The therpeutic power of "emotionless" music: does it exist?

Before speaking at all to the title of this blog entry, please visit the following link and try the interactive demos. I also suggest you read the related article linked to at the top of that page:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/18/science/20110419-music-expression.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

So we're dealing with a couple different questions at hand.

Test 1) Does timing and volume effect musical expression?

This may seem like an obvious "yes," and indeed it is. I think a more interesting question to consider is how does timing and volume effect musical expression? So what if some notes are shorter and some notes are longer? Who cares if one note is slightly louder than another note? These seemingly insignificant nuances can actually play a critical role in your music-listening life. Imagine you've had a rough day and you just want to relax to your soothing yet intense recording of a movement by Haydn. Now imagine the movement with no dynamics and no expression within gestures. You might get the melody stuck in your head, but that's about it. Besides what can be taken from the note patterns themselves, there is no perceivable emotion in the piece. You will hear the music but likely make no emotional connection and hence not really feel any better. It is the emotional "camaraderie" that you have with a piece that connects you to it. These minute differences in volume and timing  enable (or disable) you from making this emotional connection.

Test 2) Does magnifying a performer's musical expression bring out a greater emotional response in the listener?
 
According to Levitin's trials, the answer to this question is no. Natural human expression (unmagnified digitally) seems to bring out the most emotion. This seems to me to imply that we have a "threshold" for connecting emotionally to music. In the same way that we don't respond emotionally to music devoid of any expression, we also don't connect emotionally to music that has too much expression. One way to think about this is to compare it to a spoof of a horror movie. When we watch horror movies, we tend to get spooked. We are able to fully engage our emotional selves in the movie because we can relate to the human thoughts and feelings being evoked on screen. In a spoof however, characters tend to be over-dramatic, often comically so. Such over-dramatic reactions are not "realistic" and hence we do not relate to them on a emotional level. Thus we derive less emotional meaning out of the spoof than the movie itself. 


Test 3) Can expressiveness in music be randomly distributed and achieve the same listener response?

The expressiveness cannot be completely and truly random. For instance, if certain musical "strong beats" (meant to be emphasized) are played quietly and "weak beats" played loudly, the piece will just sound 'off.' A non-musician won't be able to explain exactly why, but he or she will be able to identify that something about the beat isn't quite right. With that said, there is a certain amount of variability of how the music is expressed from artist to artist within the confines of sensible interpretation. That's why we like some recordings more than others, or some conductors more than others. Imagine if only one recording in the world existed of Beethoven's 1st symphony.


Test 4) Which is more expressive: a change in volume, or a change in note duration? 

Levitin's studies show that change in timing is the more effective of the two. We must keep in mind however that this of course also has to do with how much the timing is altered or how significant the difference in volume is. Either way, this test really speaks to the power of artistic license: all the composer does is write his musical intentions down on a sheet of paper; it is up to each individual artist to take the license to interpret the work and express it as he or she feels fit. 

So in thinking about all of this in the context of music therapy, an interesting question arises: what really "does the trick" with music therapy patients: the notes themselves, or the expression and emotion behind the notes? Or maybe a combination of both? Perhaps this will become clearer as my studies in this fascinating field continue.