Graphic Representations of Short Musical Compositions

Abstract

Sixty college students were asked to ‘make any marks’ to visually represent five short orchestral compositions, and to write essays to explain their graphic representations. Most musically trained participants provided abstract representations (symbols or lines), while most pictorial representations (images or pictures telling a story) were created by musically untrained participants. A content analysis of the essays revealed that trained participants focused on themes, repetition, mode, changes in pitch, instruments, interplay of different instruments, and sections of the composition. Untrained participants were more likely to focus on arousal of emotions or sensations, fleeting images, and to create stories to accompany the music. Four styles of representations emerged, depending on whether listeners attended primarily to global qualities, fluctuations in dimensions of sound, perceptually salient features, or underlying structure of compositions.