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Effects of baton usage on college musicians’ perceptions of ensemble performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of baton usage on college musicians’ perceptions of ensemble performance. Two conductors were videotaped while conducting a 1-minute excerpt from either a technical (Pathfinder of Panama, John Philip Sousa) or lyrical (Seal Lullaby, Eric Whitacre) piece of concert band music. Each excerpt was conducted twice, once with and without a baton. After viewing each of the four videos, college musicians (N = 119) rated the ensemble expressivity and ensemble precision of each performance. Technical excerpt performances were rated significantly higher when the conductor used the baton than we he did not. No baton effect was found for ratings assigned to the lyrical excerpt. A separate panel of evaluators (N = 44, college musicians), who served as the control group, assigned ratings to the same excerpts, but was presented these excerpts in an audio-only format. Findings indicated that the use of the baton significantly affected these participants’ ratings of ensemble expressivity and ensemble precision for the technical excerpt, with higher ratings being assigned to those excerpts in which the conductor used a baton. Similar to our results in the audio-visual condition, no significant differences were found between participants’ ensemble expressivity or ensemble precision ratings when listening to the lyrical excerpt.