Expressive timing in Schumann's "Träumerei:" an analysis of performances by graduate student pianists

Statistical analyses were conducted on the expressive timing patterns of performances of Schumann's "Träumerei" by ten graduate student pianists who played from the score on a Yamaha Disclavier after a brief rehearsal. A previous study of acoustic recordings of "Träumerei" by 24 famous pianists [B. H. Repp, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 92, 2546-2568 (1992)] provided "expert" timing data for comparison. In terms of group average timing pattern, individual shaping of ritardandi, and within-performance consistency, the students turned out to be quite comparable to the experts. This demonstrates that precision in expressive timing does not require extensive study and practice of the music at hand, only general musical and technical competence. Subsequent principal components analyses on the students' timing patterns revealed that they were much more homogeneous than the experts'. Individual differences among student pianists seemed to represent mainly variations around a common performance standard (the first principal component), whereas expert performances exhibited a variety of underlying timing patterns, especially at a detailed level of analysis. Experienced concert artists evidently feel less constrained by a performance norm, which makes their performances more interesting and original, hence less typical. Since the norm may represent the most natural or prototypical timing pattern, relatively spontaneous performances by young professionals may be a better starting point for modeling expressive timing than distinguished artists' performances.