On the musical sublime: the effects of music on the beauty and sublimity of images

Recent studies have measured the sublime and beautiful in visual images, particularly photographs (Ishizu & Zeki, 2014; Hur, Gerger, Leder, & McManus, 2018). The sublime and beautiful are also often discussed in musicology, although there is no empirical work on how these aesthetic evaluations relate to musical experiences. This research examined the aesthetics of music alone and then the influence of music on the aesthetics of images. The first study explored how mode (major key vs. minor key vs. atonal) and tempo (slow vs. fast) related to the sublime and beautiful in 6-second clips of piano music by Bach, Chopin and Schoenberg. The second study explored the relative influence of visual and auditory components on composite stimuli when the music pieces appeared with photographs. For music alone, mode was the predominant predictor, with sublimity predicted by minor keys, whereas beauty was predicted by major keys. In the combined stimuli, aesthetic valuations of both photographs and music clips predicted the overall evaluation. However, the sublimity and beauty of a composite image were influenced about three times as strongly by the visual component as by the musical component. In both conditions, sublimity and beauty were predicted by different sets of variables, suggesting that although sublimity and beauty may be related, they may ultimately operate on separate mechanisms. The results are also discussed in light of individual differences, and will consider whether some of these findings can be predicted by Big Five personality traits, masculinity-femininity, and empathy.