Science & Technology - Posted by Katherine Gombay-McGill on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 14:36 - 15 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Timing key to music’s emotional hold
Skilled pianists communicate musical emotion primarily by making some notes longer and some shorter, some louder and some softer, just like is done normal conversation. To hear more, click here. (Credit: McGill U.)
MCGILL (CAN) — How one piano performance makes the listener swell with feeling, while another makes him look around for the nearest exit, all comes down to the physics of the instrument.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
“All of the subtlety and expressive nuance in a performance—the parts of it that make you feel joy, sadness, or hope—can be reduced to just three factors: how long the pianist holds the notes, how loudly he or she plays them, and the pedal positions,” says Anjali Bhatara, doctoral student at McGill University. “This is information that we can then actually measure and manipulate.”
By using a Disklavier, a specially modified piano keyboard containing hundreds of sensors and miniature motors beneath the piano keys, researchers used a computer to register the precise and nuanced movements made by a concert pianist while performing one of Chopin’s Nocturnes.
They then worked on the computer files to create a number of different versions of the performance. The timing, loudness, and pedaling were manipulated to create a continuum of versions of the piece, ranging from 100 percent expressive (the original performance) to 0 percent expressive—a wooden, robotic version in which every note is played at exactly the same volume and for exactly the same length of time.
Study participants listened to the different versions that were played back to them in random order, without any indication as to the degree of expressivity in the performance, and were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how expressive they found each version.
Even non-musicians both recognized and preferred the more expressive versions of the music.
The research is published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
“They might hear an 80 percent followed by a 20 percent followed by a 60 percent expressive and they were consistently able to recognize and choose the more expressive version, says Daniel Levitin, professor of psychology.
“This tells us that even very subtle differences in performance are readily identified, even by average listeners. I found that astonishing.”
Variations in timing have an even greater emotional impact than do variations in the loudness of playing.
“The skilled pianist has learned to communicate musical emotion primarily by making some notes longer and some shorter, some louder and some softer, just like we do in normal conversation,” Levitin says.
“It stands to reason that one might be more important than the other, but I was surprised when it turned out that timing is more effective than the loudness in making you feel something.
“One of the hopes of this kind of research is that it will help us to better understand the alchemy of what goes into a moving performance,” Levitin says.
“It’s really a big step forward in capturing and quantifying why music is emotionally moving.”
The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering and Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
More news from McGill University: www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/
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15 Comments
emc2
I play bach with compelling momentum AND rubato. I think this is a great first step in analyzing that “it” quality to students.
I play bach with compelling momentum AND rubato. I think this is a great first step in analyzing that “it” quality to students. thank you.
Mr. A
Ooops, Bach is not supposed to be played with rubato. That’s a big no no Maria.
seriously, dude?
is it in the bible?
Mr. A
It is one of the founding laws of nature… up there with quantum theory and general relativity, haha. I am surprised the universe is still intact.
:-)
I like you.
Mr. A
Thanks. :) My piano teacher always made me play Bach with complete old school rigor… I actually think it is a lot more fun to play with rubato. How long have you been playing?
I think the audience thinks it’s a lot more fun when we play with rubato.
46 years. you?
Mr. A
18 years old.
good. you’re smart and young. use your energy well.
I have been playing for 46 years. :-) I began playing at 3.
Mr. A
Thanks, I am off to college next year majoring in biochemistry. I hope to stay young for an awful long time
Playing since 3?! My goodness that is a long time. Are you in a music profession?
click on my name above. it’ll take you to my music website where amongst other things I write controversial articles on mostly classical music.
yes, I’m in the classical music profession to shake things up before the genre dies of boredom inflicted by pedants.
:-)
Jason Mescia
Just because something is not played with rubato does not mean there aren’t still extremely subtle issues with timing…it’s just a matter of how advanced you get on your instrument and in terms of rhythm and musicianship in general. No matter how metronomically rigorous you are with a piece there is ALWAYS some form of phrasing and subtle timing to use if you really want to interpret the piece tastefully. Rubato is just an extreme example of flexibility in phrasing. Some of Bach’s music like the famous Tocatta and Fugue calls for rubato while much of it sounds great if you are metronomically accurate, and even if you play it as perfectly even as possible this still is an issue of timing being what makes it sound effective rather than dynamics because their is no limit to how metronomically accurate you can get.
Mike
Any musician knows this, and most non-musicians at least have a clue. It’s called “feel.”
this analysis only works with composers from chopin on, and chopin in particular. If variations in timing create more emotion, bach would be left out in favor of chopin, yet bach is considered the most compelling of composers. People play Chopin with ‘rubato’ or stretchy timing, but we play bach more metronomically, to emphasize the momentum. I used to play bach with rubato, but gave that up for compelling momentum. So nice try…