scholarly journals A concert for babies: Attentional, affective, and motor responses in an infant audience

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haley Elisabeth Kragness ◽  
Laura Cirelli
Keyword(s):  
Musical Performance ◽  
Home Environments ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Motor Responses ◽  
Caregiver Behavior ◽  
Live Music ◽  
Song Style ◽  
Infant Attention ◽  
Sensorimotor Responses

Many of our most powerful musical experiences are shared with others, and researchers have increasingly investigated responses to music in group contexts. Though musical performances for infants are growing in popularity, most research on infants’ responses to live music has focused on solitary caregiver-infant pairs. Here, we report infants’ attentional, affective, and sensorimotor responses to live music as audience members. Two groups of caregiver-infant (6-18 months) pairs (50 total) watched a short musical performance with two song styles – lullaby and playsong. Caregivers were instructed to watch passively or interactively. The playsong captured more attention and, especially in the interactive condition, elicited more smiles. Notably, infant attention synchronized more with their own caregiver than a random caregiver. Infants with enriched musical home environments spent more time moving rhythmically (“dancing”). Overall, infants’ responses to live musical performance in an audience were influenced by song style, caregiver behavior, and their own musical histories.

Gendering Emotions: Ṭarab, Women and Musical Performance in Three Biographical Narratives from ‘The Book of Songs’

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-183
Author(s):  
Karen Moukheiber
Keyword(s):  
Formative Period ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Social Conduct ◽  
Literary Biographies ◽  
The One ◽  
The Book Of Songs

Musical performance was a distinctive feature of urban culture in the formative period of Islamic history. At the court of the Abbasid caliphs, and in the residences of the ruling elite, men and women singers performed to predominantly male audiences. The success of a performer was linked to his or her ability to elicit ṭarab, namely a spectrum of emotions and affects, in their audiences. Ṭarab was criticized by religious scholars due, in part, to the controversial performances at court of slave women singers depicted as using music to induce passion in men, diverting them from normative ethical social conduct. This critique, in turn, shaped the ethical boundaries of musical performances and affective responses to them. Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī’s tenth-century Kitāb al-Aghānī (‘The Book of Songs’) compiles literary biographies of prominent male and female singers from the formative period of Islamic history. It offers rich descriptions of musical performances as well as ensuing manifestations of ṭarab in audiences, revealing at times the polemics with which they were associated. Investigating three biographical narratives from Kitāb al-Aghānī, this paper seeks to answer the following question: How did emotions, gender and status shape on the one hand the musical performances of women singers and on the other their audiences’ emotional responses, holistically referred to as ṭarab. Through this question, this paper seeks to nuance and complicate our understanding of the constraints and opportunities that shaped slave and free women's musical performances, as well as men's performances, at the Abbasid court.

Developing “Big Ears”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Greenland
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Silent Majority ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Live Music ◽  
Private And Public

This chapter examines how jazz fans, especially the most active concertgoers (the regulars), respond to a musical performance. It first considers how fans become part of jazz communities and how they contribute to the New York City jazz scene. It then shows how nonperforming musicians fill the performance space, suggesting that these offstage participants, who are also “performing” jazz, constitute the unseen scene, the silent and not-so-silent majority that forms an integral part of communal music-making. It also explains what happens when fans are in the house: how their musical tastes develop, how they view performers and performances, and how their private and public listening practices inform their understandings of and appreciation for jazz and jazz performances. The chapter concludes that when jazz audiences with “big ears” attend to and interact with live music and musicians, it creates a sympathetic environment where jazz can come alive.

The Role of Timing Patterns in Recognition of Emotional Expression from Musical Performance

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrik N. Juslin ◽  
Guy Madison
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Decoding Accuracy ◽  
Better Than

The purpose of this study was to explore whether listeners can use timing patterns to decode the intended emotional expression of musical performances. We gradually removed different acoustic cues (tempo, dynamics, timing, articulation) from piano performances rendered with various intended expressions (anger, sadness, happiness, fear) to see how such manipulations would affect a listener's ability to decode the emotional expression. The results show that (a) removing the timing patterns yielded a significant decrease in listeners' decoding accuracy, (b) timing patterns were by themselves capable of communicating some emotions with accuracy better than chance, and (c) timing patterns were less effective in communicating emotions than were tempo and dynamics. Implications for research on timing in performance are discussed.

scholarly journals Research on the Advantages and Feasibility of Music Headset Live

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 209
Author(s):  
Cai Wang
Keyword(s):  
Musical Performance ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
Live Music ◽  
New Form ◽  
Commercial Value ◽  
Rent Or Buy

Our team adopts a new form of live music, which is to enjoy live music with headphones. This new form of analysis can combine the advantages of live music and recorded music. The audience can adjust the volume, reverberation, etc. according to their needs. This high-quality new format can attract the audience to know some truly outstanding original musicians, bands and music, not just through the "star effect". In addition, Our team studies the great commercial value of this new form of musical performance. Audiences can rent or buy high-quality headphones to listen to high-quality concerts, which means that practitioners can cooperate with some headphone brands. At the same time, the live performance was recorded as a separate track at the end. Mixers will make them into recordings, and practitioners can collect royalties from them.

scholarly journals Affective and Cognitive Responses to Musical Performances of Early 20th Century Classical Solo Piano Compositions

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-266
Author(s):  
Mary C. Broughton ◽  
Jessie Dimmick ◽  
Roger T. Dean
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Action Understanding ◽  
Cognitive Responses ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Motor Expertise ◽  
Solo Piano

Effective audience engagement with musical performance involves social, cognitive and affective elements. We investigate the influence of observers’ musical expertise and instrumental motor expertise on their affective and cognitive responses to complex and unfamiliar classical piano performances of works by Scriabin and Hanson presented in audio and audio-visual formats. Observers gave their felt affect (arousal and valence) and their action understanding responses continuously while observing the performances. Liking and familiarity were rated after each excerpt. As hypothesized: visual information enhanced observers’ action understanding and liking ratings; observers with music training rated their action understanding, liking and familiarity higher than did nonmusicians; observers’ felt affect did not vary according to their musical or motor expertise. Contrary to our hypotheses: visual information had only a slight effect on observers’ arousal felt affect responses and none on valence; musicians’ specific instrumental motor expertise did not influence action understanding responses. We also observed a significant negative relationship between action understanding and felt affect responses. Ideas of empathy in musical interactions motivated the research; the empathy framework in relation to musical performance is discussed. Nonmusician audiences might be sensitized to challenging musical performances through multimodal strategies to build the performer-observer connection and increase understanding of performance.

Exploring decision consistency and decision accuracy across rating designs in rater-mediated music performance assessments

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie A. Wind ◽  
Pey Shin Ooi ◽  
George Engelhard
Keyword(s):  
Rating Scales ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Performance Assessments ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Music Assessment ◽  
Adjustment Procedure ◽  
Decision Consistency ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Rater Severity

Music performance assessments frequently include panels of raters who evaluate the quality of musical performances using rating scales. As a result of practical considerations, it is often not possible to obtain ratings from every rater on every performance (i.e., complete rating designs). When there are differences in rater severity, and not all raters rate all performances, ratings of musical performances and their resulting classification (e.g., pass or fail) depend on the “luck of the rater draw.” In this study, we explored the implications of different types of incomplete rating designs for the classification of musical performances in rater-mediated musical performance assessments. We present a procedure that researchers and practitioners can use to adjust student scores for differences in rater severity when incomplete rating designs are used, and we consider the effects of the adjustment procedure across different types of rating designs. Our results suggested that differences in rater severity have large practical consequences for ratings of musical performances that impact individual students and group of students differently. Furthermore, our findings suggest that it is possible to adjust musical performance ratings for differences in rater severity as long as there are common raters across scoring panels. We consider the implications of our findings as they relate to music assessment research and practice.

scholarly journals Artistic and conceptual tasks of a musician in solo and ensemble performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (S2) ◽  
pp. 774-784
Author(s):  
Olha V. Ohanezova-Hryhorenko ◽  
Liudmyla I. Povzun ◽  
Olena A. Khoroshavina ◽  
Tetiana O. Fedchun ◽  
Kateryna I. Yerhiieva
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Theoretical Methods ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Ensemble Performance ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis

The relevance of this study is justified by the necessity to investigate the tasks for the improvement of musician’s professional skills. Artistic perception of the surrounding world is based on active artistic and conceptual thinking. The purpose of this study is to define artistic and conceptual tasks of a musician. In addition, the primary purpose of this research is to consider and analyze the tasks of a performing musician. The methodological background of this study is shaped by theoretical methods of scientific knowledge. For this, the study involved such research methods as analysis and synthesis of information, as well as analytical, cultural and comparative methods. The first stage of the study was a theoretical analysis of academic literature. For the sake of this study, the types of musical performances and interpretations of works as well as the main tasks of the performing musician were considered. It was determined that musical performance is a form of art that involves the reproduction of music in a variety of ways. As a result, it was established that the task of a musician is to decipher the emotional and sensual image created by the author of the work. 

Scattered Musics

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Musical Performances

This book brings together eleven chapters on the musics of migrant and diaspora populations around the globe. Their authors are engaged with and sensitive to the nuances of struggles over identities and representations through musical expression, and they give account of some of the ways in which musicians, fans, promoters, and others use music and other media (including social media) to negotiate, transcend, or create solidarities with different normativities and nationalisms. How have diasporas transformed the musical expressions of their home countries as well as those in the host communities? How do musical performances provide a space for play in seeking to understand one’s identity? How do some communities recreate home away from home in musical performances, and how do some use music to critique and refine their senses of home? What are some of the ways in which musical performance can help reconstruct and redefine collective memory and a collective sense of place? With chapters by ethnomusicologists, sociologists, historians artists, and others, Scattered Musics is an interdisciplinary plunge into these questions.

Attractiveness Bias in the Evaluation of Young Pianists' Performances

2004 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlene Ryan ◽  
Eugenia Costa-Giomi
Keyword(s):  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Performance Quality ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Perception Of Performance

We investigated how the attractiveness bias that influences the judgment of a variety of characteristics and behaviors in infants, children, and adults affects the evaluation of young pianists' performances. The assumption was that both the visual and the audio components of a videotaped musical performance influence the viewers perception of performance quality. We asked children, musicians, and nonmusicians (n = 75) to rate the quality of 10 piano performances from audiotapes (sound only) and from videotapes (sound and image). Additionally, the participants rated the attractiveness of the performers from brief videos of the performers getting ready to play. Results show that evaluations of audiovisual recordings of musical performances are judged more reliably than are audio recordings but also suggest that they may be affected by an attractiveness bias. The bias was found to favor the more attractive pianists among the female performers and among the best players, and the less attractive pianists among the male performers. The decision to use more reliable means of evaluation (videotapes or DVDs) at the expense of favoring a particular group of performers would have to be taken carefully depending on the outcomes of the situation.

Assessment of Musical Performance by Using the Method of Continuous Judgment by Selected Description

1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seiichiro Namba ◽  
Sonoko Kuwano ◽  
Tadasu Hatoh ◽  
Mariko Kato
Keyword(s):  
Musical Performance ◽  
Subjective Impression ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Pictures At An Exhibition ◽  
Major Factors

Newly developed methods for evaluating subjective impressions of musical performances are introduced. Performances of the Promenades in "Pictures at an Exhibition," played by three musicians, were used as stimuli. In Experiment 1, the impressions of each performance were judged by the method of selected description. Three major factors concerning adjectives used to describe the subjective impression of musical performances became apparent. These were "dynamics," "tranquility," and "sadness." In Experiment 2, instantaneous impressions were judged by the method of continuous judgment by selected description, and its relation to the overall impression was examined.

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