| Abstract | We present a study, carried out on 241 participants, which
investigates on classical music material the agreement of
listeners on perceptual music aspects (related to emotion,
tempo, complexity, and instrumentation) and the relationship
between listener characteristics and these aspects. For
the currently popular task of music emotion recognition,
the former question is particularly important when defining
a ground truth of emotions perceived in a given music
collection. We characterize listeners via a range of factors,
including demographics, musical inclination, experience,
and education, and personality traits. Participants rate the
music material under investigation, i.e., 15 expert-defined
segments of Beethoven’s 3rd symphony, “Eroica”, in terms
of 10 emotions, perceived tempo, complexity, and number
of instrument groups. Our study indicates only slight
agreement on most perceptual aspects, but significant correlations
between several listener characteristics and perceptual
qualities.
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