Expertise in Music Learning: Implications for Developing Musicians

Robert Duke
Date: 
Monday, April 8, 2019 - 4:00pm
Location: 
Communications/Music Complex, Room 204G

Robert Duke presents a lecture as part of the the 11th Annual Music Education Lecture Series. Dr. Duke is the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor and Head of Music and Human Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. The mission of the Music Education Lecture Series has been to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of Loyola University students, faculty, the university community, and music teachers in the Greater New Orleans community at large by bringing distinguished individuals in the music education profession to campus for presentations on specialized subjects. In recent years, the series has grown to bring music education scholars in residence.

Dr. Duke and his research team have completed extensive research on motor skill development, motor control, and perception in relation to observations of artist-level musicians engaged in individual practice. The goal of this research is premised on the longstanding notion that novice experience in any domain should resemble the day-to-day expereinces of experts, is to create a model of expert music practice that explains the processes through which artist-level musicians acquire and maintain their skills and informs the structure of practice by young musicians. Dr. Duke's research suggests that the development of artistry requires habits of behavior, thought, and perceptual acuity that are central to musicians' success. In effect, experts' conceptions of beauty and expressivity serve to focus attention on the physical and auditory goals of performance and thus provide hierarchy for the goals of music practice.