ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether participants from varied performance-media backgrounds experience a felt emotional response through performance media different from their own. Specifically, how does this emotional response compare to the emotional response shown through their own performance medium? Secondarily, the study examined whether the response patterns over time of the Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) dial show a relationship between listening groups and/or performance media. Volunteer participants (N = 143) consisted of graduate and undergraduate music majors, non-music majors, and non-musicians at a large comprehensive university. Recordings were presented using the following performance media: (1) voice, (2) wind ensemble (non-marching), (3) marching band (non-music major), (4) piano, and (5) popular dance music (non-musicians). Based on primary performance area, participants were assigned to one of the five groups: voice (n = 31), wind ensemble (n = 25), marching band (n = 27), piano (n = 33), and non-musicians (n = 27). Participants in each group were asked to manipulate the CRDI dial corresponding to their felt emotional response to the music. All participants listened and responded to five performance media renditions of Giacomo Puccini’s Nessun Dorma from the opera, Turandot. Means and standard deviation were determined and graphically displayed. Graphs include separate composite means and ongoing standard deviation response graphs for each excerpt and one composite response graph detailing overall mean and overall mean standard deviation by group for each excerpt. Visual inspections of the composite graphs demonstrate both large as well as subtle differences among and between groups and that participant responses differentiated across the musical stimuli. Ongoing changing responses of participants within participant groups provide the most important description of responses. Further analysis of the composite response graphs demonstrates a strong relationship between responses of the music major groups (voice, piano, and wind ensemble) and their respective corresponding excerpts. There was also a strong relationship between the responses of the non-music major groups and their respective corresponding excerpts (DCI/marching band and popular dance music).
