Exploring the Significance of Musical-Emotional Response on Community Band Participation

This study explored the significance of musical-emotional response on community band members. Do participants respond emotionally to the music when rehearsing and performing in a community band, and if so, what it the nature of this response? How do the participants recognize emotional response as an important aspect of participating in community music? What might be a community music approach to musicking that includes emotional response as a deliberate strategy?

Literature and research inform us that twentieth-century music philosophers and music education philosophers regarded emotional response as an unimportant aspect of music reception. In particular, they discouraged the idea that music induced or evoked felt emotions. It was not until the emergence of research in neuroscience and music psychology beginning in the 1990s that musically induced emotions were considered. This ultimately led to contemporary theories that considered musical-emotional response as a process that included both cognitive and induced responses.

This study utilized a grounded theory approach in order to ascertain the authentic viewpoints of the participants. Following a four-month rehearsal and performance session of selected repertoire, twenty-eight community band members completed an open-ended questionnaire where they reflected on the prevalence and nature of their emotional responses to the music. The findings suggest that community band participants not only perceived the emotions represented in music but also experienced musically induced emotions.

The study revealed that the idea of accessibility was key to the participants' ability to respond emotionally to the music. Emotional response, by the participants, became contingent on many factors – the ability of the participants to perform the music successfully (technical challenges and performance anxiety), the ability of the participants to understand the structure of the music, the effect of practice and experience, and the social context.