Motion Analysis of Clarinet Performers

Abstract

In this work we evaluate the gesture consistency of 13 clarinetists during several performances. The goal is to establish an objective relation between their expressive gestural patterns and the music structure of two selected excerpts, by Mozart and Brahms. We present a method to represent, segment and analyse the patterns of recurrence on motion data during musical performances. Physical gestures were extracted during clarinet performances and analysed based on gestural features, comparing different musicians, musical passages and experimental conditions. The gestural aspects of the performances were related to the music structure and its expressive content. Results indicate recurrent sequences of clarinet gestures in regions of the excerpts that were shown to be related to key musical moments.

Keywords:

• expressive gestures
• musical expressiveness
• clarinet performances
• motion recurrence

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the performers for their participation, Adriano Barbosa for his advice on instantaneous correlation and Clayton Mamedes for editing the scores.

Notes

Euler Teixeira, Rua Grandolfo 1084, Nova Lima, MG, Brazil, 34.000-000.

This research was funded by the Brazilian agencies CNPq, CAPES and FAPEMIG and the Canadian NSERC Discovery grant for the third author.