My marriage with music psychology.

Abstract

ABSTRACT - A childhood musical environment, supportive family, early experience of performance on piano and organ, interest in psychology in late teenage years, studies of psychology and musicology at Uppsala University, and fortuitous external academic encounters led the author to a lifelong relation with music psychology. During undergraduate studies he conducted research on rhythm with Ingmar Bengtsson, a professor of musicology. The author then completed a diploma in organ performance at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, followed by a doctoral degree in Psychology, at Uppsala University. Background in both musicology and psychology encouraged joint qualitative and quantitative approaches. The doctoral studies on rhythm revealed three clusters of dimensions of experience-structural, motional, and emotional. These dimensions represent themes of the author's lifelong research, not only on musical rhythm but also music perception in general. Emphasizing motion and emotion was unusual when most music psychology focused on the experience of music structure. Applied work on the experience of sound-sound quality or timbre-was conducted in the Department of Technical Audiology in Stockholm. The author offered the first music psychology course in Sweden in 1977. A body of research on Strong Experiences related to Music (SEM) was a most significant original contribution. Growth of the field of music psychology over 40 years included formation of societies such as ESCOM in which the author played a role. He advises that in spite of the enormous opportunity for specialized scientific study of music psychology today, it is important to remember that music is an art form having individual experiential significance. PRELUDE In one of his aphorisms Nietzsche once stated that Ohne Musik ware das Leben ein Irrtum (Without music life would be a mistake). I am inclined to agree. From my earliest years and throughout my life music has been a dear and unerring companion. In my late teenage years it began to be associated with psychology as well, a junction that I came to know as music psychology. EARLY UPBRINGING AND EDUCATION I was born June 18, 1936, third child of my father Hakan and mother Elsa, after my brother Ingemar, then already 15 years old, and my sister Inga, 9 years. We lived in the small village of Varnhem in the western part of Sweden, well-known as the site of one of the few Cistercian monasteries founded in Sweden in the 12th century. The monastery flourished during the Middle Ages but was then destroyed during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. There are now only remnants of the monastery buildings, but the magnificent monastery church, built in Romanesque-Gothic transition style, is still there in all its beauty and with the size and wonderful acoustics of a cathedral (see Figure 1). Practicing and performing on the organ in this wonderful church, from late childhood until early adulthood, was decisive for much of my musical development and views on music. My mother was a housewife. She had a keen interest in music, and I remember her and my sister singing a lot - both to, and with, me. My father was a schoolteacher, and our apartment was in the same building as the school itself. We had a black upright piano in the living room, and early on my father had me practicing on it as well as on the harmonium in the classroom. I think that I liked playing from the very beginning (at least I cannot remember any serious protests), and I assume that this early practice also made me develop absolute pitch. I remember very well when one day my father discovered, probably to his surprise, that I was able to tell the pitch of any tone he played on the piano. I must have been six or seven years old and had of course no idea about what absolute pitch meant. I just listened and immediately named the pitch of each tone he played. My brother, Ingemar, had a similar musical education, supervised by my father. …