How to quantify individuality in music performance? Studying artistic expression with averaging procedures

In artistic fields such as western music performance of the past 200 years, individuality is highly valued as a performer’s expression of his or her aesthetic concepts. Yet characterizations of individual performance qualities have largely remained on a descriptive level. In this opinion article, it is argued that if researchers aim at quantifying individuality, then the only feasible approach is to determine the baseline from which individual performances diverge. Rather than using a computer-generated “deadpan performance” with no expressive features, this baseline should refer to average features comprising a number of different human performances in a given cultural context.