What shall we listen to, abstract or figurative music?

Common sense and experimental research both suggest that figurative art and classical music are a good match, whilst jazz is a better fit for abstract art. However artistic avant-gardes often deliberately fused and confused the concepts ‘figurative’ and ‘abstract’. This research deals with such concepts by asking two questions: 1) how do people classify visual art that can fit in either category; 2) can those concepts be extended to classify also music? In a two-session experiment (P, M), 24 people were asked to classify 30 paintings (10 clearly figurative, 10 clearly abstract, and 10 ambiguous) as ‘abstract’ or ‘figurative’ and rate them for pleasantness; in M they were asked to apply the same tasks to 40 15sec excerpts of instrumental music (20 classical, 20 jazz). P-results: a gender effect for pleasantness ratings was found: females rated higher ambiguous and abstract paintings than males. Abstract and figurative paintings were correctly classified; only two ambiguous paintings were classified as figurative, all the others as abstract. M-results: no main effects or interactions determined significant effects in pleasantness ratings; 4 classical excerpts were clearly classified (all figurative), and 5 jazz excerpts were clearly classified (1 as figurative, 4 as abstract).