Expressive timing in choir: An interactive study between choristers and conductor

Abstract

In traditional choral practice it would seem that the chorister’s action is an embodied way of responding to the conductor's gestures and being with the other from a second-person perspective (Gomila, 2003). From a conductor-choir interactive perspective, the choir is understood as a set of individuals who are also in interaction and not as a uniform group subordinated to the conductor. Clayton (2013) proposes three levels of musical entrainment between individuals: intra-individual, intra-group and inter-group, to describe the temporal interactions between singers in choral practice. A multimodal analysis (conductor movement and choir members' asynchronies) is presented to investigate the role of inter- and intra-individual variability in supporting collective (choir) musical performance.