Music From The Aesthetic-psychological Point Of View On The Three Functions And Performance Characteristics

In this thesis, the approach of scientific positivism and logical argumentation is adopted to illustrate the functions of film music. Three kinds of functions of film music: expression of one's emotion, exaggeration of the theme and depiction of the plot and their unique characteristics of representation will be discussed from the perspective of its aesthetic subject Ninety students are sampled as the subjects to take part in an experiment, in which they are divided into three groups. They are from three universities, Beijing Language and Culture University, Agriculture University of China and Beijing University of Science and Technology. In the experiment, selected film music and pictures are taken to be the independent variables and the change of the subject's aesthetic psychology as a dependent variable. The psychological experience and process the subject has undergone, such as the emotion he has experienced, the perception of the atmosphere and the formation of images and so on will be detected. Three types of functions of film music: expression of one's emotion, exaggeration of the theme and depiction of the plot and their unique characteristics of representation will be probed based on the results of the experiment. The following is the results of the three experiments. The first experiment shows that:1. Film music helps a lot in expressing accurately the emotion of the characters in the movie. Compared with movies without music, movies with music can deepen the emotional experiment of the aesthetic subject.2. There is a strong correlation between the appearance of film music and the attitude of the subject towards the movie. Appropriate time for playing film music facilitates subjects' understanding of the emotion which the movie tries to express.3. The role played by film music in expressing specific emotions is much more profound and effective than that of movie pictures.The second experiment proves that:1. Film music has a prominent impact in reflecting the atmosphere of the movie.2. People are more aware of the appearance of film music which represents the atmosphere of anxiety and horror than that which represents the lyric atmosphere.The third experiment demonstrates that:1. Film music has great power in depicting the plot.2.The role of film music in depicting the plot correlates with the degree of the visual effect of the movie and film music has its definite orientation.Appreciation of film music alone can arouse people's clear images of the movie. Based on the results of the three experiments and the comparative analysis of film music and non-film music, the author discusses the three functions of film music and proposes its characteristics of representation. These characteristics include the oriented, incoherent and mutually infected function of the film music in expressing emotion; the picturique, coherent and contrastive features of the film music inreflecting the atmosphere; the consistent representation of the sound and picture of the film music, and its specific and reminiscent features in depicting the plotThe author draws a conclusion from the experiments: first, the completeness of the content of the movie decides the nature and characteristics of representation of the film music; second, in order to present the special charm of the audio-visual art, film music should be closely connected with sceneries of the movie and conform to the principle of the structure of the movie.