Browsing by Author "Rundel, Klara Louise"
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- An investigation into skill acquisition in cello performance and into the role of the teacher: a case-study of two cellists preparing for a performance in a music college settingPublication . Rundel, Klara Louise; Coimbra, Daniela da Costa; Foletto, ClarissaThe aim of this work was to gain a deeper understanding of what strategies musicians use to develop their skills and achieve optimal performance levels in a music college context. In addition, it deepened the understanding of the teacher’s role in that process. More specifically, the aim was to understand the performance goals teachers devise with their students, the strategies they develop to put their goals into action and how they communicate them to their students. A case study was conducted in a Portuguese music college. The participants were a Portuguese cello professor and two students. Student 1 was in her final year of her undergraduate degree and Student 2 in her final year of her master’s degree. Two cello lessons of 1h30m each were video recorded and integrally transcribed. Afterwards, a system of coding was devised, and main dimensions of analysis identified. Results of the analysis indicated that students worked through aural modelling to create a mental representation of how the music should sound like (goal imaging). Our results also suggested that both students and teacher were looking at specific strategies to establish mental landmarks in the music (retrieval cues) that could be recalled automatically during performance. In both cases the work was focused primarily on interpretation with differences in its subcategories. Further results indicated that these differences vary according to the different stages of mastering the repertoire as well as differences according to the level of expertise of the two students. To attain a determined goal, the teacher was using, most of the times, more than one communication strategy and he adapted his actions to the developmental stage of the students, as well as to the stage of domain of the repertoire. Finally, our results suggest the presence of an expert teacher, one who is attentive to differences in students and promotes experiences to develop their talent.