8/16/2019 Sloboda Article

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Ariel Eduardo AlbaDr. Stacey DavisMUS 3413

April 15, 2015

Sloboda: Music Structure and Emotional Response

This study seeks to prove if people can point out and describe emotional responseswithin a music piece since multiple emotions can be portrayed in a single piece from onepassage to another, focusing mainly on high musical moments. The participants wereeighty-three British adults (ages: 16-70) from a group who were asked to answer aquestionnaire which consisted of: Rating multiple physical responses from a given list on howoften did they experience them (range: 1 - 5) during the last 5 years, listing three musicalpieces that they remember triggered one or more of the responses in the list as well as askingthem to specify as much as possible which musical event(s) triggered the reactions with the

help of a score whenever. The 83 participants included 34 professional musicians, 33amateur performers and 16 people who listened, but did not perform music. The participantsnominated a total of 165 works which included both popular and classical genres. The mostcommon physical responses were shivers, lump in throat, tears and laughter. From these,tears were experienced more by women while laughter was more common in people in theirthirties. The most common musical features that triggered physical responses where melodicappoggiaturas and melodic or harmonic sequences.

We kind of went over this in class, but I wonder what is it about certain musicalfeatures that triggers the reactions. Is it the build up? The pitch height? What is it that they

could have associated with it? I’m also curious about the popular works and which werenominated, since the subjects were British I’m assuming someone may have mentioned DeepPurple, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Iron Maiden, Eurythmics and such. I also like the fact thatthe study was not limited to either professional performers, amateurs or justlisteners/non-performers, but it included all of them since we all experience music in someway.It does say, however, that most of the people that were able to associate an emotion orphysical response to a music passage are, but not limited to, professional performers. Ibelieve this is because professionals have been working their craft for a longer time andfollow some sort conventions. Then again, not two individuals will experience a passage in thesame manner.