Verifying Modeling and Audiovisual Stimuli as Strategies for Mastering Guedes Peixoto's Maracat�

Abstract

Literature has been saying that auditory Modeling can be a useful tool in order to develop or broaden musical interpretive ideas. In the same way, literature ventilates that audiovisual stimuli can be applied to musicians in order to raise emotions that some scholars consider as indispensable when it comes to deliver expressive musical communications. More specifically, research in the Music Performance field points out that Modeling and Audiovisual stimuli are useful strategies in the learning process of building up a musical interpretation, both, fostering expressive tools for aiming musical performance. This research is intended to empirically verify the applicability and effectiveness of these two tools on mastering a piano work - in this case, a piece named Maracatú written by Brazilian composer Guedes Peixoto that brings the stylization of a very unique and peculiar rhythm from Brazilian popular culture - when compositional and aesthetic style of the work are totally unknown by the performers. For that, three graduate piano performance students from the School of Music at Louisiana State University were subjected to two interconnected and deliberated interventions, while studying the piece, where audiovisual stimulation and auditory modeling were applied.