When the sudden drop to a pianissimo occurred towards the ending of the piece, the perceived arousal responses of CHM and WM dropped slightly but rose again immediately to end on a high arousal. These two groups of listeners appear to have anticipated a return to a loud and majestic close and therefore kept their arousal responses higher than those of the NM.

CHM, who are more experienced with the instruments and compositional techniques used in Chinese orchestral music, might have had an idea of which features figure more prominently in the communication of particular intentions, and therefore would have more information available for their judgments.

The perception of affective intentions in music is influenced by the degree of familiarity listeners have with a musical tradition, the content implicated in the music, and the complex sonic environment created by the composer's creation and the musicians' interpretation.

The version that participants heard was a premier of the work by the Taipei Chinese orchestra.

The communication of emotions or affect takes place when listeners perceive emotional meaning that is expressed by performers in music (Juslin, 2013a, 2013b).

“I’m not a musician. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. But I mean, I wasted a lot of my life playing instruments, which was foolish,” O’Rourke told the newsletter Tone Glow in an interview published in May 2020. “I have no interest in anything being a vessel for expressing something . . . I always like to say, ‘I do stuff.’ ”

Performance assessment does not have to be a time-consuming ordeal; it is a great way to assess our students' skills. It is essential to create a rubric that is simple, quick, and objective. This article discusses the process of creating a rubric as well as showing a rubric used by the author in her general music classroom for several years. Differences between assessment and evaluation are also mentioned.