Abstract

The choices that performers make depend partially on the prescribed markings in the score, but they also have interpretative significance and contextual value whilst being subject to the performer’s technical facility. The successful integration of the musical intention and its physical realisation is what propagates musical performance. Two violin production experiments were carried out to examine one such performance choice – the pitch glide. The results suggest that durational variations are used as an intentional expressive marker of musical structure. The wide range of performers furthermore shed light on the changing aesthetic, stylistic, and technical values throughout the decades. The development and use of the glide within the changing performance practices across the 20th and early 21st centuries will also be discussed.