Abstract
In western cultures, when it comes to places of worship and liturgies, music, acoustics and architecture go hand in hand. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether the emotions evoked by music are enhanced by the acoustics of the space where the music was composed to be played on. We explored whether the emotional responses of western naïve listeners to two vocal pieces from the Renaissance, one liturgical and one secular, convolved with the impulse responses of four Christian temples from the United Kingdom, were modulated by the appropriate piece/space matching. In an alternative forced choice task where participants had to indicate their preference for the original recording of the piece (not convolved with any temple-like acoustics) vs. the convolved one, no significant differences were found. However, in the tasks where participants rated their emotional in response to each piece and acoustic condition, the factorial ANCOVA analyses performed on the results revealed significant effects. We observed that, across pieces and spaces, participants found the temple-like acoustics as more transcendent, compared to the acoustics of the original version of the pieces. In addition, they rated the secular piece as more tender and the liturgical piece as more expressive in its original versions, compared to the convolved ones. We conclude that the acoustic signature of the four Christian temples causes an exaltation of certain emotions on listeners, although this effect is not associated to one or another musical piece.
Highlights
A growing body of literature has shown the influence of environmental acoustics, including features such as loudness, reverberation and clarity, over listeners’ preference for certain concert halls rather than others (Barron, 1971; Schroeder et al, 1974; Farina et al, 2007; Lokki et al, 2012; Pätynen and Lokki, 2016)
Despite sound is an ephemeral event, acoustic environments persevere over time (Rainio et al, 2017), so that the acoustic signature of a particular space can be captured with appropriate methodologies by recording its so-called impulse response (IR) (Mattioli et al, 2017; Álvarez-Morales et al, 2020)
The main purpose of the present study was to establish a relationship between the acoustic signature of singular spaces, the compositional styles, and the emotions evoked on the listener, with regards to Christian liturgical pieces and constructions
Summary
A growing body of literature has shown the influence of environmental acoustics, including features such as loudness, reverberation and clarity, over listeners’ preference for certain concert halls rather than others (Barron, 1971; Schroeder et al, 1974; Farina et al, 2007; Lokki et al, 2012; Pätynen and Lokki, 2016). Environmental acoustics drive listeners’ emotional reactions –such as valence and activation– and influence perceptual attributes –such as roughness and sharpness (Västfjäll, 2012). Despite sound is an ephemeral event, acoustic environments persevere over time (Rainio et al, 2017), so that the acoustic signature of a particular space can be captured with appropriate methodologies by recording its so-called impulse response (IR) (Mattioli et al, 2017; Álvarez-Morales et al, 2020). By the use of an auralization approach (Vorländer, 2008), which involves a convolution-based reverberation technique (Farina and Ayalon, 2003), it is possible to apply the acoustic characteristics of the space where the impulse response is recorded to any given sound. Auralization allows to immerse listeners in a particular sonic space, to further evaluate their individual reaction, subjective interpretation and affective responses, to explore the connection between emotions and sound physical properties (Västfjäll et al, 2002; Pätynen and Lokki, 2016)
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