Eine experimentalpsychologische Untersuchung
zu Hörgewohnheiten von Jazzmusikern
Within the aid of psychometrical methods, derived from social and experimental psychology, it was investigated whether the specific musical training of jazz musicians had an influence on their attitudes towards different types of music ("classical" and jazz).
Ten jazz musicians and a control-group of musicologists, who did not know anything about jazz, gave their responses in the form of directed associations on a questionnaire entitled semantic differential.
It was found that significant differences in the responses of the two groups were based on three main factors: (1) activity and rhythmic intensity of music, (2) musical organisation and (3) sound.
ad 1. While for musicologists the main index for musical activity in jazz seems to be the time factor, jazz musicians tend to find activity in more subtle things like phrasing, dynamics, swing etc. On the other hand, jazz musicians find "classical" music, and especially baroque music, more static than do musicologists.
ad 2. The music of Charles Mingus and John Coltrane seems to be of much more musical order and logic to jazz musicians than to musicologists. Whereas for jazz musicians there is no contradiction between energy and order, this seems not to be the case with members of the control-group who feel this music to be chaotic.
ad 3. Jazz musicians, mainly modern players, are very sensitive towards sound and are inclined to find Dixieland music rough and "corny".
This investigation is meant as a pilot-study which will be followed by others dealing more extensively with related problems.