Leadership in orchestra emerges from the causal relationships of movement kinematics

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 7; no. 5; p. e35757
• Main Authors: D'Ausilio, Alessandro, Badino, Leonardo, Li, Yi, Tokay, Sera, Craighero, Laila, Canto, Rosario, Aloimonos, Yiannis, Fadiga, Luciano
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 09-05-2012; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Analysis; Biology; Biomechanical Phenomena; Causality; Cognition & reasoning; Communication; Computer Science; Conductors; Econometrics; Gestures; Humans; Judgments; Kinematics; Kinetic art; Leadership; Music; Musical performances; Musicians; Musicians & conductors; Orchestras; Qualitative analysis; Qualitative research; Quality assessment; Robotics; Sensorimotor system; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Social aspects; Social interaction; Studies; Time series; Verbal communication; Visual communication; United States > US; Italy; Maryland
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035757

Non-verbal communication enables efficient transfer of information among people. In this context, classic orchestras are a remarkable instance of interaction and communication aimed at a common aesthetic goal: musicians train for years in order to acquire and share a non-linguistic framework for sensorimotor communication. To this end, we recorded violinists' and conductors' movement kinematics during execution of Mozart pieces, searching for causal relationships among musicians by using the Granger Causality method (GC). We show that the increase of conductor-to-musicians influence, together with the reduction of musician-to-musician coordination (an index of successful leadership) goes in parallel with quality of execution, as assessed by musical experts' judgments. Rigorous quantification of sensorimotor communication efficacy has always been complicated and affected by rather vague qualitative methodologies. Here we propose that the analysis of motor behavior provides a potentially interesting tool to approach the rather intangible concept of aesthetic quality of music and visual communication efficacy.