Page 122 - How to Shine on Stage

of performers on stage, and the formality of the performance. It has been
found that MPA increases with the size of the audience and the formal-
ity of the performance, but decreases with the number of performers on
stage. Research has also revealed that MPA is most pronounced among
classical musicians, considerably less so among jazz musicians, and least
pronounced among entertainment musicians.
Ultimately, it is best to harness the pre- performance excitement to
120 be able to experience flow, to which I will dedicate one of the following
sections.

3.3.1 Performance Anxiety
How to Shine on Stage form of anxiety stimulated by social exposure during performance. It is
Performance anxiety, also known as fear of performing, is a situational
not tied exclusively to performance; it can occur in any performance-re-
lated context where the performer is exposed to social evaluation, e.g.
public speaking, sport, acting, or dancing. Performance anxiety was
only recognized as a clinical disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders in 1994, when it was briefly mentioned as
a form of social phobia (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In the
latest version of the classification of psychological and psychiatric disor-
ders in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), it is listed
in the chapter on social anxiety. Most musicians do not experience per-
formance anxiety as a mental disorder, but the condition needs to be ad-
dressed and treated appropriately if the symptoms are so disturbing that
they have a recurrent negative impact on performance success.
Dianna Theadora Kenny (2011) defines MPA as a persistent disrup-
tive apprehension related to musical performance. She stresses the need
to distinguish between MPA and social anxiety (2016). She argues that
the definition of MPA should be based on a threefold typology: (1) se-
vere MPA as a focal disorder in an otherwise healthy musician, (2) severe
MPA as a manifestation of social anxiety, and (3) severe MPA as part of
a more complex psychopathology, where affected individuals may suf-
fer from an extreme combination of emotional, cognitive, and somatic
anxiety, along with serious problems relating to selfhood and self-esteem
(Kenny, 2011).
The occurrence of MPA among musicians is difficult to assess due
to three reasons:
(1) inconsistencies in the naming of the phenomenon, (2) inconsisten-
cies in methodological approaches (Matei et al., 2018), and (3) the inclu-