Effects of Selected Variables on Musicians’ Ratings of High-Level Piano Performances

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether judgments of solo performances recorded at a well-known international piano competition would be affected by musical characteristics such as style (classic period versus early 20th-century Russian) and tempo (slow versus fast). Evaluators rated performances on six test items: tone quality, note accuracy, rhythmic accuracy, expressiveness, adherence to style and overall impression. The effects of four between-subjects variables were examined: audio versus audiovisual presentation, undergraduate versus graduate/faculty, gender, and pianists versus non-pianists. Results from the 227 evaluators revealed main effects for treatment, style and major: audiovisual presentations were rated higher than audio only presentations, performances of Russian music were rated higher than performances of classic music, and pianists rated performances higher than did non-pianists. The treatment effect was due to a significant treatment by major interaction, and applied only to non-pianists. Gender was involved in a number of three- and four-way interactions that are difficult to interpret. Pearson r correlations were calculated for ratings of the 16 performances on the overall impression test item. The mean correlation for the 120 pairs of ratings was .33 – low but statistically significant. Intraclass correlations revealed no significant differences between the two levels of all four between-subjects variables.