this orchestra] – it [nervousness] never becomes a selfish thing, it much more becomes a focus. Because if you become nervous in a very selfish way, it can actually affect people around you incredibly. It can really drag the experience down. [Participant 19]
Fitting in yet retaining identity	I think when I first went into the profession it was very much a case of ‘oh I have to get it right’. And so I adapted that way. Because in a way, the trial process is quite . . . there are different ways of approaching it. There is like you said, the way of saying ‘right I am here, this is me’. Or there’s . . . what I was when I first joined the profession which was ‘I’m going to fit in, I am going to make it all fit in’. And I think you need both really, to be honest. If you’re one rather than the other I don’t think it would work really, so that’s part of the adapting as well. [Participant 16]

Just as awareness of others’ musical actions played a key part in radar, an interpersonal awareness of colleagues’ behaviours and possible internal states was also deemed an important quality. Some participants explicitly noted that a sensitive and adaptable approach was necessary in both musical and social interactions within the orchestra:

just being switched on and listening to what’s going on around you and noticing if you’re out of tune or … just being […] generally aware of what’s going on around you. And I suppose that applies to the social side as well, being socially aware as well as musically aware. Because maybe your colleague didn’t sleep well last night or is having trouble at home, and you almost have to become intuitive to those things, so that you don’t put your foot in it, especially if you’re on trial. [Participant 2]

As this quote hints, some participants perceived causal relationships between their extra-musical behaviours and the quality of a performance, particularly by recognizing the pressures their colleagues may be under at given moments during a performance and then moderating their own social and/or musical behaviour accordingly. For example, Participant 19 (quoted in Table 1) described consciously creating a supportive environment when his colleagues have solos to play by suppressing his own signs of nerves. Another woodwind player emphasized how good working relationships between colleagues are a necessary part of working effectively in a collaborative group context:

I think it’s the sense of creating something with a group of other people, that everybody adds their contribution, and the finished result is a joint effort, and the spirit of cooperation and … well, to an extent, comradeship, because you really do need to get on with the people you work with, even if it’s just a sort of working relationship, it doesn’t need to be a deep friendship, but you really need to try and understand people. [Participant 1]

It can be very, very difficult if people don’t really fit into a team. […] Because music is like a language. It’s very intimate in a way. It’s all about communication, so if the communication is difficult or non-existing … I don’t say that you have to be friends with everybody, but in a musical way you have to get on really well. Otherwise it’s very dangerous for a section. [Participant 19]

Good working relationships are portrayed as a gel between players, establishing and opening channels of communication that are required during rehearsal and performance. Successful personal communication was perceived to facilitate musical communication in this context, where the same large group of people plays together as an ensemble for a significant proportion of their working lives. It is possible that greater emphasis is placed on working relationships in this context than in other professions, relating to a team effort for a distinct common goal (the performance) in which the majority of one’s working hours are spent in the direct presence of – and in constant collaboration with – one’s colleagues.

The analysis revealed two related key mechanisms through which good working relationships were engineered and maintained: tact and diplomacy. The topics of tact and sensitivity were raised around a number of different scenarios. Being sensitive to others when warming up or playing backstage was repeatedly mentioned, with a consensus, typified by Participant 2 (quoted in Table 1), that brash or ostentatious warm-up routines are one means of losing favour among colleagues. Participant 15 also described this behaviour in relation to working with the orchestra for the first time: first impressions could be shaped by the way a player behaves in the liminal stages of a rehearsal, especially if their actions do not correlate with their ability to meet expectations in performance.

… don’t neglect the little bits of the job, the lesser bits of the music that you think aren’t going to matter. […] actually somebody coming down the line and just playing three bass drum notes beautifully is going to impress someone at the head of the section far more than someone who comes in before the rehearsal starts, [and] starts whizzing around the xylophone or flying around their Sibelius concerto, because they [the triallists] can all do that. What they can’t do is just sit in a section and fit in and be anonymous almost. [Participant 15]

An antipathy towards virtuosic displays might seem counterintuitive among an orchestra that prides itself on its musical excellence. However, these accounts suggest that virtuosic displays are disparaged because they do not relate to the primary function of the ensemble: to work as a team to achieve a successful performance. In the orchestral context, where sections of musicians all play the same instrument, these acts could easily be interpreted as competitive as opposed to cooperative.

The participants who described the importance of tact and diplomacy also articulated that when working and interacting within a large group good relationships need to be maintained – both within one’s section and between sections. Some described devising their own strategies to maintain a diplomatic approach and to mitigate against the possibility of offending colleagues:

it’s possibly 90 other people on the platform and that’s 90 very different characters and personalities. So you often have to bite your tongue a lot. You do have to be very sensitive often to people, which isn’t always easy. […] you often have to count to ten before you say anything to anybody about anything sometimes. [Participant 4, section string player]

As the quote from Participant 3 in Table 1 indicates, strategies must be employed not only to maintain good relationships with others, but also to reconcile oneself with the need to frequently compromise one’s own artistic ideals for the sake of group cohesion. For example, when asked about receiving criticism, one player described how ‘it’s a problem because it’s a democracy, but yet of course it’s not a democracy’ [Participant 8]. Highlighting the tensions induced by power relationships in the giving and receiving of feedback within the ensemble, this stance makes evident the realities of a working within a complex organism where one hundred people may be simultaneously reliant upon each other. Individual parts may, on a momentary basis, fluctuate in their influence on the group’s overall cohesion; while, on a more permanent basis, some individuals inherently retain greater authority and prominence than others.

The trial system of recruitment in UK orchestras was one particular contributor to the perceived need for performers to exhibit social awareness and an ability to ‘fit in.’ The participants highlighted the increased need for players to demonstrate tact and social awareness when on trial, while simultaneously noting the difficulty of this process for a triallist, who – new to the orchestra and only booked for specific dates – does not have the knowledge and experience of the ensemble and its personnel with which to contextualize others’ behaviour, or with which to moderate their own. Through this process, potential orchestral members are tacitly required to demonstrate their ability to be a ‘team player’ [Participant 18] not only in their musical work, but also in their relationships with colleagues throughout the daily life of the orchestra. As Participant 16’s quote in Table 1 shows, this ability to fit in must also be finely balanced with retaining and asserting the very identity (both musical and social) which may have attracted the orchestra to the candidate in the first place. The extremely high quality of shortlisted candidates means that personality, including the ability to ‘fit in,’ might realistically serve as a deciding factor between two otherwise equal players. As one participant described, ‘the person you choose is going to be the person who blends in with the section best, and whose personality works with the people who are already there’ [Participant 1].

As discussed above relating to radar, this focus on effective working relationships is perhaps elevated in importance because of this orchestra’s particular working context: the relatively intensive schedules of British orchestras – which, in our sample’s case, also included frequent touring – meant that the performers spend more time with each other, often under stressful conditions, than may be the norm for colleagues, further emphasizing the importance of effective interpersonal skills (cf. Gaunt & Dobson, 2013). In this situation, some players described how working and personal relationships become blurred, especially when on tour, where socializing with colleagues replaces the act of spending time with family or friends at home. Triallists are therefore also judged on their abilities to manage working relationships effectively while under stressful circumstances, such as being on tour (Gillinson & Vaughan, 2003, p. 196):

you have to be able to fit in, because it’s not just how someone plays. If you’re very prickly and people don’t really get on with you, they’re not going to want you around, even if you’re a brilliant player. So I think people skills are important as well as your playing skills. [Participant 5]

The data presented in this section therefore indicate that the distinctive work pattern of orchestral musicians – in which a large number of colleagues work collaboratively together on a daily basis, and are often required to achieve a daily objective successfully – fuels the perceived need for adaptability and sensitivity on both musical and social levels. As we have explored, specific aspects of our chosen orchestra’s working context and group culture may mean that these skills have been further privileged in the participants’ accounts, and that musicians from other orchestras may prioritize the skills and qualities required for orchestral work differently.

Conclusions and implications

The prominence of radar and social communication was unexpected, and suggests that further investigation of co-ordination and communication within large-scale musical ensembles is a fruitful avenue to pursue. Existing research on co-performer communication (e.g., Ford & Davidson, 2003; King & Ginsborg, 2011; Weeks, 1996; Williamon & Davidson, 2002) has predominantly examined musical interactions from the outsider’s perspective – through the analysis of gestural cues, or the use of recordings to analyse synchronization in timing between performers – and has consequently placed greater emphasis on the musical, rather than explicitly social, mechanisms of performers’ interactions (cf. Sawyer, 2005, p. 53). The present study has shown the usefulness of gaining accounts from performers themselves about how such processes take place, and demonstrates the value of gaining insights into performers’ intentions in addition to recording and analysing their musical actions. While, for understandable methodological reasons, existing studies on co-performer communication have gathered data from small-scale ensembles, the present work has highlighted complexities of co-performer communication which would not transpire from studies of small-scale chamber ensembles. Further work therefore needs to be conducted on musical and social communication in orchestral playing, investigating how radar occurs in specific instances within this context, and further exploring the multifarious and interdependent modes of communication that operate between individual players, orchestral sections, the ensemble as a whole and the conductor. As highlighted in the Results and discussion section, we recognize that the prominence of radar in our data may relate to particular organizational features of the orchestra used for the research, and indeed that this relationship may function reciprocally.

The findings of this paper add to an emerging body of literature (e.g., Gembris & Langner, 2006; Johnsson & Hager, 2008; Marotto et al., 2007) documenting the mutuality of musical and social skills required for working effectively in the music profession. The present study is among the first to document this interdependence of musical and social skills in the professional orchestral context, and to emphasize the importance of effective social interaction between colleagues outside of the strict confines of rehearsal and performance. Recognizing that these interactions can influence musical communication, and hence the overall musical product, a significant finding of the present study is the importance attributed by players to both a musical and social ‘fit’ between a player and their section. Whilst recruitment decisions in many sectors have the capacity to be swayed by the perceived fit between a potential employee and their future supervisor and/or team (Ostroff & Zhan, 2012), this may be greater in occupations, such as being an orchestral musician, in which colleagues spend the vast majority of their working hours actively engaged in collaborative activity.

This article’s findings relating to musical and social communication suggest that, as a structure of collaborative activity, the workings of a successful orchestra may yield insights into effective cooperation within large groups in other fields. In orchestral research carried out within organizational psychology there has been a tendency to focus on mechanisms of leadership and decision-making, with a particular emphasis on the conductor–orchestra relationship (Boerner & von Streit, 2005; Hunt, Stelluto, & Hooijberg, 2004; Koivunen & Wennes, 2011). However, our findings indicate more complex levels of negotiation and communication within the ensemble than can be represented by a single uni-directional flow of communication from conductor to orchestra: the participants devoted greater attention to outlining the complex skills required for communicating and interacting with colleagues than to those required for following the directions of the conductor. Sennett (2012) stresses the importance of listening as an aspect of cooperation in both musical rehearsals and verbal discussions, and a key finding of this article is the importance of the process of listening and then adapting in musical interactions between players – often through tacit and non-verbal means – and the high complexity and pace at which these processes occur. Further work could build on this research to explore what might be learnt from the professional orchestra as a model of effective cooperation and collaboration; elsewhere, we consider the concept of the orchestra as a community of practice, from material in the dataset not presented here (Gaunt & Dobson, 2013).

Finally, while orchestral studies from work or organizational psychology often focus on performers’ working contexts, motivation and stress factors, they rarely link up with pedagogy to consider how students might be better equipped for the demands made by an orchestral career. The present research indicates that conservatoire training needs to address both musical and social communication in ways which highlight the interconnections between the two, and demonstrates that conservatoire training could do more to prepare students for the complex modes of communication and heightened awareness needed to operate successfully in a professional orchestra. There are a number of implications of these findings for the conservatoire sector which could be explored, including: finding ways to help students to focus on the processes of listening and adapting, while still producing technically accurate performances; exploring further ways of introducing students to and/or replicating the professional orchestral working environment at appropriate stages during their training; re-aligning the conservatoire assessment system to give greater emphasis to assessing individual students’ collaborative skills when working with others in ensemble rehearsals and performances; and educating students about the importance of etiquette to maintaining social cohesion in the orchestral context, while also making clear that behaviour conventions are likely to differ between ensembles. In order to inform the ways that conservatoires attempt to equip students with the communication skills highlighted in this article, we recommend that more detailed retrospective work be undertaken with successful performers to identify how they themselves acquired these skills, and by what means they believe these skills can best be assimilated by today’s generation of aspiring orchestral musicians.

Footnotes

Appendix

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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