Carol Lynne Krumhansl

This article reports the results of a study spanning a century of popular music, divided into 10 decades, with participants varying in age from their mid-teens to their mid-70s. It traces the music media with which they listened in different periods of their lives. It asks about whether they know and like the music in each decade, and their emotional reactions. Finally, it asks whether the music is associated with autobiographical memories and, if so, with whom they were listening or whether they were listening alone. The results show a regular progression through the life span of listening with different individuals (from parents to children) and with different media (from records to digital downloads). A number of effects found in previous studies were replicated, but the study also showed interactions with the birth cohorts. Overall, there was a song specific age effect with preferences for music of late adolescence and early adulthood; however, this effect was stronger for the older participants. In addition, there were preferences for music of the 1940s, 1960s, and 1980s that were stronger for the younger participants. Music of these decades also produced the strongest emotional responses and coincided with the introduction of important new music technologies, particularly long playing records, tape cassettes, and CDs. When growing up, the participants tended to listen to the older music on the older media, but rapidly shifted to the new music technologies in their last teens and early twenties. Younger listeners are currently listening less to music, suggesting an important role of socially sharing music. Finally, the oldest listeners had the broadest taste, liking music that they had been exposed to in different “listening niches” over their lifetimes.

Autobiographical memories are disproportionately recalled for events in late adolescence and early adulthood, a phenomenon called the reminiscence bump. Previous studies on music have found autobiographical memories and life-long preferences for music from this period. In the present study, we probed young adults’ personal memories associated with top hits over 5-and-a-half decades, as well as the context of their memories and their recognition of, preference for, quality judgments of, and emotional reactions to that music. All these measures showed the typical increase for music released during the two decades of their lives. Unexpectedly, we found that the same measures peaked for the music of participants’ parents’ generation. This finding points to the impact of music in childhood and suggests that these results reflect the prevalence of music in the home environment. An earlier peak occurred for 1960s music, which may be explained by its quality or by its transmission through two generations. We refer to this pattern of musical cultural transmission over generations as cascading reminiscence bumps.

Abstract: Research in music cognition has assessed the role of experience by investigating the effects of development, training, and cross‐cultural differences. A fourth approach is to apply statistical techniques to identify patterns that are relatively frequent in the listeners' musical experience. As an example of this approach, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was conducted on melodic expectancy. Two patterns that frequently began musical themes in classical and folk music were identified. A final continuation tone was added to these opening patterns. Some of the continuation tones were frequent in the musical styles; others were infrequent. Listeners judged how well the continuation tones fit with their expectations. A sparse‐sampling (event‐related) design was used in the fMRI study, with image acquisition at varying delays after the sequence. Early acquisitions showed activation in the auditory cortex, and late acquisitions showed effects of the motor response. These results suggest the timing of the image acquisitions was appropriate. Contrasting melodies and monotonic controls showed right inferior frontal activation, similar to that found in other studies. However, no differences were found as a function of whether or not the continuation tone was frequent or infrequent in the statistical style analysis. Methodological differences of this study from other recent fMRI studies on harmonic expectations are discussed.

Cognition and emotion are closely linked in music. The interplay between expectations and the sounded events is hypothesized to play a central role in creating musical tension and relaxation. The research summarized here is part of an ongoing program investigating how this dynamic aspect of musical emotion relates to the cognition of musical structure. Musical emotions change over time in intensity and quality, and these emotional changes covary with changes in psychophysiological measures. Perceptual studies support music-theoretic descriptions of musical structures that underlie listeners’ expectations. Cross-cultural comparisons suggest that certain psychological principles of expectation are quite general, but that musical cultures emphasize these differentially. A schema of temporal organization that relates episodes of tension and relaxation to musical form and expressive aspects of musical performance is described. Finally, some results suggest that the expression of emotion in music shares properties with the expression of emotion in speech and dance.

Abstract: This article presents a self‐organizing map (SOM) neural network model of tonality based on experimentally quantified tonal hierarchies. A toroidal representation of key distances is recovered in which keys are located near their neighbors on the circle of fifths, and both parallel and relative major/minor key pairs are proximal. The map is used to represent dynamic changes in the sense of key as cues to key become more or less clear and modulations occur. Two models, one using tone distributions and the other using tone transitions, are proposed for key‐finding. The tone transition model takes both pitch and temporal distance between tones into account. Both models produce results highly comparable to those of musically trained listeners, who performed a probe tone task for ten nine‐chord sequences. A distributed mapping of tonality is used to visualize activation patterns that change over time. The location and spread of this activation pattern is similar for experimental results and the key‐finding model.

Rhythm and pitch are the 2 primary dimensions of music. They are interesting psychologically because simple, well-defined units combine to form highly complex and varied patterns. This article brings together the major developments in research on how these dimensions are perceived and remembered, beginning with psychophysical results on time and pitch perception. Progressively larger units are considered, moving from basic psychological categories of temporal and frequency ratios, to pulse and scale, to metrical and tonal hierarchies, to the formation of musical rhythms and melodies, and finally to the cognitive representation of large-scale musical form. Interactions between the dimensions are considered, and major theoretical proposals are described. The article identifies various links between musical structure and perceptual and cognitive processes, suggesting psychological influences on how sounds are patterned in music.

A basic issue about musical emotions concerns whether music elicits emotional responses in listeners (the 'emotivist' position) or simply expresses emotions that listeners recognize in the music (the 'cognitivist' position). To address this, psychophysiological measures were recorded while listners heard two excerpts chosen to represent each of three emotions: sad, fear, and happy. The measures covered a fairly wide spectrum of cardiac, vascular, electrodermal, and respiratory functions. Other subjects indicated dynamic changes in emotions they experienced while listening to the music on one of four scales: sad, fear, happy, and tension. Both physiological and emotion judgements were made on a second-by-second basis. The physiological measures all showed a significant effect of music compared to the pre-music interval. A number of analyses, including correlations between physiology and emotion judgments, found significant differences among the excerpts. The sad excerpts produced the largest changes in heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance and temperature. The fear excerpts produced the largest changes in blood transit time and amplitude. The happy excerpts produced the largest changes in the measures of respiration. These emotion-specific physiological changes only partially replicated those found for nonmusical emotions. The physiological effects of music observed generally support the emotivist view of musical emotions.