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were selected, and variations of the original pieces by mode (a piece in major was
also played in minor) and tempo (fast versus slow) were constructed. Clusters of
adjectives were given, and the listeners were instructed to mark adjectives they
found appropriate for each piece of music. Hevner concluded that faster tempi were
associated with happiness, whereas sadness was associated to slow tempi. Rigg
(
1940a
,
b
) studied the effect of music structure including mode and tempo on
emotional responses. Music phrases supposed to express pleasant/happy and sad/
serious emotional states were composed, and they were then systematically mod-
i
ed regarding tempo and mode. The listeners rated their perceived emotion by
choosing between these two categories. The results showed that shifts an octave
upward makes the phrase happier and faster tempo results in happier ratings. Since
these pioneer works, numerous studies demonstrated that mode manipulations are
strongly associated with happiness and sadness, indicating that mode is a reliable
indicator of mood (Peretz et al.
1998
). Even among 8-years-old children, the major
mode is associated with happiness and joy, whereas minor mode is associated with
sadness (Dalla Bella et al.
2001
).
It is generally agreed that music stimulates wide networks across the brain and
that speci
c areas of the brain appear to be involved for the perception of different
aspects of music such as melody, rhythm, and timbre (Zatorre and Samson
1991
,
see also Sect.
6.6
in this chapter). In that vein, Tsang et al. (
2001
) investigated the
effect of mode and tempo separately on music emotion using EEG recordings in the
frontal region. They reported that both tempo and mode in the happier direction
resulted in greater relative left frontal activity, whereas changes in both tempo and
mode in the sadder direction resulted in greater relative right frontal activation, in
agreement with the hemispheric specialization of emotional valence (Davidson
1988
). There are few studies that investigated the effect of mode and tempo on brain
activity using fMRI. Khalfa et al. (
2005
) used the manipulation of mode and tempo
in musical excerpts to test the lateralization of brain regions involved in the rec-
ognition of negatively and positively valenced musical emotion. They found that
the minor mode (sad excerpts) involved the left frontal cortex, which does con
rm
the valence lateralization model. In the same line, Green et al. (
2008
) investigated
the effect of mode on emotional responses to music. Although the reported results
are in some cases contradictive, minor mode melodies were evaluated as sadder
than major melodies and caused increased activity in limbic structure.
6.4.2 Interactive Effects
All the above-described studies investigated the affect of tempo and mode on
musical emotion separately without considering possible interactive effects between
these parameters. Therefore, little is known about how tempo and mode interact.
Scherer and Oshinsky (
1977
) studied emotional responses to musical excerpts with
varying tempo and mode of Beethoven melodies but no interaction effects between
tempo and mode were reported. Husain et al. (
2000
) studied the effect of tempo and
