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“The Power of Music”

Yorkshire Music and Science Colloquium 2010

Date: Tuesday, May 4 (pm) and Wednesday, May 5 (am)

Location: University of York. Psychology Department (May 4); Music Department (May 5).

Aims: To bring together music researchers in the Yorkshire region and to encourage exchanges between them.

Synopsis: Music is the domain of performing musicians, composers, and music theorists. However, the last decade has also seen an exponential growth of interest in music from many disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, medicine, and computer sciences.

Scholars in these areas ask about musical universals, brain processing of music, evolutionary origins of music, cognition enhancing effects of music, and emotions evoked by music. The latter topic has gained particular prominence in the last years, this trend culminating in the International Conference on Music and Emotion at Durham University, and a massive new volume, the Handbook of Music and Emotion, edited by Patrik Juslin and John Sloboda (OUP).

In the spirit of this interdisciplinary interest, the Yorkshire colloquium intends to bring together researchers from the area to present a panoptic view on music and its effects. The theme this year (“the power of music“) is purposefully broad, all while placing a certain emphasis on why and how music moves us.

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Timetable

Tuesday pm, May 4, Venables Room (PS/A202, Psychology Department)

1.30 Welcome (Psychology) Main Entrance, Reception Area

2.00-2.10 Marcel Zentner (York) Opening: The Power of Music

2.15-3.00 Marilyn Vihman (York) The role of rhythm in early phonological templates

3.00-3.20 Peter Searle (York) Do words augment the emotional impact of music?

3.20-3.40 Olivia Coward & Cassandra Suicide rates in eminent composers, poets, and Walker (York) writers

3.40-4.00 Lily Law (York) Exploring the music quotient (MQ)

4.00-4.30 Coffee Break

4.30-5.30 Ben Knapp (Belfast, Real-time physiological recording and analysis for Queens) understanding and augmenting musical performance

5.30-6.00 Drinks

! 6.30 Colloquium Dinner ! ( The Old Siam - for more info please see back page)

Wednesday am, Rymer Auditorium (Music Department)

9.30-10.15 Marcel Zentner (York) A panoptic view of music and emotion

10.15-10.45 Ben Knapp (Belfast) The biomuse trio: A discussion of live performances using direct physiological measures

10.45-11.00 Coffee Break

11.00-11.30 Renee Timmers (Sheffield) Influences of emotion on expectation and attention in music perception

11.30-12.15 Michael Spitzer (Durham) Schubert and Fear

12.15-12.45 All General Discussion

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Abstracts 4 May 2010

Title: The role of rhythm in early phonological templates (Marilyn Vihman) Rhythm serves a basic organizing principle in the onset of novel motor behaviours in infancy; among these is the onset of babbling, or the production of adult-like syllables, in the middle of the first year. A child’s first words are constructed from the speech-like vocalizations that child has practiced in babbling; within a matter of weeks phonological systematicity begins to be seen, with early word patterns reflecting sensitivity to the rhythmic organization of the ambient language as well as the individual child’s vocal practice. A comparison of patterns arrived at by children learning different languages gives some idea of the role of rhythm in the emergence of systematicity.

Title: Do words augment the emotional impact of music? (Peter Searle) Previous investigations have disagreed about which musical element was more emotionally evocative, is it melody or lyrics? This experiment has addressed this contentious issue using three experimental groups where the same song was used in three versions; lyrics only (spoken word), melody only (foreign language version) and both together (English language version). Using a previously constructed scale the participants had to rate each of nine emotions that the audio clips made them feel.

Title: Suicide rates in eminent composers, poets, and writers (Olivia Coward & Cassandra Walker) This talk presents research on suicide rates among eminent composers, poets, writers. Methodological questions are discussed and some preliminary findings presented

Title: Exploring the music quotient (MQ) (Lily Law) At present, no well-validated computerised test of perceptual musical competence exists. The only available tests are either outdated (i.e. Seashore, 1939) or they measure congenital amusia, a pathological condition that affects a small minority of the population (Peretz, Champod, & Hyde, 2003). The lack of an instrument to assess individual differences in perceptual musicality in the normal population hampers progress in several areas of study, including neuroscience, psychology, and music education. The overarching aim of our current work is to close this gap. Music Quotient or MQ- Test (MQT), a beta-version of a test that measures a number of interrelated musical skills, was developed to facilitate this research. Preliminary results and further steps of the study will be discussed.

Title: Real-time physiological recording and analysis for understanding and augmenting musical performance (Ben Knapp) How can the real-time measurement of physiology be used as a tool to understand gesture and emotion in musical performance? Can this information be used to create new types of composition and performance possibilities? To answer these questions, the Biomuse system, an ergonomic physiological recording system has been developed. This system sits at the boundary between data collection device, human-computer interface and digital musical instrument. Results from the use of the Biomuse to measure changes in the physiology of performers and audience in concert settings will be presented. The use of the Biomuse as an Integral Music Controller, an interface that enables the use of both gesture and cognitive/emotional state to create music, will also be discussed.

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5 May 2010

Title: A panoptic view of music and emotion (Marcel Zentner) The topic of musical emotions is complex and elusive. Therefore, I have always thought that it is best approached „panoptically“ – i.e., from different angles and disciplines. I will first talk about my work with infants, which convinced me that music’s power to trigger emotive reactions appears so early in life that they may rest on a natural predisposition. Acculturation then infinitely enriches this emotional experience – an experience I have tried to characterize empirically. I will then argue that emotion and music are by no means inextricable, and that when emotions are evoked by music, a series of interacting elicitors are at work. Among these, I will focus on emotional reactivity to music as a personality trait. As much as this work has taught me, it may well be that “Music can never reveal its ultimate secret” (O. Wilde, The critic as an artist).

Title: The biomuse trio: A discussion of live performances using direct physiological measures (Ben Knapp) Three pieces will be presented that explore the concept of using physiological state as a means of controlling sound and environment. The first piece, The Reluctant Shaman, is a music theatre piece that, through the use of many modes of direct physiological interaction, enables the audience to go on a journey with the focal musician/actor on an exploration of Irish Traditional Music during the Great Famine. The second piece, the Biomuse Trio, is a chamber music piece, written for violin, laptop, and gestural performer, that experiments with the idiomatic nature of gestural interaction. The third piece, Stem Cells, is a piece re-written from a live laptop performance to be a solo performance using the gesture and cognitive/emotional state of both the performer and the audience.

Title: Influences of emotion on expectation and attention in music perception (Renee Timmers) In this presentation, I present a series of experiments that explore the influence of emotional priming on musical expectations and focal attention. The hypothesis is that emotions are not only a response to music, but also inform and influence the listening process. Depending on the emotional prime, participants may expect a melodic continuation in a higher or lower pitch range, smaller or larger melodic intervals, and slower or faster melodic movement. Influence on appropriateness ratings, attention to multiple streams and reaction time responses are measured. Preliminary results will be reported.

Title: Schubert and Fear (Michael Spitzer) We know more about how fear in music sounds like on a local, expressive level than what ‘fearful’ pieces do structurally across time. On the one hand, listeners readily recognise quiet dynamics, tremolo textures and fast tempi, etc., as expressive of the basic category Fear (Juslin 2010). On the other hand, is there such a thing as a formal process unfolding, say, a response to perceived ‘threat’ in music? This paper addresses this question by analysing two works by Schubert, a composer whose music is often heard as highly emotional: the exposition of his ‘Unfinished’ Symphony; and the song Erlkönig. My argument makes three moves. First, I relate Nico Frijda’s theory of ‘action tendency’ to goal-orientated behaviour within musical forces. Second, I interpret Arne Öhman’s model of ‘threat imminence trajectory’ to musical processes, including his three modules of ‘orienting’, ‘freezing’, and ‘fight-or-flight’. Third, I separate out what I call Öhman’s ‘action model’ to the ‘expression model’ intrinsic to Juslin’s theory, which is vocal in origin (after Spencer). I argue that part of the sophistication of Schubert’s representation of musical Fear flows from a complex dialogue between action and expression models.

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Speakers’ Contact Details

Name Department University Email Olivia Coward Psychology York [email protected] Lily Law Psychology York [email protected] Ben Knapp Music/SARC Queen’s, Belfast b.knapp.qub.ac.uk Peter Searle Psychology York [email protected] Michael Spitzer Music Durham [email protected] Renee Trimmers Music Sheffield [email protected] Marilyn Vihman Linguistics York [email protected] Cassandra Walker Psychology York [email protected] Marcel Zentner Psychology York [email protected]

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! 6.30 Colloquium Dinner !

The Old Siam, York http://www.theoldsiamyork.co.uk/

126 Micklegate York, North Yorkshire YO1 8JX 01904 635 162