While there is an increasing shift in cognitive science to study perception of naturalistic stimuli, this study extends this goal to naturalistic contexts by assessing physiological synchrony across audience members in a concert setting. Cardiorespiratory, skin conductance, and facial muscle responses were measured from participants attending live string quintet performances of full-length works from Viennese Classical, Contemporary, and Romantic styles. The concert was repeated on three consecutive days with different audiences. Using inter-subject correlation (ISC) to identify reliable responses to music, we found that highly correlated responses depicted typical signatures of physiological arousal. By relating physiological ISC to quantitative values of music features, logistic regressions revealed that high physiological synchrony was consistently predicted by faster tempi (which had higher ratings of arousing emotions and engagement), but only in Classical and Romantic styles (rated as familiar) and not the Contemporary style (rated as unfamiliar). Additionally, highly synchronised responses across all three concert audiences occurred during important structural moments in the music—identified using music theoretical analysis—namely at transitional passages, boundaries, and phrase repetitions. Overall, our results show that specific music features induce similar physiological responses across audience members in a concert context, which are linked to arousal, engagement, and familiarity.

A concert is a common event at which people gather to share a musical experience. While techniques are increasingly offering insights into naturalistic stimuli perception, this study extended methods to a more ecological context in order to explore real-world music listening within a concert setting. Cardiorespiratory, skin conductance, and facial muscle responses were measured from participants attending one of three concerts with live chamber music performances of works of varying Western Classical styles (Viennese Classical, Contemporary, and Romantic). Collective physiological synchronisation of audience members was operationalised via inter-subject correlation (ISC). By assessing which musical features (obtained via Music Information Retrieval and music-theoretical analyses) evoked moments of high synchrony, logistic regressions revealed that tempo consistently predicted physiological synchrony across all concerts in Classical and Romantic styles, but not the Contemporary style. Highly synchronised responses across all three concert audiences seemed to occur during structural transitional passages, boundaries, and at phrase repetitions. The results support the idea that group synchronisation is linked to musical arousal, structural coherence, and familiarity. By employing physiological ISC and an inter-disciplinary musical analysis, the current study demonstrates a novel approach to gain valuable insight into experiences of naturalistic stimuli in an ecological context.

Music listening can lead to strong aesthetic experiences. Extending typical laboratory studies, which report the relations between self-reports and psychophysiology, the current study set out to investigate music listening in the real-world setting of a concert. During three chamber music concerts with an identical program of three string quintets from the classical, romantic and contemporary period, psychophysiological data (facial electromyography (EMG) and arousal measures) and self-reports on the aesthetic experience (music-induced emotions and absorption) were recorded from 98 participants. The results show that the contemporary work differed from the other works by revealing higher evoked negative emotions together with higher EMG and skin conductance activity. In the classical and the romantic work, the participants’ reactions mirrored the compositional strategy of a sonata cycle, suggesting three distinctive sections. Decreased physiological activity together with reported higher melancholy and being moved in second and third movements suggest the perception of a distinct inner section within the overall work. Particularly the third movements reflect their different functions depending on the musical style: in the romantic work it reveals its transitional function by grouping with the second movement, in the classical, it reveals its resolving function by grouping with the closing movement. The closing sections lead to an increased activity in arousal measures together with positive emotions and engagement. Further, using a random forest approach, each physiological measure showed a different set of predicting self-report items, illustrating the various responses that occur in a concert situation with live performances from different styles.