Music performance research: A bibliometric analysis of trends, themes, and knowledge structures

Music performance research spans multiple disciplinary traditions, including musicology, psychology, education, health sciences, and technology studies. While this diversity has supported growth, it has also produced a fragmented literature whose thematic structure and intellectual organization remain insufficiently mapped. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of music performance research examining publication dynamics, thematic development, and knowledge networks. Metadata from 2159 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (1966–2025) were analysed using performance indicators, co-word analysis, co-citation networks, and thematic mapping. Results show substantial growth since the early 2000s alongside dispersion across disciplinary outlets. Thematic analyses identify a dominant focus on music performance anxiety and wellbeing, accompanied by more fragmented research on education, skill acquisition, and performance expertise. Network analyses reveal well-established research clusters but limited integration between conceptual domains. By providing a systematic overview of WoS-indexed music performance research, this study offers a reference framework for interdisciplinary dialogue and future research development within the field.