Aspects of Stylistic Knowledge: What Are Different Styles Like and Why Do We Listen to Them?

Abstract

Stylistic knowledge is one of many ways in which listeners may respond to musical styles. As a form of conceptual knowledge, stylistic knowledge has multiple facets. We examined stylistic knowledge of a college student population in Turkey by questioning them about how similar they thought different styles were, which descriptive qualities they associated with different styles of music, and for what reasons people would listen to different styles. We discovered that our respondents represented the similarity among musical styles in a systematic way that could be described by a small number of dimensions. There was also considerable consensus on how musical styles and reasons for listening to them could be described. Musical styles were described with reference to an evaluative, an activity, and a peacefulness dimension. Reasons for listening could be subsumed under four factors: background, movement, identity, and appreciation. Musical styles differed in how closely they were associated with these descriptive dimensions and reasons for listening. How the styles were perceived was also affected by the stylistic preferences of the respondents.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barsalou, L. W. (1985). Ideals, central tendency, and frequency of instantiation as determinants of graded structure in categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11, 629-654.

Berlyne, D. E. (1971). Aesthetics and psychobiology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Collins, A. M. and Quillian, M. R. (1969). Retrieval time from semantic memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 82, 402-428.

Crozier, W. R. (1997). Music and social influence. In: D. J. Hargreaves and A. C. North (Eds.), The social psychology of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gelman, S. A. and Markman, E. M. (1986). Young children's inductions from natural kinds: The role of categories and appearances. Child Development, 58, 1532-1541.

Hacohen, R. and Wagner, N. (1997). The communicative force of Wagner's leitmotifs: Complementary relations between their connotations and denotations. Music Perception, 14, 445-476.

Hargreaves, D. and North, A. C. (1999). Developing concepts of musical style. Musicae Scientiae, 3, 193-216.

Hartley, J. and Homa, D. (1981). Abstraction of stylistic concepts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 7, 33-46.

Imberty, M. (1997). Formes de la r6p6tition et formes des affects du temps dans l'expression musicale. Musicae Scientiae, 1, 33-62.

10.

Konecni, V. J. (1982). Social interaction and musical preference. In: D. Deutsch (Ed.), The psychology of music. New York: Academic Press.

11.

Medin, D. L. (1989). Concepts and conceptual structure. American Psychologist, 44, 1469-1481.

12.

Meyer, L. B. (1956). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

13.

North, A. C. and Hargreaves, D. (1997). Liking for musical styles. Musicae Scientiae, 1, 109-128.

14.

Osgood, Suci and Tanenbaum , (1957). The measurement of meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

15.

Rosch, E. H. and Mervis, C. B. (1975). Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 573-605.

16.

Rosch, E. H. , Mervis, C. B. , Gray, W. D. , Johnson, D. M. and Boyes-Bream, P. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 8, 382-439.

17.

Russell, P. A. (1997). Musical tastes and society. In: D. J. Hargreaves and A. C. North (Eds.), The social psychology of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

18.

Sloboda, J. A. (1985). The musical mind: the cognitive psychology of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

19.

Stokes, M. (1992). The Arabesk debate: Music and musicians in modern Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

20.

Watt, R. J. and Ash, R. L. (1998). A psychological investigation of meaning in music. Musicae Scientiae, 2, 33-53.

21.

Wedin, L. (1972). A multidimensional study of perceptual-emotional qualities in music. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 13, 1-17.