Target Articles

The Effects of Musical Fit on Choice Between Competing Pairs of Cultural Products

Joanne P. S. Yeoh and Adrian C. North

National Metrical Types in Nineteenth Century Art Song

Leigh VanHandel

Abstract

Previous studies have claimed that music can prime the selection of certain products and influence consumers’ propensity to spend because it activates related knowledge of the world and subsequently raises the salience of certain products and behaviors associated with that music. Music that corresponds with the attributes of certain products therefore can prime the selection of those products. Ethnically Chinese Malaysian participants were presented with six pairs of products, each containing a Malay or an Indian version of the product in question, and asked to state a preference for one from that pair. Malay or Indian music was played simultaneously in the background. Product choices corresponded with the ethnicity of the background music played. This demonstrates that music ‘fit’ can influence product choice when consumers do not have a clear existing preference for one product over another.

Abstract

William Rothstein’s article “National metrical types in music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries” (2008) proposes a distinction between the metrical habits of 18th and early 19th century German music and those of Italian and French music of that period. Based on theoretical treatises and compositional practice, he outlines these national metrical types and discusses the characteristics of each type. This paper presents the results of a study designed to determine whether, and to what degree, Rothstein’s characterizations of national metrical types are present in 19th century French and German art song. Studying metrical habits in this genre may provide a lens into changing metrical conceptions of 19th century theorists and composers, as well as to the metrical habits and compositional style of individual 19th century French and German art song composers.