Listeners can experience strong and often positive identification with music. Contemporary research has emphasized the importance of a listener’s own identity, including their sense of self and their desires, when forming such identifications. However, acknowledgments of the listener’s role in the listening experience have failed to productively engage discussions of virtual musical agency. Theorists have typically fallen into two groups: 1) those who consider agency to be a composed phenomenon existing outside of a listener’s subjective response; or 2) those who consider agency to be so susceptible to subjective interpretation that one cannot theorize about it at all. In this dissertation, I present the concept of “empathic identification” as a middle ground, or a means of understanding and theorizing about the subjectivity of listeners’ experiences with virtual musical agency. I use psychological literature on empathy (both within and outside of the field of music) to explain the mechanism behind listeners’ identifications and to supplement previous theories of virtual musical agency—in particular Hatten (2018). When listeners identify with music, they empathize with a virtual “other” which they perceive to be strongly similar to themselves. This “other” is traditionally referred to as a virtual musical agent. However, the listener also phenomenally merges with the music when empathic identification occurs. As a result, the listener projects themselves “into” the music, experiencing its expression as though it were their own. This experience introduces what I call the “agential listener,” or a category of virtual agency which originates in the listener but is located within the music; it is the virtual presence of the listener within the music itself. This virtual agency can interact with all hierarchical levels of virtual musical agency (as described by Hatten 2018), andexplains the subjectivity of listeners’ agential attributions. In effect, a listener’s personal agency can be similar to or different from a musical agency, causing listeners to attribute agency and enter into the music at different agential levels. I use Hatten’s (2018) analysis of Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F Minor to demonstrate how this theory can supplement previous agential analyses. Finally, I argue that empathic identification can explain seemingly conflicting research on the enjoyment and engagement of listeners with classical music, especially in concert hall settings.

Creator

• Leaman, Aubrey

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-8rg2-ak13

Subject

• Cognitive psychology
• Music theory
• Social psychology

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_917201
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:16158

Keyword

• Agency
• Musical Empathy
• Empathy
• Music Analysis
• Musical Agency
• Subjectivity

Date created

• 2022-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright