Abstract
The present study was designed to find out what kinds of affective characters would have been perceived from Mozart’s works. We conducted two experiments in which students majoring in music listened to musical pieces―string quartets and piano sonatas― of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, and rated them on adjective scales. The results of multivariate analysis showed that participants perceived ‘less dynamic’, ‘more stable’ and ‘beautiful’ affective characters in the two genres of pieces of Mozart than in those of Beethoven or Schubert. Based on the findings, we discussed the implications of Mozart’s music for adjustability of emotions or improvement of cognitive tasks.
