Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among students in a classical music department in Montreal, this research explores how mind-body duality collapses in musical performances. It examines the discourses and practices around performance anxiety that embody student’ identities as musicians.

Paper long abstract:

Based on a fieldwork among music students at a Montreal university, this research explores the place of the self, the body and the mind in classical music performances. The French expression "stress de la performance" (performance anxiety) is used to refer to a set of sensations, thoughts and affects that accompany the very act of playing music in public. This performance anxiety, depending on its intensity, can be considered both as something very disturbing and as something necessary for artistic expression. Whereas discourses are important to understand the social meanings of performance anxiety in classical music, practices of stress management help to understand how the duality mind-body may collapse, a topic that arouses a great deal of interest in anthropology (Csordas 1990; Lock 1993). In this sense, practices of stress management invade musicians' identities as performers. They embody in a concrete way the relationship between the musician and the audience. They also embody -more abstractly- the relationship between the musician and the music that is being played. Through the way they speak about, feel and live their performance anxieties, musicians participate in the constant elaboration of norms that frame the use of the mind-body self on stage. This also reveals the centrality of the notion of control. Musicians explicitly express the desire to "let the music flow" which allows a complete expression of musical emotions that are to be communicated to listeners. This very goal can only be reached through a perfect control of technical aspects of the music that allows for a totally liberated mind.