Latest News – Where language ends, music speaks: Professor Catherine Foxcroft’s inaugural lecture recital on performance and the human spirit

By Siyamthanda Hobo

We are used to calling music a universal language; but for Professor Catherine Foxcroft, that barely scratches the surface. For her, music is far more than artistic expression. It is an act of profound human communication that connects performer and listener through shared emotion, presence and transcendence.

These ideas formed the heart of Professor Foxcroft’s inaugural lecture recital, The Soul Between the Notes: Music Performance, Communication and the Human Spirit, presented before colleagues, students, family, friends and members of the Rhodes University community following her appointment as full professor in the Department of Music and Musicology.

Opening the evening, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation & Strategic Partnerships, Dr Nomakwezi Mzilikazi, on behalf of Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sizwe Mabizela, welcomed guests and traced Professor Foxcroft’s path from a young pianist in Cape Town to an internationally recognised performer, researcher and educator. Since joining Rhodes University in 2003, she has become a leading voice in music psychology and cognition, with a particular focus on cognitive strategies in music sight-reading, expressive performance and the optimal states musicians strive for: an award-winning teacher who has mentored more than 50 honours students, graduated 10 Master’s students and 1 PhD, alongside an international performance career.

The soul’s true language

In her inaugural lecture recital, Professor Foxcroft explored music performance not simply as an aesthetic practice, but as an extraordinary form of human communication. Drawing from psychology, philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis, she examined the relationship between performer and listener and the moments of connection that occur through live music.

“Music performance,” she explained, “is not simply an aesthetic art form, but an act of extraordinary human communication.”

Professor Foxcroft began by reflecting on the range of music psychology research undertaken by her postgraduate students. Their work explores diverse areas including musicians’ sight reading strategies through eye tracking technology, creativity and improvisation, artificial intelligence in live music performance, community music, music and mental health, and the use of music in supporting wellbeing.

While these projects demonstrate the breadth of contemporary music psychology, Professor Foxcroft’s own research continues to focus on understanding performers and the psychological processes involved in musical expression.

When the self disappears

A central theme of her lecture was the concept of ‘flow’, developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. She described ‘flow’ as a state of complete absorption when there is a perfect balance between the musician’s skills and the challenge of the music they are performing.

“For music performers, the flow state is not an occasional happenstance,” she said. “It is the goal of optimal performance.”

Drawing from her doctoral research, Professor Foxcroft explained that performers often describe flow as a state in which self-consciousness fades and the music appears to move through them. In these moments, technical mastery becomes secondary to emotional expression and communication.

The lecture also drew on the reflections of renowned pianists including Arthur Rubinstein, Glenn Gould, Alfred Brendel, Sviatoslav Richter and Martha Argerich. Through their experiences, Professor Foxcroft put forward the idea that exceptional performance requires the performer to move beyond personal ego, allowing the music itself to become the central voice.

She further considered the writings of Irish philosopher and poet John O’Donohue, whose reflections on beauty and human connection influenced her understanding of music as an encounter between souls. His concept of the ‘threshold’, the space between the ordinary and the sacred, provided a framework for understanding the unique relationship created between performer and audience during live performance.

“It is only when we are willing to be touched or moved that music induces an emotional response in us,” Professor Foxcroft reflected.

Turning to the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, she examined how music communicates dimensions of human experience that cannot always be expressed through language. While words provide meaning through structure and symbolism, music reaches beyond language to engage listeners emotionally and psychologically.

Professor Foxcroft concluded her lecture by reflecting on the spiritual dimensions of music, drawing on the biblical concept of ‘ruach’, the Hebrew word encompassing breath, wind and spirit. Like breath itself, she suggested, music exists through movement and time,  and at a certain level of depth and beauty, music ceases to be merely human and becomes a site of genuine encounter with the divine.

“Live music performance is a practice of a performer’s willingness to communicate in the truest form with the audience through music. To me, music is the language of the soul where we reside at our fullest with the divine.” she concluded.

Beyond words, into song

The lecture recital continued beyond words as Professor Foxcroft brought these ideas to life through two virtuosic piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt.

The first, Isolde’s Liebestod, from Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, portrayed Isolde’s final ecstatic vision as she encounters love, loss and transcendence. The second, Liszt’s concert paraphrase from Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, transformed the opera’s famous Act III quartet into a powerful solo piano performance capturing themes of longing, betrayal and passion.

Closing the evening, Dean of Humanities Professor Siphokazi Magadla congratulated Professor Foxcroft on this significant academic milestone, celebrating a career shaped by artistic excellence, intellectual curiosity and a deep commitment to teaching, research and mentorship.

Professor Magadla reflected on the significance of witnessing someone who discovered their gift at a young age pursue it with dedication and share it generously with students, colleagues and audiences across generations.

Professor Foxcroft’s inaugural lecture recital demonstrated the distinctive role of the humanities in bringing together scholarship, creativity and human experience. Through music, philosophy and psychology, she reminded the audience that performance is not only about sound, but about connection, communication and the enduring search for meaning between the notes.