MUSIC: Listeners and Performers

The study of music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between
human affect and music. It is a branch of music psychology with numerous areas of study, including
the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which
emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain
reactions. The field draws upon and has significant implications for such areas
as philosophy, musicology, and aesthetics, as well the acts of musical
composition and performance.

Associations between musical features and emotion differ among individuals. Appearance
emotionalism claims many listeners' perceiving associations constitutes the expressiveness of
music. Which musical features are more commonly associated with which emotions is part of music
psychology. Davies claims that expressiveness is an objective property of music and not subjective
in the sense of being projected into the music by the listener. Music’s expressiveness is certainly
response-dependent, i.e. it is realized in the listener’s judgement. Skilled listeners very similarly
attribute emotional expressiveness to a certain piece of music, thereby indicating according to
Davies (2006) that the expressiveness of music is somewhat objective because if the music lacked
expressiveness, then no expression could be projected into it as a reaction to the music.

Conveying emotion through music

The ability to perceive conveyed emotion is said to develop early in childhood, and improve
significantly throughout development. Empirical research has looked at which emotions can be
conveyed as well as what structural factors in music help contribute to the perceived emotional
expression. There are two schools of thought on how we interpret emotion in music.
The cognitivists' approach argues that music simply displays an emotion, but does not allow for the
personal experience of emotion in the listener. Emotivists argue that music elicits real emotional
responses in the listener.

It has been argued that the emotion experienced from a piece of music is a multiplicative function of
structural features, performance features, listener features and contextual features of the piece,
shown as:
Experienced Emotion = Structural features x Performance features x Listener
features x Contextual features

where:
Structural features = Segmental features x Suprasegmental features
Performance features = Performer skill x Performer state
Listener features = Musical expertise x Stable disposition x Current motivation
Contextual features = Location x Event
Structural features
Structural features are divided into two parts, segmental features and supra-
segmental features. Segmental features are the individual sounds or tones that
make up the music; this includes acoustic structures such
as duration, amplitude, and pitch. Suprasegmental features are the foundational
structures of a piece, such as melody, tempo and rhythm. There are a number
of specific musical features that are highly associated with particular
emotions.[9] Within the factors affecting emotional expression in music, tempo is
typically regarded as the most important, but a number of other factors, such
as mode, loudness, and melody, also influence the emotional valence of the
piece.

Tempo

Tempo is the speed or pace of a musical piece. Studies indicate an association

between fast tempo and happiness or excitement (or even anger). Slow tempo
may be associated with sadness or serenity.

Mode

Mode, or the major or minor tonality in a piece often indicates happiness or

sadness. Major tonality often conveys happiness or joy, while minor tonality is
associated with sadness.

Loudness

Loudness, or the physical strength and amplitude of a sound, may be perceived

as intensity, power, or anger; while soft music is associated with, sadness, or
fear. Rapid changes in loudness may connote playfulness or pleading, whereas
few or no changes can indicate peace and sadness.

Melody

In melody, a wide range of notes can imply joy, whimsicality, or uneasiness; a

narrow range suggests tranquillity, sadness, or triumph. Consonant, or
complementing harmonies, are connected with feelings of happiness,
relaxation, or serenity; dissonant, or clashing harmonies may imply excitement,
anger, or unpleasantness.

Rhythm

Rhythm is the regularly recurring pattern or beat of a song. A smooth,

consistent rhythm may be associated with happiness and peace. A rough,
irregular rhythm may be associated with amusement and uneasiness, while
varied rhythm implies joy.
Performance features
Performance features refers to the manner in which a piece of music is
executed by the performer(s). These are broken into two categories, performer
skills and performer state. Performer skills are the compound ability and
appearance of the performer; including physical appearance, reputation and
technical skills. The performer state is the interpretation, motivation, and stage
presence of the performer.

Listener features
Listener features refers to the individual and social identity of the listener(s).
This includes their personality, knowledge of music, and motivation to listen to
the music.

Contextual features
Contextual features are aspects of the performance such as the location and
the particular occasion for the performance (i.e., funeral, wedding, dance etc...).

These different factors influence expressed emotion at different magnitudes,

and their effects are compounded by one another. Thus, experienced emotion
is felt to a stronger degree if more factors are present. The order the factors are
listed within the model denotes how much weight in the equation they carry. For
this reason, the bulk of research has been done in structural features and
listener features.

Conflicting cues

Which emotion is perceived is dependent on the context of the piece of music.

Past research has argued that opposing emotions like happiness and sadness
fall on a bipolar scale, where both cannot be felt at the same time. More recent
research has suggested that happiness and sadness are experienced
separately, which implies that they can be felt concurrently. One study
investigated the latter possibility by having participants listen to computer-
manipulated musical excerpts that have mixed cues between tempo and
mode. Examples of mix-cue music include a piece with major key and slow
tempo, and a minor-chord piece with a fast tempo. Participants then rated the
extent to which the piece conveyed happiness or sadness. The results indicated
that mixed-cue music conveys both happiness and sadness; however, it
remained unclear whether participants perceived happiness and sadness
simultaneously or vacillated between these two emotions. A follow up study was
done to examine these possibilities. While listening to mixed or consistent cue
music, participants pressed one button when the music conveyed happiness
and another button when it conveyed sadness. The results revealed that
subjects pressed both buttons simultaneously during songs with conflicting
cues. These findings indicate that listeners can perceive both happiness and
sadness concurrently. This has significant implications for how the structural
features influence emotion, because when a mix of structural cues is used, a
number of emotions may be conveyed.

Specific listener features

Development

Studies indicate that the ability to understand emotional messages in music

starts early, and improves throughout child development. Studies investigating
music and emotion in children primarily play a musical excerpt for children and
have them look at pictorial expressions of faces. These facial expressions
display different emotions and children are asked to select the face that best
matches the music's emotional tone. Studies have shown that children are able
to assign specific emotions to pieces of music; however, there is debate
regarding the age at which this ability begins.

Infants

An infant is often exposed to a mother’s speech that is musical in nature. It is

possible that this motherly singing allows the mother to relay emotional
messages to the infant. Infants also tend to prefer positive speech to neutral
speech as well as happy music to negative music. It has also been posited that
listening to their mother’s singing may play a role in identity formation. This
hypothesis is supported by a study that interviewed adults and asked them to
describe musical experiences from their childhood. Findings showed that music
was good for developing knowledge of emotions during childhood. The role of
the mother in emotional development of the child goes beyond the singing that
the child receives in infancy. It has been shown that mothers that explain the
emotions of others to their children during preschool allows the child to be more
sensitive to the emotions of those around them. Therefore, the mother’s role in
the emotional development of the child begins in infancy but will extend well into
childhood.

Pre-school children

These studies have shown that children at the age of 4 are able to begin to
distinguish between emotions found in musical excerpts in ways that are similar
to adults. The ability to distinguish these musical emotions seems to increase
with age until adulthood. However, children at the age of 3 were unable to make
the distinction between emotions expressed in music through matching a facial
expression with the type of emotion found in the music. Some emotions, such
as anger and fear, were also found to be harder to distinguish within music.

Elementary-age children

In studies with four-year-olds and five-year-olds, they are asked to label musical
excerpts with the affective labels "happy", "sad", "angry", and "afraid”. Results in
one study showed that four-year-olds did not perform above chance with the
labels "sad" and "angry", and the five-year-olds did not perform above chance
with the label "afraid".A follow-up study found conflicting results, where five-
year-olds performed much like adults. However, all ages confused categorizing
"angry" and "afraid". Pre-school and elementary-age children listened to twelve
short melodies, each in either major or minor mode, and were instructed to
choose between four pictures of faces: happy, contented, sad, and angry. All
the children, even as young as three years old, performed above chance in
assigning positive faces with major mode and negative faces with minor mode.

Personality Effects

Different people perceive events differently based upon their individual

characteristics. Similarly, the emotions elicited by listening to different types of
music seem to be affected by factors such as personality and previous musical
training. People with the personality type of agreeableness have been found to
have higher emotional responses to music in general. Stronger sad feelings
have also associated with people with personality types of agreeableness and
neuroticism. While some studies have shown that musical training can be
correlated with music that evoked mixed feelings as well as higher IQ and test
of emotional comprehension scores, other studies refute the claim that musical
training affects perception of emotion in music. It is also worth noting that
previous exposure to music can affect later behavioral choices, schoolwork, and
social interactions. Therefore, previous music exposure does seem to have an
effect on the personality and emotions of a child later in their life, and would
subsequently affect their ability to perceive as well as express emotions during
exposure to music. Gender, however, has not been shown to lead to a
difference in perception of emotions found in music. Further research into which
factors affect an individual’s perception of emotion in music and the ability of the
individual to have music-induced emotions are needed.

Eliciting emotion through music

Along with the research that music conveys an emotion to its listener(s), it has
also been shown that music can produce emotion in the listener(s). This view
often causes debate because the emotion is produced within the listener, and is
consequently hard to measure. In spite of controversy, studies have shown
observable responses to elicited emotions, which reinforces the Emotivists' view
that music does elicit real emotional responses.

Responses to elicited emotion

The structural features of music not only help convey an emotional message to
the listener, but also may create emotion in the listener. These emotions can be
completely new feelings or may be an extension of previous emotional events.
Empirical research has shown how listeners can absorb the piece’s expression
as their own emotion, as well as invokes a unique response based on their
personal experiences.

Basic emotions
In research on eliciting emotion, participants report personally feeling a certain
emotion in response to hearing a musical piece. Researchers have investigated
whether the same structures that conveyed a particular emotion could elicit it as
well. The researchers presented excerpts of fast tempo, major mode music and
slow tempo, minor tone music to participants; these musical structures were
chosen because they are known to convey happiness and sadness
respectively. Participants rated their own emotions with elevated levels of
happiness after listening to music with structures that convey happiness and
elevated sadness after music with structures that convey sadness. This
evidence suggests that the same structures that convey emotions in music can
also elicit those same emotions in the listener.

In light of this finding, there has been particular controversy about music
eliciting negative emotions. Cognitivists argue that choosing to listen to music
that elicits negative emotions like sadness would be paradoxical, as listeners
would not willingly strive to induce sadness. However, emotivists purport that
music does elicit negative emotions, and listeners knowingly choose to listen in
order to feel sadness in an impersonal way, similar to a viewer's desire to watch
a tragic film. The reasons why people sometimes listen to sad music when
feeling sad has been explored by means of interviewing people about their
motivations for doing so. As a result of this research it has indeed been found
that people sometimes listen to sad music when feeling sad to intensify feelings
of sadness. Other reasons for listening to sad music when feeling sad were; in
order to retrieve memories, to feel closer to other people, for cognitive
reappraisal, to feel befriended by the music, to distract oneself, and for mood
enhancement.

Researchers have also found an effect between one's familiarity with a piece of
music and the emotions it elicits. In one study, half of participants were played
twelve random musical excerpts one time, and rated their emotions after each
piece. The other half of the participants listened to twelve random excerpts five
times, and started their ratings on the third repetition. Findings showed that
participants who listened to the excerpts five times rated their emotions with
higher intensity than the participants who listened to them only once. This
suggests that familiarity with a piece of music increases the emotions
experienced by the listener.

Emotional memories and actions

Music may not only elicit new emotions, but connect listeners with other
emotional sources. Music serves as a powerful cue to recall emotional
memories back into awareness. Because music is such a pervasive part of
social life, present in weddings, funerals and religious ceremonies, it brings
back emotional memories that are often already associated with it. Music is also
processed by the lower, sensory levels of the brain, making it impervious to
later memory distortions. Therefore creating a strong connection between
emotion and music within memory makes it easier to recall one when prompted
by the other. Music can also tap into empathy, inducing emotions that are
assumed to be felt by the performer or composer. Listeners can become sad
because they recognize that those emotions must have been felt by the
composer, much as the viewer of a play can empathize for the actors.

Listeners may also respond to emotional music through action.Throughout

history music was composed to inspire people into specific action - to march,
dance, sing or fight. Consequently, heightening the emotions in all these events.
In fact, many people report being unable to sit still when certain rhythms are
played, in some cases even engaging in subliminal actions when physical
manifestations should be suppressed Examples of this can be seen in young
children's spontaneous outbursts into motion upon hearing music, or exuberant
expressions shown at concerts.

Courtesy Wikipedia