Book Review: Together in Music. Coordination, Expression, Participation by Timmers, R., Bailes, F. & Daffern, H.

Abstract

While music performance studies have tended to focus on solo performance or on performers as individuals (see for example how even the recent Oxford Handbook of Music Performance (2022) has only two chapters specifically dedicated to the case of ensemble performance over the course of its two volumes), there has been more and more interest in the past few years in studying collective musical performances and music ensembles of all sizes. Part of this interest comes ‘from within’ so to speak – from musicologists and music psychologists embracing a social turn and looking to understand in more depth the processes and mechanisms underlying joint musical activities (from rehearsal to actual performance) over a large range of artistic practices (see for example Clarke & Doffman, 2017). But this surge in interest is also due to a growing tendency within the social and cognitive sciences more broadly to treat musical ensembles as a paradigmatic group activity that allows for the systematic exploration of general issues related to joint action, group ontology, distributed creativity, and social cognition (Aucouturier & Canonne, 2017; D’Ausilio et al., 2015; Michael, 2017). Packing 36 chapters in a little less than 300 pages, the edited collection Together in Music. Coordination, Expression, Participation ties together these two trends and offers an overview of the diversity of research currently done within this exciting field. The book follows a threepart structure, with the first part tackling the ‘meso’ level – that is, group interaction and communication during rehearsals, group organization, group identity, etc. – the second part, the ‘micro’ level – that is, decision-making during group performance, synchronization, fine-grained interactions, ancillary gestures, etc. – and the third part, the ‘macro’ level – that is, the long-term effects of collective musical practices on wellness, empowerment and development, or the embedment of collective musical practices within broader communities. Within each part, review papers presenting tools, theoretical frameworks, and typologies alternate with more focused papers reporting on specific case studies. To say that I was eagerly waiting for a book like this would be an understatement. Having dedicated a large part of my research time for the past 10 years to exploring group improvisation, I am still fascinated and amazed by how complex joint music-making practices and collective musical behaviors can turn out to be. My expectations were thus high. However, I must confess that I was slightly disappointed by this collection, despite the presence of some genuinely interesting and stimulating parts. Part of my issue with this book comes from some of the editorial choices that were made. As I said earlier, there are 36 chapters in this collection. This would certainly be appropriate for a larger handbook, but this is clearly too much within the limited space of the present book. As a result, chapters feel either rushed or decidedly too narrow in scope. Chapter 31 describes an extended 2-year longitudinal study with three youth orchestras involving a multidisciplinary team in a mere four pages. Crucial details that would allow readers to assess the validity of the choices made by the research team are bound to be excluded in such a cramped space: for example, the statistical analysis performed by the researchers are not described or explained, nor are we provided with any rationale for the protocols used to assess the children’s motor coordination. Conversely, Chapter 12 introduces a substantial amount of quantitative data on the rehearsal talk between two musicians over a seven-day rehearsal period but without really managing to provide the reader with a sense of a broader research context, making it hard to know what to really take from this case study. Overall, I cannot help but feel that the editors could have selected fewer chapters, thus allowing their authors to present in more details their study and to connect them more convincingly to the relevant literature (from this perspective, it is symptomatic that most of the case studies quote very few references, sometimes only two or three). It would have also helped in avoiding some unnecessary redundancies (there are for example two very similar studies on ensemble leadership within educational settings in the first part, and many overlaps of references and theoretical framings in the chapters from the third part, dedicated to collective music-making and wellbeing). With such a diverse collection of chapters, total consistency is likely not to be expected. But statements that strongly clash with each other could probably have been avoided or editorially managed. For example, Chapter 22 presents a fascinating analysis of early recordings from