Introduction

Listeners are exposed to a greater number and variety of musical performances today than at any other time in human history, and the rapid expansion that began with the advent of the recording industry in the early twentieth century shows no signs of abating. With the proliferation and diversification of performance through recording has come a renewed preoccupation with performers themselves as interpreters and personalities. This chapter is concerned with the different circumstances of listening to performance and their implications, and with the perceptual processes involved in what listeners can and do hear in performance.

The title of this chapter suggests that it is possible to listen to the performance component of what might be called ‘the total sound of music’. Is this a defensible view? To what extent and in what way are listeners aware of performance as a separable element of music – indeed, can anything other than performance be heard? For the score-based music of the Western concert tradition, a distinction between ‘music’ and ‘performance’ seems justified if only because the score stands as a representation of the music which is free of any particular performance. But what of the vast number of listeners who seldom if ever look at scores, or the overwhelming majority of other music for which no score exists? In short, do people ever listen to performance (as opposed to music), and if so, what do they hear?