On the interrelation between listener characteristics and the perception of emotion in classical orchestra music

This study deals with the strong relationship between emotions and music, investigating three main research questions: (RQ1) Are there differences in human music perception (e.g., emotions, tempo, instrumentation, and complexity), according to musical education, experience, demographics, and persona...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Schedl, Markus, Gómez Gutiérrez, Emilia, 1975-, Trent, Erika S., Tkalčič, Marko, Eghbal-Zadeh, Hamid, Martorell Domínguez, Agustín
Format: article
Status:Versión aceptada para publicación
Publication Date:2017
Country:España
Institution:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repository:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/43629
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/43629
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TAFFC.2017.2663421
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Emotion perception in music
Classical music
Audio analysis
Personality
User study
Agreement and correlation in music perception
Description
Summary:This study deals with the strong relationship between emotions and music, investigating three main research questions: (RQ1) Are there differences in human music perception (e.g., emotions, tempo, instrumentation, and complexity), according to musical education, experience, demographics, and personality traits?; (RQ2) Do certain perceived music characteristics correlate (e.g., tension and sadness), irrespective of a particular listener's background or personality?; (RQ3) Does human perception of music characteristics, such as emotions and tempo, correlate with descriptors extracted from music audio signals? To investigate our research questions, we conducted two user studies focusing on different groups of subjects. We used web-based surveys to collect information about demographics, listening habits, musical education, personality, and perceptual ratings with respect to perceived emotions, tempo, complexity, and instrumentation for 15 segments of Beethoven's 3rd symphony, “Eroica”. Our experiments showed that all three research questions can be affirmed, at least partly. We found strong support for RQ2 and RQ3, while RQ1 could be confirmed only for some perceptual aspects and user groups.