Abstract
This investigation replicates previous research into K–12 students’ responses to mid-20th-century art music. The study extends that research to include undergraduates and graduates as well as an additional group of graduate students who had taken a 20th-century music class. Children’s responses showed remarkable consistency and indicated that younger children gave higher mean liking ratings than did older students. Kindergarten and third-grade youngsters preferred all but two of the excerpts compared to their older counterparts. There appeared to be a large difference between younger students’ responses compared to 6th- and 9th-grade students, who were more similar to undergraduate and graduate music students, while 12th graders generally gave the lowest responses. Preferences for the group of graduate students who studied 20th-century music were not significantly higher than those of graduate students who had not had an additional course. These results corroborate previous research that illustrates differences in preference between different ages of listeners.
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