The surprising trait people who listen to sad music share
Sad songs say so much, according to Elton John. And according to David Huron, an expert in music cognition, a predilection for them says a lot about the listener.
Professor Huron, a visiting academic at the University of NSW, has explored why some people like sad-sounding music.
Those who most enjoyed it scored high on empathy in personality tests.
They also tended to score high on agreeableness and openness, his research at the Ohio State University found. About 50 per cent of people like listening to sad music, with 10 per cent saying it is the music they most enjoy.
Professor Huron said the acoustical qualities of sad music closely reflect what makes a human voice sound sad, and some people “respond to a ‘sad’ song as though they were in the presence of a sad person – they feel a sense of compassion”.
“As it turns out, compassion is a positive emotion,” he said. “People who are not so empathetic simply hear the music as sad, and feel sad themselves.”
David Robertson, the chief conductor and artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, said music affects people in different ways “because each person brings with them a wealth of background when they’re listening to any piece of music”.
“A concert is one of those moments when you go in and you are moved uniquely,” he said. “It’s interesting to look back at an audience after you’ve finished a performance and see the different expressions on their faces because they can range, [after] the same piece, anywhere from a sense of awe and glory ... to a sense of utter and complete intimacy and closing off of the rest of the world.”
The SSO has been rehearsing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, or solemn mass, for performances starting on Wednesday in the concert hall at the Sydney Opera House. The composer described it as his “greatest work”.
Robertson said the piece “is so incredibly rich that you can come back to it time and time again and you find different things in it, which I think is an indication that these emotional triggers – whatever they may be – are different for us at different times of the day and different periods of our life”.
Associate Professor Emery Schubert, who researches emotion and music at the University of NSW, said music can influence the way we feel intrinsically as well as through associations, “such as watching movies where the love scene has slow, gentle music playing, or a chase scene with fast, pulsating music”.
“Importantly we may not be conscious of the rich history of connections we make over our lifetime between music and emotions,” he said.
“But being aware of how the music affects us can make us experts at manipulating our own moods through music.”
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