Thaindian News

Washington, Apr 11 (ANI): Reading program notes before hearing music can significantly lessen a listener’s enjoyment, says a new study.

“Listeners are less likely to simply let the music wash over them if they have read a description: they are more likely to listen in terms of the concepts just encountered,” University of Arkansas music theorist Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis wrote in results published in Psychology of Music online.

Struggling to listen conceptually may inhibit a sense of flow, which studies have shown to be critical to many types of musical enjoyment.

In the experiment, members of the University of Arkansas community to listened to brief excerpts from Beethoven String Quartets. None of the participants were music majors or professional musicians.

Immediately before listening to each excerpt, some of the participants read dramatic descriptions of the music, such as “the opening evokes a deeply-felt hymn.” Others read structural descriptions: “This piece begins with a series of slow, sustained chords.” A third group read no description at all.

Margulis reported that participants consistently enjoyed the music more when they had not read a description of it in advance, a surprising finding given that program notes are written with the aim of enhancing enjoyment.

“Descriptions - especially dramatic descriptions - may interfere with the directness and intimacy with which listeners are able to experience a work,” Margulis wrote. “It may distance listeners or place them at a remove - as if they were listening through someone else’s ear.”

The assumption has been that the conceptualization offered by program notes enhances pleasure in listening to music. Yet, Margulis said, “Little research has examined the basic psychological processes involved in applying conceptual information to music on a first pass, the way you might if you read a description just before hearing a piece. Despite this lack of research, program notes are a nearly ubiquitous feature at concert halls across the United States.” (ANI)