How does emotional music affect musicians?

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Rambo Talabong: Welcome back to the Scienceline podcast. I’m Rambo Talabong, your host and the Multimedia Editor here at Scienceline.org. Make sure to subscribe to our show — whether that’s on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or another platform that you prefer using.

Welcome to the podcast. Today, we’re delving into the fascinating world of musical expressivity. It’s this concept of how the very emotions woven into a piece can change the way musicians play. We’ll hear from experts, researchers and performers who’ve all wrestled with that blend of art and science. Taking us there is our very own Perri Thaler. Tune in.

(Music)

Perri Thaler: Listen to this song for a second.

(Music continues)

Thaler: How does his song make you feel? Joyful, scared, calm? It makes me feel nervous.

Lots of research has tried to break down why I feel that way, why music played a certain way has a specific effect on an audience. But have you ever thought about how music makes the musicians playing it feel? A group of researchers recently noticed this gap in the science. They decided to study how the emotion in a piece of music affects how musicians play it. The degree of emotion in a piece is referred to as its expressivity.

Nicola di Stefano: What was under-investigated was the way musicians perceive expressivity, emotional expressivity and the way musical expressivity affects musicians when they play.

Thaler: I’m Perri Thaler, and that was …

di Stefano: Nicola di Stefano. I’m a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy.

Thaler: Nicola studies music cognition and was the main researcher for this new study asking how emotional music affects how musicians play. His team focused on physical movements, like bowing. 

di Stefano: And we know that smoothness in movement when holding the bow and when bowing is crucial to obtain high quality sound, expressive sound, relaxation to induce positive qualities and to increase the quality of sound.

Thaler: He and his team asked violinists to rate the expressivity of pieces they were playing and then measured various physiological and movement traits while they played.

di Stefano: So we try to combine these two possible causes or possible interactions — movement and physiological measures — as a proxy for emotional changes.

Thaler: He did that by analyzing different data about the violinists, like their heart rates and bowing speed, while they played. The pieces came from the Western classical repertoire and included composers like Bach and Mozart —

(Music)

Thaler: As well as some non-emotional technical exercises. 

Generally, musicians want to be relaxed while they play so that they can most easily control the sounds they make. But with the emotional pieces, that’s not what this research team found. The researchers saw that when violinists played more emotional pieces, their bow movements were rougher. This told Nicola that they might be reacting strongly to the emotions in the pieces they were playing. In Nicola’s words…

di Stefano: The main finding is that, when musicians have to play music that they rate as more expressive, they typically move in a less smooth way.

Thaler: Why?

di Stefano: When the music is rated as more expressive, it’s a challenge for musicians to stay relaxed because they know that they have to. And somehow, probably this information alters their motor behavior because it’s a kind of forcing command to stay relaxed, let’s say. And the result is the opposite. So it’s muscular tension, muscular rigidity.

Thaler: The idea is that when musicians are playing a high expressivity piece, there’s some psychological component where they know they should be particularly calm. But in fact, this psychological feedback is making them less calm, and so their bowing gets worse?

di Stefano: Exactly.

Thaler: Nicola compares this psychological effect on motor activity to someone learning how to play tennis. 

di Stefano: When you start to play tennis, they tell you, okay, relax the shoulder. Don’t use the shoulder. Free the shoulder.

Thaler: Yet beginners often tense up anyway because of the psychological pressure, Nicola told me. A similar thing happens here, he thinks, even though the violinists he studied weren’t beginners. This theory is backed up by the generally accepted idea that anxiety leads to stress responses, like muscle tension. A paper from February of this year actually linked violin beginners with muscle tension from anxiety. Though as I mentioned, Nicola wasn’t studying beginners. 

One could surmise from his findings that an emotional piece might sound worse than a less emotional one, if a musician isn’t careful with their technique. So I talked to a professional violinist to hear how emotions affect musicians in the real world. 

Curtis Macomber: My name is Curtis Macomber. I’m a violinist. I teach at the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music and Mannes School of Music.

Thaler: I asked Curt if he relates to the research findings. That is, does he think his bowing gets worse during emotional pieces? Curt said:

Macomber: No. But I would react that, I have students who will say, well, you know, I was scared about that shift coming up, and I tell them, you don’t know if you’re gonna miss it until you miss it. And then I tell them, you know, you put your mind elsewhere, think about something entirely different or think about another aspect of your technique or something. You put your mind away from it and you’ll be more successful.

Thaler: Sometimes he, too, gets in his head about a tough, emotional piece. 

Macomber: But I don’t agree with this playing badly bit, to play emotionally. I don’t buy that.

Thaler: Curt thinks that his experience, along with his compartmentalization strategy, acts as a safeguard against worsening bow technique. Counter to the research, Curt thinks of emotion as an overwhelmingly positive tool in his arsenal, something that makes his playing better, rather than worse. In fact, when he’s learning a new piece, a big part of his process is seeking out the embedded emotion in the piece so that he can make sure to portray it.

Macomber: It’s trying to get into a composer’s head, in a new piece, and see what they’re trying to project. And that’s actually part of the fun, is … thinking, oh this part should use this kind of vibrato or, you know, what is he trying to project?

Thaler: Curt told me about an emotional performance he did recently.

Macomber: On the tip of my tongue is a performance I just did two nights ago. It’s an entire program of works by a contemporary composer.

(Kafka Fragments plays)

Thaler: This program is based on the works of the writer Franz Kafka. Curt played violin for this program while a friend sang the opera part.

Macomber: The performance a couple of nights ago was a high for both of us in that we really felt we were in the moment, we were enjoying being where you are, and your mind is completely on what you’re doing and projecting to an audience.

Thaler: Curt told me about different sections of the performance. Some were sad, like a bit about Kafka realizing he’ll never see a woman again. And others were silly, like a bit when someone is happy to have broken his leg. So you cover a range of emotions in this piece?

Macomber: Absolutely.

Thaler: Is it hard to cover so many emotions in the span of an hour? 

Macomber: It’s a challenge. One of the big challenges of the piece is to switch gears. Okay. We’re done with that, and we’ve gotta know this next thing and get in his head. But it was that that’s part of the fun of the piece. 

Thaler: So while Nicola and his team found that emotions can hamper a violinist, Curt actually looks forward to encountering them. Nicola is planning to do more research on this topic, though, so maybe we can get clearer insight when there’s more data. Until then, sit back, relax, and don’t think too hard about the bowing mechanics of this beautiful music.

(Music)

Thaler: Big thanks to Nicola di Stefano, Curt Macomber, as well as Mimi Rabson for a helpful interview that didn’t make it into the final product, Free Music Archive/Gregor Qundel and the Divertimento Ensemble for the music and Blythe Terrell for her notes and guidance.

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Talabong: And that’s it for this episode of Scienceline. I’m Rambo Talabong. Thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed today’s exploration of music, emotion and performance, be sure to tune in next time for more stories at the intersection of science and everyday life. Until then, keep listening. And keep asking questions.

The Scienceline podcast is available on every major platform, so be sure to subscribe wherever you listen. And if you’d like, maybe give us a rating or review. It helps other people to find our show. Scienceline is a production of NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. Our theme music is by Jahzzar at the Free Music Archive. And for more information, please visit us at Scienceline.org or shoot us an email at scienceline@gmail.com. See you next time.