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Shared Leadership in Chamber Music Ensembles: A Preliminary Study Borrowing from Sports Psychology

Connections between athletes and musicians have been drawn recently by scholars, sports psychologists, and musicians. Literature on these connections, however, has focused on individuals rather than exploring connections between teams and ensembles. The broad goal of our study was to determine whether leadership roles like those observed in sports research emerge in chamber music ensembles. We chose to focus on connecting the literatures of leadership in sports and music by using a questionnaire drawn from sports research (Fransen, et al., 2014) in a chamber music setting. Fransen’s model was designed to measure the emergence of four leadership roles (Task, Social, Motivational, and External) in teams. In our study, fifty local musicians responded to an online questionnaire derived from Fransen (2014). We found that all four of Fransen’s leadership roles were identified by respondents as present in chamber ensembles. Respondents were also asked to describe leadership roles in their ensemble that did not fit Fransen’s four leadership roles, where such existed. From their responses, we postulate the roles of “organizational leader” and “leader by example” in chamber ensembles. We interpreted the organizational leader to be an extension of Fransen’s “external leadership” role. We interpret he leader by example role to be a set of attributes as predictors of shared leadership in individuals, rather than as a separate leadership role. In light of our findings, we offer suggestions for improving the functioning of chamber ensembles and for future research in this topic.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/34799
Date January 2016
CreatorsKleyn, Mark
ContributorsDineen, Phillip Murray
PublisherUniversité d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Source SetsUniversité d’Ottawa
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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