Influence of generalized complexity of a musical event on subjective time estimation

This study examined the variations in the apparent duration of music events produced by differences in their generalized compositional complexity. Stimuli were the first 90 sec. of Gustav Mahler's 3rd Movement of Symphony No. 2 (low complexity) and the first 90 sec. of Luciano Berio's 3rd Movement of Symphony for Eight Voices and Orchestra (high complexity). Berio's symphony is another reading of Mahler's. On the compositional base of Mahler's symphony, Berio explored complexity in several musical elements-temporal (i.e., rhythm), nontemporal (i.e., pitch, orchestral and vocal timbre, texture, density), and verbal (i.e.. text, words, phonemes). These two somewhat differently filled durations were reproduced by 10 women and 6 men with a stopwatch under the prospective paradigm. Analysis showed that the more generalized complexity of the musical event was followed by greater Subjective estimation of the duration of this 90-sec. symphonic excerpt.