Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals.
There is debate whether the foundations of consonance and dissonance are rooted in culture or in psychoacoustics. In order to disentangle the contribution of culture and psychoacoustics, we considered automatic responses to the perfect fifth and the major second (flattened by 25 cents) intervals alo...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2023-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294645 |
| _version_ | 1797377696433438720 |
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| author | James Armitage Imre Lahdelma Tuomas Eerola Rytis Ambrazevičius |
| author_facet | James Armitage Imre Lahdelma Tuomas Eerola Rytis Ambrazevičius |
| author_sort | James Armitage |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | There is debate whether the foundations of consonance and dissonance are rooted in culture or in psychoacoustics. In order to disentangle the contribution of culture and psychoacoustics, we considered automatic responses to the perfect fifth and the major second (flattened by 25 cents) intervals alongside conscious evaluations of the same intervals across two cultures and two levels of musical expertise. Four groups of participants completed the tasks: expert performers of Lithuanian Sutartinės, English speaking musicians in Western diatonic genres, Lithuanian non-musicians and English-speaking non-musicians. Sutartinės singers were chosen as this style of singing is an example of 'beat diaphony' where intervals of parts form predominantly rough sonorities and audible beats. There was no difference in automatic responses to intervals, suggesting that an aversion to acoustically rough intervals is not governed by cultural familiarity but may have a physical basis in how the human auditory system works. However, conscious evaluations resulted in group differences with Sutartinės singers rating both the flattened major as more positive than did other groups. The results are discussed in the context of recent developments in consonance and dissonance research. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T19:57:14Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-8472a0d5b4c44570bc53e750c89b7550 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T19:57:14Z |
| publishDate | 2023-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-8472a0d5b4c44570bc53e750c89b75502023-12-24T05:33:36ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032023-01-011812e029464510.1371/journal.pone.0294645Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals.James ArmitageImre LahdelmaTuomas EerolaRytis AmbrazevičiusThere is debate whether the foundations of consonance and dissonance are rooted in culture or in psychoacoustics. In order to disentangle the contribution of culture and psychoacoustics, we considered automatic responses to the perfect fifth and the major second (flattened by 25 cents) intervals alongside conscious evaluations of the same intervals across two cultures and two levels of musical expertise. Four groups of participants completed the tasks: expert performers of Lithuanian Sutartinės, English speaking musicians in Western diatonic genres, Lithuanian non-musicians and English-speaking non-musicians. Sutartinės singers were chosen as this style of singing is an example of 'beat diaphony' where intervals of parts form predominantly rough sonorities and audible beats. There was no difference in automatic responses to intervals, suggesting that an aversion to acoustically rough intervals is not governed by cultural familiarity but may have a physical basis in how the human auditory system works. However, conscious evaluations resulted in group differences with Sutartinės singers rating both the flattened major as more positive than did other groups. The results are discussed in the context of recent developments in consonance and dissonance research.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294645 |
| spellingShingle | James Armitage Imre Lahdelma Tuomas Eerola Rytis Ambrazevičius Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals. PLoS ONE |
| title | Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals. |
| title_full | Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals. |
| title_fullStr | Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals. |
| title_short | Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals. |
| title_sort | culture influences conscious appraisal of but not automatic aversion to acoustically rough musical intervals |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294645 |
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