Emotional Expression in Music Performance: Between the Performer's Intention and the Listener's Experience

TLDR

Nine professional musicians performed short melodies on violin, electric guitar, flute, and voice to convey specific emotions, and the resulting performances were validated by listener ratings and analyzed for tempo, dynamics, timing, and spectral characteristics. The study found that performers’ expressive intentions strongly influenced tempo, dynamics, timing, and spectral features, that performers exhibited both common patterns and individual differences, that listeners could largely decode the intended emotions, and that certain emotional characters were easier to convey, suggesting no universal performance rules across instruments, styles, performers, or listeners.

Abstract

Nine professional musicians were instructed to perform short melodies using various instruments - the violin, electric guitar, flute, and singing voice - so as to communicate specific emotional characters to listeners. The performances were first validated by having listeners rating the emotional expression and then analysed with regard to their physical characteristics, e.g. tempo, dynamics, timing, and spectrum. The main findings were that (a) the performer's expressive intention had a marked effect on all analysed variables; (b) the performers showed many similarities as well as individual differences in emotion encoding; (c) listeners were generally successful in decoding the intended expression; and (d) some emotional characters seemed easier to communicate than others. The reported results imply that we are unlikely to find performance rules independent of instrument, musical style, performer, or listener.