Pleasant musical imagery: Eliciting cherished music in the second person

Abstract

This article introduces the notion of pleasant musical imagery (PMI) for denoting everyday phenomena where people want to cherish music "in their heads." This account differs from current paradigms for studying musical imagery in that it is not based a priori on (in)voluntariness of the experience. An empirical investigation of the structure and experiential content in 50 persons' experiences of PMI applied the elicitation interview method. Peer judgments of the interviews helped to bridge a phenomenological investigation of particular experiences with systematic between-subjects analysis. Both structural features of the imagery (e.g., Looseness of structure or Looping) and content features of the imagery (e.g., Embodied evocativeness and Object-directedness) showed significant associations with participants' individual characteristics, personality, and/or cognitive style. The approach taken suggests a new paradigm for studying musical imagery-one that is based on tracing the interactional and enactive processes of "inner listening."