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Christmas offerings
Carols in the wind
John E Marley, Paula Searle, Nicole L Chamberlain, Deborah R Turnbull
and Catherine M Leahy
MJA 2001; 175: 656-658
Abstract -
Methods -
Results -
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Aim: To compare mood and emotional responses to music
played on pipe organs and pipeless (digital) organs.
Design: A two-organ (pipe v. digital) crossover
study.
Setting: St Theodore's Anglican Church, Adelaide.
Subjects: 43 non-musician volunteers.
Main outcome measures: Changes in mood and emotions
measured by the Profile of Mood States.
Results: Both instruments produced significant
reductions in the emotions commonly experienced during the
Christmas season: tension-anxiety, depression-rejection,
anger-hostility and fatigue. There were no significant changes for
vigour or confusion-bewilderment, and no significant differences
between the mood-altering effects of the two instruments.
Conclusions: Pipeless organs are as effective as
pipe organs in inducing beneficial mood changes.
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From supermarkets to cathedrals, carols and organs are part of
Christmas. Music affects emotions, and listeners agree on the types
of emotions experienced.1,2 Listening to music may
invoke a range of responses, from a pleasant, relaxed mood to intense
emotions aroused on hearing a beautiful musical phrase3 or a children's
carol service. Music decreases heart rate, respiratory rate and
Profile of Mood States4 scores, indicating
relaxation and mood improvement.5 In a US study, a randomised
trial of guided imagery and music conducted over 13 weeks, music
positively affected mood scores and reduced serum cortisol levels in
healthy adults.6 This suggests music may have
another important application: treating stressed adults in the
pre-Christmas period.
Organ music is usually played on the occasion of important life events
such as weddings and funerals. For the many people who attend
Christmas church services, the experience would be incomplete
without the resounding tones of the organ. Associations with
tradition, and the instrument's rich tonal range and volume, are part
of what gives the organ its ability to produce powerful emotional
responses.
The sound of a pipe organ is produced from distinct generators
(pipes), numbering from tens to thousands. Many pipes work together
and their sounds meld in acoustic space. Pipe organs are expensive to
install and maintain.
In pipeless (digital) organs, sound is synthesised from digital sampling of the tones produced by traditional organ pipes made by famous pipemakers. The sound diffuses from a few loudspeakers and sounds similar to that of a pipe organ. However, signals conveyed to the speakers, and sounds corresponding to many notes, can cause beats with power nodes and antinodes, which may be unpleasant. Electrical beats are different from in-air acoustical beats produced by organ pipes. A greater number of speakers can produce spatialisation similar to the sound produced by pipe organs.7
Comparing natural and emulated orchestral instruments, it has been
found that a fundamental property distinguishing natural
instrument tones from their emulated counterparts is the presence of
two partially independent sources of variability, such as the
natural complex harmonics of strings with the resonance patterns of
wood. This endows the music of natural generators with richness of
texture and enduring interest.8
Organists tend to have strong views about the
superiority of pipe organs over pipeless ones. However, most people
listening to organs at Christmas are not organists — would their
emotional experience be the same whether the sound was produced by a
pipe organ or a digital organ? In the spirit of scientific curiosity we
set out to explore whether non-musicians experienced similar mood
and emotional responses on hearing a digital organ compared with a
pipe organ. Would cash-starved parishes be depriving their
parishioners of the full Christmas experience if they invested in
electronics rather than wind?
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Participants |
Healthy volunteers aged 16 years and over were recruited by
advertisement from the University of Adelaide and the general
community during the pre-Christmas period in 1999. Expert musicians
were excluded, as it was thought they might spend the time trying to
guess which instrument they were listening to rather than responding
to the music itself. The only other exclusions were people with
moderate to severe hearing impairment, "tone-deafness" or a known
aversion to organ music. A minimum sample size of 30 subjects was
needed. A pilot study was conducted by playing a CD of organ music to
volunteers to determine the time taken for them to become restless. As
a result, 25 minutes of music was chosen for the main study.
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Study design | |
Our study was carried out at St Theodore's Anglican Church, Adelaide.
The design was a crossover study, with subjects randomly allocated to
one of two groups. The groups were then randomly allocated to hear
either the pipe organ on the first visit, followed by the digital organ
on the second, or the digital instrument on the first, followed by the
pipe organ on the second. Each group attended at the same time each week
(either 6 pm or 7 pm) and listened to only one instrument at each visit.
Visits were separated by one week to allow memory of and response to the
first instrument to fade.
In order to standardise the test conditions, organs of similar size
specifications were played in the same building. Subjects were
seated at the back of the church facing away from the instruments, so
that they were "blind" to which instrument was being played at each
session. St Theodore's Church is a large, resonant building with good
acoustics, uniform throughout. The same music was used at each test
session using similar registrations (for a list of the pieces played,
see Box 1). A professional organist who was not familiar with either
instrument performed the music, after a standard amount of
familiarisation time on each. The instruments used were a pipe organ
built by Waters of Adelaide and an Ahlborn Galanti pipeless organ (specification for both organs available from corresponding author on request).
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Mood scale |
Before and after each recital, subjects completed the Profile of Mood
States.4 This includes 65 adjectives
describing feelings and moods, to which participants indicate their
response using a five-point scale. The emotions measured are
tension-anxiety, depression-rejection, anger-hostility,
fatigue, vigour, and confusion-bewilderment.
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Statistical methods | |
We calculated the differences between pre- and post-listening mood
scores and compared the differences between the digital and pipe
instruments using t tests (after checking for normal
distribution). As carryover effects were found to be not
significant, we were able to pool data over the two periods for each
instrument. Pre- and post-music mood scores were compared using a
one-sample t test for each of the instruments and for both
instruments combined. Data were entered and managed in a Microsoft
Access database, and the SPSS statistical package was used for all
analyses.
Ethical approval was given by the University of Adelaide Committee on
the Ethics of Human Experimentation.
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Forty-three subjects completed the study, of whom 23 were women (mean
age of participants, 39 years; range, 22-71 years). There were no
significant demographic differences between the two groups.
When the results for both instruments were analysed, either
separately or combined, we found that our listeners experienced
significant reductions in tension-anxiety,
depression-rejection, anger-hostility and fatigue; however,
there were no significant changes in scores for vigour or
confusion-bewilderment, and no significant differences between
mood changes induced by the pipe organ compared with the digital organ
(see Box 2).
The time at which the music was played did not significantly affect
mood scores (data not shown here). Curiously, however, the group that
attended at the later time of 7 pm recorded lower vigour scores (mean,
-2.1875) after listening to the digital organ, while the 6 pm group had
higher vigour scores (mean, 1.1538) after listening to the same
instrument (P = 0.024). The 7 pm group showed no change in
fatigue scores (mean, 0.0625) after listening to the digital organ,
while the 6 pm group had lower fatigue scores (mean, -2.346) after
listening to the same instrument (P = 0.041).
After completing the last profile at the second session, subjects
were asked, without prior warning, to indicate which instrument they
thought was being played at that session. Responses were no better
than would be expected from random guessing, indicating that
subjects could not distinguish between the two types of organ (  =
0.009; P = 0.48).
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Music played on both pipe and digital organs produced predictable and
desirable mood and emotional responses. It may be that greater
changes would have been seen had subjects been "pre-stressed" by
stressors such as Christmas shopping or finding a parking place in the
Christmas rush. We considered it unnecessary to include a control
group not exposed to music, as the ability of music to alter mood is well
documented.
Both instruments proved equally beneficial in reducing the
distressing emotions commonly present in the pre-Christmas period.
However, our results suggest that feelings of confusion and
bewilderment (such as those accompanying present-choosing) are,
alas, likely to persist; and, while fatigue may be reduced by
listening to music, listeners may not experience increased vigour.
The argument that real pipes are essential for non-musicians to
experience beneficial mood and emotional responses to music should
now be laid to rest. So, while organists may continue to fight to the
death on this issue, financially challenged parishes can safely
install pipeless organs without jeopardising the Christmas
experience for their parishioners or, presumably, their Christmas
collections. Organ music can be highly recommended as a good
treatment for pre-Christmas mood disorders.
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JM (an inept but enthusiastic organist) conceived the study, PS
provided organization and administration, DT psychological
knowledge, CL musical expertise and NC statistics.
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The Pipeless Pipe Organ Company loaned equipment for the study.
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Mark Joyner played the music. Patrick Brislan, of the Elder
Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide, gave invaluable
expert advice.
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emotional content of music. 4th International Conference on Music
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Collier G. Towards a model of music and emotion. 4th International
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Sloboda J. Music structure and emotional response: some empirical
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McKinney C, Antoni M, Kumar M, et al. Effects of guided imagery and
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Bazzanella L, Debiasi G. Electronic organ's sound spatialisation
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McGill University, 1996.
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Department of General Practice, University of Adelaide, Adelaide,
SA.
John E Marley, MD, FRACGP, Professor of General Practice;
Paula Searle, BTeach, BEd, Research Officer;
Nicole L
Chamberlain, BSc (Hons - Statistics), Statistician;
Deborah R Turnbull, PhD, MPsych(Clin), Senior Lecturer;
Catherine M Leahy, BA(Hons - Psychology),
BMus(Composition), Research Officer.
Reprints will not be available from the authors.
Correspondence:
Professor John E Marley, Department of General Practice, University
of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005.
john.marleyATadelaide.edu.au
©MJA 2001
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© 2001 Medical Journal of Australia.
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Fr Peter Thompson playing the pipe organ at St Theodore's Anglican Church, Adelaide (photo courtesy of Wendy Newbury).
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1: Music played
Trumpet Voluntary (Clarke)
Air from the Water Music (Handel)
Rondeau from Abdelazar (Purcell)
An Old English Melody (Wesley, arranged by Floyd)
Canon in D (Pachelbel)
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