Sense of agency refers to the ability to influence one’s functioning and environment, relating to self-efficacy and wellbeing. In youth, agency may be challenged by external demands or redefinition of self-image. Music, having heightened relevance for the young, has been argued to provide feelings of self-agency for them. Yet, there is little empirical research on how music impacts adolescents’ daily sense of agency. The current study investigated whether music listening influences adolescents’ perceived agency in everyday life (...) and which individual and contextual determinants would explain such an influence. Participants were 44 adolescents (48% female, 36% with training in music, mean age 14), recruited through local schools. The mobile Experience Sampling app MuPsych was used to collect brief self-reports of personal music listening experiences during daily life. This method assessed the change in the listener’s perceived control over both their emotional states (Internal Agency), and their external environment (External Agency), over five minutes of music listening. Also measured were changes in mood states, and contextual variables (social situation, concurrent activity, and reason for listening). The impact of music on the sense of agency was analyzed using multilevel structural equation modelling. There was no general increase of agency across all music episodes, but agency fluctuations were determined by specific individual and contextual factors. Music training predicted increases in both internal and external agency during music listening, and external agency increased more for male participants. Certain context features such as listening alone, paying attention to music, and listening for enjoyment were related to greater increases in agency. Increases in agency significantly correlated with increases in mood valence. Our findings confirmed the plasticity and situational embeddedness of the sense of agency. Music indeed can support agency, but the impact is dependent on specific individual and contextual factors. Sense of agency can be seen as a health resource and significant part of youth development, and current findings provide new insight into when and by whom such affordance is likely to be employed. (shrink)

Performing and listening to music occurs in specific situations, requiring specific media. Empirical research on music listening and appreciation, however, tends to overlook the effects these situations and media may have on the listening experience. This article uses the sociological concept of the frame to develop a theory of an aesthetic experience with music as the result of encountering sound/music in the context of a specific situation. By presenting a transdisciplinary sub-field of empirical (...) (concert) studies, we unfold this theory for one such frame: the classical concert. After sketching out the underlying theoretical framework, a selective literature review is conducted to look for evidence on the general plausibility of the single elements of this emerging theory and to identify desiderata. We refer to common criticisms of the standard classical concert, and how new concert formats try to overcome alleged shortcomings and detrimental effects. Finally, an empirical research program is proposed, in which frames and frame components are experimentally manipulated and compared to establish their respective affordances and effects on the musical experience. Such a research program will provide empirical evidence to tackle a question that is still open to debate, i.e., whether the diversified world of modern-day music listening formats also holds a place for the classical concert – and if so, for what kind of classical concert. (shrink)

Quarantine and spatial distancing measures associated with COVID-19 resulted in substantial changes to individuals’ everyday lives. Prominent among these lifestyle changes was the way in which people interacted with media—including music listening. In this repeated assessment study, we assessed Australian university students’ media use throughout early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, and determined whether media use was related to changes in life satisfaction. Participants were asked to complete six online questionnaires, capturing pre- and during-pandemic experiences. The (...) results indicated that media use varied substantially throughout the study period, and at the within-person level, life satisfaction was positively associated with music listening and negatively associated with watching TV/videos/movies. The findings highlight the potential benefits of music listening during COVID-19 and other periods of social isolation. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak required diverse strategies, such as social distancing and self-isolation, to avoid a healthcare system crisis. However, these measures have been associated with the onset or increase of anxiety and depression symptoms in the population. Music listening was previously shown to regulate emotion, consequently reducing depression symptoms. Since previous studies with Brazilian samples have already shown a high prevalence of depressive symptoms during the first confinement period, the aim of this study was threefold: (i) to compare (...) groups with severe depression symptoms and no depression in what concerns to demographic and socio-economic factors as well as symptoms of anxiety and resilience levels, (ii) to explore changes in music listening daily routine during the confinement measures by both groups (no depression and severe depression), and (iii) to investigate which were the main factors influencing both two groups to music listening during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional study included 494 Brazilian respondents aged 18 years and above. Our online survey comprised demographics, socio-economic, and COVID-19 related questionnaires, with questions regarding music listening used during social distancing measures on which the participants rated how much each of the 41 potential reasons for listening to music changed in importance compared to the situation before the pandemic and also the evaluation of anxiety, depression, and resilience levels. The respondents with severe depression were younger and showed higher levels of anxiety symptoms and lower resilience level. Furthermore, they were increasingly likely to listen to music to feel emotionally better with the situation, to feel comfort, to forget problems, to be energetic, to decrease sad feelings, to relax, to cheer up, to forget concerns, to express feelings, to reduce anxiety, to remember better times, to relieve boredom, to mentally stimulate themselves, and to ward off stressful thoughts compared to the participants with no depression. The exploratory factor analysis (FA) identified four types of music listening functions during social distancing measures: negative mood management, cognitive functioning, positive mood management, and physical involvement, in which the participants with severe depression revealed significant differences compared to non-depressed participants for the negative mood management factor, which shows the importance of music listening to regulate their negative emotions. As a conclusion, we can argue that most of our respondents used music listening to cope with and regulate their moods during confinement, especially those who presented with severe depression symptoms. (shrink)

When we listen to music, what do we listen to and for? How do we listen? How well do we listen and how do we listen well? This paper suggests that ‘modes of engagement’ are the active, operational means by which listeners experience music and that listening experiences more often than not involve multiple interacting modes rather than a fixed mode throughout. Modes of engagement may be voluntarily employed or involuntarily adopted; they may be technical or descriptive; (...) they may involve explicitly musical details and relationships, or they may seem more peripheral to the music. In the end, though, successive, simultaneous, and interacting modes of engagement are said to define unique and meaningful trajectories through music as heard. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic brought rapid changes to travel, learning environments, work conditions, and social support, which caused stress for many University students. Research with young people has revealed music listening to be among their most effective strategies for coping with stress. As such, this survey of 402 first-year Australian University students examined the effectiveness of music listening during COVID-19 compared with other stress management strategies, whether music listening for stress management was related to well-being, (...) and whether differences emerged between domestic and international students. We also asked participants to nominate a song that helped them to cope with COVID-19 stress and analyzed its features. Music listening was among the most effective stress coping strategies, and was as effective as exercise, sleep, and changing location. Effectiveness of music listening as a coping strategy was related to better well-being but not to level of COVID-19 related stress. Although international students experienced higher levels of COVID-19 stress than domestic students, well-being was comparable in the two cohorts. Nominated songs tended to be negative in valence and moderate in energy. No correlations were found between any self-report measure and the valence and energy of nominated coping songs. These findings suggest that although domestic and international students experienced different levels of stress resulting from COVID-19, music listening remained an effective strategy for both cohorts, regardless of the type of music they used for coping. (shrink)

Music and listening, music and consciousness -- Conceptualizing consciousness -- The phenomenology of everyday music listening experiences -- Absorption, dissociation and trancing -- Musical and non-musical trancing in daily life -- Imaginative involvement -- Musical and non-musical trancing : similarities and differences -- Experiencing life and art : ethological and evolutionary perspectives on -- Transformations of consciousness -- Everyday music listening experiences reframed.

This article offers a sonic reading of Gilles Deleuze’s political philosophy. It argues that Deleuze adopts a sonic-musical vocabulary to account for the affective and corporeal dimensions of politics or the ways that bodies and nonconscious forces shape political and epistemological experience. Suggesting that sonic expressions operate on both the musical and the linguistic register and inflect bodies before being consciously recognized, the article thus explores how the sound flows involved in political assemblages also find entrance into philosophical concepts. To (...) make this argument, the article traces several sonic figures – most prominently refrain, rhythm, and resonance – throughout Deleuze’s _oeuvre_ and puts those into conversation with sound studies scholarship. With this, the article makes two wider contributions. First, it traces connections between Deleuze’s early philosophical works and his later more overtly political collaborations with Guattari by way of sound to establish a notion of the political as an aesthetic-ecological field composed with and beyond human activity. Second, the article outlines parameters of a sonic political philosophy centered on affective involvement, embodied listening, and experimental thinking, thus also articulating the relevance of sound studies scholarship for political theory and Deleuzian philosophy. (shrink)

Strategies to support the psychosocial well-being of older adults living in aged-care are needed; and evidence points toward music listening as an effective, non-pharmacological tool with many benefits to quality of life and well-being. Yet, the everyday listening practices of older adults living in residential aged-care remain under-researched. The current study explored older adults’ experiences of music listening in their daily lives while living in residential aged-care and considered how music listening might support (...) their well-being. Specifically, what might go into autonomous listening activities? 32 Australian residents living in two Australian care facilities participated in semi-structured interviews. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed three themes pertaining to “previous music experiences and interest,” “current music listening,” and “barriers to listening.” While an interest in and access to music did not necessarily result in everyday listening practices, of those participants who did listen to music, perceived benefits included outcomes such as entertainment, enjoyment, relaxation, and mood regulation. Drawing on Ruud’s notion of music as a “cultural immunogen” supporting well-being and Self-Determination Theory, theoretical implications of the findings are addressed, relating to how to create and support music activities in aged-care facilities so that they are engaging, meaningful, and promote emotional regulation, community, and well-being. (shrink)

Cilj je slušanja glazbe u školi oblikovati kulturno-umjetnički svjetonazor učenica i učenika te doprinijeti njihovom estetskom odgoju. U hrvatskim osnovnim školama realizira se prema tzv. standardnom modelu kojemu je težište na spoznajnoj dimenziji. Kako bi se povećali pozornost, motivacija, slušalačke navike i prihvaćanje umjetničke glazbe, predlaže se spoznajno-emocionalni pristup koji višemodalno povezuje glazbene i izvanglazbene sadržaje. Cilj istraživanja bio je usporediti utjecaje spoznajno-emocionalnog i standardnog pristupa u nastavi glazbene kulture na spoznajni i emocionalni aspekt slušanja glazbe. Sudjelovalo je 557 učenika (...) i učenica iz 30 petih razreda. Slušali su Hačaturjanovu Maskaradu, Beethovenovu Wellingtonovu pobjedu, Rimski Korsakovljevu Šeherezadu i Fauréovu Pavanu te odgovarali na pitanja vezana za spoznajni i emocionalni aspekt slušanja glazbe. Petnaest razreda imalo je nastavu po standardnom, a 15 razreda po spoznajno emocionalnom pristupu. U spoznajnom aspektu odgovori učenika i učenica uglavnom se nisu razlikovali. U emocionalnom aspektu, u Šeherezadi i Pavani nešto su intenzivnije doživljavane dominantne emocije kada je bio primijenjen spoznajno-emocionalni pristup. The purpose of music listening in school is to shape students’ world view regarding culture and arts, as well as to contribute to their aesthetic education. Croatian elementary schools use the ‘standard model’, which focuses on the cognitive dimension. In order to increase attention, motivation, listening habits, and acceptance of artistic music, a cognitive-emotional approach is suggested that connects musical and extra-musical content in multiple modalities. The goal of the research is to compare the effects of the cognitive-emotional approach versus the standard approach to music teaching on the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. 557 year 5 students from 30 classes participated in the research. They listened to Khachaturian’s Masquerade, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, Rimsky- Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Fauré’s Pavane, as well as answering questions related to the cognitive and emotional aspects of music listening. Fifteen classrooms used the standard approach, while the other fifteen used the cognitive-emotional approach. Student responses generally did not differ in the cognitive aspect. In the emotional aspect, Scheherazade and Pavane engendered somewhat more intense dominant emotions when the cognitive-emotional approach was used. (shrink)

Ongoing electroencephalography signals are recorded as a mixture of stimulus-elicited EEG, spontaneous EEG and noises, which poses a huge challenge to current data analyzing techniques, especially when different groups of participants are expected to have common or highly correlated brain activities and some individual dynamics. In this study, we proposed a data-driven shared and unshared feature extraction framework based on nonnegative and coupled tensor factorization, which aims to conduct group-level analysis for the EEG signals from major depression disorder patients and (...) healthy controls when freely listening to music. Constrained tensor factorization not only preserves the multilinear structure of the data, but also considers the common and individual components between the data. The proposed framework, combined with music information retrieval, correlation analysis, and hierarchical clustering, facilitated the simultaneous extraction of shared and unshared spatio-temporal-spectral feature patterns between/in MDD and HC groups. Finally, we obtained two shared feature patterns between MDD and HC groups, and obtained totally three individual feature patterns from HC and MDD groups. The results showed that the MDD and HC groups triggered similar brain dynamics when listening to music, but at the same time, MDD patients also brought some changes in brain oscillatory network characteristics along with music perception. These changes may provide some basis for the clinical diagnosis and the treatment of MDD patients. (shrink)

Subjective and psychophysiological emotional responses to music from two different cultures were compared within these two cultures. Two identical experiments were conducted: the first in the Congolese rainforest with an isolated population of Mebenzélé Pygmies without any exposure to Western music and culture, the second with a group of Western music listeners, with no experience with Congolese music. Forty Pygmies and 40 Canadians listened in pairs to 19 music excerpts of 29–99 s in duration in (...) random order (eight from the Pygmy population and 11 Western instrumental excerpts). For both groups, emotion components were continuously measured: subjective feeling (using a two- dimensional valence and arousal rating interface), peripheral physiological activation, and facial expression. While Pygmy music was rated as positive and arousing by Pygmies, ratings of Western music by Westerners covered the range from arousing to calming and from positive to negative. Comparing psychophysiological responses to emotional qualities of Pygmy music across participant groups showed no similarities. However, Western stimuli, rated as high and low arousing by Canadians, created similar responses in both participant groups (with high arousal associated with increases in subjective and physiological activation). Several low-level acoustical features of the music presented (tempo, pitch, and timbre) were shown to affect subjective and physiological arousal similarly in both cultures. Results suggest that while the subjective dimension of emotional valence might be mediated by cultural learning, changes in arousal might involve a more basic, universal response to low-level acoustical characteristics of music. (shrink)

I discuss the social dimension of musical experience. I focus on the question of whether there is joint musical listening. One reason for this focus is that Adorno and those in his tradition give us little in the way of an understanding of what the social dimension of musical experience might be. We need a proper clear conception of the issue, which the issue of joint experience yields. I defend a radically individualistic view, while conceding that such a view, (...) inspired by Hanslick, may have political ramifications. I have two arguments. The first is a principled argument against joint musical listening from the impossibility of perceiving the aesthetic properties of music. I connect this with the privacy of our grounds for aesthetic judgements about music. The second argument accepts that joint listening could in principle span different sense modalities, but draws attention to the fact that the experiences on which aesthetic judgements are based cannot be willed in a way they would have to be if there was joint listening. Lastly, I consider two phenomena, of making music together and dancing together, which seem to involve joint listening, but in fact do not. I end by drawing an individualist conclusion about the nature of musical experience. (shrink)

The music in here--. Music as body ; Music as mind ; Music as heart ; Feeling mind, thinking heart -- --out there--. Music as life ; Music as story ; Music as mirror -- --and everywhere--. Music on the Zen elevator ; The enlightened listener ; Living the waves.

In Listening Subjects, David Schwarz uses psychoanalytic techniques to probe the visceral experiences of music listeners.

Contemporary electronic music has splintered into numerous genres and subgenres, all of which share a concern with whether sound, in itself, bears meaning. Listening through the Noise considers how the experience of listening to electronic music constitutes a departure from the expectations that have long governed music listening in the West.

In this paper, I examine the relationship between new technologies and listening, starting from a distinction between two different levels. The first concerns the role new technologies play in the “mere” reproduction and diffusion of music materials that are not necessarily classifiable in the category of the so-called “technological music”; the second concerns the listening modes unavoidably involved in the reception of a music product, due to its very nature. To this end I shall focus (...) my attention on some elements that characterize both music production and reception: historical development of the relationship between technology and music; technologically mediated non-live listening; technologically mediated live listening; ontological oscillation in a musical work of art following its digitalization. These are issues that also bring into play aesthetics in a developmental stage of this discipline, in which a philosophical reflection on technological music may contribute to formulate – as J. Demers wrote – «a theory that acknowledges the interconnectedness of aesthetics with culture and society». (shrink)

In claiming that metadata possess the power to put historical awareness into the act of listening, this article examines digital music use as an aesthetic situation driven by potentialities of becoming. Working from a theoretical foundation amalgamating digital music archives and metadata as environments the article discusses Georgina Born’s notion of musical assemblages alongside the concept of virtuality, and by letting these meet the article argues for a musical assemblage built from sensibilities of becoming rather than layers (...) of mediation. The inner workings of digital music use constitute an ecology in which recorded music history moves and reconnects, and this makes the historicity of recorded music be fluid, thus turning listening into a historicised action. In exemplifying this, the article discusses some of the strategic programming of metadata on the digital music platform Diskoteket, and through an analysis of sampled music, the prospects of recorded music’s historicity are shown as affective capacities. (shrink)

Stimmung in music -- The philosophy of Stimmung -- Playing in between -- History -- Duration -- Aftersong.

Music as a narrative drama is an intriguing idea, which has captured explicit music theoretical attention since the nineteenth century. Investigations into narrative characters or personae has evolved into a sub-field--musical agency. In this book, Palfy contends that music has the potential to engage us in social processes and that those processes can be experienced as a social interaction with a musical agent. She explores the overlap between the psychological processes in which we participate in order to (...) understand and engage with people, and those we engage in when we listen to music. Thinking of musical agency as a form of social process is quite different from existing theoretical frameworks for agency. It implies that we come to musical analysis by way of intuition--that our ideas are already partially formed based on our experience of the piece (and what it makes us feel or how it makes us sense it as any other) when we choose to analyze and interpret it. Palfy's focus on social processes is a very effective way to pinpoint when and why it is that our attention is captured and engaged by musical agents. (shrink)

Auditory scene analysis is an elementary aspect of music perception, yet only little research has scrutinized auditory scene analysis under realistic musical conditions with diverse samples of listeners. This study probed the ability of younger normal-hearing listeners and older hearing-aid users in tracking individual musical voices or lines in JS Bach's The Art of the Fugue. Five-second excerpts with homogeneous or heterogenous instrumentation of 2–4 musical voices were presented from spatially separated loudspeakers and preceded by a short cue for (...) signaling the target voice. Listeners tracked the cued voice and detected whether an amplitude modulation was imposed on the cued voice or a distractor voice. Results indicated superior performance of young normal-hearing listeners compared to older hearing-aid users. Performance was generally better in conditions with fewer voices. For young normal-hearing listeners, there was interaction between the number of voices and the instrumentation: performance degraded less drastically with an increase in the number of voices for timbrally heterogeneous mixtures compared to homogeneous mixtures. Older hearing-aid users generally showed smaller effects of the number of voices and instrumentation, but no interaction between the two factors. Moreover, tracking performance of older hearing aid users did not differ when these participants did or did not wear hearing aids. These results shed light on the role of timbral differentiation in musical scene analysis and suggest reduced musical scene analysis abilities of older hearing-impaired listeners in a realistic musical scenario. (shrink)

A person listening to music can be said to “hear space” in two senses: metaphorically, when the musical features of a composition, such as melody, harmony or rhythm, evoke a space (e.g., if she hears a “rising” melodic line) or suggest abstract concepts related to an imaginary spatial scene; and literally, when she perceives spatial information relating to sound sources and the spatial region where they are located. In this paper I will analyze the way we perceive space (...) when listening to music, focusing on the experience of physical space. I will apply a model of the way we experience non-musical (or environmental) sound sources to the perception of musical sound sources. I will argue that our experience of musical and non-musical sound sources involve similar perception of the spatial properties of sounds sources, by applying a specific model of spatial experience of non-musical sound sources to some musical compositions which exemplify different roles of space as an aesthetic tool, I will argue that our experience of musical and non-musical sound sources involve similar perception of the spatial properties of sound sources. Accordingly I will suggest that if we want to capture the difference between musical experience and the auditory experience of non-musical sounds with relation to space, we should probably focus on the experience of metaphorical space. (shrink)