Faire du stress son métier : l’anxiété de performance chez les interprètes de musique classique

Abstract

In the course of their training, students of classical music performance acquire thorough mastery of their instruments and solid theoretical knowledge. They are also trained to perform on stage by giving multiple concerts, recitals and auditions. Many of them experience anxiety at these events. The terms “stage fright” and “stress” are widely used to refer to these difficulties, and the proliferation of articles and workshops shows a growing interest in this subject in the classical music community. In this article, we propose to reflect on the place of stress in relation to musical performance and its management by performers. Based on the ethnography of a classical music faculty in Quebec, we analyse the discourses and practices that contribute to the changing definition of the very notion of stress. The way in which performers explain and appropriate the scientific discourse on this notion reveals a conceptualization of stress as an integral and, indeed, inevitable component of the profession. Defined as having harmful effects only in the absence of self-control, stress is ultimately a way of describing the emotional work that interpreters have to undertake. This research also reveals the construction of an ideal state – both physical and mental – for going on stage, thus conveying an injunction to excellence as well as a discourse on the profession and, more generally, on art. This article contributes to a better understanding of normative as well as prescriptive effects that social anxieties and fears can have when they are put into words and subjected to a form of institutionalisation.

Keywords

• performance
• stress
• classical music
• stage fright