On cognition of musical grouping: relationship between the listeners’ schema type and their musical preference

We assume that there are various musical groupings of perceptions according to the degree of schemata and there are two dominant music grouping schemata; (a) accent-oriented grouping schema and (b) phrasing schema (musical expression referred to as the Rainbow type). In order to verify these hypotheses, we investigated how listeners’ groupings change when the inner voice of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata “Pathetique” was replaced with chords. We eventually succeeded in identifying three listening groups; those who have a strong (a) schema (type A), those whose (a) is prior to (b) (type AF), and those whose (b) is prior to (a) while paying attention to their inner voice (type FA_I). We verified that type A listeners prefer Rap music, Rock music, listening in a lively place, listening to party music, and listening to lyrics, while type FA_Ilisteners prefer Bach, Chopin, and listening alone and quietly.