Music Composed For Calm And Catharsis Using A Compositional Toolkit For Emotional Evocation - Inspired By And Directed Towards Healthcare Contexts And Self-Managed Wellness

Abstract

Emotional experience through music listening is a universal experience. In the age of COVID-19 and an ever-mentally enslaved population, music that encourages calm and/or catharsis is more relevant than ever (Gallagher et al., 2020). As composers, can we form a framework for and create music to pointedly evoke an intentional emotion? This dissertation seeks to build on the solid foundation of music and emotion researchers’ past theories, and demonstrate how to further utilise the power that music has in both our everyday lives, and also in healthcare settings – providing an output of a large suite of music for use for calm and catharsis, and a Compositional Toolbox for Emotional Evocation that composers might use to effect positive emotional change. In two pilot studies: one for children and one for adults, this dissertation tests music written using said Toolbox, to observe its effect on arousal and pleasure. The studies also utilise visuals as a secondary means of sensory control, and to investigate whether the multisensory application of music and visuals enhances emotional evocation over isolated experience. Participants rated on a Likert-type scale, how they think each sample would make someone feel, or how it made them feel. An analysis of pieces from these studies is included in this dissertation. Mixed-method, deductive, and thematic analysis was used for data, which was collected via surveys and interviews. It was found that music using the Toolbox was more emotionally evocative, more calming, and happier overall than that written without. Most of the pieces achieved their emotional aims, and positive correlations between the use of music and visuals together have arisen. Music without the visuals appeared to be calmer than that with visuals in one of the studies. This dissertation begins to promote the use of the Compositional Toolbox for Emotional Evocation as a framework for emotional composition.