Perception of musical tension in short chord sequences: The influence of harmonic function, sensory dissonance, horizontal motion, and musical training

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of four variables (tonal hierarchies, sensory chordal consonance, horizontal motion, and musical training) on perceived musical tension. Participants were asked to evaluate the tension created by a chord X in sequences of three chords (C major ---7 X ---7 C major} in a C major context key.The Xchords could be major or minor triads major-minor seventh, or minor seventh chords built on the 12notes of the chromatic scale. The data were compared with Krumhansl's (1990) harmonic hierarchy and with predictions of Lerdahl's (1988)cognitive theory, Hutchinson and Knopoffs (1978)and Pamcutt's (1989)sensory-psychoacoustical theories, and the model of horizontal motion defined in the paper. As a main outcome, it appears thatjudgments of tension arose from a convergence of several cognitive and psychoacoustics influences, whose relative importance varies, depending on musical training.Music and spoken language are complex auditory sequences of events that evolve through time. In both, it is striking that listeners usually perceive events as progressing in a coherent, dynamic way. In spoken language, this temporal coherence is due to semantics and to syntactic and contextual information; it also results from the fact that language usually refers to a well-identified external reality.Such information has no clear equivalent in music (Clarke, 1989). Incontrast, a number ofmusic theorists have considered that intuition of coherent progression through time is mainly determined by the tension-relaxation relations that exist among musical events (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983;Meyer, 1956;Schenker, 1935). Inthe Western tonal system, these tension-relaxation relations are for one part determined by the harmonic relations that exist among chords. Chord designates the simultaneous sounding of three or more notes. In the present study, all chords contained four notes. Following standard usage, we refer to them as soprano, tenor, alto, and bass voices. It has beenWe would like to thank F. Madurell for assisting the experimentation and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which greatly improved the manuscript. R.P is with the Faculty

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

“…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). The most elaborate model of musical tension has been devised by Farbood (2012), and takes into account dynamics, pitch height of melody, bass and inner voices, tempo, onset frequency, and harmony.…”

“…However, other low-level psychoacoustical features may play a role in mediating tension. In particular, sensory dissonance is likely to have an effect on experienced tension, which is indicated by previous research showing that for single chords subjective roughness ratings correlate with tension ratings (Pressnitzer, McAdams, Winsberg, & Fineberg, 2000) and that predictions of a roughness model correlate with tension ratings of musicians (Bigand et al, 1996). To investigate whether these findings generalize to longer music pieces, future research on musical tension should therefore consider also including measures of sensory dissonance into the analysis.…”

“…The aforementioned studies (Bigand & Parncutt, 1999;Bigand et al, 1996;Farbood, 2012;Krumhansl, 1996) show that different structural features are related to the subjective experience of musical tension, and that experienced tension can be modelled based on such features. However, research investigating how the experimental manipulation of specific structural features in real music pieces affects experienced tension is scarce.…”

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