I’ve got a new paper out, with Mary Farbood (first author) about ratings of musical tension to an interesting example of romantic lieder, Schubert’s Morgengruss. The link is not to the performance we worked with, which was the Pears and Britten recording, but I like this interpretation too.

My contribution is in the comparison between verses, identifying significant moments of tension rating increases and decreases which differed between verses, and discussing how that might be related to the singer’s articulation, contrast between successive verses, and other factors often overlooked in continuous parametrizations of musical stimuli. While displaying some of what activity analysis can do, numerically, it was also fun to put on my music theory hat to interpret what might be influencing listeners continuous ratings of tension.