Alf Gabrielsson,an Obituary

My dear mentor, the highly influential Swedish professor of music psychology, Alf Gabrielsson, passed away on May 24, 2024. Alf was born on June 18, 1936, in the small village of Varnhem. He grew up in a musical family and developed absolute pitch around the age of 6. Performing on the organ in a 12th-century Cistercian monastery from late childhood to early adulthood strongly influenced his interest and development in music. Based on a musical aptitude test, Alf was advised to pursue a profession in music. He did eventually study organ, piano, harmony, singing, counterpoint, and choral conducting at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, graduating as a musikdirektör in 1963. However, before obtaining employment as a musician, academic life had seemingly already lured him away, leading to a somewhat different but equally rewarding career path.

Alf had moved to Uppsala in 1956 to study philosophy, psychology, musicology, art history, and political science. His psychology professor was Gunnar Johansson, who invented the so-called point-light technique to study what was termed biological motion. At the musicology department, Alf eventually caught the eye of the distinguished professor Ingemar Bengtsson, whom Alf later described as “the most broad-minded musicologist ever in Sweden.” Bengtsson looked for a collaborator in psychology and found a most suitable one in Alf. They continued to work together for more than 30 years, focusing especially on groundbreaking studies of the performance of rhythm.

Alf published his first research articles (in Swedish) on musical rhythm in 1960. Around the same time, he met Barbro, whom he married (in 1963) and with whom he had three children (Håkan, Ingela, and Anneli). In 1965, he was appointed senior lecturer at the psychology department, teaching mainly research methods and statistics. A significant proportion of the professors of psychology in Sweden received their basic training in statistics from Alf. His excellent skills in multivariate statistics came in handy when, a few years later, he used factor analysis and multidimensional scaling to explore the perception of rhythm. This research culminated in his doctoral dissertation in psychology at Uppsala University in 1973, in which he conceived of rhythm experience as based on three main factors—structure, motion, and emotion—which became recurrent themes in his later work.

After his dissertation, Alf conducted research on a variety of topics, such as the perceived sound quality of sound-reproducing systems (arguably studies of timbre), measurement and synthesis of music performance (using novel computer equipment), and the emotional impact of music. Alf paved the way for the latter domain by emphasizing emotions at a time in the late 1980s and early 1990s when most researchers in music psychology focused primarily on structural aspects. A landmark publication was his extensive 1999 review of studies of music performance, which covered more than 400 articles. The review highlights the thorough approach Alf would adopt in any research task.

However, the project that Alf came to regard as his most distinctive contribution to music psychology was his extensive study of “strong experiences with music.” It featured 1,350 phenomenological reports of “peak experiences,” which were carefully content-analyzed and reported in numerous publications. This project cut to the heart of most people's motives for listening to music and was partly born out of Alf's own frustration over the fact that the field of music psychology had neglected a topic that lay listeners regarded as most important. The use of qualitative data might have surprised a few people accustomed to Alf's previous work characterized by experimentation and multivariate statistics. However, Alf himself was always keen to combine scientific and humanistic perspectives in his work. This may explain his early focus on “ecological validity” and the use of “real music” in his experimental studies.

Alongside his research, Alf started courses in music psychology in 1977 and public seminars in 1988. (Both continue to this day.) A steady stream of international visitors provided a stimulating environment for his students. In the 1990s, Alf supervised his first PhD students, many of whom would continue successfully with research and teaching in music psychology. It was a privilege to have Alf as a supervisor and to observe his work and personality firsthand. Alf was a generous, humble, ambitious, funny, and passionate colleague. It seemed to me that he was reading all the time. As impressive as his published output might seem, it did not fully reflect his encyclopedic knowledge of music research and musical phenomena. Being able to read English, French, and German literature, he would frequently cite obscure references to important but long overlooked works in the field.

However, Alf was not only a keen student of the history of our field. He was also curious about modern developments. While working on my undergraduate thesis, Alf learned that I was a guitarist playing professionally, more or less. He eagerly requested a demonstration of all the playing techniques and technical sound effects on my electric guitar—not to be polite, but because he truly wanted to understand this unfamiliar domain.

Alf had impressive work stamina. We only collaborated closely as authors on two or three articles, and this was done in an old-school fashion, sitting together in front of the computer. I liked to think of myself as someone capable of hard work but, although Alf was 30 years my senior, it was invariably I who would request a break. Alf worked hard and referred to his afternoon diet (bananas and chocolate biscuits) as his “secret weapons” in persevering.

In his work, Alf was typically reluctant to commit to a specific theory, seemingly preferring to stay close to the data—perhaps, somewhat like his American predecessor of Swedish descent, the pioneer music psychologist Carl E. Seashore, whose family and former laboratory in Iowa, USA, Alf visited more than once. Alf's open-minded and diplomatic character was also apparent in his supervision: The joke among his close students was that if you asked Alf whether you should approach a task in this or that way, his initial response would always be, “Can't you do both?” (To be fair, sometimes we could do both!)

In 1991, Alf was elected as a member of the Royal Academy of Music in Sweden. In 1995, he was appointed full professor in psychology. In 1997, Alf and his students organized the Third Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Alf was very active in this organization, and served as its president from 1997 to 2000. During this time, Alf also supported the development of music psychology research in Eastern Europe, Poland in particular. His time was often spent serving the field, rather than his own career.

Alf was formally retired in 2001. The book Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, edited by me and John Sloboda, and published the same year, was dedicated to him. However, Alf continued to work for another two decades, writing books and research overviews. In 2008, he published a Swedish book on his project on strong experiences with music (translated to English in 2011). In 2012, Alf received the Sempre Lifetime Achievement Award from The Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research. In 2020, finally, he capped 60 years of scientific publishing (!) with a Swedish textbook in music psychology, which is currently used in our courses.

It is no exaggeration to say that Alf single-handedly laid the foundation for the field of music psychology in Sweden (although Alf himself would be the first to acknowledge the support of others, including his colleagues in the music acoustics group in Stockholm). Alf was the perfect ambassador for the domain of music psychology, always generous with his time and knowledge. My colleague John Sloboda referred to him as “the gentle giant of music psychology.”

Alf's interest in music research never wavered: Only weeks before he passed away, he was still asking for details regarding our latest seminar in music psychology. Alf referred to music as “a dear and unerring companion in life” and he continued to perform and listen to music as long as his health would allow. The field of music psychology will surely miss one of its most influential and sympathetic practitioners, as will his colleagues in the Department of Psychology at Uppsala University, myself included. I send my deepest condolences to his three children and their respective families.