Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

This profile – or map of the’inner morphology’ of the Brahms movement – is based
on the following analytic procedures:
• Phenomenological description of the movement (Table 8.1)
• Analysis of the musical form (auditory and visually, consulting the score) 56
• Mood Analysis (using Hevner’s ”Mood Wheel”) 57
• Analysis of the image potential. 58
Furthermore I have integrated material from an analysis that was undertaken during a
workshop with 12 music therapy researchers 59 . The participants in this workshop
listened to the Brahms movement without any introductory information about the
music. Individually they chose and worked through one of the following tasks:
• Auditory Analysis of the music (identifying salient musical features)
• Visual Analysis using the score (same purpose as a)
• Mood Analysis (using the Mood wheel)
• Analysis of the image potential (Questionnaire on the character of the
listener’s personal imagery or free indication/suggestion of image potentials)
• Drawing a Mandala (+ comments).
The Intensity Profile is not an exact measurement of any single musical element.
Tension and higher intensity level may be produced by volume (loud music is often,
but not always experienced as more intense than quiet music; crescendos as
intensifying), but also melodic movement and phrasing contributes (ascending
movement often producing tension, descending relaxation), as does mood, texture etc.
It is possible to make an exact graphic representation of the energy and tension level
of the recording (measured in Volts), and the digitized wave-form (DW) profile of the
Brahms recording is presented in Figure 8.4, enabling a visual comparison with the
Intensity Profile:
56 This analysis is integrated in the Intensity Profile. The score used was: Heugel H 31406.
57 Also integrated in the Intensity Profile. Hevner’s Mood Wheel is enclosed as Appendix 8.10.
58 Based on the Phenomenological description and material from the workshop describe in note 4.
59 I would like to thank all participants in my workshop at the Ph.D.-course in Aalborg University,
October 25th, 2003.
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