The Aesthetic Appreciation of Musical Intervals Among School Children and Adults

The purpose of the experiments.The method of experiment with adults.T?ke order of popularity of the interwals.The aesthetic efect of the diferent intervals.The method of experiment with school children.liesults of the experiments with Elementary School children.Results of the experiments with Preparatory School children.Comparison of the results of the experiments in the Tests for a 'musical ear.' Introspection of school children.Sex differences in the Elementary School experiments.Summary of results and conclusions.Major and mivhor intervals.The octave.Concords felt as discords.Elementary and Preparatory Xchools. I. The purpose of the experiments.IN 1910 some experiments were begun in order to test the aesthetic appreciation of musical intervals among school children.The object was to discover, if possible, something as to the development with age of a feeling for consonance, and to determine the differences in this respect among children belonging to different cultural groups and having had different degrees of musical training.It seemed desirable also to obtain results from adults, for the sake of comparison.Apart from this, I wished to ascertain the extent to which individuals could be divided into ' perceptive types ' according to their attitude towards musical elements, as Mr E. Bullough has classified The Appreciation of Musical Intervalsso far as the reasons given by such young children can be trusted) tends to support the view I have put forward that the higher note is more influential than the lower in determining the apparent pitch of an interval.Thus the following table, giving the judgments of children from eight years to thirteen inclusive, shows that the third bd# is judged to be 'low' more often than the octave goy', and 'high' less often than the octave, presumably because the upper note of the third is lower than the upper note of the octave.TABLE I.