Aesthetic assessment of the music composition from different stylistic periods

This paper aims to investigate the aesthetic assessment of the music compositions from Renaissance, Baroque and Romanticism period, by aesthetic dimensions: beauty, harmony, decoration and semantic depth. The research was carried out on 15 students of Psychology. The stimuli were 54 music compositions from Renaissance, Baroque and Romanticism (18 for each period). The participants were asked to assess each stimulus on 13 scales (a 1-7 scale of Semantic Differential), using the dimensions: beautiful-ugly, harmony, decoration and semantic depth. The results indicate that there are differences in assessing the music composition from different art periods on given dimensions: beautiful-ugly, decoration and semantic depth. The most aesthetically evaluated are music compositions of Romanticism period and the least-music compositions of Renaissance. The music of Renaissance is the most evaluated in terms of harmony and semantic depth, but the least in terms of decoration. The Music of Baroque and Romanticism are not differentiated by these dimensions. The results indicate that with the development of music periods grow up Aesthetic evaluation of music works. Decoration appears to be more important characteristic in music aesthetic differentiation than harmony.