Practice English Listening B2 Exercises – The psychology of music

1   to make us remember important moments in the past, e.g. when we met someone for the first time.

2   to help us change activities, e.g. we play a certain kind of music to prepare us to go out in the evening and another kind to relax us when we get home from work.

3   to intensify the emotion that we’re feeling, e.g. if we’re sad, we play sad music to make us even sadder; if we’re feeling angry, we play angry music to make us angrier; we play romantic music to make a romantic dinner more romantic.

I think it is very interesting that human being are the only animals which listen to music for pleasure. A lot of research has been done to fine out why we listen to music, and there seem to be three main reasons. Firstly, we listen to music to make us remember important moments in the past, for example when we met someone for the first time. Think of Humphrey Bogart in the film Casablanca saying ‘Darling, they’re playing our song’. When we hear a certain piece of music, we remember hearing it for the first time in some very special circumstances. Obviously, this music varies from person to person.

Secondly, we listen to music to help us to change activities. If we want to go from one activity to another, we often use music to help us to make the change. For example, we might play a certain kind of music to prepare us to go out in the evening, or we might play another kind of music to relax us when we get home from work. That’s mainly why people listen to music in cars, and they often listen to one kind of music when they’re going to work and another kind when they’re coming home. The same is true of people on buses and trains with their iPods.

The third reason why we listen to music is to intensify the emotion that we’re feeling. For example, if we’re feeling sad, sometimes we want to get even sadder, so we play sad music. Or we’re feeling angry and we want to intensify the anger then we play angry music. Or when we’re planning a romantic dinner, we lay the table, we light candles, and then we think that music would make this even more romantic?

Three important human emotions

2   sadness

3   anger

How we feel affects the way we speak, e.g.

2   sad – speak more slowly / lower

3   angry – raise voice / shout

Music copies this, e.g.

2   slow music with falling pitches sounds sad.

3   loud music with irregular rhythms sounds angry.

Examples

1   happy, e.g. Seventh Symphony (Beethven)

2   angry, e.g. Mars (Holst)

3   sad, e.g. Adagio for strings (Albinoni)

This is especially exploited in film soundtracks, e.g. the shower scene in Psycho (the woman is just having a shower but the music makes it terrifying).

Let’s take three important human emotions: happiness, sadness, and anger. When people are happy they speak faster, and their voice is higher. When they are sad they speak more slowly and their voice is lower, and when people are angry they raise their voices or shout. Babies can tell whether their mother is happy or not simple by the sound of her voice, not by her words. What music does is it copies this, and it produces the same emotions. So faster, higher-pitched music will sound happy. Slow music with lots of falling pitches will sound sad. Loud music with irregular rhythms will sound angry. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the music is, if it has these characteristics it will make you experience this emotion.

Let me give you some examples. For happy, for example, the first movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. For angry, say Mars, from The Planets by Holst. And for sad, something like Albinoni’s Adagio for strings. Of course the people who exploit this most are the people who write film soundtracks. They can take a scene which visually has no emotion and they can make the scene either scary or calm or happy just by the music they write to go with it. Think of the music in the shower scene in Hitchcock’s film Psycho. All you can see is a woman having a shower, but the music makes it absolutely terrifying.