The Coupling of Action and Perception in Musical Meaning Formation

Abstract

THE EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE ON MUSIC COGNITIONhas stressed the central role of the body and body movements in musical meaning formation processes. In the present study, we investigate by means of a behavioral experiment how free body movements in response to music (i.e., action) can be linked to specific linguistic, metaphorical descriptions people use to describe the expressive qualities they perceive in the music (i.e., perception). We introduce a dimensional model based on the Effort/Shape theory of Laban in order to target musical expressivity from an embodied perspective. Also, we investigate whether a coupling between action and perception is dependent on the musical background of the participants (i.e., trained versus untrained). The results show that the physical appearance of the free body movements that participants perform in response to music are reliably linked to the linguistic descriptions of musical expressiveness in terms of the underlying quality. Moreover, this result is found to be independent of the participants' musical background.

The Role of Embodiment in the Perception of Music

“…More recently, we focused on the foundations of expressive encoding and decoding, trying to understand these processes and develop an appropriate methodology. This was investigated in two other studies, namely, a study of expressive-supporting gestures during clarinet playing of a baroque music piece by Marin Marais (Desmet et al, 2012), and a study of expressive-responding gestures during listening to an excerpt of Brahms' First Piano Concerto (Maes, Van Dyck, et al, 2014;Amelynck, Maes, Martens, & Leman, 2014).…”

“…The studies of expressive-responding gestures (Maes, Van Dyck, et al, 2014;Amelynck et al, 2014) show how listeners move in similar ways in response to music. Additionally, these studies investigate the extent to which the properties of the body movement responses to music link to the linguistic, metaphorical descriptions people use to describe the expressive qualities they perceive in the music.…”

Gestos en la dirección: Comunicación de significados musicales corporeizados

“…La figura 4.1 reúne y compara la organización de los estratos entre los marcos de referencia conceptual de Camurri et al (2003), diseñados a partir de objetivos de inferencia de emociones básicas en la danza; Lesaffre (2006), que estudia el desarrollo de sistemas de recopilación de información musical para conformación de bases de datos musicales; Leman (2008), cuyo objetivo epistémico es el procesamiento de la expresividad en el contexto de multimodalidad de música-movimiento; y Maes et al (2014), que estudia la acción-percepción para la conformación de los significados musicales.…”

“…En la pedagogía de la dirección musical los factores de movimiento han sido relacionados con las categorías expresivas de la música (Jordan et al, 2011;Gambetta, 2005). Asimismo los factores de movimiento se correlacionaron con conceptos y metáforas lingüísticas sobre la expresión (Maes et al, 2014).…”

“…No encontramos la posibilidad de transferir los métodos utilizados en otros estudios, dado que unos utilizan la masa corporal según tablas de modelos corporales (Giraud et al, 2016) o la aceleración (Maes et al, 2014;Van Dyck et al, 2013). El primero no podemos aplicarlo porque para calcular la masa corporal de la mano necesitaríamos los datos de los dedos que nuestro sistema no captura; y la segunda opción nos resulta poco representativa del descriptor Laban en cuestión.…”