Musical Experience as Predictive Factor of Aesthetic Reaction: A Review of Literature

IntroductionOne relevant argument supporting the importance of music listening within music education could be the evidence of significant differences between musicians and non-musicians concerning their aesthetic reactions. Price (1986) considers that aesthetic reaction is a learned behavior which results from one's history of interaction with musical stimuli. Bharucha (1994 apud Misenhelter & Price, 2001) suggests that musical training generates better knowledge regarding compositional techniques and therefore higher expectancies in music perception, and this fact modifies the esthetic reactions. Also, the cognitive processing of complex musical information may strengthen and refine the emotional states deeply connected with the aesthetic reaction.Davies (1978) has shown that subjects' musical preferences and music complexity have a significant effect on aesthetic reaction which is described by a reversed U shape where the maximum intensity of aesthetic response matches the medium levels of music complexity. Experimental studies have demonstrated that there are important differences between musicians and non-musicians regarding aesthetic reaction and these differences manifest themselves both in a quantitative and qualitative manner.Investigating Aesthetic Reaction to Country MusicJohn Lychner (2008) has noticed that most experimental studies used academic music stimuli in aesthetic reaction investigations and stated that, in this manner, generalizations regarding the aesthetic response may be biased. Instead, he focused on observing the aesthetic reaction towards commercial genres. Consequently, he used the continuous response digital interface (CRDI) to record the aesthetic response of 64 students during the audition of a country song (Drive for Daddy Gene by Alan Jackson). Half of the participants were musicians. Lychner was interested to see if the aesthetic reaction of both musicians and non-musicians would be influenced by the presence of video images during music listening. Therefore, he created an experimental design where subjects' aesthetic response was measured in two conditions: audio only and audio-video condition (where the students listened to the song Drive for Daddy Gene concomitantly with watching the video created especially for the same piece). Results have revealed a series of significant differences regarding presentation format (audio versus video) and participants' musical experience (musicians versus non-musicians in both experimental conditions). First, the audio only condition resulted in higher aesthetic responses from all subjects compared to the audio-video condition. Therefore, contrary to the general expectation, Lychner's findings have shown that adding video to an audio stimulus did not appear to enhance participants' aesthetic response. Although it seems logical to expect an enhanced aesthetic response from an audio-visual stimulus compared to its audio only format, experimental research revealed otherwise. Previous studies (Frego, 1999; Lychner, 2002) have found similar results. The authors explained the phenomenon by stating that in the audio-video condition participant's attention becomes divided within the tasks of listening and watching. Lychner adds that it is possible that the addition of video to an aural stimulus may actually detract from the participants' aesthetic experience.Second, musicians and non-musicians have shown big differences in their aesthetic response to country music. Overall, non-musicians had a stronger response to the stimuli than musicians, particularly in the audio-video condition. Moreover, the CRDI graphics were very different in each group: in the audio condition, musicians' reaction indicates a more stable line, while the nonmusicians' response has many peaks and valleys according to changes in the music discourse. In the audio-video condition, the situation is reversed: nonmusicians response rises and then plateaus, while musicians react with more peaks and valleys according to changes in the video stimulus. …