Elementary, Middle, and High School Student Perceptions of Tension in Music

Abstract

School-age students from Grades 2, 5, 8, and 11/12 (N = 112) were asked to listen to a recording of thefirst movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 104. Al subjects were asked to record theirperception of "tension " in the music using a Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) dial. As in previous studies of this type (Fredrickson, 1995;Madsen & Fredrickson, 1993), no definition of the term in question was given, allowing subjects to, in essence, create their own definition. Graphic analysis showed that even though the magnitude of group responses varied widely, there are some striking similarities in the timing of major group responses. Pearson correlations between groups ranged from .98 between the fifth and eighth graders to. 71 between the second graders and a population of professional musicians from a previous study who responded to the same musical recording. In general, younger subjects tended to use a wider range of the dial, whereas older and more musically experienced subjects were much more conservative. These results were consistent with results of previous studies and indicated a perceptual consistency regarding an entity that a fairly wide variety of populations define as tension in this piece of music.

The Influence of Different Structural Features on Felt Musical Tension in Two Piano Pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn

“…This is corroborated by empirical research showing that subjective ratings of musical tension correlate with ratings of discrete emotions (sadness, fear, and happiness) and physiological responses during music listening (Krumhansl, 1997). It has furthermore been shown that subjective ratings of musical tension correlate highly within individuals between different exposures to the same music piece (Krumhansl, 1996) as well as between different groups of persons such as musicians and nonmusicians or school children of different ages (Fredrickson, 1997(Fredrickson, , 1999(Fredrickson, , 2000, suggesting relatively consistent and stable underlying cognitive and affective processes.…”

Performance Gestures of Musicians: What Structural and Emotional Information Do They Convey?

“…The tension judgment is sensitive to changes in a performance [6], and it depends on a wide variety of structural, harmonic, and rhythmic features in the music [16] [14] [6] [10] [12]. This measure is consistent across age groups, musical skill levels, and levels of familiarity with the stimulus music [7] [8] [9] [10]. It is an informative and consistent measure.…”

Focus of attention to melody or harmony and perception of music tension: An exploratory study

“…Research utilizing the CRDI for perception of musical tension and individual variables has included effects of conductor (Fredrickson, 1994), performer use of rubato (Fredrickson & Johnson, 1996), age and/or sophistication of the listener (Fredrickson, 1997a), participation in rehearsal/performance (Fredrickson, 1999), listeners' musical proficiency (Fredrickson, 2000), dynamics (Misenhelter, 2001), performance medium (Fredrickson, 2001), jazz music (Fredrickson & Coggiola, 2003), music and text (Hackworth & Fredrickson, 2009), as well as artistic tension in dance (Frego, 1999).…”