Chapter 1

Music and Listening, Music and Consciousness

Watching Swann's face while he listened to the phrase, one would have said that he was inhaling an anaesthetic which allowed him to breathe more deeply. And the pleasure which the music gave him ... was in fact closely akin, at such moments, to the pleasure which he would have derived from experimenting with perfumes, from entering into contact with a world for which we men were not created •.. (Proust, 19\3[1922]: 279).

I listen to music when I'm walking to school, working, trying to get to sleep, in the hath [laughs] ... pretty much most of my day is taken up with music. I really notice when it's not there - I hate silence. (Sophie)

lntroduetlon

Strong, intensely emotional experiences of music are a transcultural universal., and possess identifiable socio-cultural functions. The instances of listening to music that individuals tend to remember, discuss with others, and overtly value the most commonly, relate to strong involvement experienced at live events such as pop festivals, classical concerts, halIets, weddings etc. (Lamont, 2009). Transformative experiences of and with music - whether live or recorded - are frequently cited as those where music is a main source of attention and emotional arousal is high.

Such scenarios have often been the subject of literary fiction: the first volume of Proust's A fa recherche du temps perdu, for example, contains a number of descriptions of intense experiences of listening to music. The protagonist Charles Swann hears live performances of the fictional composer Vinteuil's violin and piano sonata on several occasions, and moves from a strong, synaesthetic involvement in the physical quality of the sounds themselves, to the intensely emotional experience of the rejuvenatory and transformative power of the music, which acts to provide access to Schopenhauer-esque 'invisible realities' . Swann's experiences are further intensified by his fascination with one phrase that initially 'proposed to him particular sensual pleasures' and subsequently becomes associatively linked to a love affair. Proust's vivid descriptions show strongly involving music listening episodes to be multifaceted experiences, potentially combining emotional arousal with a number of other factors, e.g. cross-modal perception (synaesthesia), inner imagery, associations and memories.

8 Everyday Music Listening

The striking nature and phenomenological richness of strong experiences, together with the clear changes of conscious functioning that they imply, make them immediately attractive to study - at first sight far more accessible to psychological documentation than mundane experience. It is undoubtedly true that - to date - the psychological processes operating in strongly emotional experiences of and with music in both Western and non-Western contexts have received far more research attention than the subjective qualities of everyday life listening experiences (e.g. Gabrielsson & Lindstrom Wik, 2003; Becker, 2004; Lamont, 2009; Whaley, Sloboda & Gabrielsson, 2009; Gabrielsson, 2010, 2011). It is wrong to conclude, however, that this indicates that everyday experience is intrinsically less richly varied in psychological terms.

An increasing body of research indicates that the most prevalent listening situation in the West is one where attention is distributed 'across a complex situation of which music is only a part' (Sloboda and O'Neill, 2001: 418). In its starkest form this has been identified as a situation featuring markedly passive consumption in which music is used as 'sonic wallpaper' forming the 'undemanding backdrop to some other task' (North et aI., 2004: 72) reaching awareness only when it is suddenly absent. Adopting a somewhat different stance, cultural theorist Michael Bull, in an extensive study of iPod use, views the practice of listening to music in situations involving distributed attention as a purposeful way of managing consciousness (Bull, 2007). Even so, he still offers an essentially negative assessment of much distributed everyday listening, framing it as an escapist strategy used by those who carmot or choose not to negotiate 'non­mediated experience' because 'this may threaten the user's sense of cognitive control with the introduction of "uncontrollable" thoughts or feelings flooding in' (2007: 125). Instead, individuals opt, in Bull's emotively bleak words, for a 'tethering of cognition to the auditory products of the culture industry' (2007: 133). Although such explanations certainly articulate some aspects of everyday listening experienCe, it seems unlikely that they define all possible types of psychological engagement with music in daily life. The notion that, in everyday situations, music necessarily functions as an 'undemanding backdrop' or as a means to censor 'uncontrollable thoughts' certainly provides a mismatch with my own personal experience. Anecdotal report suggests that a greater variety of listening stances exist, bUt detailed supporting evidence is scarce.

One of the difficulties in assessing the subjective qualities of everyday music listening experiences is that, because they may not be pre-plarmed or emotionally 'tagged', they lack memorability. Due to the capacity for music to interweave 'invisibly' with everyday life, the more 'mundane occurrences are simply forgotten or filtered out' (Sloboda and O'Neill, 200 I: 417). It is far easier then, to chart the function of music in everyday life - the ways in which music as utilitarian resource can be used to regulate behaviour and mood in different situations (e.g. DeNora, 2000) - than tap the subjective moment-by-moment 'feel' of individual music listening experiences as they unfold.

Music and Listening, Music and Consciousness 9

Another difficulty in thinking about the qualities of everyday experience attaches to the way in which experiences may be classified. Alterations of cognitive, perceptual and emotional functioning from an individually perceived 'norm' combine to effect shifts of consciousness commonly referred to in the literature as being either 'profound' or 'superficial'. Such a dichotomy features a covert qualitatively positive/negative split, e.g. the term 'profound' carries with it connotations of depth of meaning, intensity and importance, whereas the term 'superficial' carries connotations of 'lacking depth or thoroughness' and of being 'of insignificant import' (O.E.D., 1989). Alterations of consciousness might be better served by being more frequently defined as 'dramatic' or 'subtle'. Even the word mundane, often featured in studies of everyday music listening, is increasingly understood in 'a weakened sense as ordinary, commonplace. Hence: prosaic, dull, humdrum; lacking interest or excitement' (O.E.D., draft revision, 2009).

Of course, everyday music listening experiences may at times be all of the above, but on other occasions as I show in this book - they may afford subtle alterations of consciousness, marked by a quality of involvement that may be either positive or negative. Once again, we can tum to Proust's work - a rich source of phenomenological report - for numerous accounts of subtle consciousness change in daily life. His writing contains many instances of mundane objects or situations that are 'seen afresh' in what could be described as an informally aesthetic manner, via a sharpened or enhanced sensory awareness:

A little tap at the window, as though some missile bad struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, universal. It was

the rain. (Proust, 1913[1922]: 120)

Only via empirical studies with a qualitative emphasis that chart interactions between music, perceiver and environment in a broad range of real-world contexts, can the varieties, qualities and pllIpOSe of everyday listening experiences be fully understood. Additionally it is essential to situate such empirical enquiries within a broader frame of intra- and interdisciplinary reference. For that reason, the concern of this chapter is to present an overview and evaluation of the field of music listening research (content, methods, approaches), before considering the subjective experience of music from the rather different vantage point of consciousness and altered states literature.

10 Everyday Music Listening

Music Listening in DaUy Life: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives

Overview

Over little more than a decade, everyday music listening practices have come to constitute a key focus of research attention. This is indicative of a general shift in the humanities and social sciences towards understanding of the everyday, as well as of real-life contexts. Due to technological advance (particularly the proliferation of portable sound devices), the contexts in which recorded music may be heard, and the uses of music, are more numerous and diverse than in any previous era. In addition, a wider range of musics are more accessible than ever before. Given this diversity of musical context and function, it seems reasonable to theorize that the ways in which music is experienced will be similarly broad ranging.

Accordingly, pioneering empirical studies of music in everyday life (Sloboda et aI., 2001; North et aI., 2004) have necessarily possessed a primarily exploratoryl documentary emphasis, setting out to identify the territory of enquiry - the what, when, where, why aspects of music listening - rather than a focus on the psychological detail of individual experiences theruselves. Central to most studies has been the notion of music not just as consumed commodity, but as functional resource. More recent enquiries have continued to explore specific uses of music, but have been concerned to connect these to aspects of subjective experience, particularly musical preference! (e.g. Greasley & Lamont, 2006; Lamont & Webb,

! Musical preference has been studied via various routes, including the impact of individual differences such as personality, social status, age; the influence of situation, mood; listening behaviours of high and low engagers in music, and empirical aesthetics (e.g. examining correlations between preference and arousal levels, musical complexity, prototypes, repeated exposure to music). For a detailed overview of this literature see Lamont &. Greasley's chapter in Hallam et al. (2009); also Juslin &. Sloboda, 20 I 0, chapters 19, 24 &. 25; North &. Hargreaves, 2008, chapter 3). The relationship between lifestyle preferences and musical preferences has been the subject of a large scale (2,532 respondents) survey study (North and Hargreaves, 2007), with clear implications for the experience of listening to music. Central to the study were correlations made between musical taste and preferred media/leisure pursuits, which led to some provocative generalizations relating to expected experiences ofvarious 'taste publics'. For example, 'fans of hip hop/rap, DJ-based music, dancelhouse and indie scored highest on factor 1 ("non-domestic, intellectually undemanding, indoor entertainment") ... fans of opera and classical music scored highest on factor 2 ("open alr, cerebral")' (2007: 193). Although an apparently straightforward, thorough and pragmatic docornentation of everyday life practices, such 'objective' findings teeter on the edge of dangerous territory, i.e. that types and qualities of experience are dependent on membership of high or low culture taste publics. This notion of a hierarchy of experience (often linked with education and social background) is one that was more commonly promoted some decades ago, notably by Bourdieu (1979[84]) in what is now a classic text (Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste). This viewpoint is contentious and I return to examine it in Chapter 4. North and Hargreaves do not overtly

Music and Listening. Music and Consciousness II

2010), mood and emotion (e.g. Juslin et al., 2008; Zentuer, Grandjean and Scherer, 2008), all of which constitute components within the overarching field of affect studies (Juslin and Sloboda, 2010). Additionally, some studies have focused on specific topics, such as everyday therapeutic uses of music (e.g. Batt-Rawden and DeNora's [2005] exploration of the use of music as a 'technology of health' by individuals suffering from chronic illness) or the listening habits of different sectors of the population (e.g. Omigie & Stewart's [2010] study of music use by amusics), or age groups (e.g. Hays & Minchiello's [2005J interview study of the meaning of music in the daily lives of older people). It is worth noting, however, that, as yet, the listening practices of older people and children continue to be severely under­represented in the literature. Crucially, no study has yet attempted to examine the listening experiences of a representative cross-section of the population (in terms of ethnicity, gender, class, occupation). Obviously such a project would be both logistically daunting, and potentially impractical, although, as Juslin et al. (2008) observe, a compromise could be to 'alternate between representative sampling of participants and representative sampling of situations' (2008: 679). To date, scholarly understanding of everyday music listening in the industrialized West has derived ahnost entirely from the experiences of undergraduate psychology students, and is therefore inevitably partial.

Various methodologies have been used to tap everyday experience. Participant observation (directly witnessing individuals in a situation, such as an aerobics class, e.g. DeNora, 2000) and Experience Sampling Method (ESM) methodologies (electronic alerts, e.g. a text message that signals to an individual that they should complete an experience response form) enable experience to be documented as or soon after it occurs. The experience-sampling method also accommodates situational variables and individual meaning (Zentner and Eerola, 2010: 192). Structured diaries, or unstructured free descriptions (reflective reports), may be used to access both present and past experiences, while semi-structured interviews and surveys typicaIly involve retrospective recall. To date, research has typically relied on self-report as opposed to indirect measures (for an outline of the merits and disadvantages of each method see Sloboda, 2010: 503-6), although a multiple method approach is frequently adopted to 'triangulate' evidence, so reducing the likelihood of inaccuracy.

Activities and Contexts

A preliminary survey study concerning everyday uses of listening (Sloboda, 1999) found that the most popular activities while listening to music were driving, running or cycling (22%), and housework (22%) - all scenarios that feature a

argue for tight links between lifestyle correlates and musical preference, but do offer some uncomfortably judgemental homologies, e.g. 'Fans of country and western have a dour, parochial, and low-culture lifestyle that mirrors the conventional lyrical themes of country and western music.' (2007: 494)

12 Everyday Music Listening

distributed attention. In 200 I, Sloboda et al. published the results of the first enquiry to chart the functions of music in naturalistic 'real-world' settings, using ESM a methodology originally developed by Csikszentmihalyi and colleagues (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987), and one that has subsequently become established in the field of music listening studies (e.g. North & Hargreaves, 2004' Juslin et al., 2008; Greasley & Lamont, 2009, 2011). This landmark, if small~ scale study (eight participants) identified a number of common main activities while listening to music, which were then grouped under three headings: personal, leisure and work. Personal activities included states of being (e.g. sleeping) and maintenance activities such as cooking or getting dressed, while leisure activities were Subdivided into listening to music as sole focus, and active- and passive leisure pursuits. The three top categories featuring music were personal maintenance, travel, and active leisure.

Declared activities will obviously reflect the occupation and age range of the sample (e.g. students may be likely to do less housework but more self-directed study), but other studies have confirmed that one of the most common everyday uses of music is to frame or enhance the activity of travel (Bull, 2004, 2007; North & Hargreaves, 2004; Greasley & Lamont, 2009; Heye & Lamont, 2010). Active leisure and personal maintenance have also recurred as popular categories featuring music (Greasley & Lamont, 2009),. and other activities have been highlighted to a greater degree in individual inquiries, including relaxation - an example of 'passive leisure' (Juslin et aI., 2008) -, and intellectually demanding work tasks such as writing, studying (North et al., 2004; Greasley & Lamont, 2009). In terms of context, studies concur that the highest frequency of self­chosen music experiences occurs at home and while travelling - particularly when alone. Unsurprisingly, listening experiences in public places, or in the company of others, are likely to involve a low level of choice. All studies have found instances of listening to music as a main activity to be low (Sloboda et aI., 200 I: 2%; North et aI., 2004: 11.9"10; Juslin et aI., 2008: 5%; Greasley & Lamont, 2011: 2.3%), suggesting that 'the concentrated, attentive, focusing on music that is paradigmatic of the classical concert or laboratory experiment is a rather untypical activity for most listeners' (Sloboda & O'Neill, 200 I: 418).

Musical Function and Qualities of Experience

A major focus of many studies of everyday music listening has been on function - music as resource used to regulate behaviour and mood - rather than a detailed account of experience itself. In a large-scale (n.346) examination of the uses of music in daily life (North et aI., 2004), participants were asked to select from a range of forced-choice options (drawn from previous research) relating to function. In terms of occasions involving self-chosen music, the most popular responses were: (a) enjoyment (56.4%); (b) to help pass the time (40.6%); (c) habit (30.6%); (d) to create the right atmosphere (30.5%). North etal. 's enquiry became a key reference point for subsequent research, and nearly all empirical,

Music and Listening. Music and Consciousness 13

'naturalistic' studies of music listening have since employed questionnaires that usually include forced choice questions (typically including North et al.'s 'top four' functions) to tap uses and effects of music. Enjoyment, sometimes phrased as 'I really liked listening to it', emerges as a key reason for listening (Lamont & Webb, 2010; Greasley & Lamont, 20ll; Heye & Lamont, 2010), the other most popular options being 'to pass the time', 'to relax', 'to create or accentuate an emotion', 'to create the right atmosphere' (Juslin et al., 2008; Greasley & Lamont, 20 II; Lamont & Webb, 20 I 0; Heye & Lamont, 20 I 0).

However, such apparently straightforward reasons are deceptive in their simplicity - blanket statements that could inform whole areas of enquiry. For example, what does 'enjoyment' mean experientially? What might be the varied nature of experiences involving an alteration of time sense? If listening is a habit, why has this habit formed and what does it do for a person? What atmospheres are valued and what does the 'right' atmosphere feel like? Closed response formats can be completed quickly by individuals, ensure consistent coding, bypass verbalization difficulties, and enable cross-study comparison. At the same time, they also acquire canonical status (as Zentner et al. have Observed with relation to 'emotion labels' [2008: 495]) and circumscribe the territory of inquiry. Additionally, as individuals become familiar with questionnaire layouts, they may skim through checklists in an increasingly glib way.

A more developed account of musical function is given by Sloboda, Lamont and Greasley (2009), via a review of predominantly qualitative literature relating to self-chosen music use. The authors observe that music appears to occupy six 'functional niches' in contemporary Western society: travel, physical work, brain work, body work, emotional work, attendance at live events. Furthermore, they identify four overarching functions of 'self-chosen music use': distraction, energizing, entrainment, and meaning enhancement. Various listening scenarios are mentioned - for example, the use of music on public transport to enhance or distract from 'a routine, even boring low-dernand experience' (2009: 432). Still tantalizingly absent, however (with the exception of reference to strong experiences of music), is a discussion of individual, lived experience. In what ways - perceptually, cognitively, affectively - does music enhance a journey? What are the experiential effects of being distracted by music?

Hints of the Subjective 'Feel' of Experience

Listening studies examining functions of music in daily life - particularly if incorporating interviews or open-response questionnaires - do offer some valuable insights into the subjective 'feel' of experience. One example is DeNora's study of self-regulation through music. Music, described as 'a technology of the self', serves to modulate mood or energy levels, to aid concentration (2000: 58--60), and acts as a virtual space in which to explore self-identity, i.e. an 'ongoing constitution' of person-as-individual in psychological, physical and emotional terms (2000: 47). Particularly striking is her description of the use of music to

14 Everyday Music Listening

configure shifts of consciousness via physical and emotional entrainment during the various stages of an aerobics session:

From the meditatively 'bodied' mode of the corel (little thinking or feeling and

much moving) back to a more self-conscious and more sentimental mode post­

core. (2000: 101)

Other findings from the listening literature relate to arousal levels and thought processes. Summarizing the results of the 2001 diary-based study previously mentioned, Sloboda et al. concluded that 'music tended to increase arousal, present-mindedness and positivity' (200 I: 20). At the same time, DeNora (2000: 50-I), Sloboda and O'Neill (2001: 419) and Dibben and Williamson (2007: 587), among others, have noted the involvement of music in the decrease (as opposed to a more often observed increase) of arousal (i.e. relaxation)3 and also in evoking memories and associations (DeNora, 2000; Sloboda & O'Neill, 200 I; Zentner et aI., 2008). For example, results from a Mass-Observation project4 mailing from 1997 revealed that 'the use of music as a cue to reminiscence [was] the single most frequent use reported' - by half of the 249 panel members (Sloboda, 2005: 324). Such reminiscence would involve an inward focus accompanied by visual imagery and emotional memories that are anchored in familiar music, and it is possible that this may be a common listening mode in the West.

High levels of involvement when listening to music are often associated with live concert settings, where music is the prime focus of attention. Bull, however, has shown that music may form one element within an involving situation that includes external (e.g. visual) and internal (e.g. thoughts) stimuli. Using a combination of interviews, framed by insights from critical theory, to examine the use of music on the move (2003, 2004, 2007) he maintains that 'the use of sound technologies can be understood as part of the Western project of the appropriation and control of space, place, and the "other'" (2004: 174). To put it another way, music functions as a means of configuring and shaping quality of experience. The car in particular, is described as providing a customized, private space - one example of what Bull (2007) terms an 'auditory bubble' - in which to occupy 'routine periods of empty time', thus 'reclaiming' or 'transforming' them. Once again,· different modes of experience are intimated, from that involving an inward, imaginative focus to one where sound 'mediates' or 'accompanies' perception of the environment, providing what Bull terms an 'aestheticization of the world outside' (2003: 369).

The fastest and most vigorous part of an aerobics session. Dibben and Williamson studied the listening practices of 1,780 British drivers via

survey, and listed relaxation as the 'dominant use of music' while driving.

4 The Mass Observation project was initiated in 198 I by Sussex University. Approximately 500 panel members record details of their daily lives in response to a diverse range of survey topics.

Music and Listening. Music and Consciousness 15

Ways of Mapping Everyday Experience

Any enquiry that attempts to understand the varieties and qualities of subjective experience will inevitably draw on received ideas, existing conceptual frameworks, and associated terminology. In terms of a holistic 'top-down' approach to studying musical experience (as opposed to the primarily 'bottom-up' information­processing view of perception), emotion - variously defined - has been the construct of choice. This accords with an established tradition, traceable to the ancient Greek notion of catharsis, of writing about musical meaning and affect in terms of emotion (see Cook & Dibben [2010] for an overview).

It is now accepted that emotion and mood constitute components within the broader, rapidly developing field of affective science, and that studies of musical affect can encompass aesthetic and spiritual experience, as well as preferences, mood and emotion (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010: 9). Despite this, in practice, most 'real-life' studies continue to map subjective experience principally in terms of emotion, mood and perceived function of music, even if findings are informed by other organizing frameworks.

For example, in a study of mobile listening (Heye & Lamont, 2010), designed particularly to confirm the existence ofBull's previously mentioned metaphorical 'auditory bubble', experience was still assessed primarily through checklists of emotion adjectivess ('happy', 'relaxed', 'energized' came top), rather than free phenomenological report or open responses relating to attention, awareness, altered perception of surroundings etc. Rating scales included specifically to test the 'bubble' hypothesis merely asked how aware individuals were of their music and surroundings, whether completing the questionnaire had interrupted their experience, and how loud their music was. Follow-up interviews with eight (of a total of 428) listeners, were more productive, revealing that music could simultaneously shut out and enhance awareness of surroundings, but relied on retrospective recall of general listening practices rather than recent experience.

By contrast, studies that do not use closed response formats as a starting point from which to map qualities of experience, arrive at a more varied range of what might be termed ways of being-with-music, e.g. 'transcendence', 'harmony with the environment' (from Greasley and Lamont's [2006] interview study of musical preference in young adults), 'solace', 'diversion', 'revival' (from Saarika1lio and Erkkila's [2007] interview and diary study of adolescent's mood regulation). In such scenarios, feeling and function are not easy to separate, or at least function seems to encompass a composite of associated feelings and other experiential qualia.

Sloboda et al. 's (200 I) bipolar mood scales in this case

16 Everyday Music Listening

Music-induced Emotions and Psychological Mechanisms

An important body of recent research has sought to clarify, refine and extend the reach of studies of emotion and everyday musical experience. Drawing on previous literature, Juslin (2009) and Juslin et al. (2008, 2010) have reviewed the different ways in which emotions may be evoked by music, arriving at a list of seven 'psychological mechanisms' (meaning types of information processing), theorized to have evolved in sequence, and accordingly to reflect 'lower' and 'higher' levels of brain functioning. The mechanisms are: brainstem reflex (a focus on acoustic attributes), rhythmic entraimnent, evaluative conditioning (where two stimuli become associated), emotional contagion (mimicry), visual imagery, episodic memory (where music,provides an emotional anchor to past experience), and musical expectancy (where emotion is generated by the violation of expectation). The first four mechanisms are considered to induce general arousal and basic emotions, visual imagery and episodic memory to induce 'all possible emotions', and musical expectancy to induce a selective range of emotions, including awe and 'thrills' (Juslin et al., 2010: 626). Juslin et al. (2008) carried out an ESM study to assess: (a) prevalence of these psychological mechanisms; (b) occurrence of particular emotions (terms included on the questionnaire reflected both categorical and dimensional conceptualizations of emotion) in everyday situations with and without music; (c) interaction between music, situation and listener. The most commonly reported mechanisms were emotional contagion, brain-stem response, and episodic memory, but the authors acknowledged that self-report may be problematic in that individuals may be unaware of the 'true causes' of smne emotions, and may under-report certain experiences (Juslin et al., 2008: 679). Results (predictably) indicated that music and non-musical stimuli evoked a shared range of emotions, positive emotions occurring more frequently than negative emotions in musical and non-musical episodes, although happiness­elation and nostalgia-ionging were more prevalent in the case of situations involving music.

Zentner and Eerola (2010) have advocated a move away from the reliance on standardized mood/emotion scales informed by categorical (also known as 'discrete' or 'basic') and dimensional (most commonly based on valence and arousal) models of emotion. Noting that these models were not designed to map music-induced emotion, Zentner et al. developed a domain-specific model of emotion via a series offour empirical studies involving different groups oflisteners, designed to identify' emotion terms suited to describe felt emotions across a variety of musical styles' (Zentner et al., 2008: 496). This yielded the nine-factor Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS) that accommodates emotion categories such as wonder, transcendence and nostalgia as well as a range of nuanced affect terms relevant to everyday experience, e.g. 'relaxed', 'dreamy', 'enchanted', 'light', 'moved', 'soothed'. Via the GEMS, Zentner et al. have endeavoured to bypass the difficulty of verbalizing experience by providing would-be introspectees with

Music and Listening, Music and Consciousness 17

an 'off-the-shelf' emotion vocabulary sufficiently rich and varied to echo that of Proust or Thomas Mann (Zentner & Eerola, 2010: 212).

Reconsidering Everyday Music Listening Experiences: Key Issues

The Nature o/Subjective Experience: interactions between Music, Perceiver and Situation

Much more is known now than a decade ago about the 'when', 'where' and 'whys' of everyday music listening experiences. Not so much is known about the 'what' _ the subjective qualities of lived experience. It is still not uncommon to find music's contribotion to experience described as 'background', 'accompaniment', or 'soundtrack'. Such terms assume a hierarchical structuring of the components of experience where some things matter and others fade into the periphery of awareness. At times this is undoubtedly true we have to pay attention in order to negotiate the demands of daily life. However, in many everyday situations when travelling, engaged in a routine activity, or relaxing - awareness may be equanimous, i.e. we may be equally conscious of a number of impressions and events. In such cases components of experience are not separable, but interact, perceptually affecting each other. To be sure, musical soundtracks to daily life may be barely perceived, but they also have the capacity to mediate, focus, colour and integrate aspects of experience otherwise music would not be employed by the film and television industries.

In fact, the need to uncover interactions between stimulus, perceiver and situation, in order to understand processes involved in everyday music experiences. has been a consistent theme running through naturalist enquiries concerning the use of self-chosen music. Drawing on J.J Gibson's theory of ecological perception, the potential of an ecological approach to listening has hilen increasingly explored in recent years (Clarke, 2005; Windsor, 2000; DeNora, 2000). In this approach, it is recognized that listening is not an autonomous activity, but is instead situated within a context, i.e. dependent on 'the relationship between perceiver and enviromnent (natural and cultural)' (Clarke, 2003: 117). Music is not seen as an unchanging stimulus that transmits immanent meaning and standard effects regardless of occasion or who is experiencing it. Rather, the combination of objective musical properties and capacities and needs of the listener give rise to what are termed affordances: 'the uses, functions, or values of an object - the opportunities that it affords to a perceiver' (Clarke, 2003: 117). Thus, sounds may specify different types of meaning at different times, and correspondingly -different types of experience. Referring to Gaver's work (1993) on auditory event perception concerning 'musical' and 'everyday' listening, Dibben identifies 'two kinds of listening which operate simultaneously but which the listener privileges in different ways according to his or her needs or preoccupations' (2001: 162). Listening may fluctuate between attention to acoustic attributes of music (qualities

18 Everyday Mzuic Listening

of the sounds themselves) or 'source specification' (including both musical and cultural sources and associations). These insights, taken together with the findings of the listening studies discussed, point towards types of listening that encompass one or more of the following:

• distributed attention 'across a complex situation of which music is only a part' (Sloboda & O'Neill, 2001: 418)

• concentration and attentiveness, albeit with an external or internal focus wider than the music alone

• a potentially multisensory character.

Assessing Experience

Studies of everyday listening commonly adopt a multiple method approach to generate a variety of data, which is then compared to minimize inaccuracy. Even so, as I mentioned before, it is often difficult to generalize findings, because of the emphasis in the literature on the experiences of young, predominantly female undergraduate students, frequently studying psychology. Another problem is that individual methodologies tend to prescribe experience to an extent. Put simply, as a researcher, you tend to get out what you put in. Forced choice items may function as 'cues' - so-called 'demand characteristics' (VastfjAII, 2010: 256) - that circumscribe individual response. Pre-detennined emotion labels may not reflect actual experience (Sloboda, 2010: 505), and individuals unfamiliar with thinking about their experiences in tenns of emotion labels may 'translate' them in various ways. Function labels - prescribed reasons for listening - may similarly fail to tap the details of experience. For example, selecting the option 'because I really liked it'might short-circuit any further reflection as to the nature of engagement.

Questionnaires - even when featuring a mixture of rating scales, open- and forced-choice responses - are necessarily sequential. They do not respect the narrative of processual consciousness, instead serving to fragment experience. If we were asked to record a recently occurring dream in this way, it is likely that any mental imprint of it would have vanished long before reaching the end of the tick-boxes. Even naturalistic, idiographically friendly methods such as the ESM possess the disadvantage of interrupting unfolding experience rather than unobtrusively monitoring it. Like dreams, mundane experiences are evanescent: questionnaire, survey and ESM studies have limited value in tenns of tapping the subtle detail of the subjective 'feel' of everyday interaction with music. Such infonnation therefore remains invisible and consequently largely unrecognized as a fonn oflistening practice.

Defining the Everyday .

Noting that the tenn 'everyday' sometimes appears to function as a catch-all category, Sloboda (20 10) has discussed various ways in which the everyday is

Music and Listening. Music and Consciousness 19

distinguished (implicitly or explicitly) from the 'non-everyday' in the literature. He suggests that everyday experiences are typically low in intensity, characterized by 'shifting mild emotion by small steps' (2010: 495), linked to habitual actions, are easily forgotten, and marked by 'distraction and flux' (2010: 497). They involve hasic 'self-referential emotions, with a focus on factors external to music' (2010: 511), occurring not in special environments, but in locations that people can move through freely. The music heard may possess 'everyday' qualities (e.g. brief and simple, clear emotional codes) that encourage 'surface hearing', or art music may be listened to in a 'surface' way (2010: 503). If an element of emotional complexity is present it is likely to derive from non-musical aspects of the situation, and the experience is typically listener focused (e.g. targeted use of music to change mood, aid task completion) rather than work focused.

While these observations are accurate in a substantial proportion of cases, I argue that they do not account for all fonns of listening in daily life. Particularly difficult is the notion of dividing the everyday from the special via location and experience. People certainly m~ experience intense involvement while listening to music heard in a variety of 'non-everyday' specialist settings - in a concert hall, in a stadium, at a cathedral. Tbey also m~ experience the same sensation when hearing jazz in a pub or Peruvian panpipe players in a shopping precinct (both everyday locations where individuals can come and go). In fact, studies of strong experiences of music (SEM) indicate that they can occur non-volitionally in any place at any time (Whaley et aI., 2009: 452; Gabrielsson, 2010: 568).

Sloboda acknowledges that we can experience 'non-everyday' music in an ordinary way (20 I 0: 502). By the same token, we must be able to experience the ordinary in a special way. The notion of ordinary experience as consistently 'mundane and insignificant ... concerned with the unexciting business of managing home, food, cleaning, getting to and fro from work' (Sloboda, 2010: 496) is misplaced and if true, for many people would make life simply unbearable! The point is that, at any moment, the 'everyday' can be transfonned into the 'non­everyday', and one of the aims of this book is to demonstrate how music is a particularly effective medium for that purpose. Undertaking routine activities can feel mundane (in the modem sense), but experience may be mediated by music to

seem fresh or unusual.

Packaging Experience: Moving Beyond the Emotion Wrapper

Different vocabularies divide up experience in different ways. Critically, as music therapist Mercedes Pavlicevic observes, not only does tenninology package experience, but 'it saves us the trouble of first checking the packaging' (1997: 9). Emotion studies offer one vantage point on experience, but researchers have used words such as emotion, mood, feeling and affect in differing and sometimes contradictory ways (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010: 9), and categorical and

20 Everyday Music Listening

dimensional models of emotion potentially ignore a broader range of affective phenomena.

Of course, whether or not words like 'feeling' and 'emotion' accommodate all experiential phenomena depends on how the terms are defined. For neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, 'emotions' are 'chemical and neural responses' (1999: 42), i.e. body and brain reactions that occur both continuously and unconsciously, while 'feelings' constitute 'a conscious read-out' of emotions (1999: 285). Thus, 'some level of emoting is the obligate accompaniment of thinking about oneself or about one's surroundings' (1999: 58). By contrast, the working definitions of emotion and mood prescribed by the recent Handbook of Music and Emotion appear more restricted, e.g. emotion as 'a quite brief but intense affective reaction' (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010: 10). This has prompted some authors in the field to call for a focus on other 'types' of experience such as 'flow' experiences, 'altered states', and 'aesthetic experiences' (2010: 940).

One option when seeking to tap a more inclusive range of experience, is, as I have indicated, to expand the remit of emotion labels, as in Zentner et at. 's (2008) development of a domain-specific model of emotion, or to admit other proposed 'types' of emotion e.g. 'aesthetic' emotions6 (Scherer, 2004; Zentner et aI., 2008), and 'refined' emotions (Fridja & Sundararajan, 2007) contemplative, detached modes of experiencing, divorced from the need to act.

Another option is to abandon canonic emotion labels altogether, and simply ask people to describe their subjective experience. Evidence suggests that individuals may experience emotions to music (as represented by current emotion labels) just over half the time (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Justin et al., 2008). If that is the case, then emotions (at least as represented by current emotion labels) do not account for the entirety of experience. Free phenomenological reports (mentioned as a 'top priority' for future research in the Handbook of Music and Emotion) may well include emotion labels, but are not exclusively about emotions.

The most detailed phenomenology of music-listening experiences to date is provided by Gabrielsson's pioneering research (Gabrielsson & Lindstrom Wik, 2003; Gabrielsson, 2009, 2010, 2011), prompted by the dearth of research concerning the holistic experience of music, into the nature of strong experiences with and of music (henceforth SEM). Gabrielsson explained the focus on strong, rather than ordinary experiences, by quoting from a classic text The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: 'we leam most about a thing when we view it .. , in its most exaggerated form' (1902: 39). Between 1989 and 2004, 1,354 reports of strong experiences of music were collected from 953 individuals, representing a cross section of age, gender, occupation, education, musical training (Gabrielsson, 2010: 552). Although feelings and emotions frequently featured in reports, some descriptions did not mention them.

6 Juslin et al. have objected to the term 'aesthetic emotion', maintaining that aesthetic and emotional responses may occur independently of one another (20 I 0: 636).

Music and Listening. Music and Consciousness 21

Many of the characteristics the authors include as part of a descriptive system for SEM (based on content analysis offree descriptions) would seem to be relevant to everyday listening. Experiences are considered via seven overarching categories, five of which are immediately pertinent: physical reactions/quasi-physical reactions, behavioUrs, perception, cognition, feelings/emotions.7 Perceptual characteristics include a generally intensified perception and/or multimodal perception, sensory change andlor synaesthesia. Among the numerous cognitive factors identified are: focused attention, complete absorption, no thoughts/abandon analytic attitnde, changed experience of time and space, associations/memories and imagery. Feelings and emotions include intense/powerful emotions, positive emotions (including mood states, e.g. calmness), negative emotions, and mixed or changing feelings. A more recent study (Lamont, 2009) of strong experiences of music in university students, was informed by a positive psychology framework, specifically Seligman et at.'s (2005) notion of the importance of pleasure, engagement and meaning in achieving 'authentic' happiness. The study confirmed the advantages of idiographic analysis in conveying the totality of experience (Lamont, 2009: 257), noting that in comparison to the emotional affects of music, 'much less is known about engagement', including the constructs of 'flow', 'trance' and 'absorption' (2009: 252).

Towards the end of the Handbook of Music and Emotion, Juslin and Sloboda make the following extremely pertinent observation:

Ultimately, it could be fairly difficult to establish clear boundaries between feelings of emotions and other experiential qualia in music listening. One might predict then, that in the long term, the field of music and emotion may eventually be subsumed under the far broader heading of 'music experience' ... (Justin &

Sloboda, 20 I 0: 941).

The authors could equally have written 'music and consciousness'. It is this rather different vantage point on experience that I now examine.

Music and Consciousness

Identifying the Territory

Interest in the psychological and physical effects of music can be traced back at least as far as the Upper Palaeolithic period, circa 45,000 to 10,000 years ago, when music is presumed to have been used in cave rituals involving image making while in an altered state of consciousness (Lewis-Williams, 2002: 225). The anthropologist Erika Bourguignon has referred to the ability to alter consciousness as 'a psychobiological capacity available to all societies' (1973: It).

The overlap between cognition and perception is acknowledged by the authors.

22 Everyday Music Listening

Although it is probable that alterations of subjective experience have been recognized and valued at all times across all cultures, the term consciousness (first appearing in Roman juridical literature) only acquired its modern usage (to describe psychological consciousness) via two key philosophical texts of the seventeenth century Descartes Meditations (1649) and Locke's An essay concerning human understanding, vol. I (1690). The first book to feature both the words 'consciousness' and 'music' in its title was only published in 2006.8

To my knowledge, no specific historical chronology charting interactions between music and mind exists. The nearest equivalent is offered by writers in the field of music therapy, who have sometimes sought to situate/validate contemporary music therapy practice by piecing together historical trajectories concerning the effects of music, or the relationship between music and healing. Such lineages are of dubious value since they do not always draw upon primary sources, assume a continuity of practice, and are necessarily selective due to author bias, lack of written documentation - especially in the case of ancient or heterodoxiCal practices and lack of availability/translations of non-Western texts, leading to a bias towards European and American sources.9

In many ways, the slow progress in the study of music and consciousness resembles that observed in the associated field of music and emotion only a few years ago. In 2001, a landmark publication the predecessor of the current Handbook of Music and Emotion - appeared, constituting the first attempt to establish emotion as a 'core research area ... bringing together the various concerns wi~ the affective nature of music that have so far been spread over a wide variety of Journals and book publications in different disciplines' (Scherer, foreword to the 2001 edition). At the beginning of the book, Juslin and Sloboda suggested reasons for .the slow development of an integrated study of music and emotion, many of whIch are equally applicable to research into music and consciousness. These are:

• the difficulty in studying emotions in a laboratory setting (200 I: 4) • the lack of a unifYing paradigm • the emphasis on the study of observable behaviour in the 1940s and 1950s

'during which the study of' inner' mental processes were seen as less than scientific' (2001: 5)

• the lack of truly interdisciplinary synthesis within a multidisciplinary field.

The authors also summarized a series of overarching dichotomies that are easily transposable to the study of consciousness, e.g. whether the effect of music on consciousness is received (something inherent in the music), or constructed

D. Aldridge &.J. Faclmer, eds (2006). Music and Altered States: ConsCiousness. Transcendence. Therapy and Addictions. London, Jessica Kingsley.

9 W.F. Kummel's (1977) Musik und Medizin: lhre Wechselbeziehung in Theorie und Praxis von 800 bis 1800 offers the most scholarly approach to music and mentaliphysical disorder

Music and Listening, Music and Consciousness 23

(personal appropriation of the music), the contribution of biological and cultural factors to the experience of music, and whether consciousness-changes attached to music are merely percetved (as when people speak of music as 'trancey' but are unaffected by it) or actually induced (the music feels 'hypnotic').

Labelling Experience

To date, most studies of music and consciousness have focused on music's contribution to the creation of qualitatively different, often dramatic shifts in consciousness. These are usually considered in terms of the constructs of trance and altered states of consciousness (ASC) and examined from various perspectives (ethnomusicologicaVantbropological, psychological, neurological). There can be a tendency to treat trance and ASC as isolated terms or thing-like 'givens'

perhaps allocated a local definition that fits with the particular phenomenal situations being investigated - rather than locating them in any broader viewl theory of consciousness. 10 That there are different potential ways to define trance and ASC becomes less confusing if these are considered as generic terms that may then yield typologies of experience. This is a necessary approach, and one that I explore in Chapter 2, which considers ways of conceptualizing consciousness. For now, however, I acknowledge that it is not an approach that is problem free, not least because it can create a notion of experience as static, rather than processual, and also because ambiguity is still possible if different typologies are adopted by different researchers - as is the case in emotion research.

Descriptions of rituals involving the concept of trance are familiar within ethnomusicology and anthropology. There seems to be a consensual acceptance among ethnomusicologists/anthropologists of the existence of trance, perhaps because rituals serve to frame and contextualize it, lending trance validity as an observable and real phenomenon supported by the belief systems of those taking part. Rouget's seminal work on music and trance (1985) has provided an exhaustive worldwide overview of such studies. More recently, the concept of trance has been applied to music experience in the West, e.g. Hutson's (1999) study of rave subculture and Becker's contextually broader-ranging description of 'deep listeners' (2004). Within the studies mentioned so far, there has been an emphasis on, and acceptance of, traditional notions of strong forms of trancell

(paralleling the focus of Gabrielsson and Lindstrom Wik's 2003 study of strong, Western listening experiences). Thus Rouget characterizes trance as taking place

10 Judith Becker's book Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion and Trancing (2004) is a notable exception to this, drawing particularly on theories influenced by Biological Phenomenology (Varela et aI., 1991; Edelman, 1992; Damasio, 1999).

1\ Strong trance in the sense that it is 'similar to other altered states of consciousoess such as sleep, concussion, epileptic seizure, alcohol intoxication' (Heap and Aravind, 2002: 24). The authors note the (as yet) lack of a rigorous scientific classification of strong trance.

24 Everyday Music Listening

in company and involving 'noise, crisis, sensory over stimulation and anmesia' (1985: 11). He then becomes more specific:

... let me list the principal symptoms of the /ranee state:!l trembling, shuddering, horripilation, swooning, falling to the ground ... convulsions, foaming at the mouth, protruding eyes, large extrusions of the tongue, paralysis of a limb ... noisy breathing, fixed stare' (1985: 13).

To the Westerner, used to the notion (often courtesy of depictions in literature, film and television) that trance involves somnambulant states, immobility, and the handing over of volitional control to large-eyed Svengali-like figures,13 this may seem extremely odd; the antithesis of what one might expect if seeking help from a hypnotherapist. In fact, Rouget does acknowledge a state involving 'immobility, silence, solitude, sensory deprivation and hallucinations' (1985: 11), but chooses to term this 'ecstasy', which, confusingly, he maintains never includes music, although he immediately qualifies these definitions by placing 'trance' and 'ecstasy' at opposite ends of a continuum 'linked by an uninterrupted series of possible intermediary states, so that it is sometimes difficult to determine which of the two is involved.'

Becker prefers the gerund 'trancing' to terms such as 'trance state' or 'altered state of consciousness', 'as both terms imply a static situation, a fixed form' (2004: 7) rather than process. She warns against the dangers of reification (2004: 40), commenting, 'I suspect there may be different kinds of consciousness coterminous with different kinds of trancing' (2004: 165), although choosing to focus on a definition of trance in accord with that of Rouget:

I define trance as a bodily event, characterized by strong emotion, intense focus, the loss of the strong sense of self, usually enveloped by anmesia and a cessation of the inner language (2004: 43).

It is obvious that there are difficulties with attaching phenomenological labels to aspects of consciousness. For example, the SEM descriptive system previously referenced, includes components that 'seem to fit qualities in altered states of consciousness, such as complete absorption, lose consciousness ofbndy, time and space, experience unreality, loss of control, merge with the music' (Gabrielsson and Wik, 2003: 203). However, the authors stress that SEM cannot be 'simply identified with altered states, peak experiences or flow, although there is considerable overlap between all these concepts' (2003: 203).

!l My italics. This phrase does not allow for the possibility of different fonDS of trance. 13 Svengali is a character from a novel (Trilby, 1894) by George du Maurier. Grin3 and

gaunt, with dark, staring eyes, he uses hypnotism to tom a tone-deaf young girl (Trilby) into an opera singer.

Music and Listening. Music and Consciausness 25

A fairly recent, edited compilation of essays, Music and Altered States: Consciousness, Transcendence. Therapy and Addictions (Aldridge and Fachner, 2006) constituted the first published text to attempt to bring together contemporary research concerning music and consciousness. Interestingly, the impetus for the book came from the field of music therapy, and the topic of music and healing (via shifts of consciousness) informs a good proportion of the material (settings range from palliative care to medicinal uses of music in conjunction with drugs in non-Western contexts). Additionally, Fachner includes research relating to music and drug-induced altered states of consciousness, together with electrophysiological (EEG) studies of music-related ASC that attempt to map neural correlates of such states, e.g. the increase in slower alpha and theta waves during meditation (Kohlrnetz, Kopiez and AltemntUler, 2003; West, 1980) and music and dance-induced trance (Oohashi et aI., 2002; Park et aI., 2002V

4 The

equation of brain states with specific states of consciousness is problematic for various reasons (which I explore in Chapter 2), but it does reflect an increased emphasis on evidence-based research in music therapy.

Fachner's chapter on altered states and music cites a range of literature not commonly considered together. Thus, the topic of music and trance (drawing chiefly on the work of Rouget, in addition to Fachner's own research [2004] concerning the interdependency ot mental set, setting, sound and trance via a mixture ofEEG mapping and phenomenological report) is considered alongside targeted uses of music to alter consciousness. These include: (a) the use of music therapy with patients for whom alternate states are the norm, due to brain injuries or when in a coma (Gustorff and Hannich, 2000); (b) the use of music to aid relaxation and imagination in the Bonny method of Guided Imagery in Music (GIM) (Bonny and Savary, 1973; Grocke, 2005); (c) the use of monotonous drumming to function as an induction to hypnotic states (Hamer, 1990; Szabo, 2006)

The latest addition to the field, Music and Consciousness (Cla:rke & Clarke, 2011), includes a broad-ranging exploration of interactions between music and mind via specific case studies, as well as a consideration of the topic from philosophical, cognitive and scientific perspectives. The contribution of music to transformations of consciousness is assessed with relation to improvisation, composition, everyday life and music therapy, in addition to non-Euro-American traditions and practices such as Buddhism and North Indian classical music. Although the book has no over-arching agenda, several provocative organizing ideas emerge. One is the possibility - informed by an ecological approach to perception - that behavioural/situational modes of engaging with music and perceptual interaction with specified properties of music may produce different kinds of consciousness that are particular to music (E.F. Clarke 2011, chapter 11).

14 BEG experiments reveal particular brainwave patterns alpha, beta, theta or delta _ with different frequency ranges that 'represent different consciousness aspects of the measured experience' (Fachner, 2006: 32), e.g. slow delta waves are associated with

dreamless sleep.

26 Everyday Music Listening

If that is the case, one could hypothesize that particular kinds of consciousness also attach to engagement with non-musical stimuli or activities. For example, from a bio-evolutionary perspective, when the communication systems of music and language are compared, it is certainly true that they mediate experience differently, so yielding different ways of being-in-the-world (Zbikowski, 2011, chapter 10). Another possibility explored is that music facilitates entry to and understanding of forms of consciousness that might not be accessed so readily or completely without specific sonic stimuli, e.g. in Hindustani music the loss of sense of self when engaged in the concentrated activity of intoning the tonic note 'Sa' against a drone (D.l Clarke, 2011, chapter 1).

Imaginative Involvement, Musical Involvement and Absorption

A slim, little-known but thought-provoking body of literature to do with broader interactions between music and consciousness (although still laboratory focused) exists, which is of particular relevance to 'real-world' everyday listening practices. In essence, this examines the capacity of music to provide a means towards involved, absorbing experiences, and whether such musical involvement is related to hypnotic susceptibility.IS Several studies take the construct of absorption as their starting point, attempting to assess its presence using the Tellegen Absorption Scale (from now on abbreviated to TAS), originally developed as a measure of 'openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences' (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974: 268) that the authors considered to be a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility, i.e. there is a likely association between hypnotizability in a controlled setting and absorption in hypnotic-like experiences in daily life.

For example, Rhodes et al. (1988) asked 35 introductory psychology students to complete the TAS prior to listening to eight 4-minute excerpts of a range of musics (classical, new age, rock and country), concluding that there were links between the enjoyment of music and the 'trait' of absorption. Unfortunately, their value-laden hypothesis that 'classical music, with its greater complexity, would make greater demands on this ability' [absorption] (1988: 737) was reflected in the s~bs~diary conclusion that a preference for classical music would lead to a greater hkelihood that absorption would occur than if listening to rock or country music.

In a pioneering interview-based study (1965, 1974), J.R. Hilgard developed the notion of 'imaginative involvement' to describe so called 'hypnotic-like' expe~ences ~ ev~day life, which provided 'a temporary absorption in satisfying expenences In WhICh fantasy plays a large role' (I 979b: 483). She identified music as one strong area of such involvement. Drawing on this, Snodgrass and Lyun

IS In academic usage. the tenn 'hypnotic susceptibility' is used to mean how suggestible a person is 'after undergoing a hypnotic induction' (Heap et al." 2004: 2), usually as assessed by psychometric tests such as the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale: fonus A-C (Weitzenhoffer & Hilgard, 1959, 1963) or the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (Shor & Orne. 1962).

Music and Listening. Music and Consciousness 27

(1989) studied correlations between degree of imaginative absorption and hypnotic susceptibility while listening to 'imaginative versus non-imaginative music' (1989: 41). Initially, 282 students were screened for hypootic susceptibility using the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Fonn A, and on a different occasion (supposedly as part of a music appreciation study) listened individually to four pre-selected pieces of classical music.

Links emerged between high hypnotizability and capacity for absorption: a greater correlation between these factors was shown by those interested in classical music, and, regardless of level of hypootic suggestibility, the pieces previously rated as 'more imaginative' triggered more imagery elaboration. This led Snodgrass and Lyun to conclude that music involvement could be definitely included 'as part of the domain of imaginative involvement related to hypnotizability' (1989: 50). However, the artificiality of the study (listening to non-self-chosen music in a laboratory), in addition to its inherited assumption (taken from one sentence within J.R. Hilgard's study of imaginative involvement)16 that classical music is more likely to be absorbing, make it impossible to accept these findings without question. Students heard the music on headphones at a table facing a one­way mirror and were given the instruction to listen with their eyes closed; both these factors fonn potential impositions on nonnal individual listening practice. They were instructed to 'listen carefully', which could have encouraged an analytical mode of perception, and afterwards to fill in a questionnaire containing items such as 'How involved were you in the passage? That is, how much was your attention held by the passage?' 'How deeply were you concentrating while listening?' (1989: 46), which hint at what involvement 'ought' to feel like. Finally, the two pieces pre-selected as 'most imaginative' (see footnote 31) were obviously programmatic, and thus more likely to trigger 'standard' images. The author's characterization of the other two (Baroque) pieces as 'least imaginative' reflects the unstated (if common) assumption that old or structurally complex classical music must be abstract, other-worldly and autonomous.

Taking their cue from Snodgrass and Lyun, and drawing on a similar range of literature, Nagy and Szabo examined the nature of musical involvement while listening to music via a series of experiment-based studies (Nagy, 2002; Nagy & Szabo, 2003, 2006). They hypothesized that qualities of involvement would differ depending on whether the experiencer was deemed to be a high or low involver in music, i.e. that musical involvement was a capacity, rather than dependent on state or context. A twenty-nine-item scale of musical involvement (M.1.S.) was developed, which was used in conjunction with open-ended essays conceming the meaning of music (both applied to retrospective recall of experience) to establish differences within music-listening experiences. One limitation was that the M.I.S.

16 Hilgard's sentence reads: 'Absorbed involvement in music of the classical type can be like pure involvement in nature, an intense, absorbing, aesthetic experience' (1979b: 484). She is obviously referencing one type oflistening - the contemplative detachment of the traditional Western concert model.

28 Everyday Music Listening

required participants to recall 'listening to a musical piece that has a great effect on you'. thus assuming that high involvement in music equated strong emotional involvement, and that high involvers would always be likely to listen in this way. Once established, this supposition led to some questionable conclusions e.g. that high involvers 'usually listen to music when doing nothing meanwhile: (2002: 508). For the authors, this was inevitable, given their qualifying statement tha~ '.[t]his c~ be understood if we think that you can be deeply involved in an actIVIty only If you pay full attention' (2002: 508) - a notion that will be called into question by the empirical data included in this book. Thus they arrived at a division between high and low involvement characterized as high equalling more 'trance-e~periences' and low equalling 'memories and relaxation' (2003: 429).

In th~lr 2003 stud~, the claim that high involvers in music are more likely to expenence trance IS substantiated somewhat, because the M.I.S. is used in conjunction with Pekala's Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (a checklist of interacting dimensions of experience used to assess the presence of altered states of consciousness) although - echoing the methods of Snodgrass and Lynn (1989) - the situation in which music is heard is again artificial (alone for 15 minutes in a darkened room 'in a comfortable armchair' (2003: 430),11 and the division between high and low involvement is still seen to translate as high equalling more 'trance-experiences' and low equalling 'memories and relaxation' (2003: 429). Nagy and Szabo's most recent study (2006) built on connections between music and trance, seeking both to establish whether hypnotic inductions influence the experience of music, and whether music itself may act as a hypnotic induction. li

The authors concluded that music indeed did serve as a hypnotic induction for high involvers, but not for low involvers, although hypnotic induction enhanced musical experience for the latter.

As already noted, laboratory-focused research has the capacity to conceal or ~ke~ phenomena because practice (in this case ways of listening and experiencing) IS dIvorced from natural contexts, thus severing interactions between experiencer and ~vironment ~e prime reason for observing phenomena in a laboratory situation IS ~ opporturuty to be able to restrict and manipulate the number of contributing ~~ables, so making findings specific, reliable and capable of replication. However, It IS worth acknowledging that, in practice, it is impossible to create totally controlled

17 Thi . . . s ~nano appears to be a perennial favourite among researchers examining I~stemng e:~nen~ in laboratory settings. 11 appeared yet again in a recent study (this lime a ~echmng chair was chosen) where 'lights were dimmed' and participants listened to a s~es ~f 25 pre-chosen excerpts using headphones. They were 'left alone during the expenment m order to create a private annosphere' (Kreutz et aI., 2008: 107).

18 • The hypnotic i.nd,uction used was the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, form A (Wel~offer ~ Hilgard" 1959). This scale is generally thought by hypnosis researcbers to be especially SUitable for general use as it favours 'easier' suggestions - what arc called ideo-motor items (e.g. suggestions for arm levitation), as opposed to cognitive items (e.g. hallucinating a mosquito) or challenge items (e.g. 'you want to open your eyes but can't').

Music and Listening. Music and Consciousness 29

conditions, and that the experiments just reviewed can themselves be viewed as rituals, encouraging ways of behaving and interacting with given stimuli that would

not be equivalent to the real-life scenarios they seek to access. Typically, participant experience is passive: listening setting, music, time and

length oflistening episodes are all pre-determined. Participants inevitably become primed by setting, and by the behaviour of those around them to expect something to happen. In fact, if taking part is a requirement of their studies, or they are given course credit for contributing, they may already be in an increased state of arousal or suggestibility and consequently motivated to manufacture responses (or conversely to withhold them if jaded by aspects of their course/irritated by the tutors!). The instruments of enquiry (questiounaireslscales) may privilege some aspects of experience at the expense of others, so creating the d~e~ that any results are merely 'methodological artefacts'. Particularly problematIC IS the comparison of the scenario of hypnotic induction-by-music with use of scripted, hypnotiC inductions and tests for hypnotic susceptibility, which are not tailored to the individual, and may thus have the potential to create a sense of exclusion or alienation. Hypnosis researchers Woody and McConkey have advocated a move away from the long-established and widespread (since the late 1950s) use of~e various Harvard or Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility scales in research studies, noting that their persistence mistakenly implies that 'the underlying issues are by now so well worked out that we can specify a "gold standard" procedure for assessing trait levels of hypnotic susceptibility' (2003: 314).

Summary

Existing listening studies reveal the need for documentation of the details of individual experience at different times and in different settings, in order to understand the psychological processes operating in everyday music listening experiences, together with nature of involvement. It is also clear that asking individuals to articulate their experiences solely in terms of emotional response prevents the mapping of those experiences in their holistic entirety. Additionally, any study needs to define the terms it uses, or at least the sense in which it chooses to use them, at the outset. Despite its limitations, Nagy and Szabo's research remains thought-provoking, but at the same time a fundamental (and frustrating) flaw is that although words such as 'trance' and 'hypnotize' are frequently used, the authors never explain what they mean by these labels. Without explanation, we are simply left with construct piled on construct - an intellectual 'house of cards', lacking firm conceptual foundations. That is why I now turn to ways of conceptualizing consciousness, in order to situate and explain what I mean by the terms 'subjective experience' and 'trancing'. Only then does it become possible to discuss the subjective percepmal qualities of everyday experiences of listening to

music with any lucidity.