TY  - UNPB
A1  - Himonides, Evangelos
PB  - Institute of Education, University of London
Y1  - 2008///
M1  - Doctoral
N2  - Abstract:
This thesis investigates the phenomenon of perceived vocal 'beauty' in singing, being
that moment in time when we are emotionally overwhelmed by the quality of the
singer's voice in performance. Theoretical analyses indicate that this perceptual
experience arises from the particular ways that diverse, but definable variables of the
phenomenon are interwoven. The robustness of the emergent theoretical taxonomy
is subjected to empirical evaluation through a multifaceted investigation into the
psycho-acoustic and context-specific interpretation of sung performance quality.
Initial research was grounded in an analysis of semi-structured interviews with seven
people from a wide range of backgrounds as listeners (i.e. conductors, educators and
performers) concerning their experience of sung performance. An iterative process
of data analyses juxtaposed with a wide interdisciplinary range of literature reviews
led to the design of three surveys. These were focused on (i) a large scale (N=374)
survey regarding professionals' opinions about the evaluation of 'quality' in sung
performances (ii) the qualitative analyses of a series of BBC Radio 4 broadcasts titled
'The Singer Not the Song', aiming to capture experts' opinions on the perception of
beautiful performances across different musical genres and (iii) an online survey
(N=177) that was conducted in order to present a narrower-angle perspective as
demonstrated through people's views about a sung performance in a nonmainstream
context (musical genre). Taken together, the evidence base indicated that
different perceptual features become contextually sensitive and salient for individual
listeners of singing performances. Then the emergent taxonomy of underlying
contributory factors was further interrogated by individual expert listeners using an
innovative experimental procedure that embraces the application of new multimedia
technology. This new technology (based on the renowned Continuous Response
Digital Interface (CRD!) concept that was developed at Florida State University) was
designed to act as a real-time monitoring system of singing perception along a
'like/ dislike' continuum of perceived quality, whilst simultaneously collecting realtime
data of listeners' physiological responses to the sung performance. Findings
from this final phase of the empirical study indicated that the acquired combined
perceptual/physiological-response data are systematic and support the theorised
taxonomy of the perception of sung performance quality and its integrated nature.
EP  - 412
AV  - restricted
ID  - discovery10007396
N1  - Unpublished
TI  - The psychoacoustics of vocal beauty : a new taxonomy
UR  - http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.502436
ER  -