Naturally Biased Associations Between Music and Poetry

Abstract

The study analyzes the existence of naturally biased associations in the general population between a series of musical selections and a series of quatrains. Differently from other studies in the field, the association is tested between complex stimuli involving literary texts, which increases the load of the semantic factors. The stimuli were eight quatrains taken from the same poem and eight musical clips taken from a classical musical version of the poem. The experiment was conducted in two phases. First, the participants were asked to rate 10 couples of opposite adjectives on a continuous bipolar scale when reading a quatrain or when listening to a musical clip; then they were asked to associate a given clip directly with the quatrains in decreasing order. The results showed the existence of significant associations between the semantics of the quatrains and the musical selections. They also confirmed the correspondences experienced by the composer when writing the musical version of the poem. Connotative dimensions such as rough or smooth, distressing or serene, turbid or clear, and gloomy or bright, characterizing both the semantic and the auditory stimuli, may have played a role in the associations. The results also shed light on the accomplishment of the two diverse methodologies adopted in the two different phases of the test. Finally, the role of specific musical components and their combinations is likely to have played an important role in the associations, an aspect that shall be addressed in further studies.

Cross-Modal Perceptual Organization in Works of Art

“…Analysis of the findings revealed that the results obtained with the two methods (the Osgood semantic differential and direct association) do not always overlap; something that we already found in a previous study of ours ( Albertazzi, Canal, et al., 2016 ). Although the results are generally consistent, the evaluation based on the Osgood semantic differential (Phase 1) showed in specific occurrences a partial dissimilarity in the results of the evaluation based on direct association (Phase 2).…”

“…The 11 pairs of adjectives presented in Italian were as follows: piacevole/spiacevole (pleasant/unpleasant), sereno/angoscioso (serene/distressing), grave/acuto (left in Italian, see also Albertazzi, Canal, et al., 2016 ), consonante/dissonante (consonant/dissonant), caldo/freddo (warm/cold), calmo/agitato (calm/agitated), acceso/spento (fiery/faded), morbido/duro (soft/hard), luminoso/cupo (bright/gloomy), statico/dinamico (static/dynamic), and dolce/aspro (sweet/bitter). Judgments were given on a continuous scale as described later.…”

“…Over the years, a series of stimuli of increasing complexity have been tested providing evidence of the presence of cross-modal Gestalten organizing multisensory grouping. For example, cross-modal correspondences have been verified between abstract concepts and color mapping ( Albertazzi et al., 2013 ), between conceptual literary meanings and classical music ( Albertazzi, Canal, et al., 2016 ), between contents of contemporary expressionist painting and Spanish flamenco music ( Albertazzi, Canal, & Micciolo, 2015 ), and between contents of abstract paintings and tactile perceptions ( Albertazzi, Bacci, et al., 2016 ). The last four studies do not make use of methodologies such as reaction times or implicit association tests.…”

Naturalizing Phenomenology: A Must Have?

“…Experimental phenomenology shows the direction. The outcomes of recent experiments, in fact, are promising ( Albertazzi et al, 2015 , 2016a , b ; Albertazzi and Da Pos, 2016 ), and they also show that complex scenes can be experimentally tested in a rigorous way. Whatever we may come to know about the brain ( Marshall and Magoun, 1998 ), from the viewpoint of “the phenomenologist” (descriptive, demonstrative, and experimental) it does not offer any information on consciousness phenomena.…”

“…Instead of asking the observer to rate on a bipolar scale how “cold” versus “warm” a musical clip is, the observer immerses his/her hands in a container of cold water (5° Celsius) and a container of warm water (40° Celsius), deciding which sensation is best associated between the two modalities (acoustics and touch) along a rating scale placed between the two sensory objects (for a follow up see Murari et al, 2017 ). More recently, experimental phenomenology methods have proved successful in the field of cross-modality (also with very complex scenes), such as paintings, poetry, and musical pieces, closer to our lived experiences than highly simplified ones ( Albertazzi et al, 2015 , 2016a , b ). The phenomenological concept of scene (i.e., what we perceive), is often erroneously denoted with the term ‘stimulus.’ Unfortunately, the word ‘stimulus’ has different meanings in perception: on the one hand, it means the physiological stimulation of the sense receptors, on the other, the phenomenal content of a perception that can elicit a behavioral response.…”