Variations in musical presentations and their effects on perceived emotions

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Psychology - General, University of Fribourg (Departement für Psychologie), language: English, abstract: The current paper investigates the influence that variations in musical presentations have onperceived emotions. Especially variations of tempo, dynamics, interval distributions, mode andtonal strength are taken into consideration. Two empirical studies will be discussed to explore thequestion. The first study examines the influence of interval distribution, mode and tonal strengthon perceived emotions. The findings of this study support the idea that the expression of aparticular emotion is associated with a distinct pattern of interval occurrences. Study twoinvestigates the influence of variations of tempo and dynamics on perceived emotions. Thefindings of study two show that variations in dynamics have an effect on the expressiveness ofemotions. Hence, the results of these two studies give an insight on which components of musicalpresentations influence the perceived emotions of the listener.