Unpacking musical beauty: sound, emotion, and impact differences across expertise and personality

Beauty is an aesthetic quality that many composers and performers strive to attain and that most listeners value highly in music. Yet, what listeners hear and feel when they find music beautiful, the impact this experience has on them, and wherein lie any important differences between individuals are questions that still lack clear answers. To address these gaps, an online questionnaire was administered to 81 adults. They described their experience of listening to three self-selected “beautiful pieces of music” alongside three pieces they enjoyed listening to but did not consider beautiful; this with a focus on each piece’s sonic features, the emotions induced, and any impact that engaging with the pieces had had on them. Respondents’ personality traits and level of musical training were also collected to explore if these were a source of significant variability in the data. Thematic analysis of text responses found that pieces perceived as beautiful are characterised by both low-level (e.g., slow tempo, soft timbre, low sound level), and high-level features (e.g., composition style, degree of change, complexity levels, repetition); have the ability to calm, evoke pleasant sadness in, and move the listener; and in terms of long-term impact, provide the listener strong emotional support, and provide them inspiration for musical activities. Exploratory, quantitative analyses examining individual differences revealed that participants high in the trait Openness to experience were most concerned with the aesthetic qualities of pieces. Our findings suggest that the experience of musical beauty is a multifaceted phenomenon that can have a profound emotional impact on some individuals, contributing to a more comprehensive account of what it means to experience beauty in music.