Psychology of Music

Fifty participants who had never learned how to read music completed a questionnaire about their interpretations of standard western musical notation. Some common assumptions were that a note must consist of a circle plus a line, symbols with unfilled spaces denote silence, the value of notes and rests increases with the size and number of features of a symbol, pitch is denoted by both note-head and stem, and tempo is determined by horizontal spacing. These assumptions are not consistent with the conventions of standard musical notation, thus the findings of the study suggest that many fundamental aspects of notation are not intuitive to beginners. Implications of the findings are discussed with respect to music pedagogy.

Performance time productivity estimates for 102 classical composers are reported. For each composer, the grand total and totals within several musical genres (e.g., symphonies, concerti, operas) are provided, which are used to generate a measure of composer versatility, or the extent to which each composer's output spans multiple genres. Estimated durations of lost works for each composer are also summarized. Descriptive results identify the most prolific composers in the overall sample and within each genre. Illustrative correlational analyses revealed reliable overall associations between average annual productivity, eminence and composer birth year; versatility was related only to birth year. However, composers in different periods of musical history (Baroque/Classical, Romantic and 20th century) showed different patterns of correlations between the variables, with 20th-century composers showing no reliable correlations at all. Implications and suggestions for incorporating the reported productivity estimates into multi-level statistical analyses of composers' lifespan creative productivity are discussed.

This study focuses on health-promoting behaviours in students from two conservatoires, the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM, Manchester, UK; n =199) and the Royal College of Music (RCM, London, UK; n = 74). The research questions concern (a) the levels and types of health-promoting behaviours among performance students and (b) the association of health-promoting behaviours with emotional state, perceived general self-regulation and self-efficacy. To address these questions, the students were surveyed using server-based inventories over the internet. Results revealed varying levels of adherence to individual aspects of health-promoting behaviours. No significant differences between the populations of the two conservatoires with respect to health-promoting behaviours were observed. In general, values for health responsibility, physical activity and stress management were lower than values for nutrition, interpersonal relations and spiritual growth. Significant correlations were found between all subscales of health-promoting behaviours, emotional state, self-efficacy and self-regulation. These results suggest that music performance students tend to focus more strongly on psychosocial than physical aspects of health while particularly neglecting health responsibility. It is also concluded that health-promoting behaviours are weakly and differentially associated with both positive and negative emotional states, as well as with perceived self-efficacy and self-regulation.

A crucial issue in research on music and emotion is whether music evokes genuine emotional responses in listeners (the emotivist position) or whether listeners merely perceive emotions expressed by the music (the cognitivist position). To investigate this issue, we measured self-reported emotion, facial muscle activity, and autonomic activity in 32 participants while they listened to popular music composed with either a happy or a sad emotional expression. Results revealed a coherent manifestation in the experiential, expressive, and physiological components of the emotional response system, which supports the emotivist position. Happy music generated more zygomatic facial muscle activity, greater skin conductance, lower finger temperature, more happiness and less sadness than sad music. The finding that the emotion induced in the listener was the same as the emotion expressed in the music is consistent with the notion that music may induce emotions through a process of emotional contagion.

A framework for studying parent—child interactions is proposed, based on evidence that parents play a pivotal role in their children's musical development. It is suggested that the goals and aspirations that parents hold impact on the styles and practices they adopt during interactions with their children. Importantly, the model proposes a feedback loop in which child and socio-contextual characteristics interact with parenting goals, styles and practices to help shape children's musical competence and achievement, their sense of musical identity and accomplishment, and their continuing desire to participate, exert effort, overcome obstacles and succeed musically.