Perception of Western Musical Modes: A Chinese Study

Abstract

The major mode conveys positive emotion, whereas the minor mode conveys negative emotion. However, previous studies have primarily focused on the emotions induced by Western music in Western participants. The influence of the musical mode (major or minor) on Chinese individuals’ perception of Western music is unclear. In the present experiments, we investigated the effects of musical mode and harmonic complexity on psychological perception among Chinese participants. In Experiment 1, the participants (N = 30) evaluated 24 musical excerpts in five dimensions (pleasure, arousal, dominance, emotional tension, and liking). In Experiment 2, the participants (N = 40) evaluated 48 musical excerpts. Perceptions of the musical excerpts differed significantly according to mode, even if the stimuli were Western musical excerpts. The major-mode music induced greater pleasure and arousal and produced higher liking ratings than the minor-mode music, whereas the minor-mode music induced greater tension than the major-mode music. Mode did not influence the dominance rating. Perception of Western music was not influenced by harmonic complexity. Moreover, preference for musical mode was influenced by previous exposure to Western music. These results confirm the cross-cultural emotion induction effects of musical modes in Western music.

Is Absolute Pitch Associated With Musical Tension Processing?

“…The first finding of our study is that AP and non-AP possessors rated the major melodies less tense than the minor ones. This result is in line with previous evidence that the minor triads or melodies express higher tension than the major triad (Lahdelma & Eerola, 2016) or melodies (Huynh et al, 2017) and that the minor music induces greater tension than the major music (Fang et al, 2017;Nielzen & Cesarec, 1982), which could be explained by two possibilities. According to the psychological model of tension and suspense, tension as an affective state usually originates from events associated with instability/dissonance/conflict or uncertainty that triggers predictive processes directed at future events of emotional significance (Lehne & Koelsch, 2015).…”

“…If AP is relevant to tonal music structure processing (Jiang et al, 2010;Marvin & Brinkman, 2000), we hypothesized that AP and non-AP possessors would give different ratings to perceived and felt musical tension. On the basis of the findings described previously (e.g., Fang et al, 2017;Parncutt, 2014), we hypothesized that minor melodies would be rated as tenser than major ones.…”

“…First, to induce greater tension responses ( Lerdahl & Krumhansl, 2007 ; Wong et al., 2009 ), we manipulated melodic regularities at the end of melodies, where melodies ended on all 11 tones but the leading tone of a major or minor scale. Second, given that a music passage in the minor mode is more dissonant and unpleasant ( Parncutt, 2014 ; Virtala & Tervaniemi, 2017 ) and thus tenser ( Fang et al., 2017 ; Huynh et al., 2017 ) than that in the major mode, melodies in major and minor modes were included. Third, given that tonal expectancies are stronger when melody sequences were presented in the same key than in the different keys from trial to trial ( Jiang et al., 2016 ), melodies in this study were presented in single-key and mixed-key conditions to induce different levels of musical tension.…”

Harmonic organisation conveys both universal and culture-specific cues for emotional expression in music

“…Two ethnic groups were located who matched the design demands: the Kalash, who are a remote Indo-European/Aryan polytheistic community, and the Chitrali/Kho people (note that the tribe is referred to as Khow, and the people are referred to as Kho) who are the native Muslim population of the Chitral region. Due to geographical, as well as cultural isolation and a lack of readily available technological amenities (internet, radio stations, access to world music, and a stable electricity grid), the two tribes match the description of Fang’s [ 32 ] Chinese listeners as truly “un-Westernised”.…”

“…More recent research has added little to this distinction [ 26 – 29 ], except to show that although young children can potentially make the distinction between the major mode and the minor mode and what these may signify in terms of emotion [ 30 ], it is a cue they need to learn before they are able to harness it in emotion recognition [ 31 ]. With regard to the question of how universal the affective distinction between major/minor is when taken outside the Western context, a recent study [ 32 ] found that Chinese listeners do make the Western-style affective distinction, that is, the major mode was linked to positive and high arousal, whereas minor was associated with negative and low arousal, although this was influenced by previous exposure to Western music. When non-Western participants who have no exposure to Western music—such as the Mafa tribe members in Cameroon [ 5 ]—provide answers to emotion recognition task using music in both major and minor mode, the results suggest that the mode of the piece is linked to the recognition.…”