If it’s Mozart, it must be good? The influence of textual information and age on musical appreciation

In a framing experiment, 170 participants aged 19-80 years were asked to read a description in the fashion of a program note prior to listening (individually via headphones) to a sinfonia by Josef Myslivecek (1737-1781). Divergent versions of this description were created for treatment manipulation, while the participants were not informed about it. Within a 2 x 2 design the descriptions (a) attributed the musical piece to different composers of highly different prominence and prestige. Half of the participant group was informed that they would be listening to the overture to the pastoral operaAscanio in Albaby Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791), whereas the other half was informed correctly. The composers' names were (b) combined with descriptions that applied either an analytic or expressive writing mode. Subsequently collected ratings for liking and a number of perceived musical characteristics were significantly higher when participants had read the expressive compared with the analytic writing mode. Interestingly, younger adults showed higher liking ratings when the music was attributed to Mozart, whereas no significant differences were found in older adults. In sum, this study supports the notion that being exposed to text information prior to listening to music affects perception and appreciation of musical characteristics.