Kate Hevner's Adjective Circle

This was my 2nd (or 3) papers for Dr. Thornton's class. It seems like there might be a chapter/article/or something of Hevner somewhere in there. Excuse the errors. ~Dan

Kate Hevner: Studies utilizing the adjective circle

Daniel John Shevock

Penn State

MUS ED 545: Psychological Foundations of Musical Behavior

Introduction

            For music educators, the music psychologist, researcher, and creator of the adjective circle, Kate Hevner Mueller (1898-1984) contributed extensively to our understanding of emotion in music. A prolific scholar, she developed tests measuring music discrimination, musical concepts, and attitude toward music (Ollen, 2013), wrote on music appreciation (Hevner, 1934), studied musical taste (Mueller & Hevner, 1942), and wrote on experiences of women in education (Mueller, 1954). While her contribution to music education was robust and varied, it was her adjective circle that initially interested me in her.

            She was born to a Presbyterian minister and a teacher in Pennsylvania, either Westmoreland (Kate Mueller papers, 1999), or Sunbury (Ollen, 2013). According to Ollen, Hevner was the second of three children, graduated from Wilson College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1920, Columbia University with a Master of Arts in 1923, and the University of Chicago in 1928 with a Doctor of Philosophy. At Columbia, Hevner studied with the foremost educational thinker of the early 20^th century and father of experiential education, John Dewey, but was not impressed with his teaching style; “Dewey was bewildering to me, for he sat at his desk with his hand over his mouth, talking, or rather rambling and rambling, or so it seemed to me. I enjoyed the assigned readings and somehow got through the course, but I must admit I never could follow the lectures” (Hevner as quoted in Ollen, 2013). Ultimately, she decided to have another professor supervise her master’s thesis, but found the work “discouraging.”

            Hevner had a more positive experience at the University of Chicago due to smaller classes, which she found more pleasant and intellectually stimulating. Additionally, Hevner found, “there were no rules for graduate students, and I enjoyed that very much” (as quoted in Ollen, 2013). Ollen suggested Hevner put in long hours working with her doctoral advisor, L. L. Thurstone, and completed an 11 page doctoral thesis entitled An Empirical Study of Three Psychophysical Methods.

            Hevner became a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, where she worked between 1929 and 1935. At Minnesota she perceived an overwhelming pressure to produce and publish research, while teaching skills, teaching experimental psychology to undergraduates, were not valued. Hevner published 14 articles during these six years. While on a Carnegie Committee for the Study and Advancement of the Teaching of the Arts grant to study music appreciation testing at the University of Oregon in 1931, Hevner met her future husband, John Henry Mueller. She seemed to be attracted to him primarily because she and he argued about the nature of beauty in art. When John accepted a post as Associate Professor in Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Kate followed where she was the Dean of Women from 1937 to 1947, senior counselor for women from 1947 to 1949, and Associate Professor, and later Full Professor of Education from 1949 to her retirement in 1969 (Ollen, 2013). According to the author, Hevner served as the President of the Esthetics Division of the American Psychological Association, and was named one of the 70 women most qualified to serve as vice-president of the United State in 1959.

The Affective Character of Major and Minor Modes in Music

            Conducted in 1935, The Affective Character of Major and Minor Mode in Music, was a precursor to Hevner’s adjective circle. It utilized an adjective checklist. In this study, Hevner (1935) wanted to know: “(1) whether the historically affirmed characteristics of major and minor modes are apparent to listeners and (2) if they are, to what extent the recognition of these characteristics depends on training in music, on intelligence, or on the talent measured by the Seashore tests” (p. 103). Hevner identified several problems with research that had been done up to that point regarding major and minor modes and music perception. Because such research had used small melodies, taken out of context, Hevner believed “the stimuli cannot be regarded as music” (p. 105), were not musically expressive, and that music requires more than a single moment to be comprehended by listeners. She used a number of compositions for the study – written by Schumann, Rameau, Arensky, Bach, Beethoven, Durand, and Gluck – and arranged them for piano in both major and minor keys. This checklist (see figure 1) emerges in the next study (Hevner, 1936) as the adjective circle.

Figure 1: From Hevner’s (1935) adjective checklist – a precursor to the adjective circle

            As can be seen in the checklist, Hevner began categorizing the adjectives into groups. Hevner (1935) found that historically affirmed characteristics of major and minor were prevalent in the adjectives circled by participants. She also found that training, musical ability using the Seashore tests, and intelligence were influential in discriminating moods, but not essential.

Experimental Studies of the Elements of Expression in Music

Figure 2: Hevner’s (1936) adjective circle

            This study, Experimental Studies of the Elements of Expression in Music, conducted in 1936 seems to be Hevner’s first use of the adjective circle. In this study, she looks at three additional variables; melodic line, rhythmic motion, and harmony. She posits that many factors affect meaning in music: “the form and structure of the music itself, the attitude of the listeners, their previous experience, their training, talent and temperament, and their momentary mood and physiological condition” (Hevner, 1936, p. 247). With these wide-ranging factors affecting music meaning, Hevner began the article laying out methodological requirements for research into the psychology of music; the researcher must utilize real music rather than musical elements out of context, the researcher must be aware of the cumulative effect – “to choose those elements which involve successive moments of time, such as rhythm and tempo, rather than intervals and chords” (p. 248), and to look at the movement of chords instead of triads in isolation.

            Following the research method utilized in Hevner’s (1935) previous study, Hevner (1936) had 66 participants check adjectives appropriate to the music as they listened (see figure 2). Using these first 66 participants, she formulated the adjective circle among these participants’ answers and then by consulting the participants’ understandings:

… it was a simple matter to tabulate all of the votes for one adjective… or for all the compositions which are alike in certain respects. Then, by comparing the numbers of votes for different adjectives, the meanings or affective characteristics of the compositions could be ascertained. (p. 249)

In contrast to the previous study in which she used piano arrangements, Hevner (1936) used Victor recordings for this next leg of the study: Debusy’s Reflection on the Water, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Scherzo, Paganini’s Etude in E Flat Major, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, and Wagner’s Lohengrin, Prelude to Act III. In this leg of the study there were 52 participants. Each participants checked as many or few of the adjectives as seemed appropriate – most participants checked six or more.

Hevner (1936) felt this part of the study was successful in distinguishing affective moods within the entire compositions, and thought “the same process has been applied also to the study of the affective character of certain elements of musical structure” (p. 254). She isolated elements between two participant groups, arranging each piece so that only one element is different. The same pianist performed all compositions. Within six compositions, Hevner changed the rhythm, and within nine she changed the melodic rising and falling. She found that major and minor were the most significant with major “strongly associated with happiness, gayety, playfulness and sprightliness, and the minor with sadness, and with sentimental yearnings, tender effects” (p. 264). Many other adjectives on the circle were expressed equally well in multiple modes. She also found that melody is less important than harmony to affect answers on the adjective circle. Certain rhythms can also make compositions more serious, dignified, and vigorous.

The Affective Value of Pitch and Tempo in Music

            In The Affective Value of Pitch and Tempo in Music, Hevner (1937a) continued her exploration of musical moods through the adjective circle. The fast tempos she studied had means of 102, 104, 112, and 152 beats per minute, while the slow tempos had 63, 72, and 80. She found that tempo plays a great role than pitch. “It yields majorities on all groups and its effects are clear-cut and consistent. Modality is perhaps second in important, although its general usefulness is not comparable to that of either pitch or rhythm since its effects are severely limited to four of the adjective groups: happy, sad, humorous and sentimental” (p. 625).

An Experimental Study of the Affective Value of Sound in Poetry

            Finally, Hevner (1937b) used the adjective circle to describe emotion in poetry. She thought that poetry research had looked at three main areas; poetic image/idea, poetic sounds/formal elements in poetry, and relationships between formal sounds and thinking. “There must be some sort of system, some orderly scheme for using sounds to enhance meaning with such glorious effectiveness” (p. 420). The purpose for this study was to examine the grammar of the poetic language, and to find an fundamental system which is commonly understood. The elements of poetry Hevner isolated within four “nonsense” (p. 434) poems were; vowel sounds, consonant sounds, meter, and voice inflection. She recorded the poems and had participants listen to phonographs and circle adjectives on the adjective circle. The adjective circle for this study was the same circle used in her previous research. She found that meter had the most effect upon meaning with consonant sounds, voice inflection, and vowel sounds being consecutively less effective.

Conclusions

            My interest in studying Kate Hevner arose from my dual interest in emotions in music and my interest in female music educators in our gendered history. Her line of research was quantitative-experimental, but seemed to respect the holistic nature of music as a social activity more than other researchers of that era. For instance, while Seashore’s examinations were isolated sounds which ultimately showed more benefit in identifying people with potential to learn Morse code than music, Hevner seemed aware of music’s nature as a complete activity that is too often examined out of context.  In a time when isolating elements was the popular research paradigm, she made an effort to understand emotions to music in context while retaining her quantitative research beliefs. Though this study focused on the adjective circle, future studies might look at her writings on musical taste and music appreciation. She also wrote on women in education. Her studies were steeped in Western Art Music, and further research using the adjective circle to understand world music, jazz, or popular music might be interesting.

References

Hevner, K. (1934). Appreciation of music and tests for the appreciation of music. Studies in the Appreciation of Art, 4(6), 83-151.

Hevner, K. (1935). The affective character of major and minor modes in music. The American Journal of Psychology, 47(1), 103-118.

Hevner, K. (1936). Experimental studies of the elements of expression in music. The American Journal of Psychology, 48(2), 246-268.

Hevner, K. (1937a). The affective value of pitch and tempo in music. The American Journal of Psychology, 49(4), 621-630.

Hevner, K. (1937b). An experimental study of the affective value of sound in poetry. The American Journal of Psychology, 43(3), 419-434.

Kate Mueller papers (1999). Collection C170, Indiana University Archives. Retrieved March 16, 2013 from http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/findingaids/archives/InU-Ar-VAA2655.

Mueller, J. H. & Hevner, K. (1942). Trends in musical taste, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Publications.

Mueller, K. H. (1954). Educating women for a changing world, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Ollen, J. (2013). Kate Hevner Mueller (1898-1984), Ohio State University School of Music. Retrieved March 16, 2013 from http://www.musiccog.ohio-state.edu/Music829F/Biographies/Hevner.html.