Alf Gabrielsson

Emotional Expression in Music Performance: Between the Performer's Intention and the Listener's Experience

Nine professional musicians were instructed to perform short melodies using various instruments - the violin, electric guitar, flute, and singing voice - so as to communicate specific emotional characters to listeners. The performances were first validated by having listeners rating the emotional expression and then analysed with regard to their physical characteristics, e.g. tempo, dynamics, timing, and spectrum. The main findings were that (a) the performers expressive intention had a marked effect on all analysed variables; (b) the performers showed many similarities as well as individual differences in emotion encoding; (c) listeners were generally successful in decoding the intended expression; and (d) some emotional characters seemed easier to communicate than others. The reported results imply that we are unlikely to find performance rules independent of instrument, musical style, performer, or listener.

The Performance of Music

Publisher Summary Music performance is a large subject that can be approached in many different ways. This chapter focuses on empirical research of music performance and related matters. Most of this research is concerned with Western tonal music and mainly art music. Excellence in music performance involves two major components like a genuine understanding of what the music is about, its structure and meaning, and a complete mastery of the instrumental technique. Evaluation of performance included many studies which are reviewed earlier. Evaluation occurs in the everyday activity of music critics, music teachers, and musicians. An overall evaluation is considered as a weighted function of the evaluations in the specific aspects. In order to maintain the tempo and to achieve perceived synchrony, musicians should therefore play a small amount ahead of the beat they hear. With sharp attacks the delay is less, and instruments with sharp attacks may therefore serve as “beat-definers” for the rest of an ensemble. In addition, some attempts are made to predict evaluation of music performances from the physical characteristics of the performances.

Emotion perceived and emotion felt: same or differenrt?

A distinction is made between emotion perception, that is, to perceive emotional expression in music without necessarily being affected oneself, and emotion induction, that is, listeners’ emotional response to music. This distinction is not always observed, neither in everyday conversation about emotions, nor in scientific papers. Empirical studies of emotion perception are briefly reviewed with regard to listener agreement concerning expressed emotions, followed by a selective review of empirical studies on emotional response to music. Possible relationships between emotion perception and emotional response are discussed and exemplified: positive relationship, negative relationship, no systematic relationship and no relationship. It is emphasised that both emotion perception and, especially, emotional response are dependent on an interplay between musical, personal, and situational factors. Some methodological questions and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Music performance research at the millennium

Empirical research on music performance has increased considerably during recent decades. This article updates the review of the research up to 1995 published by the current author in 1999. Covering about 200 papers from 1995 up to 2002, this article confirms the impression that music performance research is in a very active stage. As in the previous review, the majority of papers are on measurement of performance, but there is a rapidly increasing number of contributions concerning models of performance, performance planning and practice. Although fewer in number, there are also many new contributions within each of the remaining areas of performance research analysed in this review.

Expressive intention and performance.

This paper discusses how intentions concerning the emotional character of a piece of music affect the performance of the piece. In other words, what does a performer do to generate the intended emotional character of the music? We will first present two theories on music and emotion and then turn to some empirical investigations.

Perceived sound quality of reproductions with different frequency responses and sound levels

Three programs (female voice, jazz music, and pink noise) were reproduced using four different frequency responses and two different sound levels. Fourteen normal hearing subjects listened to the reproduction via earphones and judged the sound quality on seven perceptual scales (loudness, clarity, fullness, spaciousness, brightness, softness/gentleness, and nearness) and a fidelity scale. Significant differences among the reproductions appeared in all scales and could be attributed to the differences in frequency response or sound level or both. Interactions between the reproductions and the programs could be explained by the relations between the spectrum of the programs and the frequency responses used. The results for the noise program were similar to those for the jazz music program.

Applicability of the Cochran Q test and the F test for statistical analysis of dichotomous data for dependent samples.

Statistical analysis of experiments giving dichotomous data and using a design with repeated observation of the same Ss or with matched groups is discussed. A minor extension of Cochrans Q test is presented and the importance of exactly specifying the null hypothesis when using this test is emphasized. The possibility of using the F test for dichotomous data is investigated in computer-simulated experiments. The results indicate that for the examples chosen, the F test as a rule gives at least as good results as the Q test with regard to the Type I error. The approximation to the theoretical significance level is good except in some cases where there are very strong deviations from F test assumptions.

Emotional Expression in Drumming Performance

Two professional drummers were instructed to play three rhythm patterns on a set of electronic drums so as to communicate specific emotions (happy, sad, angry, fearful, tender, solemn, and no expression) to listeners. Listening tests confirmed that listeners on the whole perceived the intended expressions. Analyses of the acoustic variables available to the performers (i.e. tempo, dynamics, and timing) showed characteristic patterns of cue utilisation for each intended emotion. The results are discussed in relation to earlier research on communication of emotions in music performance and non-verbal vocal expression.

Perception and Performance of Musical Rhythm

Rhythm is often said to be the most fundamental element of music in any culture of the world (see, for instance, Gaston, 1968). In spite of this there is still very much confusion about the concept of rhythm, both on the empirical and on the theoretical side. Many rhythm phenomena have proved to be elusive for analytical and/or empirical approaches, and the attempts at theoretical explanations are rather limited in number as well as in scope. Most of the experimental research on rhythm does not directly refer to rhythm in connection with music — there are some outstanding exceptions, however. For historical reviews of rhythm research see Gabrielsson (1973a, 1979).

Loudspeaker frequency response and perceived sound quality

The psychophysical relations between loudspeakers’ frequency response and their perceptual properties were investigated. The frequency response of 18 high‐fidelity loudspeakers was measured in three different conditions: in free field, in reverberation room, and in the listening room itself. The perceptual data consisted of experienced listeners’ ratings of the same loudspeakers in seven scales: clarity, fullness, spaciousness, brightness, softness, absence of extraneous sounds, and fidelity (Gabrielsson and Lindstrom, 1985). Hypotheses concerning the psychophysical relations were stated on the basis of results from earlier listening tests. The relations obtained with measurements in the listening room showed better agreement with the hypotheses than those obtained by measurements in free field or in reverberation room.