Being in music: music performance dysfunction through guided imagery and music

Abstract

Music performance dysfunction in professionally trained elite musicians is a broad, pervasive, yet oft times narrow and temporary phenomenon, situated in a culture rarely understood by those outside the field of professional music. This project explored the meaning of music performance dysfunction in professional musicians by addressing how musicians understand themselves in the field of music and through their relationship to music. The nature of inquiry for this project used an overarching ethnographic and sociological paradigm upon which was set a conceptual framework encouraged by the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The project was organised around three domains of the musician's lived experience: the subjective world of the professional musician; negative affect, anxiety, and dysfunction in the musician arising through the context of music performance; and the emotions, memories, and insights that emerge through Guided Imagery and Music. Music is the dimensional phenomenon that binds all domains. The three domains were investigated through two distinct studies that elicited a rich tapestry of findings and illuminated a colourful world, unique to the field. The first study addressed a few salient features of being a modern professional musician. Fifteen musicians were interviewed about what it is to be a musician, what it is to perform, what is music to the musician, what is the musician’s relationship to music, and the issue of music performance anxiety. Phenomenological analysis revealed themed issues surrounding a tacit understanding and acceptance by the musicians of the enormous highs and devastating lows in their chosen career. Acute music performance anxiety was understood as a continuum within a larger of the occupational field and personal life, a musician’s position along which is dependent upon an individual’s propensity to embody the many influences within the social domains of a complex occupational field. The second study was built upon the first study. The issue of music performance dysfunction in three professional musicians was individually explored using the music therapy method of Modified Guided Imagery and Music (MGIM) in a multiple case study design. This study explored each musician’s unique experiences of performance dysfunction in a ten week program of themed MGIM sessions. Each session comprised specifically programmed music that supported the topic at hand. Through hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis, the music based exploration brought to light the unique foundational issues of each musician’s performance dysfunction and gave each an opportunity to renew their relationship with music The findings from each study revealed a distinct composite essence. Furthermore, a reflective overview combining findings from both studies showed emotion as a substance of exchange in performance. The quality and meaning of musicians’ experience were found to prevail within a social milieu, and were determined and dependent on the emotional foundation of an individual's dispositional tendencies that develop through embodied experience. Through the qualitative and sociological frame employed in this project, the musicians’ experience of music performance dysfunction was shown to be a complex and enduring concern that has deleterious effects on career and personal life.