Atonal Music: Can Uncertainty Lead to Pleasure?

Abstract

In recent years, the field of neuroaesthetics has gained considerable attention with music being a favored object of study. The majority of studies concerning music have, however, focused on the experience of Western tonal music (TM), which is characterized by tonal hierarchical organization, a high degree of consonance, and a tendency to provide the listener with a tonic as a reference point during the listening experience. We argue that a narrow focus on Western TM may have led to a one-sided view regarding the qualities of the aesthetic experience of music since Western art music from the 20th and 21st century like atonal music (AM) – while lacking a tonal hierarchical structure, and while being highly dissonant and hard to predict – is nevertheless enjoyed by a group of avid listeners. We propose a research focus that investigates, in particular, the experience of AM as a novel and compelling way with which to enhance our understanding of both the aesthetic appreciation of music and the role of predictive models in the context of musical pleasure. We use music theoretical analysis and music information retrieval methods to demonstrate how AM presents the listener with a highly uncertain auditory environment. Specifically, an analysis of a corpus of 100 musical segments is used to illustrate how tonal classical music and AM differ quantitatively in terms of both key and pulse clarity values. We then examine person related, extrinsic and intrinsic factors, that point to potential mechanisms underlying the appreciation and pleasure derived from AM. We argue that personality traits like “openness to experience,” the framing of AM as art, and the mere exposure effect are key components of such mechanisms. We further argue that neural correlates of uncertainty estimation could represent a central mechanism for engaging with AM and that such contexts engender a comparatively weak predictive model in the listener. Finally we argue that in such uncertain contexts, correct predictions may be more subjectively rewarding than prediction errors since they signal to the individual that their predictive model is improving.

Musical prediction error responses similarly reduced by predictive uncertainty in musicians and non‐musicians

“…Moreover, for music research, methods such as these could be very informative about the nature of musical knowledge and musical expectations and how these are represented in the cortical hierarchy. Relatedly, this line of research could inform musical aesthetics, given that some musical styles exploit uncertainty as an artistic resource (Mencke, Omigie, Wald‐Fuhrmann, & Brattico, ). Finally, the use of more realistic stimuli could help us understand how different types of musical stimuli (e.g.…”

Musical prediction error responses similarly reduced by predictive uncertainty in musicians and non-musicians

“…Moreover, for music research, methods such as these could be very informative about the nature of musical knowledge and musical expectations and how these are represented in the cortical hierarchy. Relatedly, this line of research could inform musical aesthetics, given that some musical styles exploit uncertainty as an artistic resource (Mencke, Omigie, Wald-Fuhrmann, & Brattico, 2019). Finally, the use of more realistic stimuli could help us understand how different types of musical stimuli (e.g.…”

“Stopping for knowledge”: The sense of beauty in the perception-action cycle

“…Through a DTI and probabilistic tractography study (Sachs et al, 2016), it has been shown that aesthetic emotions triggered by music are related to the structural connectivity between associative auditory cortices and the frontal reward-related areas (such as the anterior insula and the medial prefrontal cortex; for a review of functional connectivity studies supporting this evidence refer to Reybrouck et al, 2018). Mnecke and colleagues, in a very elegant study exploring the aesthetic appreciation of atonal music and its relation with learning mechanisms, suggested that the dopaminergic activity may mediate the reward generated in response to representational models' refinement (Mencke et al, 2019). As indicated by seminal studies in nonhuman primates, such dopaminergic activity, is observed selectively in correspondence to a certain degree of uncertainty, whereas is lacking when the upcoming input is completely predictable (Fiorillo J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f et al, 2003).…”

“…As indicated by seminal studies in nonhuman primates, such dopaminergic activity, is observed selectively in correspondence to a certain degree of uncertainty, whereas is lacking when the upcoming input is completely predictable (Fiorillo J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f et al, 2003). In other words, this dopaminergic-based reward may represent the intrinsic motivation to acquire new information (Ferreri et al, 2019;Koelsch, 2010), thus helping the individual to tolerate the risk deriving from uncertainty, to focus on learning-oriented activities (Cheung et al, 2019;Gold et al, 2019a;2019b;Koelsch et al, 2019;Mencke et al, 2019). For a summary of the relevant research showing an involvement of the frontal reward-related network in aesthetic appreciation see Table 1, section 3 (see also Figure 1B for a representation of the brain areas involved).…”

“…We all change our preference according to our experience. As an example, experienced listeners usually prefer more complex music (Geringer, 1982;Mencke et al, 2019) such as free jazz and aesthetic preferences generally narrow over time. In other words, music might simply become too predictable to engage the attention of experienced listeners and trigger perceptual learning, which in turns would induce aesthetic appreciation.…”