Can we modify our experience of music by "hearing it as . . ."? It is thought that musical meaning partly arises through the use of cross-domain mappings, or metaphors. These metaphors allow the listener to conceptualize music differently, explaining one domain in terms of another, regardless of musical expertise. The aim of the present line of experiments was to produce a dimensional model of the different metaphors used in Western classical music for a population of musicians and nonmusicians. With a large pool of 540 participants and 3 successive studies based on participants' own musical experiences (Study 1) and on musical excerpts (Studies 2 and 3), we reduced an extensive list of metaphors collected at concerts to 5 final categories. The experimental setup was based on a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to first extract a preliminary model of 5 factors and subsequently to confirm this model with a large number of participants. The resulting Geneva Musical Metaphors Scale comprises 5 metaphorical scales: Flow, Movement, Force, Interior, and Wandering. This model provides insight into how musicians and nonmusicians approach the use of metaphors when listening to Western classical music. This model might provide scientific grounds for music educators, musicians, and guided imagery and music practitioners to improve communication and teaching. It also creates a new way to label musical excerpts and classify them. Finally, this research offers a basis for investigating the understudied role of metaphors and visual imagery in classical music.
a b s t r a c tMusic is often described in terms of emotion. This notion is supported by empirical evidence showing that engaging with music is associated with subjective feelings, and with objectively measurable responses at the behavioural, physiological, and neural level. Some accounts, however, reject the idea that music may directly induce emotions. For example, the 'paradox of negative emotion', whereby music described in negative terms is experienced as enjoyable, suggests that music might move the listener through indirect mechanisms in which the emotional experience elicited by music does not always coincide with the emotional label attributed to it.Here we discuss the role of metaphor as a potential mediator in these mechanisms. Drawing on musicological, philosophical, and neuroscientific literature, we suggest that metaphor acts at key stages along and between physical, biological, cognitive, and contextual processes, and propose a model of music experience in which metaphor mediates between language, emotion, and aesthetic response.
This study explores a unique experimental protocol that evaluates how a musician's sensitivity to social context during performance can be analysed through a combination of behavioral analysis, self-report and Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE). An original application has been developed to create audience of avatars that display different motivational states that are known to affect musician's performance. The musicians' body expressions have then been recorded through a motion capture system and analysed as they relate to audience motivational state. The musician subjective experience has been captured after each performance through semi-structured interviews. Preliminary results depict the strategies implicitly employed by four expert violinists during their performances under the various contexts (empty room and engaged and disengaged audience of avatars). Finally, this study discusses the way to improve methodology, analyses and real-world responses to musician's needs.
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