Growing interest in studies on the relationship between music and movement has given rise to many paradigms and theories, including embodied approaches that provide interesting methodologies in studies on music and dance. Insight into the relation between dance and music is particularly important for the Baroque period, as a direct connection between music and dance was omnipresent, even if music was not used to dance to. Many types of Baroque dances existed, each of them with particular dance steps and a specific character, requiring a specific tempo. However, in music performance practice today, the link with the original dance movement is often lost and the tempo variation can be very large. The aim of this study is to compare the interpretations of dancers and musicians regarding Baroque music and dance in an experimental setting. First, we investigate the influence of dance movement on the musical interpretation of a series of Baroque dances. The pieces were recorded both with and without dance accompaniment and the tempo and timing in the different versions were compared. In the second part, dancers performed a particular choreography to music that varied in tempo. Video analysis and questionnaire data were used to evaluate the different performances. The results were compared with the tempi of music recordings of the same dance types, showing a clear difference between music and dance performance. Musicians adapt their interpretation when performing together with the dancers, and the optimal tempo range found for certain Baroque dances coincides only partly with the tempi commonly found in music recordings. The direct link between music and movement and its mutual influence illustrates the importance of an embodied approach in music performance, where in this case dance movement gives concrete information for a “historically informed” performance.

The present study aims to gain better insight into the connection between music and dance by examining the dynamic effects of the bass drum on a dancing audience in a club-like environment. One hundred adult participants moved freely in groups of five to a musical sequence that comprised six songs. Each song consisted of one section that was repeated three times, each time with a different sound pressure level of the bass drum. Hip and head movements were recorded using motion capture and motion sensing. The study demonstrates that people modify their bodily behavior according to the dynamic level of the bass drum when moving to contemporary dance music in a social context. Participants moved more actively and displayed a higher degree of tempo entrainment as the sound pressure level of the bass drum increased. These results indicate that the prominence of the bass drum in contemporary dance music serves not merely as a stylistic element; indeed, it has a strong influence on dancing itself.

notes inégales is a common practice in the performance of French baroque music. It indicates that the first of a pair of equally notated notes is played longer, similar to the use of swing eighths in jazz. The performance of that inequality is an ongoing source of debate, but the actual performance has not been studied yet. In an experiment, eight harpsichordists and eight baroque violinists performed six melodies of French baroque gavottes in three tempo conditions. The mean ratio of inequality was 1.63, with mean ratios of individual performers varying between 1.89 and 1.33. Another significant source of variance was the metric structure, with larger inequality found at metrically important points. Tempo also had an important influence, but individual interpretation varied greatly. For example, while most performers played more evenly while tempo increased, some performers chose the opposite strategy. Pitch interval had only a minor impact on the execution of the notes inégales, but also showed differences between performers. The results show the importance of personal style in music performance: although the music played is highly standardized, we show how the timing of different performers can be influenced by different aspects of the musical structure.

IN THIS STUDY WE REPORT ON THE RESULT OF AN experiment in which a guqin music performance was recorded and individual listeners were asked to move their arm along with the music that they heard. Movement velocity patterns were extracted from both the musician and the listeners. The analysis reveals that the listeners' movement velocity patterns tend to correlate with each other, and with the movement velocity patterns of the player's shoulders. The findings support the hypothesis that listeners and player share, to a certain degree, a sensitivity for musical expression and its associated corporeal intentionality.

The distribution of listeners’ perceived tempi across large collections of music has been modeled previously by a resonance function with a peak near the “preferred tempo” of 120 beats per minute (BPM) [Van Noorden and Moelants, J. New Music Res., 28, 43–66]. Here, through a series of experiments in which listeners were asked to tap to the most salient pulse of musical excerpts,we examined distributions of tapped tempi from single musical excerpts to see if the global resonance of preferred tempo is dependent on musical content. Results show that for some musical excerpts, the distribution of perceived tempi conforms to the global resonant form in that metrical levels with tempi near 120 BPM were perceived as most salient, while for other excerpts the most saliently perceived tempo sat well above or below 120 BPM. We then used a model, which quantifies relative strengths of periodicities in the audio signal, to demonstrate that deviations from the “preferred tempo” can be partially explained by dynamic rhythmic accents drawing listeners to tempi away from the resonance.

Research by S. Handel and J. S. Oshinsky (1981) has shown that when tapping to polyrhythms, people synchronize with different subsequences depending on the overall tempo, with a global change from the faster component at slow tempi to the slower component at medium tempi and then to the overall repeating pattern at fast tempi. In this article, similar polyrhythmic patterns are studied, adding larger pitch intervals between the two sequences. The results largely confirm the findings of Handel and Oshinsky at small pitch intervals, but at larger pitch intervals, the importance of the overall pattern decreases in favor of the slow component of the polyrhythm. This effect can be explained by the increased possibility for streaming of the two components and the decrease in peripheral interaction of the coinciding tones. The results of the experiment are modeled following the resonance model for temporal selectivity proposed by L. Van Noorden and D. Moelants (1999). The preference for certain subsequences can be explained as a resonance phenomenon with a natural frequency of 2 Hz.