Journal of Research in Music Education

This paper seeks to extend the significance of musical expressiveness in music education through the consideration of Gestalt perceptual concepts. The concept of expressive quality is discussed and two defining characteristics identified. First, the presence of expressive qualities, as phenomenal attributes, is indicated when emotional terms are applied to perceptions. Second, expressive qualities are determined by the structure of the percept to which they belong and are thus products of perceptual organization. The theoretical implications of the concept for music are explored and the classic objections of Hanslick reconsidered. The empirical support for extending the concept to music draws on studies showing listener agreement on emotional attributions to music and work on melodic perception that shows that music does have the kind of perceptual structure required by the concept. An expressive method, based on the relation of expressive qualities to music structure, is suggested as an educational device. An illustration of the method is given and its advantages for the student are summarized.

An experiment with 108 young adults showed that (a) repetition produced habituation or enhancement of liking, galvanic skin response (GSR) and respiration amplitude only if music selections continued longer than an initial five seconds and (b) when five seconds of either selection is, on the posttest, continued for 15 seconds, there is relatively more liking, more GSR, and less amplitude of respiration. These results are consistent with reports of the repetition effect of increased liking if one assumes that continuing interrupted music sequences elicits attention to- and liking of the repeated elements of the first five seconds. The origin of following behaviors, and extrapolations from them, are discussed as instances of Pavlovian processes in intellectual development.

The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the extent to which differential training in aural discrimination would result in subsequent music selection. Students trained to discriminate components of instrumental music only and vocal music only were compared to a contact control group. Pretests and posttests consisted of the subject's operant music selection, cognitive music skills, and attitudes about school music.

Results indicated no difference among groups on the three dependent measures. Pre-posttest difference scores for each individual group revealed significant increase in time spent listening to instrumental music for the contact control group, significant increase in cognitive music skills for all groups, and no change in attitude about school music for any group. On the basis of these data, it appears that the three treatments did not function differentially to change first-grade student music selection, cognitive music skills, or attitudes about school music. This surprising absence of influence might suggest that knowing is not valuing.

Quality singing has a characteristic “ring” identified as a harmonic strength centering around 2.8 kHz. This timbral quality is relatively independant of other factors, and has been labeled the singing formant (SF). This investigation dealt with whether the SF is a significant aspect of all singing voices, and the comparisons of SF strength in the performances of trained professionals and relatively untrained students. Nine vowel-tasks were recorded and analyzed using a fast Fourier spectral analyzer. Resulting plots were analyzed and SF values assigned to 198 tasks performed by nine students and thirteen professionals from all major voice categories.

The results indicated that the SF in males and females is a significant factor in all vocal categories, and 222 percent greater SF strength occurred in professional groups compared to student groups. Implications for further study and future use of SF information for singing teachers and students were discussed.

Cerebral dominance for the perception of arpeggiated triads that differed in tonality, pattern, and the combination of tonality and pattern was investigated presenting stimuli monaurally in a matching-to-sample paradigm. Responses of musically inexperienced adults, adult musicians, musically inexperienced children, and musically trained children were compared to assess how music training and age affect lateral dominance. The data suggested that there are developmental changes. Nonmusical adults presented a significant right ear superiority for the perception of the triad pattern task, implying that an analytic process had been applied to perceive the stimuli. Both nonmusical adults and nonmusical children presented a significant left ear superiority for the perception of triads differing in tonality and pattern. This indicates that a gestalt process had been applied for the perception of these stimuli. Musically trained adults and musically trained children perceived all three tasks without significant ear differences, showingthat both hemispheres had become equally able to perceive the tasks due to music training.