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The aesthetic experience of live concerts: self-reports and psychophysiology

Music listening can lead to strong aesthetic experiences. However, to gain deeper insights into such experiences, more empirical research outside of laboratory settings is required. The current exploratory study measured aesthetic experience (music-induced emotions and absorption) in combination with psychophysiology (facial electromyography and arousal measures) from 98 participants during three live concerts with a program of classical, romantic, and contemporary chamber music. One musical movement from the contemporary work was presented from a recording. Results firstly highlight two key components of the concert frame as influencing the aesthetic experience: a) the programming order led to a rise-and-fall trajectory of emotions with the less familiar contemporary work leading to higher negatively valenced emotions. Nonetheless, this experience was embedded in an overall highly appreciated concert, with b) the factor of liveness becoming apparent in lower engagement with the recorded than the live music. Secondly, the participants’ reactions gave insights into how the multi-movement works were perceived; opening and closing movements elicited higher positively valenced arousal, contrasting the characteristics of an inner section, which evoked lower arousal and mixed emotions. This scheme differed between the classical and the romantic works in the third movements, reflecting a different trajectory of tension and relaxation in the respective styles. Finally, we show relations between physiological responses and self-reports reflecting both positive and negative aesthetic experiences. Overall, we demonstrate that the ecological validity of the current study is particularly informative for theoretical approaches on the aesthetic experience, with the frame as a crucial component.