Modeling Tonal Tension

Lerdahl, Fred; Krumhansl, Carol L.

doi:10.1525/mp.2007.24.4.329

Cited by 171 publications

(189 citation statements)

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“…This stability of musical arousal profiles even in absence of tonal structure indicates that participants responded to features that remained relatively unaltered between the two versions (such as rhythm, note density, or global structure). Assuming that participants' ratings to a large extent depend on tonal structure (as suggested by our results and by previous research, see Krumhansl, 1996;Lerdahl & Krumhansl, 2007), this indicates that tonal aspects tend to covary with nontonal features of the music.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…From a theoretical perspective, the hierarchical structure of music Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983;Rohrmeier, 2007Rohrmeier, , 2011Schenker, 1935) can inform models of tension. For instance, Lerdahl's model of tension (Lerdahl, 1996(Lerdahl, , 2001Lerdahl & Krumhansl, 2007) combines predictions based on surface structure and tonal distance as well as higher order hierarchical dependency structure. The notion of an influence of local tonal structure on musical tension has been supported by behavioral studies (Bigand & Parncutt, 1999;Bigand, Parncutt, & Lerdahl, 1996).…”

Section: A Striking Feature Of Music Is Its Abilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Influence of Different Structural Features on Felt Musical Tension in Two Piano Pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn

et al. 2012

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IN TONAL MUSIC, PATTERNS OF TENSION ANDresolution form one of the core principles evoking emotions. The experience of musical tension and resolution depends on various features of the music (e.g., dynamics, agogics, melody, and harmony); however, the relative contribution of different features to the experience of tension is less clear. To investigate the influence of different features on subjectively experienced musical tension, we compared continuous ratings of felt musical tension for original and modified versions of two piano pieces by Mendelssohn and Mozart. Modifications included versions without dynamics and without agogics as well as versions in which the music was reduced to its melodic, harmonic, or outer voice components. Additionally, we compared tension ratings with a loudness model. Tension ratings for versions without dynamics, versions without agogics and without dynamics, and outer voice reductions correlated highly with ratings for the original versions for both pieces. Tension rating correlations between melodic or harmonic reductions and original versions, as well as loudness and original ratings, differed between pieces and appeared to depend on the relative importance of the feature in the respective piece. In addition, qualitative analyses suggested that felt tension and resolution depend on phrase structure, local harmonic implications, and global syntactic structures of the pieces. Altogether, results indicate that discarding expressive features such as dynamics and agogics largely preserves tension-resolution patterns of the music, whereas the contributions of harmonic and melodic structure depend on the way in which they are employed in the composition.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: A Striking Feature Of Music Is Its Abilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Different Structural Features on Felt Musical Tension in Two Piano Pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn

et al. 2012

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“…Krumhansl (1996) and Lerdahl and Krumhansl (2007) related perceived tension in music to points of tension and relaxation, mostly harmonic in nature, in line with Meyer's theory. More generally, the fluctuations in tension and emotionality as recorded with continuous response methods suggest the importance of temporal structure for the affective impact of musical events (see e.g., Krumhansl, 1998;Schubert, 2001;Sloboda & Lehmann, 2001).…”

Section: Emotional Ornamentation In Performances Of a Handel Sonatasupporting

confidence: 60%

Emotional Ornamentation in Performances of a Handel Sonata

Timmers¹,

Ashley²

2007

Music Perception

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Ornamentation is one aspect of music associated with emotional affect in Baroque music. In an empirical study, the relationship between ornamentation and emotion was investigated by asking a violinist and flutist to ornament three melodies in different ways to express four emotions: happiness, sadness, love, and anger. The performers adapted the type of ornaments to the instructed emotion as well as the characteristics of the ornaments. The flutist specifically varied the duration, timing, and complexity of the ornamentation, while the violinist varied the complexity, density, and sound level of the performances. The ability of the performers to communicate the emotions was tested in a listening experiment.Communication was found to be generally successful, with the exception of the communication of happiness. This success was not due to general consensus about the expression of emotions through ornamentation. Rather the listeners were sensitive to a performer's specific use of ornamentation.Received March 28, 2006, accepted July 10, 2007 Key words: emotion, ornamentation, affects in Baroque music, performance, perception Emotional Ornamentation 3 Emotional Ornamentation in Performances of a Handel SonataThe aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between variations in melodic ornamentation and perceived emotion in the context of modern performances of a Handel sonata. The research aimed to contribute to the understanding of the attribution of emotional qualities to music and the communication of emotion using music. The questions asked were: What musical qualities relate to perceived emotions, and, specifically, what is the role, if any, of ornamentation in the communication of emotion for modern day musicians?These questions are distinct from the question of how listeners come to experience emotions in response to music. Listeners' experience of emotions may be more subjective and socially dependent than their perception of emotion (see for discussions Gabrielsson, 2001Gabrielsson, /2002Scherer, 2004;Scherer & Zentner, 2001).Previous research has shown that listeners are quite consistent in labeling music with an emotional quality, especially where it concerns basic emotions (Gabrielsson & Juslin, 2003). This research has started to distinguish relevant musical features that are responsible for labeling music with a specific emotional category.Perhaps not surprisingly, almost every musical feature, including aspects of the performance, may influence the perception of emotions; this may include harmony, rhythm, melody, tempo, dynamics, timbre, vibrato, and articulation (see e.g., Gabrielsson & Juslin, 1996;Hevner, 1935;Sundberg, Iwarsson, & Hagegård, 1995). Some of these features are apparently more important than others. For example, tempo and mode are both salient features, but, when contrasted, tempo can overrule the effect of mode to distinguish happy from sad sounding music (Gagnon & Peretz, 2003).The exact influence of musical features on the perception of emotions is, howeve...

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“…Yet these weights tend to organize themselves into patterns that reveal the hierarchical metric structures of pieces or passages. The impingement of distant events on the local hierarchy in both models, explicitly and implicitly, connect metric hierarchy to a common music-theoretical intuition about harmonic hierarchies in tonal music recently formalized by Lerdahl and Krumhansl [5], that local events can 'sound' different when heard on their own or in process from when heard as part of a larger excerpt of a composition.…”

Section: The Articles In This Issuementioning

confidence: 88%