ABSTRACT

Music experience raises many complex questions that can be analyzed from different points of view. Listener can be attracted to a piece of music, because of the emotions or the sensations induced by that music. This chapter proposes the taxonomy of music developed by including a expressiveness content—sensorimotor expressiveness—which can be applied both to the compositional layer and to the performance layer. It focuses on the development and validation of new methods to investigate music perception without verbal measures. These methods are based on sensory qualities, kinetics/energy space, and action metaphors. The chapter presents the results of studies based on the description of sensorimotor expressiveness through verbal labels. It also focuses on two methods for studying sensorimotor expressiveness without using verbal labels, based on action-reaction metaphors and cross-modal associations. The chapter discusses the results in a broader context and hypothesizes new perspectives for future research.