Classic Express Research project by Ilona Sie Dhian Ho

In a combined qualitative and quantitative research the influence of storytelling in concerts for children is analyzed. In a controlled setting, The Classic Express (mobile concert hall), groups of schoolchildren attend either a concert with or a concert without storytelling. The groups, similar in socio- economic background and age, are compared. In a quantitative research the involved listening, the felt emotional intensity, the interest in classical music and the interest in actively playing an instrument, will be measured. For quantification new grading systems are developed by scientists and musicians in a collaborative process. In a qualitative research on the influence of storytelling the focus is on children with severe learning disorders. The emotional responses of these children in concerts with and without storyelling, and in combination with participatory elements (moving, gestures) are observed by teachers and caretakers, They compare their observations in the concert to the normal behaviour of their pupils. Both Interviews with the teachers and their grading of arousal, attention and emotional levels in the concert will provide data that will be analyzed by the reserachers. This research is the first study of The Classic Expression Research Group, a group of researchers from the Royal Conservatoire and Leiden University, collaborating to provide new insights on the impact of presentation techniques in classical concerts.

Ilja Venema

Latest update 10.1.2022

We have collected our data and are analyzing it now!

We spent 3 days in total conducting our experiments and collecting data at two different schools. Initially the plan was to go to more schools, but due to Covid-complications this was unfortunately not possible. We are very happy that we could still collect as much data as we did and right now, we are processing all collected data from our three experiments so that we can analyze them after.

My research about the perceived emotional intensity of children will be relatively simple to process: we will only look at multiple-choice answers to one question (“How strongly do you feel emotion x?”), which will hopefully allow us to also look in more detail. I hope to not only see if there is a significant effect of storytelling, but I am also curious to see if the story helps to immediately engage more with the music (looking at measurements done at the beginning of pieces), if the story generates overall higher emotions and if the story helps to stay longer emotionally involved with the piece (which we can see by looking at the end of pieces).

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