Historical listening has long been a topic of interest for musicologists. Yet, little attention has been given to the systematic study of historical listening practices before the common practice era (c. 1700–present). In the first study of its kind, this research compared a model of medieval perceptions of “sweetness” based on writings of medieval music theorists with modern day listeners’ aesthetic responses. Responses were collected through two experiments. In an implicit associations experiment, participants were primed with a more or less consonant musical excerpt, then presented with a sweet or bitter target word, or a non-word, on which to make lexical decisions. In the explicit associations experiment, participants were asked to rate on a three-point Likert scale perceived sweetness of short musical excerpts that varied in consonance and sound quality (male, female, organ). The results from these experiments were compared to predictions from a medieval perception model to investigate whether early and modern listeners have similar aesthetic responses. Results from the implicit association test were not consistent with the predictions of the model, however, results from the explicit associations experiment were. These findings indicate the metaphor of sweetness may be useful for comparing the aesthetic responses of medieval and modern listeners.

中文翻译：

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中世纪和现代音乐聆听中的甜美隐喻

历史聆听一直是音乐学家感兴趣的话题。然而，在普遍实践时代（约 1700 年至今）之前，对历史听力实践的系统研究却很少受到关注。在同类研究中，这项研究将基于中世纪音乐理论家著作的中世纪“甜蜜”感知模型与现代听众的审美反应进行了比较。通过两个实验收集响应。在一个内隐联想实验中，参与者先听一段或多或少辅音的音乐片段，然后向他们展示一个甜美或苦涩的目标词，或一个非词，据此做出词汇决定。在显式关联实验中，参与者被要求以李克特三点量表对在谐和和音质（男性、女性、管风琴）上各不相同的短音乐片段的感知甜度进行评分。将这些实验的结果与中世纪感知模型的预测进行比较，以调查早期和现代听众是否有相似的审美反应。隐式关联测试的结果与模型的预测不一致，但是显式关联实验的结果与模型的预测一致。这些发现表明，甜蜜的隐喻可能有助于比较中世纪和现代听众的审美反应。将这些实验的结果与中世纪感知模型的预测进行比较，以调查早期和现代听众是否有相似的审美反应。隐式关联测试的结果与模型的预测不一致，但是显式关联实验的结果与模型的预测一致。这些发现表明，甜蜜的隐喻可能有助于比较中世纪和现代听众的审美反应。将这些实验的结果与中世纪感知模型的预测进行比较，以调查早期和现代听众是否有相似的审美反应。隐式关联测试的结果与模型的预测不一致，但是显式关联实验的结果与模型的预测一致。这些发现表明，甜蜜的隐喻可能有助于比较中世纪和现代听众的审美反应。