Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker…Science has found the formula

Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker

Why does Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ make everyone cry? Science has found the formula

 

By MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF

The Wall Street Journal (illustration) Associated Press (photo); Universal Music Publishing (score)Adele slightly modulates her pitch at the end of some long notes, adding to the tension.

On Sunday night, the British singer-songwriter Adele is expected to sweep the Grammys. Three of her six nominations are for her rollicking hit “Rolling in the Deep.” But it’s her ballad “Someone Like You” that has risen to near-iconic status recently, due in large part to its uncanny power to elicit tears and chills from listeners. The song is so famously sob-inducing that “Saturday Night Live” recently ran a skit in which a group of co-workers play the tune so they can all have a good cry together.

Adele, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter performed “Someone Like You” from her latest album “21″ at WSJ Cafe

What explains the magic of Adele’s song? Though personal experience and culture play into individual reactions, researchers have found that certain features of music are consistently associated with producing strong emotions in listeners. Combined with heartfelt lyrics and a powerhouse voice, these structures can send reward signals to our brains that rival any other pleasure.

Twenty years ago, the British psychologist John Sloboda conducted a simple experiment. He asked music lovers to identify passages of songs that reliably set off a physical reaction, such as tears or goose bumps. Participants identified 20 tear-triggering passages, and when Dr. Sloboda analyzed their properties, a trend emerged: 18 contained a musical device called an “appoggiatura.”

An appoggiatura is a type of ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. “This generates tension in the listener,” said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. “When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good.”

Chills often descend on listeners at these moments of resolution. When several appoggiaturas occur next to each other in a melody, it generates a cycle of tension and release. This provokes an even stronger reaction, and that is when the tears start to flow.

“Someone Like You,” which Adele wrote with Dan Wilson, is sprinkled with ornamental notes similar to appoggiaturas. In addition, during the chorus, Adele slightly modulates her pitch at the end of long notes right before the accompaniment goes to a new harmony, creating mini-roller coasters of tension and resolution, said Dr. Guhn.

To learn more about the formula for a tear-jerker, a few years ago Dr. Guhn and his colleague Marcel Zentner found musical excerpts—from Mendelssohn’s “Trio for Piano” and Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” for example—that reliably produce the chills and then measured the physiological reactions (heart rate, sweating, goose bumps) of listeners.

Chill-provoking passages, they found, shared at least four features. They began softly and then suddenly became loud. They included an abrupt entrance of a new “voice,” either a new instrument or harmony. And they often involved an expansion of the frequencies played. In one passage from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 (K. 488), for instance, the violins jump up one octave to echo the melody. Finally, all the passages contained unexpected deviations in the melody or the harmony. Music is most likely to tingle the spine, in short, when it includes surprises in volume, timbre and harmonic pattern.

“Someone Like You” is a textbook example. “The song begins with a soft, repetitive pattern,” said Dr. Guhn, while Adele keeps the notes within a narrow frequency range. The lyrics are wistful but restrained: “I heard that you’re settled down, that you found a girl and you’re married now.” This all sets up a sentimental and melancholy mood.

When the chorus enters, Adele’s voice jumps up an octave, and she belts out notes with increasing volume. The harmony shifts, and the lyrics become more dramatic: “Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.”

Adele, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter performed “Rolling In The Deep” from her latest album “21″ at WSJ Cafe

When the music suddenly breaks from its expected pattern, our sympathetic nervous system goes on high alert; our hearts race and we start to sweat. Depending on the context, we interpret this state of arousal as positive or negative, happy or sad.

If “Someone Like You” produces such intense sadness in listeners, why is it so popular? Last year, Robert Zatorre and his team of neuroscientists at McGill University reported that emotionally intense music releases dopamine in the pleasure and reward centers of the brain, similar to the effects of food, sex and drugs. This makes us feel good and motivates us to repeat the behavior.

Measuring listeners’ responses, Dr. Zatorre’s team found that the number of goose bumps observed correlated with the amount of dopamine released, even when the music was extremely sad. The results suggest that the more emotions a song provokes—whether depressing or uplifting—the more we crave the song.

With “Someone Like You,” Adele and Mr. Wilson not only crafted a perfect tear-jerker but also stumbled upon a formula for commercial success: Unleash the tears and chills with small surprises, a smoky voice and soulful lyrics, and then sit back and let the dopamine keep us coming back for more.

—Ms. Doucleff is a scientific editor at the journal Cell.

LEONARDO LIVE

Beginning February 16, 2012, art lovers around the world will be able to experience LEONARDO LIVE, a satellite-delivered HD presentation of the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan”, captured at the U.K. National Gallery.

LEONARDO LIVE offers an unprecedented opportunity for audiences worldwide to experience these da Vinci works. The historic exhibition is sold out in London and, due to the fragility of the paintings, the exhibition cannot tour.

After limited screenings in the UK in November 2011, an expanded presentation of LEONARDO LIVE featuring bonus content will be available at movie theaters around the world, in limited screenings only.

I’ve just paid for my ticket! Cant wait to experience a very special cinematic presentation of da Vinci’s works at my local theatre, The Penthouse, in Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand.

This never-before-seen exhibition brings together the largest number of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings ever assembled in one collection. Oh, what I would have given to have been able to see the originals at the sold out exhibition in in London.

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-painter-at-the-court-of-milan

beautiful music, divine paintings

Art and Healing: Why We Create

I came across this post in Shelf Awareness for Readers by –Naomi Benaron, author of Running the Rift (Algonquin, January 17, 2012)  who writes about the power of art to heal.

Recently, I attended a genocide conference that included a film called Beyond the Deadly Pit, produced and directed by Rwandan genocide survivor Gilbert Ndahayo. It documents confronting his father’s killer during gacaca, the traditional court used to try “lesser” perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.

Ndahayo said, “If one wants to be healed from the sickness, he must talk about it to the world.

For 12 years, I lived with the remains of about 200 unpeaceful dead in my parents’ backyard.”

I found the film so profoundly moving that I could not rise from my chair. Even now, writing this, I cannot prevent the tears.

During the post-film q&a, I asked Ndahayo if making the film had facilitated healing. He said simply, “No.”

And yet, he made the film, and he continues to make films. Why? Why does anyone who has lived through unspeakable horrors decide to shape these events into art? Why do those of us who have not lived them still feel compelled to give them voice?

Perhaps the answer is that it is not a choice; it feels as necessary as drawing breath or putting one foot in front of the other.

To find out how artistic expression provided nourishment, strength and hope, read the rest of the article here>>

 

Does art need bankers?

As Italy’s new technocratic government struggled to its feet, 100 financiers, entrepreneurs, collectors, curators, dealers and academics gathered in Florence for a private conference on the future of art and finance

By Robert Hewison. Web only
Published online: 24 November 2011

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Does+art+need+bankers%3F/25124

Follow the money: Andy Warhol’s “Dollar Sign” paintings

Not since Damien Hirst cleared £111m from his solo Sotheby’s sale as Lehman Brothers went down in September 2008, setting off the financial crisis that still afflicts us, has there been a more powerful conjunction of art, money and events. Last month, as Italy’s new technocratic government struggled to its feet, 100 financiers, entrepreneurs, collectors, curators, dealers and academics gathered at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence for a private conference on the future of art and finance. The Governor of the Bank England, Mervyn King, senior figures from the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve, the Swiss National Bank, the CEO of Sotheby’s, Bill Ruprecht, former Guggenheim Director Thomas Krens, now running his own Global Cultural Asset Management, were just some of the influential people prepared to spend 24 hours sharing their financial wisdom and their concern for art.

The cue was, appropriately, a striking new show at the Palazzo Strozzi, “Money and Beauty. Bankers, Botticelli, and the Bonfire of the Vanities”. Its blunt opening statement, “No Bankers. No Renaissance”, was a suitable subtext to the forum organised by the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation’s dynamic director, James Bradburne. The show elegantly told the story of the rise of Florence as a financial centre and its parallel flowering as a centre for art. There was no doubt here about the meeting of art and money, but the glowering portrait of the doomed priest, Savonarola, was a reminder that the Medici faced their crises too. Florence invented the letter of exchange, a complex financial derivative and a way to get round the Church’s view that making money out of money was usury—a thought powerfully resonant today.

Since this was a closed conference under Chatham House rules, I can’t report who said what, but just as Florence is no longer the cultural and financial powerhouse it was in the 15th century, there was concern that today financial and cultural power is on the move from the West to the East. China has become the largest market for art, both indigenous and Western, but the Gulf, India, Singapore, and Taiwan also have cash and cultural power. There was much debate as to whether financial centres necessarily became cultural centres, but the consensus was, in the words of one delegate who certainly knew what he was talking about, “art tracks money and power”. Abu Dhabi’s plans may be on hold, but there is no doubt about the rise of China.

This was confirmed by the Beijing collector Li Guochang, owner of the private Wall Art Museum and the suitably named Art Bank magazine. We had already been told of the Chinese government’s cultural industry reform plan, launched earlier this year as a “a new pillar industry”, intended to more than double the contribution of their cultural industries to 5% of China’s GDP by 2016. There was some scepticism about the conditions for creativity in China—the case of Ai Weiwei was raised—but at least one Asian delegate was ready to challenge “the cultural arrogance in the room”. Market success was no guarantee of artistic quality (Damien Hirst’s reputation had been much debated), and in any case Western models were not automatically the right ones.

Although there was evident anxiety about China, there appeared to be a certain complacency about arrangements in the West. There was little questioning of how the international art market actually worked. But there was one delegate ready to be a Savonarola, and to go on the record as one. The fact that the Swiss-based Bijan Kherzi is both a financier and an enthusiastic collector of contemporary art gave a weight to his words that academic critics cannot claim. In Kherzi’s view the art world “has been hijacked by the very same forces that poisoned the world of finance: herding, greed, and short-termism leading to asset inflation, market collusion, lack of substance and too many self-possessed individuals”.

Several collectors made it clear they collected for love, not investment, but the presence of so many money men may explain why the discussion devoted to public funding for culture—revealingly framed as “How can public funding support private investment in the arts?”—did not get very far. The consensus was that government funding is in unavoidable decline, and that calls for new models. This was an opportunity for James Bradburne to point to the unique position in Italy of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation itself. Founded in 2006, it is a public/private partnership between the City and Province of Florence, the Chamber of Commerce, and a group of private funders, set up to reanimate the exhibition spaces and outreach programmes at the Palazzo Strozzi, which also houses three other cultural institutions. Bradburne stressed that, unusually for Italy, the Foundation operates at arm’s length from its public funders, as a cultural laboratory for the city.

There is, of course, a subtext to this as well. Florence has been losing market share as a tourist destination, and it is the city’s mission to improve the life of its citizens by moving away from the mass-tourism that so afflicts Venice. By making the city better for those who live there, visitors will want to stay longer, and return more often.

The Palazzo Strozzi Foundation—which also has a challenging contemporary exhibition, “Declining Democracy: Rethinking Democracy Between Utopia and Participation”—is on a mission to put Florence back on the map. This was impressively demonstrated by a banquet at the Palazzo Vecchio to celebrate the decision of the trustees of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, USA, to present their first Renaissance Man of the Year Award to Ted Turner. Turner, the founder of CNN, the man who paid America’s dues to the United Nations, the sailor, restaurant-chain owner and protector of the bison, made a passionate attack on the global military budget, called for “a new Renaissance” of ecological wisdom, and ended by serenading us with “My Old Kentucky Home”. One wonders what Savonarola would have made of that.

The writer is professor of cultural policy and leadership studies at City University, London

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Comments

28 Nov 11
17:53 CET

FLOYD CODLIN, LONDON

The short answer is “Art is going backwards if it has to solely rely on bankers”. The longer answer is to say that in the past, certainly from medieval times at least, the ruling elites would commission works of art as a means of trying to gain immortality and appease god (s). However, while leaving us with an historic legacy almost beyond dreams is also dependent upon, by its nature the caprice of patronage. As John Cleese said to a churchman on a late night chat show, when discussing whether “Life of Brian” was blasphemous…”In the past, we would not be having this debate, as by now I’d have been burn at the stake for this…I rather think that we’ve moved on since then”…

27 Nov 11
18:55 CET

CRAIG MATTOLI, GUANGZHOU, CHINA

As far as China becoming the center of either the art or the financial world, I would say it’s not going to happen, in either case, and I have had a career in finance for over three decades, have been collecting art for five decades, and have an art business and teach finance at university, in China, for the last decade. One cannot mandate by government decree, either of these things. One important ingredient, missing on both counts, is ethics. In art, here, dealers, auction houses and artists are more into the money, in many many cases, than the art. The gov has made several “art districts”, here, but they all fail. We are making one, now by organic means, which is working. There is lack of experience. Due to space constraints, I must be brief. For finance, more than ethics is involved: it requires fair play, open information flow, as well, which is very lacking. I will end with: art has always needed “patrons”. I bought art before I had money, bought a lot more when I had it.

26 Nov 11
23:46 CET

MIGUEL ESPEL, MADRID

very interesting article

26 Nov 11
16:34 CET

JANET, MINNEAPOLIS

As long as art is simply a commodity to be traded on the market, the true value of any particular work will always be suspect. Like other commodities, art, too, has its bubbles. The wealthy just follow the dealers, and the dealers follow the money. That’s the dirty side of art.

24 Nov 11
18:53 CET

PHILLIP H GEORGE, JONESVILLE NC

Thank you for the news, I found the article to be very informative & well written, Best Regards, PHG

How to see the world as an artist and get closer to your authentic self

“I have always been able to see what others were unable to see; and what they did, I did not see.” ~ Salvador Dali

Several years ago while in New York I stumbled on a book that was to change my life – “Psychic living: tap into your psychic potential” by Andrei Ridgeway.

“In this technological day and age filled with busywork, ” he writes, “many of us neglect our psychic potential. Our instincts are repressed and our inner voices buried….”

“…For many, the word “psychic” is so big, so titanic, they can’t accept it. They don’t realize it is a normal state of being, that as a lover, and a friend, we use this part of ourselves all the time.”

Today as I continued to feel my way toward my preferred future, my true path with heart, and needing a boost I decided to try one of the exercises in the book – evoking the seer.

“For an artist, whatever, he is looking at has meaning. He doesn’t need to use the word “clairvoyant, ” because the whole universe is holy. Whether it be a spirit that appears out of thin air, or a piece of fruit on the table, it has soul,” he writes. Then he encourages us to see the world as an artist and expand our vision to see into other times and places. “It is a wake up exercise, like a cup of coffee for the eyes.”

Seeing exercise

Try Andrei’s exercise – I just did and it was extra-ordinary! (I’ve posted my experience at the end of this entry)

Step one Go to a bookstore, library, art gallery or museum and visit the art section. You can make it a filed trip with a friend or lover. Give yourself time. Pretend you are living in the Renaissance, before the invention of People Magazine, when art mattered. Go through the books as if you have never seen any of those painters before, and be especially open to painters whose work you have never seen before. If you have not been in the painting world for a while and feel the need for a starting point, try one of these artists: Salvador Dali, Alexx Grey (especially his book Soul Mirrors), Georgia O’keefe, or Claude Monet.

The books that you are drawn to will contain images and colours that resonate with your soul. Go through the pages/view the paintings at a leisurely speed. When you find a painting that really moves you, that stirs your optic cells, sit there and stare at it for a while. Let the light and the colour fill you up.

Step two Write a paragraph about your favourite painting, why it touched you, what is was about it that awakened your soul, Write stream of consciousness (IE just free write without “thinking”) I liked the painting because it made me think of god and being a little kid and no end to wonder with yellow warmth and excitement in my belly. Let your pen go wild. No censorship.

Step three When you enter back into reality – your home, office, or the coffee shop next door – see if you can perceive in the objects and people around you the same level of beauty you saw in the painting. Rarely do painters create strictly from the unconscious. Most of them combine their hidden selves with the world around them, blending  spirit with matter int heir own masterful way. See what it feels like to perceive life through this double lens, to bring your soul vision into the mundane, to see in the face of a stranger the same wonder and intensity that lived in the painting.

If the painting you chose was famous, buy yourself a print and put it somewhere in your home. It will act as a reminder of how your soul sees the world, keeping your eyes attuned to beauty as you pass through the day.”

(excerpt from “Psychic living: tap into your psychic potential” by Andrei Ridgeway, pg 43)

Seeing Cass

Leap Away Girl 1969, Ian Scott

Today I went to Te Papa and after wandering around the many walls of art this painting “Leap Away Girl” by Ian Scott immediately called to me.

Here’s what I wrote:

“Fresh yellow greens, clear blue sky and white puffy clouds – the colours call to me as does the name of the painting – Leap Away Girl. “go follow your dreams” the painting called, “look to the horizons and keep following your dreams, allow the fresh, invigorating colours of nature to guide and inspire you – the red energy of passion and goals, of motivation; green the energy of pastures news, of the heart chakra, of feeling energetic and alive, connected to nature, of following the seasons; blue the colour of peace and calm of warm days and summer skies of mother earth and the heavens that envelope her; white the colour of purity, marriage, union, partnership and marriage – contracts of love.”

The energy and vitality of the painting arrests me, stops me in my tracks, draws me deeper still – it’s joyful, hopeful, sensual, expectant. The curvy shapes of the clouds in the sky and of the hills – dancing, playful, irregular, creative, uniform – heralding surprises, defying expectations.

“Let go. Let live. Follow your dreams,” it challenges and encourages me. Allow the green of the heart – of courage and positive emotion, growth and renewal to nurture you; the blue of the horizon and sea to guide you – to flow like their currents to distant shores and new memories awaiting. The white of the clouds to soften your fears to life you higher still.“

Now that I am back at the office the painting lives inside me still, whispering to and challenging my soul. I have printed out a copy of the painting and placed it on my inspiration wall, saved it as my screen saver, and pasted it in my inspiration journal. I see myself in the image of the girl – colourful, jubilant, happy beyond belief. It reminds me of my dream “I dream I am on vacation, it’s the perfect career for me.” – taken from a song by the Eagles. And of my morphing back toward art, writing, photography and photo journalism – and there on my business card for all to see is a reminder: cassandra gaisford Artist, life coach, author, photojournalist”

“Art washed from the soul the dust  of everyday life.” Pablo Picasso
Try this exercise yourself – I’d love to hear how awakening the seer within transforms your life.

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The world of art “discovery”

I came across this fantastic article while researching my novel. I have been reading Philip Mould’s book Sleuth and am completely absorbed by it so it was lovely to see this post. I can’t begin to imagine his excitement.

PHILIP MOUND: A fascinating story.

Filed under: Art and Sculpture — tmooresr @ 11:49 am

The world of art “discovery”

Thomas Moore   email:  TMooreSr@me.com    Telephone:  801.791.9918

http://www.londonconnection.com

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