John Sloboda

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Emeritus Professor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of harmonic expectancy violations on emotions. Subjective response measures for tension and emotionality, as well as electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR), were recorded from 24 subjects (12 musicians and 12 nonmusicians) to observe the effect of expectancy violations on subj...

Many people reach adulthood without acquiring significant music performance skills (singing or instrumental playing). A substantial proportion of these adults consider that this has come about because they are "not musical." Some of these people may be "true" congenital amusics, characterized by specific and substantial anomalies in the processing...

Indiscriminate or intentional harm to civilians violates humanitarian principles and basic human rights. Believing that a careful assessment of the effects of different kinds of weapons on civilians in Iraq was needed, we used the database of the Iraq Body Count (IBC), a nongovernmental organization that documents civilian violent deaths in Iraq,2...

Eighty-three music listeners completed a questionnaire in which thev provided information about the occurrence of a range of physical reactions while listening to music. Shivers down the spine, laughter, tears and lump in the throat were reported by over 80(% of respondents. Respondents were asked to locate specific musical passages that reliably e...

Sixteen pianists sight-read the unfingered right-hand score of 7 studies by Czerny. The pianists were of 3 levels of expertise. Each study was performed twice. Fingerings were transcribed from video recordings. Measures were taken of performance accuracy and fingering consistency. The choices made were compared to the predictions of a model based p...

The composer Sir James MacMillan has often referred to music as ‘the most spiritual of the arts’, and for many people, regardless of religious affiliation, this rings true. In listening to music, we are drawn to dimensions of human experience beyond the material. This collection brings together leading scholars from various disciplines – including...

Psychology of Music is a flourishing area of research in the Western Balkans. However, much of its findings and insights have remained relatively unknown outside the region. Psychological Perspectives on Musical Experiences and Skills features recent research from the Western Balkans, foregrounding its specific topics, methods, and influences, and...

A psychological exploration of the role of the different senses when present in liturgical celebrations, with special reference to music and hearing

This is my complete academic publication list in date order, with links to online versions where they exist.

Finnish Journal of Music Education. https://sites.uniarts.fi/web/fjme/archive We review the landscape for SIMM (Socially Impactful Music Making) activities in four countries (Belgium, Colombia, Finland, and the UK) by interrogating a sample of publicly available material on the policy and funding environment in each country, and by analysing an in...

We aim to address six questions: 1) Why do classical musicians need to build audiences? 2) What do audiences seek by engaging with a live event? 3) How are classical music events different from other arts events? 4) How can more of what audiences seek be added to live events? 5) Why are classical musicians, and those who promote them, not as focuse...

This study aimed to uncover potential effects on and meanings experienced by audience members who participated in performances (‘participants’) of intentional efforts to integrate participatory elements in art music practice. We document a recent project in which two contemporary composers were commissioned to write new pieces including parts for a...

This presentation summarises research undertaken on young audiences for classical music in the context of a project entiled "Vocal Futures" that ran in London from 2010-2020 and presented a range of multimedia live classical events targetted at 18-25 year olds. It presents data on changes in motivation for attendance at classical concerts as a resu...

The recent re-introduction of improvisation as a professional practice within classical music, however cautious and still rare, allows direct and detailed contemporary comparison between improvised and “standard” approaches to performances of the same composition, comparisons which hitherto could only be inferred from impressionistic historical acc...

Bars 8–12 prepared (strict) version.

Bars 8–12 improvised state of mind.

Bars 7–8 (flute solo opening 3 notes) improvised state of mind version.

Bars 165–177 prepared (strict) version.

Bars 7–8 (flute solo opening 3 notes) prepared (strict) version.

This reflection on the first 25 years of ESCOM’s activities is in two parts. In the first part we analyse the country and discipline spread of contributors to its journal Musicae Scientiae and its formal membership. In the second we address the choice of “cognitive sciences of music” as the initial focus of both Society and journal by comparing the...

Repetition of a piece on a concert programme is a well-established, but uncommon performance practice. Musicians have presumed that repetition benefits audience enjoyment and understanding but no research has examined this. In two naturalistic and one lab study, we examined audience reaction to repeated live performances of contemporary pieces play...

GOING TO THINGS TOGETHER MAKES EVENTS BETTER, MAKES LIVES BETTER – NEW RESEARCH ON MEETUP.COM Unpublished working paper Meetup.com is an international social application that puts people with common interests in touch with one another so that they can attend events together and socialise around the event. A recent detailed survey conducted by ps...

Educational sociologists and philosophers have long recognised that educational institutions play a significant role in shaping as well as supporting societal norms. In the face of growing global social, political, and environmental challenges, should conservatoires be more overt in expressing a mission to sustain and improve the societies in which...

This paper reports the outcomes of an investigation into the nature and motivations of the audience at a London concert of Britten Sinfonia, a touring chamber orchestra with a London residency. In particular it looks at the salience of the orchestra’s artistic ethos to audience members, and the role that awareness of this ethos plays in decisions t...

This paper examines the cultural value of opera through a study of its most devoted and long-standing audience members. Its key research objective is to develop our understanding of what opera-lovers love about opera. In doing so, we provide a case study of one way to research audience experience of the arts. We use a theoretically-grounded, interv...

This chapter reflects on how practitioners may differently relate to social justice issues in music education according to their personal and professional priorities. The relative merits of micro- and macro-approaches to social justice in music are discussed. It is argued that social justice goals are particularly strongly linked to the development...

This chapter provides an overview of research on self-chosen music listening experiences, both recorded and live. The material is organized into the functional niches that music is chosen to be part of travel, brain work, body work, emotional work, and attendance at live events as an audience member. Four different recurring functions of self-chose...

There have been two parallel themes in my research: first the response of the listener to music at every level – cognitive, emotional, aesthetic – and second what goes on in the creative musician’s head, principally on the cognitive level, in terms of how the music gets produced by composers and performers. What I hadn’t done until coming to work a...

London-based music psychologist John Sloboda explores the subconscious connections and disjunctions between musicians and their audiences. He discusses his experiments on the 'emotional hotspots' experienced by listeners and the surprising power of improvisation.

The question of the precise link between music and emotions has exercised scholars since the time of ancient Greece. The goal of this chapter is to review contemporary empirical research on music and emotion primarily within music psychology. We begin by commenting on the recent history of the field. Then, we provide a working definition of emotion...

A wide range of psychological approaches have been used to explore musical preferences, yet few studies have focused on people’s own preferred music. This article reports the results of a qualitative study into the breadth, content, and rationale of musical preferences. In-depth interviews were conducted with adults (age range 18–73 years) at home...

This chapter reviews the uses, merits, and limitations of incident-based casualty data, using the Iraq Body Count (IBC) database as an example. It outlines the characteristics, methods, and sources of IBC’s data. Examples are given of how data have been used to improve understanding of the effects of armed conflict on civilians, to commemorate indi...

Music is often said to be expressive of emotions. emotions while performing. Do musicians feel the musical emotions when expressing them? Or has expressive playing nothing to do with the emotional exp tives on the role of emotions in performance, we conducted qualitative in‐depth interviews with nineteen musicians teaching or studying at a European...

This chapter begins by characterizing and contextualizing the differences, rooted as they are in the historical and cultural development of the respective disciplines of music and drama, and the impact of dominant historical values on the institutionalization of training. It draws on a conception of discourse where utterances, spoken and written, a...

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the characteristics and impacts of adopting an improvisatory approach to the performance of classical chamber music. Improvisatory approaches to the classical repertoire, once widespread, are nowrare in contemporary professional performance practice and so there are few opportunities to study it. This study attempts to...

Despite the centrality of live musical performance to jazz, there has been little scholarly attention placed on the performer-audience relationship. This pilot study explored the factors that assisted and hindered this relationship among players and audience members attending live performances at a London jazz club. Semi-structured interviews were...

argues that reflection is a key requirement for HE music training institutions and the individuals that work in them, particularly at times of rapid change in the sector.

Suicide bombs in Iraq are a major public health problem. We aimed to describe documented casualties from suicide bombs in Iraq during 2003-10 in Iraqi civilians and coalition soldiers. In this descriptive study, we analysed and compared suicide bomb casualties in Iraq that were documented in two datasets covering March 20, 2003, to Dec 31, 2010--on...

Musical experiences are often reported to influence emotions (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008; Sloboda, O’Neill, & Ivaldi, 2001): people consciously and unconsciously use music to change, create, maintain or enhance their emotions and moods (affect) on a daily basis for their personal benefit (DeNora, 1999; Schramm, 2005). This is known as affect regulati...

Armed violence is a major public health and humanitarian problem in Iraq. In this descriptive statistical analysis we aimed to describe for the first time Iraqi civilian deaths caused by perpetrators of armed violence during the first 5 years of the Iraq war: over time; by weapon used; by region (governorate); and by victim demographics. We analyze...

This book, translated from the original Russian, offers the prospect of a rare window into the thought emerging from that part of the contemporary Russian education system that is concerned with the selection and training of the musically gifted. Its author is Professor of Psychology and Musicology of the Gnesin Academy of Music in Moscow, a multil...

Does a performer feel sad when s/he performs a sad piece of music, or does s/he perform sadness? Not much is known about the relationship between felt and performed emotions in performing musicians. Some studies emphasize the importance of feeling the emotions; others underline the idea of planned expressiveness. The purpose of this study was to in...

Does a performer feel sad when s/he performs a sad piece of music, or does s/he perform sadness? Not much is known about the relationship between felt and performed emotions in performing musicians. Some studies emphasize the importance of feeling the emotions; others underline the idea of planned expressiveness. The purpose of this study was to in...

There are three different types of scholarship, primary, secondary, and meta-scholarship. This paper applies a meta-approach to the question of musical meaning, which involves some assessment of where the enterprise as a whole has come from and is heading, its value and external impact. Three aspects of meaning are discussed: referential, functiona...

Book review of Philip Ball. The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do Without It. London: The Bodley Head, 2010. 452 pp

An extract from the preface ---------------------------------------- This special issue has been put together by colleagues from around the world who have collaborated with, and have been influenced by, Irène Deliége. Contributors were invited to submit a paper which could “take the form of any empirical or theoretical contribution which addresses...

Music's ability to express and arouse emotions is a mystery that has fascinated both experts and laymen at least since ancient Greece. The predecessor to this book, Motion and Emotion (OUP, 2001) was critically and commercially successful and stimulated much further work in this area. In the years since the publication of that book, empirical resea...

This chapter outlines some of the achievements of and challenges for the psychological approach to musical emotions. First, it describes how psychologists have conceptualized and approached the study of emotions in general. Second, it identifies some emergent themes in the psychological literature on music and emotion, and illustrates progress in a...

The term 'music in everyday life' has been prevalent in the research literature for about a decade. The only book to be so far published with this precise tide is DeNora (2000), although other terms, such as 'music in daily life' have preceded it. Earliest treatments were predominantly found within sociology and media studies, with increasing atten...

In Music and Arts in Action. Vol 2.2. Since the early 1990s, there has been an increase in the use of music and the artswithin a conflict transformation context. This guest editorial discusses thedevelopments in this research and practical area. The current status of the field,and challenges it faces, are then examined within the context of this is...

THE ACCURACY WITH WHICH INDIVIDUALS ARE ABLE to synchronize with each other using vision alone is well documented. Less attention, however, has been given to the spatio-temporal characteristics of human movement that offer cues for such synchronization. The present study investigated such cues in the context of conductor-musician synchronization. T...

This paper discusses the difference between two types of reflection, identified as professional reflection (how to improve practice within an accepted paradigm), and paradigmatic reflextion (how to shift the paradigm). Both types are valid, but tend to come into conflict with each other within organisations. Examples are given of different forms of...

In the last of nine Essays on science and music, John Sloboda argues that researchers must study music as people actually experience it, if they are to understand how it affects thoughts and feelings.

A short contrubution to a volume of tributes to Leonard B Meyer on the occasion of his death

Research has suggested that around 17% of Western adults self-define as “tone deaf” (Cuddy, Balkwill, Peretz & Holden, 2005). But questions remain about the exact nature of tone deafness. One candidate for a formal definition is “congenital amusia” (Peretz et al., 2003), characterised by a dense music-specific perceptual deficit. However, most peop...

The spatio-temporal properties of human movement that induce the percept of a visual beat were investigated in three experiments. Experiment 1, in which participants synchronized key presses with point-light representations of simple conducting gestures, showed that visual beat induction was related to acceleration along the trajectory (a), and, to...

Musical-peak experiences are a significant component of the lives of many people. They are powerful, valued, have lasting effects, and - for some - are a reason for continued engagement with music. This article highlights research on the peak experience, emphasizing literature focusing on music-specific peaks. After outlining four studies fundament...

A substantial amount of music listening in contemporary Western society is deliberately chosen. This article reviews what is known about the psychology of self-chosen exposure to musical performances of others (recorded or live). The research reviewed is organized by the functional niche that the music is chosen to be part of. Six main niches appea...

The nature of the relationship between words and music in memory has been studied in a variety of ways, from investigations of listeners' recall for the words of songs stored in long-term memory to recall for novel information set to unfamiliar melodies. We asked singers to perform an unaccompanied song from memory following deliberate learning and...

This book provides a concise, accessible, and up-to-date introduction to psychological research for musicians, performers, music educators, and studio teachers. Designed to address the needs and priorities of the performing musician rather than the research community, it reviews the relevant psychological research findings in relation to situations...

This chapter applies science to unravel the seemingly indefinable elements of nuance, expression, and interpretation in music. Nuance is first defined as a subset of expression and is the manipulation of sound parameters to create music that sounds alive rather than flat and mechanical. Scientific research reveals that the majority of expressive be...

This chapter discusses performance anxiety or “stage fright,” which is a serious problem for a lot of musicians and often has its roots in an individual's early experiences in coping with stress and pressure. The first section of the chapter discusses the physiological symptoms of performance anxiety, which are likened to a person's instinctive res...

This chapter explains the basic concepts employed in the study of the psychology of music. Assumptions and ideas are clarified, including the linkage between musical activity and its milieu. The chapter highlights several related points. First, the scientific method is adopted, in conjunction with traditional approaches, to examine and discuss the...

TThis chapter tackles motivation and its crucial role in the development and improvement of musical skills. The manifestations of motivation are treated as behaviors, and its sources are identified and classified as either intrinsic or extrinsic. The chapter also presents the results of research on the topic. First, it is found that music is intrin...

This chapter studies the concept of practice as it applies to music. Practice is revealed to be a complex behavior influenced by a variety of factors, and it is studied in terms of its macro and micro perspectives. The chapter discusses several related points regarding the activity of practice. First is that the scientific notion of practice does n...

This chapter discusses the activities of composition and improvisation as they relate musical performance, and focuses on everyday musical creativity rather than the rare incidences of genius. The generative acts of composing and improvising serve to increase the depth of a musician's understanding of musical structure, which in turn positively ben...

This chapter discusses three skills—sight-reading, playing by ear, and recalling a memorized performance—related to an individual's ability to retain and recall information from memory. These are then related to a musician's performance. The first two are necessary for the effective learning of a musical piece, while the last is vital in retaining...

This chapter further expounds on the scientific approach to musical ability, which treats music as a skill. This same approach is applied to the development of musical skills and helps refute various beliefs and opinions, especially regarding musical genius as an accident of birth. The evidence presented suggests that even babies display a diverse...

This chapter augments the musical skills identified in the previous chapters—which are individual and personal—and provides insights into how a musician can become a more accomplished performer, especially in a group setting. It presents several often overlooked points in being a performer. First, the performer's physical appearance and behavior on...

TThe third musical role, the listener, is discussed in this chapter. The opening section describes the physiological aspect of listening and reveals it to be a complicated process that transforms acoustical stimuli into images or notions that can be experienced. This musical experience is then shown to be influenced by various factors which exhibit...

This chapter discusses the second musical role—that of the teacher. A study of the factors affecting teaching methods, behaviors, and qualities is vital, since a musician's life is shaped by his mentors and since he may himself assume the same role later on in his career. Several conclusions are revealed by research on the subject. First, a musicia...

This, the last chapter, discusses the fourth musical role, that of the user. Two related approaches to music and musical experiences are then discussed. The traditional “work-focused” approach considers a musical composition as independent of performance and context. On the other hand, the “person-based” approach asserts that music cannot be divorc...

n this chapter we wish to pose a number of questions about the possibility ofa psychology for peace and what the aims of such an undertaking would or could be.In an earlier chapter it was remarked that the genesis of psychology as a scientificdiscipline has meant that it lacks any historical roots in projects that have sought toimprove the public g...

Extended book review

his text is based on a lecture given at a British Academy symposium on “Mozart 2006: Classical Music and the Modern World”, 28th January 2006, in connec- tion with the 250th Anniversary of Mozart’s birth, and repeated at the Teaching, Learning and Performing Music conference, RNCM, on 1st July 2006.

Previous work has identified a transfer of domain-specific corporeal skill to a related task such that musicians are more accurate when synchronizing with conductors' gestures if they themselves have some prior conducting experience. The present study built upon this work, which used rather simple conducting gestures, by examining synchronization w...

INTRODUCTION The sight of planes flying into the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001 has become an iconic image of our times. That day affected people in so many different ways, but in most of the world horror, sadness, disbelief, anger and solidarity were the immediate responses to the events unfolding live on our televisions. The next d...

Peace issues touch on the very heart of how nations and communities perceive the source of their power in relation to others, so they are often politically 'locked down' and democratic distance is created between a relatively elite group of decision-makers and the people; as a result, there is often a feeling of powerlessness. There is also a fierc...

To appear in R.Roberts, (Ed.) (2007) Just War: Psychology, Terrorism and Iraq. Ross-On-Wye. PCCS books). Most of the leading peace movement organisations had been in existence for some time before the 1979 INF decision, carrying on their activities without publicity or popularity. They developed critical views of nuclear deterrence and the partitio...

From Britiish Academy Review. 10, 52-55. We describe recent research into the condition of tone deafness, or ‘congenital amusia’, and consider the phenomenon of those who are not apparently tone deaf but who classify themselves as such.

Music experience is intimately related to its emotional appeal.1 This emotional power is something of a mystery or paradox because of the abstract, nonrepresentational nature of much music. Musical sequences do not refer to specific events in the external world in the way that verbal utterances do.2 Nevertheless, for most of us, participating in mu...

This study is about whether harmonic expectancy violations can trigger emotional processes, as indexed by physiological and subjective measures.

What criteria can we use to evaluate research in music psychology? Do these criteriaprovide any guide for researchers, or prospective researchers, wishing to decide whatto research, or whether to do research at all?These are the questions which motivate this chapter, and, in exploring them it will benecessary to address broader questions, to do wit...

[Reprinted from Psychologica Belgica , 26.2, 1986]----------------------------------- This chapter believes that there are five important characteristics of a healthy paradigm: an agreed set of central problems; agreed methods for working on these problems; agreed theoretical frameworks in which to discuss them; techniques and theories which are sp...

Reprinted from S. W. Yi. Ed. (1999) Music, Mind, and Science. Seoul: Seoul National University. -----------------------------------------------------This chapter takes a diametrically opposite position to the pharmaceutical model, and emphasises the role of the listener as an active agent, who makes choices about what music to listen to, where and...

Since the publication in 1986 of the book The Musical Mind, music psychology has developed as a vibrant area of research, exerting influence on areas as diverse as music education and cognitive neuroscience. This new book brings together twenty-three chapters and reviews on music and the mind, focusing on ideas, interpretation, argument and applica...

Reprinted from M. Riess-Jones, Ed. Cognitive Bases of Musical Communication. (pp. 33-46) American Psychological Association. ----------------------------------------------------------------------There is a general consensus that music is capable of arousing deep and significant emotion in those who interact with it. These experiences deserves a mor...

summarize the [author's] argument [on development of musical performance expertise]: / 1. music seems to be biologically constitutive of early human functioning / 2. music education in Western cultures produces a dismal field of achievement / 3. heritability estimates, where available, are low / 4. technical expertise within the conservatoire cultu...

[Reprinted from Visible Language (1981) Vol 15, pp 86-100]------------------------------------------------------This chapter describes how space is used in music notation. Music notation (score) is very different from language notation (text) and so some prefatory comparative remarks may help to place this notation in a wider context. Perhaps the m...