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Many scientific disciplines deal with the topic of music and emotions, including philosophy,
musicology and psychology. The perspective presented here is mainly a psychological one, yet
some theoretical and philosophical considerations will be made to clarify prevailing concepts
about music and emotions and how they can be connected.
Contents
• 1 Expressiveness of music - philosophical problems
o 1.1 Appearance emotionalism
• 2 Psychological mechanisms involved in emotions elicited by music
o 2.1 Physiological arousal
o 2.2 Emotional contagion
o 2.3 Musical expectancy
o 2.4 Learning and memory
2.4.1 Episodic memory
2.4.2 Evaluative conditioning
• 3 The nature of musical emotions (some aspects)
• 4 References
Appearance emotionalism
Two of the most influential philosophers in the aesthetics of music are Stephen Davies and
Jerrold Levinson (cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/). Without going into the depths of
the philosophical argument, this view mainly follows Davies’ [1]position. He terms his concept
the expressiveness of emotions in music appearance emotionalism. Appearance emotionalism
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holds that music is for example sad in the same way the posture of a person is sad or a weeping
willow is sad. A piece of music is not sad because it feels sadness, but because it expresses
sadness, it is sad in appearance. Why does something (that is not a person) appear sad? Because
we can identify in its structure certain characteristics that we know from a person’s expression of
sadness. We would sometimes call an old hunchbacked lady sad (although we don’t doubt that
she might feel completely differently) because she looks like someone sad we’ve already seen. In
the same way we would call a piece of music sad because its dynamic character resembles a
person’s expression of sadness. “The resemblance that counts most for music’s expressiveness
(…) is between music’s temporally unfolding dynamic structure and configurations of human
behaviour associated with the expression of emotion” (Davies 2006, p. 181 ). If a person does
not give verbal account of his or her feelings , the observer can still note them from the person’s
posture, gait, gestures, attitude, and comportment. Music recalls an appearance of sadness e.g.,
according to Davies, by a slow and quiet downward movement, underlying patterns of
unresolved tension, dark timbre , heavy or thick harmonic bass textures (Davies 2006, p. 182).
Not everybody associates the same musical features with the same emotion. Appearance
emotionalism does not claim that movement in music generally resembles human behaviour but
that many listeners have this perception of similarity, and that this is the crucial connection that
constitutes the expressiveness of music. This perception of similarity can be widely common
among listeners or highly individual. Which musical features are more commonly associated
with certain emotions is left over to the testing of music psychology (see next paragraph). Davies
claims that expressiveness is an objective property of music and not subjective in the sense of
being projected into the music by the listener. Music’s expressiveness is certainly response-
dependent, i.e. it is realized in the listener’s judgement. However, suitably skilled listeners
display a high degree of agreement in attributing emotional expressiveness to a certain piece of
music. Although this is an empirical finding, it indicates according to Davies (2006) that the
expressiveness of music has to be somewhat objective. If there was no expressiveness in the
music, no expression could be projected into it as a reaction to the music.
Some researchers believe that an emotion is a mental state of a being. Scherer [2] argues that
emotion is a “hypothetical construct” (p.240) which consists of a number of parts including
physiological arousal , motor expression, subjective feeling, behaviour preparation and cognitive
processes. Some researchers believe that in order to scientifically examine the phenomenon of
emotions it may be necessary to identify such components and define variables that are
measurable. The following list of components and processes is oriented at Patrik Juslin’s [3]
framework of “mechanisms” that some researchers believe lead to emotions induced by music
are as follows but there is much debate about these unscientifically jsutified notions:
Physiological arousal
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- changes in heart rate, breathing frequency, temperature sensation - part of the body’s “warning
system” for important/urgent events or danger; auditory criteria: fast, loud, very low/high
pitched, dissonant - e.g. dissonance as an aspect in warning calls - equally: relaxing effects of
music - brain stem reflexes: early turnoffs from the auditory pathway - influences the
pleasantness of a piece of music, but may also affect a person’s subjective/cognitive evaluation
of a piece of through proprioceptive feedback (Scherer 2004, p.241). - listeners try to establish an
“optimal arousal level” depending on the situation (e.g. Rave vs. candlelight dinner) and
personality characteristics
Emotional contagion
Musical expectancy
- The course of a piece of music sometimes violates, delays or confirms a skilled listener’s
expectation about how the piece will continue. (Dependence on learning and experience of
listener.) - syntactical relationship between different parts of a piece (e.g. harmonic progression,
repetition of parts, melody, …) - might influence general arousal and apprehension/anxiety,
disappointment
These mechanisms are most individual among the components mentioned here, and as they lack
a direct connection they are not be considered primary processes that link music and emotion.
Episodic memory
Episodic memory or the ‘Darling, they are playing our tune phenomenon’ (Davies), is certainly
of eminent importance to people’s everyday emotional reactions to music. However, it is not a
primary emotional reaction to music as to some of its specific features, but a secondary one. An
emotional response elicited by a piece of music only through the music’s ability to link to a
certain memory is independent of what the music expresses itself. The same string quartet might
conjure up happy emotions in the wedding guest and horrible emotions in a survivor from a
concentration camp who heard it there. - for episodic memory, music is only a retrieval cue -
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physiological reaction pattern to original event is memorized alongside with the experienced
content? - tendency to youth and early adulthood: music as an important part for the
consolidation of a listener’s self-identity in adolescence?
Evaluative conditioning
Definition: music as a conditioned stimulus repeatedly paired with another emotional stimulus;
less specific than episodic memory; e.g. the Bavarian beer-fest tune “Ein Prosit der
Gemuetlichkeit”.
Still, emotions elicited by music have some characteristics that make them different from real-
life emotions. Coming back to the example of the piano concert, the sadness felt at hearing it
does not only lack the regret of the sadness at the death of a loved person, but it is also certainly
less intense. There seem to be emotional intensities of real-life events that the experience of an
artwork cannot reach. In addition, most emotions, particularly the negative ones, felt when
listening to music seem to have a positive tinge. Why do we seek the experience of a negative
emotion as in a sad piece of music? One reason is that we appreciate, in an artistic, aesthetic
way, the music as an artwork that manages to create the expressiveness. Another reason is given
by Kendall Walton (see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/): Sadness is not negative in itself.
Rather the life situation that causes it, e.g. the death of a loved person, is negative. “Thus, though
we would not seek out the death of a loved one, given the death we ‘welcome’ the sorrow.”
Music gives the listener the possibility of self-experience through real emotions, without the
consequences of real-life circumstances, just as any art and play does.
References
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1. ^ Davies, S. (2006). "Artistic Expression and the Hard Case of Pure Music, in: Kieran,
M. (Ed.), Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art": 179-91.
2. ^ Scherer, K.R. (2004) while others believe it is a direct response to hormonal release
from the hypothalamus which can be empirically measured. "Which Emotions Can be
Induced by Music? What Are the Underlying Mechanisms? And How Can We Measure
Them?". Journal of New Music Research 33 (3): 239-251
3. ^ •Juslin, P.; Västfjäll, D. (2008). "Emotional responses to music: The need to consider
underlying mechanisms". Behavioural and Brain Sciences: in press.
4. ^ •James, W. (1884). "What is an emotion". Mind 9 (34): 188-205.
5. ^ •Juslin, P.N.; Laukka, P. (2003). "Communication of emotions in vocal expression and
music performance: different channels, same code?". Psychol Bull 129 (5): 770-814.
Retrieved on 2008-06-26.
6. ^ •Koelsch, S.; Fritz, T.; Von Cramon, D.Y.; Müller, K.; Friederici, A.D. (2006).
"Investigating emotion with music: an fMRI study". Human Brain Mapping 27 (3): 239-
250. DOI:10.1002/hbm.20180