Musical Emotions: A Personal Creed
An enormous amount of material has been written on the relationship between music and the emotions. I have begun to organize my own thoughts on this relationship in preparation for a more thorough essay on the subject. What follows is a list of my principal thoughts on the matter in the form of a personal creed. It is personal in that it provides myself with a skeleton from which to erect a more comprehensive investigation. The creed below therefore lacks the argumentation that will be required for support.
CREED
• I believe that when we use emotive terms to describe music, we do so legitimately, and we use these emotive terms to refer to attributes inherent in the music. That is to say, the emotions expressed by music are properties of the music itself. Naturally, there are no real or “occurent” emotions in the music, but emotions are “heard in.”
• I believe that these emotional properties of music may be considered as expressed by the composer, but they remain properties of the music, and considering them to be an expression of the composer is neither necessary nor does it comply with our usual listening experience, generally speaking.
• I believe that we hear emotions in the music primarily by way of resemblances to physiological and behavioral manifestations of real-life emotions. I believe that we may secondarily hear emotions in the music by way of relationships established conventionally (i.e. the minor mode has been associated with sadness).
• I believe that the recognition of the emotional content of music has little relevance, if any, to aesthetic value. I believe therefore that the expression of emotion by music is entirely unnecessary for the music to be valued aesthetically.
• I believe that when the emotions heard in the music match the emotional state of the listener, the real emotions within the listener may be heightened significantly. In this way, music helps the listener emote; it assists his or her emotions. Music possesses this unique capability in a way that no other art form does. I believe that this one reason why so much stock has been placed in arousal theories in the past—one feels as if the emotions heightened by the music have been aroused by the music.
• I believe that since we recognize this wonderful capability of music and because we take pleasure in the experience of the phenomenon of musically-heightened emotions, we may at times take on pretend emotions (not real ones) when listening to music. We take on these imaginary emotions because we desire to have our emotions match the music. I believe this to be the reason why we feel a kind of sadness when listening to sad music. I believe that we are in such practice of doing this that some do it unconsciously, and this phenomenon further explains the popularity of arousal theories in the past.
• I believe that pretend emotions of the undesirable kind—that is, pretend sadness, pretend anger and the like—are not undesirable at all. We take pleasure in the exercise of these pretend emotions which in real-life instances are undesirable.
• I believe that we value music for the pleasure it gives us—not because it arouses true sadness, or any other kind of negative emotion. I believe that music makes us happy, giving us the true emotion of happiness (not of the imaginary variety), and the music itself is the object of that happiness.
• I believe that music’s capability of heightening emotions is valuable in that it is unique to music, but that the value is not of the aesthetic kind. I believe that the emotional content of music can never account for the “stirring” music causes within us.
• I therefore believe that despite the number of tenets above dealing with music’s emotional content, it is largely irrelevant to the question of what moves us in music.
CREED
• I believe that when we use emotive terms to describe music, we do so legitimately, and we use these emotive terms to refer to attributes inherent in the music. That is to say, the emotions expressed by music are properties of the music itself. Naturally, there are no real or “occurent” emotions in the music, but emotions are “heard in.”
• I believe that these emotional properties of music may be considered as expressed by the composer, but they remain properties of the music, and considering them to be an expression of the composer is neither necessary nor does it comply with our usual listening experience, generally speaking.
• I believe that we hear emotions in the music primarily by way of resemblances to physiological and behavioral manifestations of real-life emotions. I believe that we may secondarily hear emotions in the music by way of relationships established conventionally (i.e. the minor mode has been associated with sadness).
• I believe that the recognition of the emotional content of music has little relevance, if any, to aesthetic value. I believe therefore that the expression of emotion by music is entirely unnecessary for the music to be valued aesthetically.
• I believe that when the emotions heard in the music match the emotional state of the listener, the real emotions within the listener may be heightened significantly. In this way, music helps the listener emote; it assists his or her emotions. Music possesses this unique capability in a way that no other art form does. I believe that this one reason why so much stock has been placed in arousal theories in the past—one feels as if the emotions heightened by the music have been aroused by the music.
• I believe that since we recognize this wonderful capability of music and because we take pleasure in the experience of the phenomenon of musically-heightened emotions, we may at times take on pretend emotions (not real ones) when listening to music. We take on these imaginary emotions because we desire to have our emotions match the music. I believe this to be the reason why we feel a kind of sadness when listening to sad music. I believe that we are in such practice of doing this that some do it unconsciously, and this phenomenon further explains the popularity of arousal theories in the past.
• I believe that pretend emotions of the undesirable kind—that is, pretend sadness, pretend anger and the like—are not undesirable at all. We take pleasure in the exercise of these pretend emotions which in real-life instances are undesirable.
• I believe that we value music for the pleasure it gives us—not because it arouses true sadness, or any other kind of negative emotion. I believe that music makes us happy, giving us the true emotion of happiness (not of the imaginary variety), and the music itself is the object of that happiness.
• I believe that music’s capability of heightening emotions is valuable in that it is unique to music, but that the value is not of the aesthetic kind. I believe that the emotional content of music can never account for the “stirring” music causes within us.
• I therefore believe that despite the number of tenets above dealing with music’s emotional content, it is largely irrelevant to the question of what moves us in music.
posted by Luke Dahn at 8:56 PM
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