Title From music listening to extramusical interpretations: musical experience as multimodal, semiotic and psychological phenomenon /
Translation of Title Nuo muzikos klausymo iki ekstramuzikinių interpretacijų: muzikinė patirtis kaip multimodalus, semiotinis ir psichologinis reiškinys.
Authors Varankaitė, Ulrika
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Pages 112
Keywords [eng] music listening ; extramusical associations ; musical semiotics ; music psychology
Abstract [eng] This dissertation explores listeners’ extramusical experience – music-evoked associations that are outside music itself. The interdisciplinary research practically investigated the process of music listening through the listeners’ perspective, and 24 Lithuanians took part in the study. The experimental session consisted of active music listening to three different musical excerpts/genres (two songs with lyrics and one instrumental piece) and qualitative semi-structured interviews with each subject separately. As findings show, multifaceted extramusical associations were induced by music that in almost all cases would include these elements: emotional response, visual imagery and associations as references to other existing real-world items in media, music and/or audiovisual culture (which involved mostly other, non-Lithuanian cultures/countries). Furthermore, the associations were influenced by the subjects’ experience and perception that had been formed by their socio-cultural environment which they shared, and this led to perceiving similar meanings and associations evoked by music even if the subjects were not familiar with the musical piece. Another important outcome was that if a musical piece contained lyrics, it was not the main factor in forming listeners’ extramusical associations; music alone is powerful to provoke specific meanings. These and other findings showed how much music listening is a complex but quite creative process for the listener since audible music is able to induce various responses including multifaceted extramusical associations full of emotional and visual content.
Dissertation Institution Kauno technologijos universitetas.
Type Doctoral thesis
Language English
Publication date 2020