Publications by authors named "Lena Heng"

Timbre has been identified as a potential component in the communication of affect in music. Although its function as a carrier of perceptually useful information about sound source mechanics has been established, less is understood about whether and how it functions as a carrier of information for communicating affect in music. To investigate these issues, listeners trained in Chinese and Western musical traditions were presented with Phrases, Measures, and Notes of recorded excerpts interpreted with a variety of affective intentions by performers on instruments from the two cultures.

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Timbre is one of the psychophysical cues that has a great impact on affect perception, although, it has not been the subject of much cross-cultural research. Our aim is to investigate the influence of timbre on the perception of affect conveyed by Western and Chinese classical music using a cross-cultural approach. Four listener groups (Western musicians, Western nonmusicians, Chinese musicians, and Chinese nonmusicians; 40 per group) were presented with 48 musical excerpts, which included two musical excerpts (one piece of Chinese and one piece of Western classical music) per affect quadrant from the valence-arousal space, representing angry, happy, peaceful, and sad emotions and played with six different instruments (, , , violin, flute, and guitar).

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