Emotion versus Tension in Haydn's Symphony no. 104 as Measured by the Two-Dimensional Continuous Response Digital Interface

Abstract

This study compared musicians' responses while listening to the first movement of Haydn's Symphony no. 104 using a two-dimensional continuous response digital interface (CRDI). The two-dimensional CRDI uses a mouse cursor via a computer screen to indicate the interrelationship of two dimensions simultaneously. In the present investigation, 50 musicians were presented with the dimensions of arousal (i.e., relaxing-exciting) and affect (i.e., ugly-beautiful). The vertical dimension on the computer screen listed the word 'Exciting" at the top and "Relaxing" at the bottom; the horizontal axis listed "Ugly" on the left side and "Beautiful" on the opposite side. Subjects moved the cursor as they tracked their response to the music. Results indicated that there was an inverse relationship between the two dimensions as subjects tracked responses during this selection. The correlation between the two dimensions was r = -.58. Additionally, graphic analysis indicated almost a mirror-image relationship between the two dimensions. When analyzed within the musical context, both the arousal and the excitement dimensions evidenced many subtle characteristics shown graphically as peaks and valleys corresponding to variations in the music. It was apparent that these two dimensions represent different aspects of perceived listening, the exciting-relaxing dimension representing degrees of arousal that were most often the opposite from subjects' affective response. Additional comparisons were made with previous research that used this identical Haydn selection but measured each dimension separately.

Musical Tension and the Interaction of Dynamic Auditory Parameters

“…Diverse empirical works have studied perceived musical tension from both viewpoints, using methodologies ranging from continuous response (Fredrickson, 1997(Fredrickson, , 1999(Fredrickson, , 2000Frego, 1999;Madsen, 1997Madsen, , 1998Nielsen, 1983;Schubert, 2001Schubert, -2002Schubert, , 2004Vines et al, 2005) to numerical ratings of expressive terms (Farbood, 2006;Ilie & Thompson, 2006). Some empirical studies point to the importance of music-syntactical features and the expectation they raise in tension perception.…”

Time-Dependent Characteristics of Performance Evaluation

“…In recent years, continuous response methods have been chiefly employed to investigate emotional responses to music, with participants required to track their perceptions of the music's emotional intensity whilst listening (Madsen, 1997(Madsen, , 1998Schubert, 1999Schubert, , 2001Schubert, , 2004Schubert & Dunsmuir, 1999;Sloboda & Lehmann, 2001). These studies have usually attempted to identify structural features in the music responsible for eliciting observed patterns of emotional variability.…”

Modeling Perceived Emotion With Continuous Musical Features

“…Based on the theory that emotions can be reduced to two or three important dimensions (Russell, 1989), Schubert selected valence and arousal as bipolar scales aligned at right angles to form the "two-dimensional emotion space" (2DES). Although several such designs are available (Madsen, 1998;Tyler, 1996) and appear to be fairly reliable (Schubert, 1999), no published study has yet used such an instrument specifically to analyze how musical features can be used to predict perceived emotion with this continuous response methodology.…”