Performance anxiety is a prevalent mental health issue among professional musicians. Pre-performance musictherapy including a listening component has been shown to help musicians relax. While substantial research has explored whichcompositional features of classical pieces induce relaxation, this study hypothesized that for professional musicians, familiaritywith a relaxing classical piece as well as performance attributes may impact relaxation level. Familiar pieces may produce a lowerrelaxation level when the musician’s performance expectations are not met, while unfamiliar pieces – bearing no such expectations- might more readily induce relaxation. Musician and non-musician participants were recruited to listen to a familiar classicalpiece performed in two markedly different styles, and also to a generally unfamiliar piece. The subjects evaluated each piece, ratedthe relaxation level experienced, and provided comments. For musicians, the unfamiliar piece generated significantly greaterrelaxation levels than the familiar piece (Familiar mean = 7.1, SEM = 0.29; Unfamiliar mean = 8.2, SEM = 0.42; p = 0.026).Furthermore, the less that the familiar piece’s performance met a musician’s expectations, the less relaxing they found it (R = 0.54,p = 0.00029). These findings may help determine which classical pieces best alleviate professional musicians' performance anxiety

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