Effective audience engagement with musical performance involves social, cognitive and affective elements. We investigate the influence of observers’ musical expertise and instrumental motor expertise on their affective and cognitive responses to complex and unfamiliar classical piano performances of works by Scriabin and Hanson presented in audio and audio-visual formats. Observers gave their felt affect (arousal and valence) and their action understanding responses continuously while observing the performances. Liking and familiarity were rated after each excerpt. As hypothesized: visual information enhanced observers’ action understanding and liking ratings; observers with music training rated their action understanding, liking and familiarity higher than did nonmusicians; observers’ felt affect did not vary according to their musical or motor expertise. Contrary to our hypotheses: visual information had only a slight effect on observers’ arousal felt affect responses and none on valence; musicians’ specific instrumental motor expertise did not influence action understanding responses. We also observed a significant negative relationship between action understanding and felt affect responses. Ideas of empathy in musical interactions motivated the research; the empathy framework in relation to musical performance is discussed. Nonmusician audiences might be sensitized to challenging musical performances through multimodal strategies to build the performer-observer connection and increase understanding of performance.

We investigate the roles of the acoustic parameters intensity and spectral flatness in the modeling of continuously measured perceptions of affect in nine diverse musical extracts. The extract sources range from Australian Aboriginal and Balinese music, to classical music from Mozart to minimalism and Xenakis; and include jazz, ambient, drum n' bass and performance text. We particularly assess whether modeling perceptions of the valence expressed by the music, generally modeled less well than the affective dimension of arousal, can be enhanced by inclusion of perceptions of change in the sound, human agency, musical segmentation, and random effects across participants, as model components. We confirm each of these expectations, and provide indications that perceived change in the music may eventually be subsumed adequately under its components such as acoustic features and agency. We find that participants vary substantially in the predictors useful for modeling their responses (judged by the random effects components of mixed effects cross-sectional time series analyses). But we also find that pieces do too, while yet sharing sufficient features that a single common model of the responses to all nine pieces has competitive precision.

Musicians anticipate and monitor the expressive effects of their actions during performance. Previous research suggests that the ability to imagine desired outcomes can partially compensate when auditory feedback is absent, permitting continued performance even though information about whether these outcomes are realized is unavailable. Research also suggests that musical imagery ability improves with increasing musical expertise. This study tested the hypothesis that expert musicians’ superior imagery abilities enable reduced reliance on auditory feedback, relative to novice musicians, during the performance of loudness changes (i.e., dynamics). Musicians reproduced the dynamic changes of sounded scales using a loudness slider as the availability of imagery and auditory feedback was manipulated. Contrary to expectations, only novices showed impairment in performing dynamics during imagery disruption and auditory feedback deprivation. Experts showed limited dependence on both sources of information, suggesting greater flexibility in how musical information is mentally represented, compared to novices, and an improved ability to adapt planning strategies.

Musicians anticipate the effects of their actions during performance. Online musical imagery, or the consciously accessible anticipation of desired effects, may enable expressive performance when auditory feedback is disrupted and help guide performance when it is present. This study tested the hypotheses that imagery 1) can occur concurrently with normal performance, 2) is strongest when auditory feedback is absent but motor feedback is present, and 3) improves with increasing musical expertise. Auditory and motor feedback conditions were manipulated as pianists performed melodies expressively from notation. Dynamic and articulation markings were introduced into the score during performance and pianists indicated verbally whether the markings matched their expressive intentions while continuing to play their own interpretation. Expression was similar under auditory-motor (i.e., normal feedback) and motor-only (i.e., no auditory feedback) performance conditions, and verbal task performance suggested that imagery was stronger when auditory feedback was absent. Verbal task performance also improved with increasing expertise, suggesting a strengthening of online imagery.

this study investigates the relationship between acoustic patterns in contemporary electroacoustic compositions, and listeners' real-time perceptions of their structure and affective content. Thirty-two participants varying in musical expertise (nonmusicians, classical musicians, expert computer musicians) continuously rated the affect (arousal and valence) and structure (change in sound) they perceived in four compositions of approximately three minutes duration. Time series analyses tested the hypotheses that sound intensity influences listener perceptions of structure and arousal, and spectral flatness influences perceptions of structure and valence. Results suggest that intensity strongly influences perceived change in sound, and to a lesser extent listener perceptions of arousal. Spectral flatness measures were only weakly related to listener perceptions, and valence was not strongly shaped by either acoustic measure. Differences in response by composition and musical expertise suggest that, particularly with respect to the perception of valence, individual experience (familiarity and liking), and meaningful sound associations mediate perception.

We propose a continued evaluation of Darwin’s suggestion that musical functioning is sexually selected, because of recent evidence on sexual dimorphism and its relation to potentially musical activities. We also propose specifically that music may enhance social trust, and hence social coalition, and anticipate some empirical assessments of this idea. The extended altriciality of the human species and the sexual differentiation of empathic responses may link these two propositions.