Meaning in Music Is Intentional, but in Soundscape It Is Not - A Naturalistic Approach to the Qualia of Sounds
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Date
2023
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MDPI
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Abstract
The sound environment and music intersect in several ways and the same holds true
for the soundscape and our internal response to listening to music. Music may be part of a sound
environment or take on some aspects of environmental sound, and therefore some of the soundscape
response may be experienced alongside the response to the music. At a deeper level, coping with
music, spoken language, and the sound environment may all have influenced our evolution, and the
cognitive-emotional structures and responses evoked by all three sources of acoustic information may
be, to some extent, the same. This paper distinguishes and defines the extent of our understanding
about the interplay of external sound and our internal response to it in both musical and real-world
environments. It takes a naturalistic approach to music/sound and music-listening/soundscapes to
describe in objective terms some mechanisms of sense-making and interactions with the sounds. It
starts from a definition of sound as vibrational and transferable energy that impinges on our body
and our senses, with a dynamic tension between lower-level coping mechanisms and higher-level
affective and cognitive functioning. In this way, we establish both commonalities and differences
between musical responses and soundscapes. Future research will allow this understanding to grow
and be refined further.
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Author PP received part funding from the National Science Centre, Poland, Grant number:
2021/41/B/HS1/00541.
Keywords
music, soundscape, sound environment, soundscape descriptors, musical affordances, coping behavior
Citation
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2023, vol. 20 (1): 269.