Associating emotions with Wagner’s music: A developmental perspective

Abstract

Brazilian listeners (N = 303) were asked to identify emotions conveyed in 1-min instrumental excerpts from Wagner’s operas. Participants included musically untrained 7- to 10-year-olds and university students in music (musicians) or science (nonmusicians). After hearing each of eight different excerpts, listeners made a forced-choice judgment about which of eight emotions best matched the excerpt. The excerpts and emotions were chosen so that two were in each of four quadrants in two-dimensional space as defined by arousal and valence. Listeners of all ages performed at above-chance levels, which means that complex, unfamiliar musical materials from a different century and culture are nevertheless meaningful for young children. In fact, children performed similarly to adult nonmusicians. There was age-related improvement among children, however, and adult musicians performed best of all. As in previous research that used simpler musical excerpts, effects due to age and music training were due primarily to improvements in selecting the appropriate valence. That is, even 10-year-olds with no music training were as likely as adult musicians to match a high- or low-arousal excerpt with a high- or low-arousal emotion, respectively. Performance was independent of general cognitive ability as measured by academic achievement but correlated positively with basic pitch-perception skills.

The definition of a musician in music psychology: A literature review and the six-year rule

“…Of the remaining 26% of papers containing a split point value (7 out of 27), four papers detailed music lessons ( i.e. , instrumental, music theory, or private/group lessons; Andrade, Vanzella, Andrade, & Schellenberg, 2017; Frey, Hautbois, Bootz, & Tijus, 2014; Russo, Thompson, & Cuddy, 2015; Sears, Caplin, & McAdams, 2014); one paper detailed formal music lessons (Weijkamp & Sadakata, 2017); another on instrumental playing experience (Hansen, Wallentin, & Vuust, 2013); and one in terms of years in an undergraduate degree in music (Goodchild, Gingras, & McAdams, 2016).…”

“…In contrast, the three papers which recruited musicians from music-specialized institutions were undergraduate students (Frey et al, 2014; Yu et al, 2016), or had at least two years of music training (Aksentijevic, Smith, & Elliott, 2014). Interestingly, of the two papers which recruited musicians from students studying in a music course at university, the median was 9.9 years of MEC (Andrade et al, 2017; Woolhouse, Cross, & Horton, 2016). Thus, based on the years of MEC, musicians with a high level of musical expertise do not necessarily reside in music-specialized institutions.…”

Memory for melody and key in childhood

“…In previous research, female advantages emerged in some music tasks, such as those that require young children to identify emotions conveyed musically [ 26 ]. These associations are not always reliable [ 52 ], however, and can disappear among older children and adults [ 26 ]. In any event, gender was of no theoretical interest.…”

Singing and Accompaniment Support the Processing of Song Lyrics and Change the Lyrics' Meaning

“…However, a growing body of evidence shows that music can at least express emotional meaning in a less arbitrary way (e.g. Andrade, Vanzella, Andrade, & Schellenberg, 2017;Cespedes-Guevara & Eerola, 2018;Fritz et al, 2009;Huovinen & Kaila, 2015;Juslin, 2013;Juslin and Laukka, 2003;Koelsch, 2011;Schubert, 2013Straehley & Loebach, 2014Swaminathan & Schellenberg, 2015;Tiemann & Huron, 2011). In addition, there is evidence of semantic meaning in music (e.g., Brodsky, 2011, HaCohen & Wagner, 1997Huovinen & Kaila, 2015;Koelsch et al, 2004;Margulis, 2016Margulis, , 2017Noble & McAdams, 2018), and of musical humour (Huron, 2004;Goeth, 2016).…”