Listeners' Responses to Music in Relation to Autochthonous and Experiential Factors

A renewed interest in the development of consumers of music recently has been displayed in the field of music education. New materials and curriculums are available for use in helping students in music classes and organizations become more perceptive listeners. This recent emphasis on the development of music listeners has been welcomed by many, but relatively little data is available on the manner in which listeners respond to music.' Each person certainly responds to music in an idiosyncratic manner, yet it does not seem unreasonable to expect that there will be some similarities in responses among persons. Several typologies of reactions to music have been constructed. Each of these typologies attests to an investigator's belief that there are similarities in reactions to music. Extant typologies range in complexity from a simple dichotomized division into extrinsic and intrinsic responses, to multifaceted characterizations that require as many as fourteen categories. During the present study, a review of these typologies led to several conclusions. Many of the categorizations can be criticized as having been imposed on the data rather than being assembled from the data. Other taxonomies have seemed to ignore the possibility that a subject might react in more than one manner simultaneously. Furthermore, most of the existing typologies were constructed prior to the advent of electronic data processing; thus their creators could not examine several variables concurrently. In spite of these weaknesses, the partial agreement that could be detected among typologies indicated