Page 18 - How to Shine on Stage

peaceful and calm. It all seems to them to be happening automatically.
Time moves slowly. They feel like they can do anything. Their sensa-
tions and experience are positive. Focusing on the performance is easy.
Self-trust is high (Tušak & Tušak, 2003).

1.3 Musical Performance Success
What success in music means depends on each individual’s aspirations.
16 The goals and expectations of professional musicians are different from
those of amateur musicians; a performer at the beginning of their career
has different goals from those with many years of experience; different
profiles of musicians, again, have very different goals: a composer’s goal
can be, for example, a high-quality orchestral performance of their com-
How to Shine on Stage chestra at a renowned concert venue, and a teacher’s goal can be their
position, a performer’s goal can be a successful performance with the or-
student’s good ranking in a competition. Here, we aim to highlight pri-
marily the musical performance success, which is the central concern of
the present monograph.
Jane W. Davidson and Stephanie MacArthur (2021) point out that
satisfaction and high levels of achievement are not necessarily linked, as
some individuals demonstrate minimal musical competence, yet find sat-
isfaction in the pleasure of making music. Conversely, a person can have
high musical achievements but not feel any inner satisfaction. This fre-
quent discrepancy will also be addressed in the chapter on internal and
external performance criteria.
Gertraud Reinhard (1981, in de la Motte-Haber, 1990) relied on
Weiner’s attributional model of expectation of success or failure to suc-
ceed to conduct a study among 9- to 14-year-old pupils attending pri-
mary music school. She found that motivation to succeed in music is
strongly related to overall motivation to succeed in school. Such students
attribute their success mainly to their own effort and are also willing to
further increase their effort. Asmus (1986) related performance motiva-
tion to the height of aspirations (the height of set goals). He conducted a
research study among music students and found that those motivated to
succeed had high self-esteem, attributed success to themselves and their
abilities, and set themselves moderately difficult goals which they could
reach. Those who were motivated to fail attributed it to their own incom-
petence and set themselves very difficult or very easy goals.
In terms of music success, we can speak of a motivational orientation,
which focuses on the setting of performance goals (Elliott et al., 1999). In
general, two goal orientations have been identified: mastery goals, which