“One proposal is that we form a vague (consistent with many possibilities) model of what the musician is likely to do next, and enjoy it when the model feels accurate.”
I suspect actually the opposite is true—that we enjoy it when our expectations are subverted, but in a way that makes sense after the fact, like a joke.
Certainly if one watches video of screaming girls at Beatles concerts (the rawest, most visceral musical appreciation I can think of) they tend to scream loudest at those parts where an unexpected chord change comes along...
You might be amused to know that David Huron (see my comment below) has done something similar to what you’re talking about: he analyzed (PDF) the timing of audiences’ laughter responses to music that is supposed to be humorous (a corpus of live performances of pieces by P. D. Q. Bach) in order to figure out the psychological mechanisms at work in musical expectation.
“One proposal is that we form a vague (consistent with many possibilities) model of what the musician is likely to do next, and enjoy it when the model feels accurate.”
I suspect actually the opposite is true—that we enjoy it when our expectations are subverted, but in a way that makes sense after the fact, like a joke. Certainly if one watches video of screaming girls at Beatles concerts (the rawest, most visceral musical appreciation I can think of) they tend to scream loudest at those parts where an unexpected chord change comes along...
You might be amused to know that David Huron (see my comment below) has done something similar to what you’re talking about: he analyzed (PDF) the timing of audiences’ laughter responses to music that is supposed to be humorous (a corpus of live performances of pieces by P. D. Q. Bach) in order to figure out the psychological mechanisms at work in musical expectation.
Thanks—that’s absolutely fascinating.
I’m also reminded of the Suprise Symphony—it plays a loud Scare Chord in the middle of a tranquil section of music, and then never does it again.
And this, too.
I know dokool, the guy who uploaded that.
You’ve actually mentioned that once before.