Reconceptualising the learning of expressiveness in music performance: Malaysian undergraduate voices beyond Western traditions

Abstract

Expressiveness learning in music performance within higher education has been predominantly shaped by Western classical music and conservatoire traditions, often privileging notation, stylistic correctness, and the composer’s intentions. In post-colonial contexts such as Malaysia, this dominance risks marginalising students’ culturally embedded, oral, embodied, and participatory musical knowledge. To date, limited attention has been given to the perspectives of non-Western students, including Malaysian students. Therefore, this study reconceptualises the learning of expressiveness in music performance through the voices of Malaysian undergraduate music education (BMus Ed) students. Situated within the Faculty of Music and Performing Arts at Sultan Idris Education University (FMSP, UPSI), this study interrogates the dominance of Western conservatoire norms. It explores how BMus Ed students understand expressiveness, how their prior and current learning experiences shape that understanding, and the strategies they employ to develop expressive performance in culturally hybrid settings. Framed by constructivist and phenomenological perspectives, this research positions expressiveness as a culturally mediated, student-constructed, and teachable competence. Therefore, a sequential mixed-methods design was employed to explore how students construct expressive knowledge through lived experience, reflection, and interaction. Study 1 involved a survey questionnaire (n = 66), generating descriptive and thematic insights into students’ conceptualisations and learning experiences of expressiveness. Moreover, Study 2 consisted of Video-Stimulated Recall Interviews (VSRI) (n = 10), enabling in-depth exploration of students’ strategies and decision-making of expressiveness in music performance. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively, while qualitative data were analysed by using Thematic Analysis (TA). The findings indicate that students conceptualise expressiveness as a multidimensional synthesis of emotional communication, musical meaning, technical mastery, personal interpretation, and embodied gesture. Previous learning experiences, often rooted in participatory, oral, improvisatory, and community-based traditions, provided intuitive and affective foundations for expressiveness. Current higher music education training has refined these foundations through technical, analytical, and ensemble-based practices, largely shaped by Western conservatoire models. Specifically, students’ learning strategies clustered into three interrelated domains: contextual understanding and emotional resonance (informed by previous experiences), technical proficiency and dynamics control (developed through current experiences in formal training), and adaptive practice that integrates both. These findings challenge transmission-based pedagogies that frame expressiveness as stylistic compliance or innate talent. Instead, Malaysian BMus Ed students actively negotiate and assemble hybrid expressive strategies, blending Western analytical tools with movement, ornamentation, improvisation, and narrative association drawn from local traditions. Thus, expressiveness emerges as emotionally grounded, culturally situated, and enacted through both technique and embodiment. Consequently, this study contributes to music performance pedagogy by articulating cross-cultural strategies that foreground students’ expressive agency. For Malaysian higher music education, it advocates curricula, assessment, and pedagogies that legitimise oral, embodied, and community-based knowledge alongside notation-based technique. Additionally, this research offers a framework for reconceptualising expressive learning beyond Western-centric paradigms, positioning students as active constructors of expressive artistry within diverse musical ecologies