Does analysis of music help in performance?

Question

The scenario: One lecturer in school set an essay on why analysis is helpful in performance of music. Is this necessarily the case? Are there performers who don't stop to analyze the music, but pull off great performances anyway? For me, the process of analysis is more or less automatic, but my friend feels that it is too systematic and mechanical.

Answer 1

Music is the only art form that you can't touch... Music touches YOU... so.. it's not like you can count the brush strokes or compare lap times... you have to analyze the music to know WHAT the composer wanted to say AND how well you came to that ideal... and the only way to do that is by analyzing your performance.

Believe me... NOBODY... and I do mean NOBODY can play as well as they think they can or did... any performance can be critiqued and analyzed and part of being a professional, or even a serious amateur, is to be able to LOOK at what you did and then accept it as good or change it.

Answer 2

I'm a classical pianist, and I have to perform the majority of my music by memory.  Since my concerts are between 2-3 hours long, that means about 125 pages of difficult music, and millions of notes, rhythms, and combinations thereof, must be fully integrated into my mind, or I'll never pull it off.  My audience members are incredibly brilliant, and unless I'm playing a debut piece, most of them will know if I mess up, since the music I play has been around for at least 200 years!  I get nervous thinking about it!  Nonetheless, if I know what structure--melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic--underlies the music, I can make relationships in my head that corresponds from one section of the music to another.  If I forget a section during performance (God forbid!), I can jump to another similar section and continue to play.  Nothing is worse than stopping dead in the middle of a performance.  There's nowhere to go but sink!

Also, if you analyze a piece of music, you will find that repetition (rhythmic, harmonic, and/or melodic) is a primary component of the work.  As a performer, when these repetitions occur, that gives you an opportunity to do something slightly different each time (within reason, of course, and within the correct historical context), thereby giving the audience a little piece of yourself as well as the original composer.  It makes the piece a bit more interesting to the audience, I think.

Answer 3

Well it really is automatic after you've been playing awhile. Music is nothing unless you put some sort of feeling into it. If you don't automatically do these things, you most definitely should sit and look the piece over and do just that. There are people who sight-read things and do an amazing job. It is definitely helpful, but not actually necessary to pull of a good performance.