The communication of dynamics between musicians and listeners through musical performance.

Abstract

Musicians perform music according to their own interpretations. How does a player realize his/her interpretation of a piece of music in the form of tones? How is his/her intention understood by a listener? The relations among the performers' intentions, intensity of tones produced by the performers, and listeners' perception were investigated quantitatively. The noteworthy findings were as follows. (1) Crescendo was easier to recognize than decrescendo. (2) It appeared that rising pitch enhanced an impression of crescendo, and falling pitch enhanced that of decrescendo. (3) The influence of “impression of the end” on crescendo was suggested. These findings were confirmed in the experiments by means of synthesized sound sequences and under well‐controlled conditions.