Verbal Responses to Music Listening by Adult Nonmusicians

Abstract

The central purpose of this research was to determine the nature of musically untrained adults’ verbal response to repeated hearings of music excerpts when asked questions that encouraged interpretive responses. Two specific research questions served as the basis for the investigation: What categories emerge from an analysis of verbal responses? How does the musical understanding represented by verbal responses compare to extant literature on the music listening of adult nonmusicians? Twelve adult nonmusicians ranging in age from 28 to 77 were interviewed individually after they had listened twice to six musical excerpts, followed by a repetition of the procedure after a one-week interval. A content analysis of their responses employed a grounded theory approach to generate a list of categories. Results indicate that participants responded across a range of musical, extramusical, affective, and preference categories, and that repeated hearings of selected pieces resulted in more detailed responses for several participants.

Psychometric properties of a scale of attitudes toward musical genres linked to social groups in Peru

“…This could be explained by the level of musical training between both groups when evaluating a specific artistic product. Thus, musicians may focus more on the musical properties themselves (rhythm, harmony, melody), and non-musicians give higher priority to the association that exists between the musical genre and the social or ethnic group that this genre would represent (Madsen & Geringer, 1990). From this also emerges a line of research to know and understand the possible differences between people depending on their knowledge or familiarity with a musical genre.…”