The Perception of Music Textural Aspects on Modern

Orchestral Music: A Case Study

First A. Luís Raimundo, Second B. Ricardo Mestre

Abstract— It is an empirically assumed fact that some of the

music written in the last century – particularly the commonly called
modern classical – poses, on the technical and aesthetic levels, major
difficulties for the common listener, and that these compositions
remain largely misunderstood by most of the public, valued only by a
few.
However, it remains to explain which particular aspects present in
some musical typologies exert either repulsion or attraction for some
sectors of the public, and consequently, how certain types of music
structures are sensorially grasped by people. Having those aspects in
mind, the present study is based on the auditory reactions of a group
of human subjects to a set of musical excerpts extracted from
orchestral compositions by composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki,
György Ligeti, Iánnis Xenákis, Georg F. Haas and Peter Ruzicka.
Through a multimodal approach - based on sensory aspects
coming from the auditory, visual, tactile domains, but also from the
emotional realm, and articulated via semantic descriptors - it is
intended to present a broad understanding of how people apprehend
certain musical structures - particularly textural and “sound mass”
elements - in some of the orchestral works written in the last decades.
This paper will expose the analysis of data extracted from an
online survey applied to about fifty subjects – of several age groups,
levels of education and musical knowledge – drawing conclusions
about the ways in which people listen to and perceive the meanings in
the orchestral music created by the aforementioned composers.
Keywords—Textural Music; Modern Classical; Survey Research;
Multimodal Perception.

F. A Author is with the Centre for the Study of the Sociology and
Aesthetics of Music (CESEM), Lisbon, PC 1099-032 Portugal (phone: +351
91 294 31 64; e-mail: luisraimundo@fcsh.unl.pt; lmr.2020@outlook.pt)
S. B. Author, is with the Centre of Investigation for Arts and
Communication (CIAC), Faro, 8005-139 (phone +351 91 974 56 48; e-mail
ricardo.mestre.1691@gmail.com)