VII. Performning Gender
Abstract
VII. Performning Gender Roger CHAFFIN, Mary CRAWFORD and Gabriela IMREH For the past seven years we (the three authors) have been doing research on memory and piano performnance. In this article we reflect on how gender issues have emerged in our research. Gender effects have become evident in the skills and perspectives brought to the project by each participant, in his/her differing subjectivities, and in the self-presentation of the pianist whose performance has been studied. Gabriela, a concert pianist, wanted to know what psychology could tell her about memorization, an important aspect of her work. Roger, a cognitive psy- chologist, wondered whether the principles of expert memory, which had been developed for cognitive skills like chess playing, would apply to a task like piano performance that has a large motor component (Chaffin and Imreh, 1994; in press). To find out, Gabriela agreed to videotape herself learning two new pieces. As Gabriela and Roger worked at interpreting the practice records, the process of negotiating the meaning of the data proved to be almost as interesting as the data themselves, and resulted in the involvement of a second psychologist, the friend and student of the performer and spouse of the