Assessment of musical listening in post-tonal contexts: The case of temA (1968) by Helmut Lachenmann

Abstract

Musical composition is a goal-oriented task in which sound materials are often organized to try to elicit the audience’s emotional, intellectual, or any other kinds of responses. However, composers’ intentions do not necessarily match with the audience’s expectations and actual responses. Scholarly speaking, these issues have been mostly addressed with tonal music but we currently know very little about them in the field of post-tonal music. Our contribution tries to broaden this knowledge through an empirical research carried out with temA by Helmut Lachenmann. A cohort of 57 participants with different musical backgrounds was invited to compare pairs of sound excerpts derived from Lachenmann’s piece, in terms of musical coherence and elicited pleasure. Results show how the continuity of the sound materials played a decisive role in the assessment, particularly when participants had a music background. In addition, professional musicians and higher music students showed stronger correlations between coherence and pleasure responses. Conversely, the presence of vocal sounds which may evoke pain or violence had only a clear influence on the pleasure response of naïve participants.