Measuring Discrimination of Complex Musical Events

This study describes the development of a reliable instrument to measure perceptual judgment in listening to large, complex musical compositions. Paired excerpts from existing compositions in a diversity of historical styles were taped and played to a panel of “expert” listeners. Some pairs were identical, some highly similar, some slightly similar, and some extremely different. The panel's codings were sorted for high and low consensus; the revised instrument was administered to university student samples, producing acceptable reliability coefficients. The study concludes that perception, memory, and comparative judgment in listening to complex musical works can be measured with reasonable accuracy by the instrument.