Performances of Chopin, Bach, and Bartok: Studies in motor programming

Abstract

Data on piano performance were obtained by recording movements in the piano action and storing the digitized signals in a computer. In this way the performances were examined of different professional pianists playing a Chopin Study, a Bach Fugue, and a Bartok Dance. This article provides a description of some of the phenomena of skilled performance and it examines two problems, one on the nature of motor independence and the other on the mechanisms of movement timing. The discussion is couched within the framework of a theory of motor programming. This supposes that the motor program generates and maintains two representations of output, an abstract homomorphism that specifies the syntax of movements together with a set of expressive features, and an array of motor commands that give the explicit targets of movement. The hierarchic construction of these representations provides a nesting of streams of information under superordinate codes, which enables movement independence. An internal clock is used to generate markers for the timing of output. It can change its rate or produce elastically deformed time scales in response to the expressive features marked in the abstract representation.