How blue is Mozart? Non verbal sensory scales for describing music qualities

Studies on the perception of musical qualities (such as induced or perceived emotions, performance styles, or timbre nuances) make a large use of verbal descriptors. Although many authors noted that particular musical qualities can hardly be described by means of verbal labels, few studies have tried alternatives. This paper aims at exploring the use of non verbal sensory labels, in order to represent different perceived qualities in Western classical music. Musically trained and untrained listeners were required to listen to 6 musical excerpts in major key and to evaluate them from a sensorial and semantic point of view (Experiment 1). The same experiment (Experiment 2) was proposed to musically trained and untrained listeners who were required to listen to 6 musical excerpts all in minor key. The overall findings indicate that subjects’ rates on non verbal sensory scales are throughout consistent and the results support the hypothesis that sensory scales can convey some specific sensations that cannot be described verbally, offering interesting insights to deepen our knowledge on the relationship between music and other sensorial experiences.