Musical parameters in the playlist of a Dutch Crematorium

Abstract

In cremation rituals in the Netherlands, music plays an important role. However, what exactly this role is remains unclear. In the literature on cremation rituals, music has received little attention up to now. A computational analysis of music played during cremations and a subsequent comparison of the results of this analysis with results of the analysis of two other playlists containing popular music shows that the crematorium playlist differs significantly from the other two playlists. The music played at cremations does indeed have specific properties, properties that correspond to notions typically expected at cremations, making it suitable for the occasion. Theories of the relation between musical properties and emotions indicate that the music played as part of cremation rituals can be qualified as serene, solemn and tender. Here, we provide computational evidence that this is indeed the case.

Music and Lyric Characteristics of Popular Dutch Funeral Songs

“…The first focus is on music characteristics. We expect to replicate findings by Mollenhorst et al (2016) on music characteristics. We thus expect to find lower valence, energy, tempo, and danceability values and higher values of acousticness for funeral music than for control songs.…”

“…Data on music characteristics were collected from the Spotify website (Spotify for Developers, 2021) through the Application Program Interface (API). Similar to the Mollenhorst and colleagues (2016) data, these audio analyses consider songs as a whole. The API was accessed through the R-package spotifyR (Thompson et al, 2017).…”

“…Recently, Mollenhorst and colleagues (2016) examined music characteristics (valence, energy, and tempo) of often-used songs in Dutch crematoria. Based on data from audio analyses, funeral music ( N = 3703 songs) was shown to be lower in valence, tempo, and energy than two popular comparison playlists (Top 40 and Top 2000).…”

“…In general, lyrics may thus be particularly salient to the listeners’ mood, and they may strongly reflect the situation the music is heard in (Baltazar et al, 2019). Funeral music’s lower valence, energy, and tempo than popular music (Mollenhorst et al, 2016) suggests it will sound sad (Schellenberg & Von Scheve, 2012). Funeral music lyrics may follow this trend and contain more negative words and more words that express sadness.…”

The Musical Eulogy and Other Functions of Funeral Music

“…Unfortunately, the chosen method does not allow the specification of conclusions regarding emotions (for studies on music and emotion, see Juslin & Sloboda, 2010 ). Although earlier research on the musical parameters in the playlist of a Dutch crematorium showed that music can be characterized as serene, solemn, and tender ( Mollenhorst, Hoondert, & van Zaanen, 2016 ), further research should be conducted on the topic of music, ritual, and emotion, combining ritual theory and research in the field of music and emotion with observations and interviews.…”