Music psychology

Music Psychology applicable in Germany as a branch of systematic musicology and is the study of universal laws making music and listening to music with the methods of psychology.

The fundamental issues dealing with the perception of music, education, music preferences, the possibility of understanding music and music production as composition, interpretation and improvisation. As an applied psychology of music discipline makes an important contribution to the care being of the musician. ( Dealing with stress and stage fright, mental training, concentration, practice, performance coaching, stage performance)

In Germany, the scientific research activities in this area are represented by the German Society for Music Psychology. It exists since 1983 and is the largest national company in this field.

History

From the beginning of human development are music and dance also the elementary expression of mental relief and the eliciting certain emotions. Even in the ancient philosophers and scientists have been thinking about the effect of music - the ancient physician Herophilus of Chalcedon, for example, hired measurements on the relationship of human pulse and music. In Greek music theory the different keys have been attributed to certain emotions, which determined the way of composing. During the Renaissance and later Baroque was the view on to say that music has an effect on the listener got what resulted in a highly differentiated character teaching.

In the 19th century the foundations were laid for what is now understood by the psychology of music. Along with the change of the subject psychology, for example, by the opening of the psychological laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, a tonal psychology began to emerge, which expounded Carl Stumpf in his eponymous work of 1883. In this book truncated laid the foundation of Konsonanzforschung by not more divided the musical perception in perception and apperception, but ran out of a fusion of sound perception. Truncated students like Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler studied in the course of their justified Gestalt psychology, the perception of music. However, the discipline psychology of music came with the homonymous work of Ernst Kurth from 1931 to her name.

Meanwhile, the Gestalt psychology and phenomenology has largely disappeared from the subject of music psychology. In recent decades, the research and theory focus shifted to cognitive psychology, in particular the processing processes are studied in the brain.

Music perception

A basic field of music psychology is concerned with the limits of hearing and the perception of sound events. So is examined in psychoacoustics, for example, the circumstances under which two successively sounding tones are perceived as sounding together and at what pace, a rhythm is perceived and from which no more (see universals of music perception ).

And phenomena such as the virtual pitch or synaesthesia be examined.

Another focus is on the relationship between music and emotion. Aspects such as the recognition of music, as well as judging, remembering and storing are often explored by neuropsychological methods.

Tests for musical talent

In the context of musical talent research have been developed scientifically based tests for musicality since the early 20th century. A relatively well-known example is the test "Musical Aptitude Profile" by Edwin E. Gordon in 1965, the relatively expensive test is divided into the following three areas: . Tonal imagination ( melody and harmony), the rhythmic imagination ( tempo and meter ) and ultimately the musical judgment ( phrasing, balance, style).

Another well-known test for the "Musical talent in children and their measurability " ( book and record ) was published by Arnold Bentley 1966. Bentleys Musikalitätstest is a group test that is to be used by teachers in the practical school work seven to fourteen year old children. Components such as discrimination ability for pitch, tone and rhythm of the memory and the ability to analyze or identify chords should be able to be determined with this test of Bentley.

A relatively recent test to measure the musicality (in children) is the " Wiener test for musicality " from the year 2004 by Vanecek / Preusche / Längle. This is according to the publisher to the world's first computer-based music talent test for children of pre - school and elementary school age. It is divided into two areas: the so-called " Längle test " to measure the pitch discrimination and the " Viennese Waltz Test" to measure the knowledge of rhythm shifts within a cycle.