Exploring the effect of tempo changes on violinists’ body movements

In expressive music performance, tempo is known to be a fundamental parameter. In this article, we explored effects of changes in musical tempo on performers’ movement articulations. Eight duos (piano – violin) played two pieces at a predefined tempo, after which this start tempo was gradually increased and decreased. Throughout the different performances, we measured acceleration of the violinists’ head and right wrist, together with the downward force applied by their body to the ground surface. We calculated periodicities in downward force using fast Fourier transform (FFT) analyses and tested whether differences occurred across different tempi. Also, we clustered acceleration and force patterns across different tempi using self-organizing maps (SOMs) and k-means clustering. The results show that a continuous change in performance tempo leads to distinct “performance states” with characteristic bodily behavior in terms of periodic body movement and co-articulated gestures, which supports theories of tempo-variant motor control