ABSTRACT

 The present study investigated the affective space of the entire twelve movements of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and compared music-induced affect between musicians and non-musicians. The participants listened to each of the movements of the concertos, in shuffled order, and rated the emotional arousal and valence of each movement immediately after listening to it. We controlled for the affective mood before the experiment, and the familiarity with each movement of the concertos. All the movements of the concertos were perceived as pleasant, but with varying degrees of emotional activation. Emotional valence varied between the peaceful Adagio Molto Autumn and the joyful Allegro Spring 1. The movements with slow tempos were perceived as the least activating, whereas the most emotionally activating was the Tempo Impetuoso D’Estate. The comparison between musicians and non-musicians indicated that the former perceived the Adagio Molto Autumn as more activating and the Allegro Non Molto Summer as less pleasant than the latter. We suggest that these differences may be related to the increased focus of musicians’ aesthetic judgments on the originality and novelty of musical structures. These results support the view that there are only discrete differences in musicinduced affect between musicians and non-musicians.

KEYWORDS: music, affectt, affective space, musical training, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons

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