Music Perception & Emotional Arousal

A new ballet debuted in Paris on the evening of May 29, 1913. The ballet, The Rite of Spring, depicted a ritual pagan suicide, a peasant girl’s dance of death, as an offering to the god of spring.  The work opened with a deeply affecting bassoon solo played in a register atypical for the instrument. With the second section, Adoration of the Earth – II, a series of strident, heavy, tension-producing chords assailed the audience and continued throughout the entire ballet.  Catcalls and loud booing gave way to pushing, jostling, and eventually fist-fighting (Glass 1998).  Audience members began fighting with one another, some calling the work genius, others decrying it as an assault against traditional ballet. Differences of opinion might have been expected with the debut of an avant-garde work, but could the music itself have played a role in exacerbating the strength of the disagreement between the two groups?  If so, what possible biological or cognitive mechanisms might have been at work?

Some experts advocate a neurophysiological view of the effect of music on emotional arousal.   In a program on music and the brain (Abumrad 2006), neuroscientist Jan Fishman states,  “We find that chords, musical chords that are typically judged to be dissonant, elicit these wild fluctuations in brain activity.”  In this view, a sub-population of neurons in auditory cortex sensitive to novel sounds is tasked with giving “sense” to the sound, in finding underlying patterns to the sound, and relating the patterns to innate or learned experience.  One explanation of the audience’s behavior is that the continued dissonance of Stravinsky’s work made it difficult for these neurons to find patterns in the music and to relate the music to past musical experiences. The overwhelmed neurons may have released dopamine in excess quantities, which contributed to a transitory effect on brain chemistry akin to a kind of temporary schizophrenia.  Frustration, confusion, and violent behavior ensued, regardless of whether the individual liked or disliked the work.

Ball (2008) describes cognitive views regarding music and emotional arousal.  One view is that emotional content is inherent in elements of music such as major or minor mode, tempo, timbre and melody.  These elements provide aural cues that humans have learned to interpret, which switch on emotional mechanisms of the brain and activate the sympathetic nervous system for action, or the parasympathetic system for inaction, depending on the cue presented. A scene in Hitchcock’s thriller, Psycho, may provide an example of this mechanism at work. 

Recall that the leading up to the shower scene in Psycho, Janet Leigh has embezzled money from her boss, and after a tension-filled day of dodging the law, she has decided to spend the night in the Bates Motel.  To unwind after the harrowing day, she takes a hot shower.  As she relaxes in the steam’s heat, the shower curtain is abruptly thrown back, and Anthony Perkins attacks her with a large kitchen knife.  Accompanying the attack are repeated, dissonant, high-pitched, intense staccato chords.  If the chords evoke the auditory memory pattern of the sounds made when sharpening a knife for slicing and cutting, then the music could amplify the viewer’s fear by recollection of that memory pattern as Jane Leigh is sliced and cut by the butcher knife in the hand of Anthony Perkins. 

Despite the mechanism advocated, there is agreement among physiologists and cognitive behaviorists that music can move us emotionally, regardless of culture, gender, or age.  Music has the ability to intensify joy or sadness, memories or hopes, despair or ecstasy. If the manipulation is too extreme vis-à-vis our expectations, the emotions evoked may cause individuals to lose control, and in the case of the premier of The Rite of Spring, to become riotous. 

References

Abumrad J. (Abumrad J. (Host) & Krulwich R. (Co-Host)), & Krulwich R. (Co-Host). (2006). Radiolab. Musical language: Sound as touch. Podcast retrieved fromhttp://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21.

Ball, P. (2008). Facing the music. Nature, 453(8 May 2008), 160-162. Retrieved fromhttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7192/pdf/453160a.pdf.

Glass, P. (1998). The time 100: Igor Stravinsky. Time, 1-3. Retrieved fromhttp://www.time.com/time/time100/artists/profile/stravinsky.html.

Music, Humor and "The Long Haired-Hare," Part 2 of 2

The first crack in the system occurs when Jones overhears Bugs’ singing and finds himself dancing and singing Bugs’ song instead of the aria. Jones sets out to silence the rabbit through a series of violent, exaggerated actions. Music is employed to caricature and amplify the violence that befalls Bugs as Jones assails him. For example, Jones crushes Bugs’ banjo and the musical accompaniment imitates strings pulled almost to a breaking point and then finally breaking. As the banjo is destroyed on screen, percussion “Mickey Mouses” the sound of the banjo’s neck snapped in two, and low-register bass notes imitate Jones’ heavy, angry steps back to his house. Bugs doesn’t take this action lying down, and after he utters his trademark “of course you know, this means war,” line, the spoof begins in earnest.

Bugs goes to the Hollywood Bowl and wreaks havoc with Jones’ performance by sneaking into the concert disguised as a great conductor, “Leopold,” and leading Jones through a set of operatic histrionics in which Jones is commanded to sing at the lowest and highest registers of his range in short succession at the whim of Bugs. Jones is forced to hold a high note for an excruciatingly long time (so long that Bugs has time to order and receive ear muffs), and in so doing pops all the buttons of his tuxedo and bursts out of his clothes. The film ends as Jones’ sustained, high note finally cracks the Hollywood Bowl, reducing it to rubble. As Bugs takes his bow, Jones emerges from the wreckage to take his bow as well. Bugs, one more trick up his sleeve, spies a precariously perched boulder perched on a beam above Jones’ head, and he motions for the Jones to hit the note again. Jones sings his final note and is brained by the boulder. Bugs then whips out his banjo and strums a ditty to end the film. The common man and his music has symbolically undressed and destroyed the elitists and opera, just as effectively as a Soupy Sales’ pie in the face.

Music, Humor and the "Long-Haired Hare," Part 1 of 2

I chuckled a while back  when I read that the comedian Soupy Sales had died.  I wasn’t happy at the thought of Mr. Sales’ death; I was smiling with the recollection of Sales’ signature gag:  a pie in the face. In Sales’ TV show of the mid-sixties, celebrities would often appear in skits or banter with Sales. At some point in the show, they would invariably receive a pie in the face.  Everyone watching the show knew the pie was coming; the anticipation of what was to come and in being in on the joke, belonging to the group that knew what was to come, was part of the fun. The mock surprise, horror or anger expressed by the celebrity, the exaggerated show of wiping off the pie from his or her face, the fact that a well coiffed handsome or beautiful person was despoiled by banana cream pie, were funny, because a context was created with the skit or banter and broken with an incongruous act, the pie in the face.    Perhaps a kind of schadenfreude was at work—the pleasure in seeing those envied brought low. 

A fine example of humor that combines many of the comedic techniques discussed (expectation, exaggeration, incongruous acts, elites brought low) in a musical context is the animated film, Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs Bunny.  The title is amusing in that it is a pun on longhairs, a term of derision for those who devotedly listen to classical music. Carl Stalling, the musical director of the animated short, begins the opera parody in the title sequence. He twists Rossini’s aria, “Largo al Factotum,” with the employment of bawdy muted horns and tin-whistle, non-traditional symphonic instruments, which create a banana-peel-slip effect:  a musical slapstick and pratfall that foreshadows what is to come in the context of the cartoon, a lampoon of opera and the elitists who listen and practice opera.  

The central incongruity of the short film is fashioned in the juxtaposition of two opposites, Giovanni Jones, a famous though fictitious baritone, rehearsing Largo al Factotum in his home with an off-screen pianist and Bugs, lounging over his rabbit hole, singing “A Rainy Night in Rio” and accompanying himself on banjo.  In the first few minutes of the short, Stallings has set up a system in which the urbane Jones and opera are symbols of elitism, while Bugs and popular music represent the common man.  

What Lies Beneath? Part 2 of 2

As the shark motif ascends to a higher register, additional instruments join the double basses.  Rhythm quickens, and texture thickens; the music rises in intensity and unexpectedly ends, creating tension and increased apprehension. New voices emerge as a harp glissando leads a swell of strings, which mimic the swells of waves at ocean’s surface, and provide transition from the confined tonal space where the shark motif is first heard, to a wider vista, suggesting that the shark has moved from a confined hunting ground to open sea.  

A variation of the shark motif begins with hints of the same diesel-driven rhythm as the original and sparks my imagination.  A boat, suggested by this variation, plows through the waves above the menace of the deep.  A xylophone plays a string of notes, pearls of sound, carried by the variation and an innocent echo of the menace of the shark motif.  I imagine the notes as drops of sea-swept spray produced by the  boat’s bow as it makes its way through the waves and carries naïve, would-be heroes unaware of the enormity of the task they’ve undertaken to slay the monster.  

The variation ends, and Williams repeats the shark motif.  It’s as if the beast has noticed the new prey and has turned to attack.  The music rises in intensity to a frenzied, final burst of sound and fury, then softly repeats and fades, creating the sense that the shark has prevailed against the heroes and is moving off into the distance.  The shark remains at large—just below the water’s surface, just below awareness.

References

American Film Institute (Producer). (2009).  AFI’s 100 years of film scores.  AFI.com, 2009. Retrieved fromhttp://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/scores.aspx. 

Calkins, J. (1991). Sharks Tales of whales, turtles, sharks and snails. Retrieved fromhttp://graysreef.noaa.gov/tw/sharks.html.

Gazzaniga, M. (2008). Human: The science behind what makes us unique. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.