Elementary, Middle, and High School Student Perceptions of Tension in Music

Abstract

School-age students from Grades 2, 5, 8, and 11/12 (N = 112) were asked to listen to a recording of the first movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 104. All subjects were asked to record their perception of “tension ” in the music using a Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) dial. As in previous studies of this type (Fredrickson, 1995; Madsen & Fredrickson, 1993), no definition of the term in question was given, allowing subjects to, in essence, create their own definition. Graphic analysis showed that even though the magnitude of group responses varied widely, there are some striking similarities in the timing of major group responses. Pearson correlations between groups ranged from .98 between the fifth and eighth graders to . 71 between the second graders and a population of professional musicians from a previous study who responded to the same musical recording. In general, younger subjects tended to use a wider range of the dial, whereas older and more musically experienced subjects were much more conservative. These results were consistent with results of previous studies and indicated a perceptual consistency regarding an entity that a fairly wide variety of populations define as tension in this piece of music.