for humans' love of music
Poets, scientists and philosophers alike have long been intrigued with the question "What is it about music that affects our emotions?"
A series of four lectures by David Huron, an Ohio State University professor and one of the world's leading scholars in the area of music cognition and perception, will explore that topic.
The lecture series, titled "How Music Makes Us Feel: The Psychology of Auditory Affect," will take place Tuesday evenings between Nov. 7 and Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m. in Sudler Hall of William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St. It is sponsored by the Department of Music in collaboration with the School of Music and the Department of Psychology.
The schedule of lectures follows. They are free and open to the public.
Nov. 7 -- "The Good, the Bad and the Sublime," a discussion of how patterns of physiological responses to music reveal how and why sounds evoke emotions, moods, feelings and specific mental states.
Nov. 14 -- "Anticipation and Surprise," exploring why the psychology of expectation and the phenomenon of surprise are central to music's ability to evoke emotions.
Nov. 21 -- "Many Musical Worlds," examining how age, sex, temperament and culture are all implicated in an individual's musical preferences and responses. The lecture will also explain why adolescence is important for the formation of lifelong musical tastes.
Dec. 5 -- "Making Music Come Alive," which will examine why mechanical musical performances fail to provoke strong emotional responses and how skilled performers tap into evolved brain functions that are essential for empathy.
A trained musician, Huron is a professor in the School of Music and the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University (OSU). He heads the OSU Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory, a research center dedicated to the scientific study of music. His research emphasizes music and human emotions and comparative ethnomusicology. In addition to laboratory-based research, his activities have also involved field studies among various cultures in Micronesia.
Since earning his doctorate in musicology from the University of Nottingham, Huron has produced some 70 scholarly publications, including two books, and given over 200 lectures and presentations at institutions around the world. Among other distinctions, he was the Ernest Bloch Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Robert N. Freeman Distinguished Lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2002 he received the Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory.
Originally from Canada, Huron served on the faculty of the University of Waterloo, where he held concurrent positions in the departments of music, psychology and systems design engineering. His most recent book is "Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation," published by MIT Press.
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