Author(s): Dianna T. Kenny

Music

Why are some performers exhilarated and energized about performing in public, while others feel a crushing sense of fear and dread, and experience public performance as an overwhelming challenge that must be endured? What are the factors that produce such vastly different performance experiences? Why have consummate artists like Frederic Chopin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pablo Cassals, Tatiana Troyanos, and Barbra Streisand experienced such intense music performanceanxiety? This is a disorder that can affect musicians across a range of genres and of all standards. Some of the 'cures' musicians resort to can be harmful to their health and detrimental to their playing. This is the first rigorous exposition of music performance anxiety. In thisgroundbreaking work, Dianna Kenny draws on a range of disciplines including psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and performance theory in order to explain the many facets of music performance anxiety that have emerged in the empirical and clinical literature. This book will lay a firm foundation for theorizing music performance anxiety and be of enormous value interest to those in the fields of music and music education, clinical psychology, and performancestudies.