Alea Iacta Est! Impact of Musical Training on the Perception of Aleatoric Music

The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent people with and without musical training respond differently to musical fragments manipulated with randomness: randomness in duration, randomness in pitch, and randomness in duration and pitch simultaneously. In addition to the recognition of a fragment as musical, we wanted to determine whether people experience a greater or lesser liking for what they hear and whether listening to these fragments relaxes or arouses them. To this effect, a quasi-experimental design was carried out where 13 musical fragments featuring different degrees of randomness were generated, starting from a tune composed for the purpose of this study. The sample consisted of 124 participants, some of whom had received conservatory musical training. Differences in perception of aleatoric versus nonaleatoric fragments of music were greater when listeners had musical training and when randomization involved duration and pitch at the same time. The impact on the listener of randomness in a musical excerpt may be of interest for future innovations in the fields of composition, music education, and music therapy.