Meagan Curtis on the Science of Sad Songs
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12.12.2010
Sad songs are just part of the story. Anyone who has suffered a broken heart knows the satisfaction of listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” or Paul McCartney singing “Yesterday.” According to psychologist Meagan Curtis, the inherent sadness of the minor third is what we hear in music. She tells Steve Paulson that a recent study suggests it is also what we hear in speech.
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Other cultures and languages?
I would enjoy knowing how much of our study of sad intervals is based on our particular Western culture, with its major and minor scales. What about Chinese and other tonal languages? What about French, with its different stress and rising-fallng inflections? What about equal-tempered scales? What about cultures (like Indonesian) with inharmonic resonance? I could go on, but I think you have a lifetime of research awaiting you.
Saddest Jazz Song(s)
Lilac Wine, sung by Nina Simone
sad song tally
Another for Nina Simone! But for me, "Little Girl Blue"
Could tone deafness confer difficulty noticing emotion in others
Dear Dr. Curtis,
I was fascinated by your discussion of the relationship between tonal expressions in music and language. My mother is tone deaf. She also has difficulty picking up on emotion in others. Hearing your discussion made me suddenly wonder if these two quirks could possibly be related. Perhaps evaluating whether people who are tone deaf can hear sadness would strengthen your hypothesis that tone is important in the expression of emotion.
I look forward to learning more about your intriguing research!
BTW, the email listed for Dr. Curtis on the Tufts website is not working.
minor third
This experiment seems a bit circular. It is widely understood and believed that music in a minor key brings to mind sad or nostalgic feelings in western listeners. You want to see if we use the minor third in language to express these feelings as well. However, instead of recording real people feeling and expressing real emotions and checking their pitch, you hire actors. Actors are trained to express emotions they DON'T feel that may or may not correspond to the words they are speaking. It is entirely possible that one thing an actor may do, intuitively, in order to convey sadness quickly to an audience, is use the minor third. This is no different that the composer using the minor third to convey sadness. It is a contrivance intended to create a certain emotional response in the listener. It is universally understood and so, as a short cut, it CAN be used to convey sadness. This is not the same as people ACTUALLY using this interval when expressing real emotions. It seems to me you haven't discovered that we DO use the minor third to convey sadness in language, only that we CAN, which we already knew.
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