Affective and Cognitive Responses to Musical Performances of Early 20th Century Classical Solo Piano Compositions

Abstract

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.