The Assessment of Musical Performance: Development and Validation of Five New Measures

This study examined the ability of 101 high school instrumentalists to perform rehearsed music, sight-read, play from memory, pay by ear and improvise. It is organised into three parts: part one describes the development of measures to assess instrumentalists' ability to perform music from memory, by ear and by improvising. In part two, scores on each of these measures are compared with results obtained using (1) the Watkins-Farnum Performance Scale to measure sight-reading ability, and (2) awards in an Australian Music Examinations Board performance examination to indicate subject ability to perform a repertoire of rehearsed music. For part three, 16 variables related to subjects' musical background were examined in order to determine the degree of correlation between these variables and the five performance skills. Results show a pattern of higher correlations between the five types of performance as instrumentalists mature. In addition, important differences between each of the five skills and 16 variables were observed and discussed.