The Emperor’s New Clothes and Your Health

Disclaimer: This article is also intended for classical musicians, music lovers, and anyone interested in conformist tendencies in other fields. Therefore, I tried to avoid jargon and to simplify some scientific concepts and findings as much as possible. For instance, while pleasure (liking) and appreciation (interest, attractiveness) might sound the same to laypeople, they are distinct aesthetic responses¹. I chose, however, to use them interchangeably so as to avoid confusion after speaking with some musicians. Indeed, most empirical research focuses primarily on pleasure to capture our aesthetic experiences². Finally, I didn’t strictly follow citation rules. For ease of reading, I used superscript numbers, but the citations at the end are in APA style.

All other forms of perception divide a man, because they are exclusively based either on the sensuous or on the intellectual part of his being; only the perception of the Beautiful makes something whole of him, because both his natures must accord with it.

— Schiller, 1793–1795, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, p. 138, Letter 27

 

Why This Article Matters

You might wonder about the relevance of this article to you, as I, a concert pianist, delve into the culture behind contemporary classical music to describe a social phenomenon similar to ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’: Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale that critiques human susceptibility to influence through fear of social judgement and pressure, and the desire for conformity. If we look closely, however, this phenomenon can be observed in many other fields, including visual arts, academia, politics, and even science. Furthermore, I propose that certain behavioural patterns associated with this phenomenon could be detrimental to our well-being.

 

Background: Two Real Stories

It was the summer of 1981 in Ireland.

A group of exceptional Hungarian musicians was invited to tour the country to celebrate the centenary year of Béla Bartók, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.

In Dublin, as an encore, Gabor Takács-Nagy (violin), Kálmán Berkes (clarinet), and Zoltán Kocsis (pianist/conductor/composer) announced that they would play a work by John Duma, who had turned 40 that day and who, though not internationally known, was a fabulous Hungarian composer.

Gabor Takács-Nagy, a wonderful conductor and the founder of the Takács Quartet, recalls: “The first movement was quite abstract; the second was titled ‘Hallucination’, very soft and requiring me to knock on the soundboard; and the third movement was unbelievably wild.”

The audience expressed their appreciation for John Duma’s work.

Similarly, the Irish Times hailed the encore piece the next day, proclaiming, “John Duma is a name to be remembered. His second movement was especially memorable, almost post- Webernian.”

Due to the complexity and originality of the composition, all three musicians were glued to their scores. Even Zoltán Kocsis, the pianist known for his phenomenal memory, asked for a page-turner. The musicians had the humility to admit the extent to which they had had to rehearse to nail each movement’s beginning and end.

Despite the media frenzy, the tragic news of John Duma, a name to be remembered, remains only within a tight circle of musicians. We wonder what happened to this hugely gifted composer. An early demise? Or a complete mental breakdown?

Regrettably, John Duma was as real as the Yeti, Bigfoot, or Loch Ness monster. The composer was an invention* of the three brilliant musicians, whose purpose was to emphasise the absurdity of much of contemporary classical music culture – a point they triumphantly made.

Similarly, I, a concert pianist and the author of this piece, also engaged in my share of musical rebellion when I was a carefree student.

I was once asked to tour with a group who had been billed to play a new work. Upon cursory examination of the score, it became clear that it would be safe to fake, as NOBODY would be able to make any sense of the piece. From the first rehearsal onwards, with the composer conducting the piece, I simply had to ensure I entered and finished at crucial moments while looking inspired and transported to an ethereal world.

The composer/conductor never ceased to praise my superb performances.

In fact, my “superb performance” during the entire tour was to ask out a lovely guy, which turned out to be, satisfyingly, fruitful. But that is another story…

 

Unveiling the Emperor’s New Clothes in Music

According to research, listening to music is rated among the ten most pleasurable activities in life³, and is regarded as a universally beloved and popular activity ⁴. But what were the inclusion/exclusion criteria of musical genres? Classical? Jazz? Pop? Would you say listening to the descriptions below could be considered a beloved activity?

• An arbitrary burst of painful clusters of notes
• Excruciating, screeching glissandos in strings
• A pianist bashing the keys with his/her arms
• Wind players blowing their instruments until their brains fry

 

I doubt any participants, including the majority of highly trained classical musicians, would enjoy listening to those incomprehensible sounds. Described by George Malcolm, superb harpsichordist and musician, as sonics, you’d be surprised to learn that we have a colourful array of such auditory experiments that are packaged with fancy labels**.

Sonics are characterised by the abandonment of all recognisable landmarks, whether a hierarchy of intervals based on nature’s series of overtones, or tonality, or harmony, or rhythm, or identifiable structure, and so on. Not even the leitmotif (a recurring theme of music), let alone a melody, is allowed. In consequence, sonics are at odds with other musical genres, such as classical, jazz, pop, and film music, in that they alienate us by rejecting the constituents and rules of music that evolved over millennia.

Hats off to the sophisticated elites who apparently recognise the significance of these cutting-edge compositional techniques!** The rest of us seem to have an irreversible handicap in understanding the oft-talked-about greatness of sonics.

I want to ask sonics enthusiasts whether they are aware that their support for the esteemed auditory experiments is equivalent to some people claiming to understand a book written without grammar, syntax, or vocabulary! Inventing new “words” by combining the letters according to their own rules is tantamount to building another Tower of Babel. I am curious to know how anyone could understand what cannot be understood.

Regrettably, this culture has infiltrated musical society and is widely shared by composers, performers, concert promoters, critics, and audiences, perplexed though they may be.

 

What I am Proposing Now and Why

I mentioned above that the constituents or building blocks of music – rules and structure – can be observed in all musical genres, sonics apart. These include structure, melody, tonality, harmony, and metre, which combine to ensure an element of predictability.

Without building blocks, there will be an irrefutable sense of alienation – precisely what sonics “communicates”!

So, how does predictability influence our experiences of pleasure when listening to music?:

Experts in the field propose⁵ that the enjoyment of music is associated with intense feelings of anticipation and expectation⁶, driven by the neurotransmitter, dopamine, in an area buried deep in the brain called the caudate nucleus^7,8 . To elaborate, we experience pleasure through a mechanism called prediction errors⁵, which is an appraisal system that examines the degree to which music fulfils or violates our expectations/anticipations.

Simply put, we experience pleasure when the music conforms to what we know, i.e., the established musical rules and structures we are familiar with. Apparently, we expect certain aspects of music, such as harmony, metre, rhythm, and tonality, within a few seconds of listening to a piece without any conscious effort⁹. Here, I refer to the general public without a particular musical education or background.

But, listen – this is the fascinating part: we humans seem to have innate, biologically driven, default auditory expectations, such as pitch, volume and the quality of sound, as evidenced in newborn babies¹⁰, and even during the foetal period¹¹.

I experienced this first-hand. My last recital before my daughter was born included the sublime Brahms’ d-minor violin/piano sonata. Just before her birth, a student played the same piece. During the second movement, my daughter moved wildly, almost dancing, as if she recognised the music. She stopped as soon as the movement ended. I admit this is an idiosyncratic sample, of course.

Like many aspects of life, interdependent pleasure/predictability follows the Goldilocks principle⁵: neither too much nor too little, but just the right amount of violations to what we are familiar with. If we could predict every piece of music, our lives would be dreary. Indeed, a small surprise can lead to greater pleasure⁵. Conversely, if we cannot make sense of what we hear, our brains shut down, indicating cognitive overload or disengagement. This occurs when we encounter stimuli that are abstruse and too alienating to disentangle or process, thus depriving us of appreciation and pleasure⁵.

To appreciate and enjoy music, we need familiar building blocks to appraise whether we can relate to what we hear. Undoubtedly, our cognitive schemas*** for musical predictability differ based on background, education, and exposure. Whatever the size of our individual “musical bank”, we need to consult and rely on these schemas to make sense of the music, which will then enable us to connect, enjoy, and find meaning in the experience.

 

Current Understanding of Brain Activities in Different Listening Conditions

At this juncture, one key question arises: What is the source of the appreciation and pleasure to which the sonics devotees lay claim? Current scientific findings in hedonic studies suggest that there is no discernible correlation between such auditory experiments per se and pleasure. Furthermore, I propose that the absence of all the building blocks that constitute music raises our stress levels on the grounds that sonics signifies unpredictability, uncertainty, volatility, chaos, and ambiguity, traits that represent symbolic threats which can raise our cortisol levels¹². No wonder I become a fuming drakaina when obliged to listen to these auditory experiments. I quite fancy conducting this study. Please DM me if you want to fund it.

As a matter of fact, a few weeks ago, Dr. Luigi Pulvirenti from the Neuroscience School of Advanced Studies forwarded an intriguing paper to me, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Trost and colleagues (2024)⁴ examined the functional neuroanatomy of different music listening conditions, mapping activation sites for pleasant vs. unpleasant music & live vs. recorded performances. This study is one of few studies that included unpleasant music and compared responses to live vs. recorded performances, commissioning new pieces to avoid familiarity influencing the results.

Despite its robust study design, the discovery that they observed a higher activation of, for instance, the ventral striatum while listening to “unpleasant” music is not a breakthrough – not that I was, or that I am, hoping for a brand new brain area of interest. Consequently, my critiques are twofold:

• Firstly, the paper did not provide the definitions/categorisations of pleasant or unpleasant music.
• Secondly, and critically, after reviewing the materials (short scores and recordings), I would categorise the authors’ “unpleasant” music as “pleasant enough”.

 

Indeed, the authors stated that what they defined as both pleasant and unpleasant music were still naturalistic, based on basic musical structures, and in a style of themes similar to “jazz standards”.

I believe the study would have been much more interesting if they had used the kind of music I have been referring to— the sonic experiments that are undeniably unpleasant and stressful for any human brain and torturous for musicians brave enough to speak up.

The real strength of this study lies in how live performances differ from recorded ones. Their analysis showed that whether pleasant or unpleasant, live performances induced higher brain activations compared to recorded ones.

Trost and colleagues⁴ argued that live performances induce stronger brain activities compared to recorded ones due to heightened emotional arousal. They suggest two possible explanations:

• live performances are adaptive and dynamic, synchronising bodily arousal¹³ and the brain state¹⁴ in the audience; and that
• musicians can adapt or modify their performances based on listeners’ emotional responses.

 

My Thoughts on Trost and Colleagues’ Arguments from a Musician’s Perspective

I agree with the first proposition: generally speaking, it is exciting to anticipate hearing our preferred music performed live, surrounded by like-minded people who share our appreciation and excitement about the music and performers. Additionally, we can feel the nervous energy of the performers. Moreover, there’s a sense of suspense as the music unfolds—live performances are of a temporal nature in that we can’t foresee the quality of the performance outcome, and performers can’t ‘go back and do it again’.

However, I am unsure whether I can agree with the second proposition. Most of my colleagues will agree that we do not have the luxury of spontaneously changing our carefully curated interpretations just because we feel the audience likes or dislikes our performance. Certainly not for classical musicians. We focus on delivering and communicating our internal constructs – our interpretations – to the audience. Frankly, trying to get a glimpse of the audience’s reaction is bad news for us: you’re dangerously out of the ‘zone’.

Is there not another aspect of music combined with live performance conditions that could have also influenced their findings?

 

Another Aspect of Music

Whether it’s a live or recorded performance, empirical studies demonstrate that music significantly defines¹⁵ and develops¹⁶ one’s identity. Simply put, identifying with a group of people who share similar musical preference¹⁷ and musical taste¹⁸— known as ingroups— adds another layer of social identity¹⁹, enhancing and maintaining our self-esteem, as outlined in the social identity theory²⁰.

Here is how it works: members of ingroups would differentiate themselves from other groups (outgroups) in order to uphold positive social identity and self-esteem through in- group favouritism, outgroup derogation, and positive differentiation from the outgroup¹⁷. Successfully discriminating against outgroups can boost self-esteem¹⁷; individuals with lower self-esteem are more inclined to engage in outgroup discrimination¹⁸. For instance, a study¹⁸ showed that participants rated fans of their preferred musical style much more positively, as a whole, than fans of their least preferred musical styles, depending on their self-esteem and the degree to which they identified with fellow ingroup members.

We never grow up! I see this pattern in many areas of life, such as visual arts, politics and sonics in classical music. Thornton’s exploration of club culture²¹ among youth illustrates this phenomenon, where individuals seek to establish distinct identities from mainstream norms, thereby forming subcultural communities.

In the realm of the sonics culture, enthusiasts could be seen as embodying a subcultural identity within the broader population, giving a sense of identity and superiority. On the other hand, musicians like those mentioned in the background story, including myself, constitute a subculture within the classical music domain: not that I feel superior, I just don’t want to lie about what I think and feel. In all, this illustrates how subcultures evolve and persist within specialised fields.

 

Self-presentation Behaviours and the Impact on Our Health

Discussing group identification and subcultures naturally leads to the examination of self- presentation behaviours. These behaviours encompass actions aimed at creating favourable impressions – impression management – or gaining acceptance from others²². One prominent form of self-presentation is the Facades of Conformity²³, which includes behaviours like:

• Giving false impressions that we accept and share the group’s values²⁴
• Explicitly expressing opinions that we do not genuinely hold²⁴ and
• Conforming to the group’s expectations²⁴.

 

Individuals often resort to such tactics because they fear potential negative consequences if they do not conform to the group’s expectations and values^24,25.

You would think, ‘What’s the big deal? We all do it.’

My point is this: ‘You don’t need to. It is not good for you.’

Self-presentation behaviour is associated with emotional and psychological distress, contributing to an increased risk of emotional exhaustion often linked to conflicts in personal values^24,25.

The scenario goes like this: Our neocortex, the ‘thinking’, ‘rational’ part of the brain, may urge us to act in ways that contradict our core values in order to fit in socially.

Consequently, we experience negative emotions triggered by our limbic system, part of the brain network responsible for emotional processes, while our neocortex may attempt to suppress, deny, mask or minimise these feelings¹²****.

Despite these efforts, our mind-body***** will not remain unaffected by these conflicting signals within us. This internal divide between our rational brain and our innate emotional processes can exacerbate overall stress levels¹², compounding interpersonal/relational stress.

In the research on stress and trauma, many studies evidenced the mechanisms we adopt in order to manage and cope with stressors. These include internalisation, externalisation and somatisation¹². Internalisation can manifest as anxiety, depression, or self-directed anger²⁶. Externalisation, in contrast, can involve aggressive driving, drug use, or seeking out high- adrenaline activities²⁶. Alternatively, the imbalance between our cognitive and emotional systems can result in somatisation, where psychological distress manifests physically, leading to symptoms like back pain, gastrointestinal difficulties, or insomnia²⁷.

 

Summary & Reflections

Let’s now piece together the research findings and what we discussed:

1. ‘Unveilling the Emperor’s New Clothes in Music’ and ‘What I am Proposing Now and Why’ discuss the sonic experiments’ alienating, unpredictable, uncertain qualities. I went further to propose that the qualities of sonics may elevate cortisol, or stress hormone, levels.
2. ‘Current Understanding of Brain Activities in Different Listening Conditions’ and ‘My Thoughts on Trost and Colleagues’ Arguments from a Musician’s Perspective’ discuss how attending a live performance enhances pleasure through shared enjoyment with (musically) like-minded individuals.
3. ‘Another Aspect of Music’ discusses how music allows us to shape our identity and boost self-esteem by belonging to ingroups with similar musical tastes.

 

‘Self-presentation Behaviours and the Impact on Our Health’ discusses that

4. Engaging in self-presentation behaviours to validate oneself and gain approval within a group can lead to emotional and psychological distress, as well as emotional exhaustion;
5. Contradictory signals between what we think we should do and what we feel may further increase overall stress levels on top of the actual interpersonal/relational stress; and finally,
6. Accumulated stress can manifest in internalisation, externalisation and/or somatisation, exacerbating our health.

 

At this point, if I were one of those “who knows better”, I would ask myself whether I honestly appreciate those stressful noises. As a matter of fact, the intention of this piece is to promote authenticity and critical thinking, especially within specific subcultures, much like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, who dared to speak up and expose the foolishness of conforming to societal expectations or pretensions. Embracing and voicing up our authentic selves allows us to cut through the noise, fostering a more honest and safe environment, one that is freer from the fear of judgment and the pressure to pretend to value things we don’t truly appreciate. Let us free ourselves from worrying about what we’re supposed to think, believe, and do. It’s stifling. Let us just be ourselves. Our true selves are more than good enough.

 

* In my truth, John Duma was an alcoholic concierge at the pianist’s house.

**Genres include, among others, ‘new complexity’, ‘total serialism’, integral serialism’, and ‘controlled chance music’. Interesting terminologies, indeed.

***A cognitive schema describes a mental structure that helps you organise and interpret information. For example, when you think of a piece of music, you have a mental picture of what it constitutes: genre, style, period, moods, tempo, tonality, rhythms, harmony, structure, and so on.

**** This explanation is simplified for clarity; in truth, all brain regions contribute to a range of activities and processes, although certain areas have specialised functions.

*****The brain, the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system, the neurotransmitters, and the body, organs, skeleton, muscles, fascia, skin and fluids.

 

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