Subtle emotional qualities expressed in music: the recognition of tenderness and sadness.

The study tested the hypothesis that people’s emotion knowledge enables them to recognize subtle differences in the emotional quality expressed by a musical piece, and thus to distinguish Tenderness (T) from Sadness (S), and both from Other emotions (O), such as Joy or Fear. To test the hypothesis, we designed an experiment in which subjects (N=24, half of whom musicians) expressed their perception, while listening to the music, at two points in time for each piece, i.e., at 40sec and at 80 sec. Their latency in response time (reaction time, RT), as well as their verbal rating on a 7- point T-0-S Likert-type scale, were recorded. Experimental stimuli were 40 classical music pieces, for orchestra or solo instruments (e.g., piano; violin and piano), each lasting 85 seconds, selected from XVII-XX century repertoire, by several authors (Fauré, Grieg, Beethoven, Chopin, etc.) that contained the structures characterizing (Sloboda & Juslin 2001) either S or T (e.g., Slow tempo for both; Soft timbre for T; Dull timbre for S), or structures expressive of O. Pieces either expressed a single emotional quality, namely T-T, S-S, O-O, or changed it midway, i.e. had the sequence T-S, T-O, and S-O. 28 new stimuli were created, by reversing original sequences, to obtain S-T (N=20), O-T (N =4), and O-S (N=4) sequences, none of which was exhibited by the original pieces. The final stimuli therefore comprised 68 musical pieces, subdivided in 9 Types as a function of what emotion the piece expressed at 40'' and 85''. The results overall confirmed the hypothesis, but also showed that perception is influenced by such variables as musical expertise, and 'location' of an emotional quality within a musical piece (e.g., Tenderness is most easily perceived in single-emotion pieces, and least distinguished from Sadness when it follows it rather than preceding it).