Shanahan and Huron (2014) addressed the question of whether composers actively make use of pitch height to convey specific affective content. They proposed an association between lower-pitched voices and less sociable (villainous) characters, in contrast to higher-pitched voices and more affable (heroic) characters.
Although Shanahan and Huron's findings were consistent with common musical intuition and ethological principles, the hypotheses were only tested with a collection of Western operas. To search for empirical evidence in support for a cross-cultural phenomenon, we conducted a conceptual replication of their study with a corpus of traditional Beijing Opera (Jingju).
