Music & Emotion

[Philosophy Now]

Why do we feel emotion when listening to music? Ben Ushedo goes beyond emotivist and cognitivist approaches to answer this intriguing question.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/57/Music_and_Emotion

[willimek]

Music and Emotions

The most difficult problem in answering the question of how music creates emotions is likely to be the fact that assignments of musical elements and emotions can never be defined clearly. The solution of this problem is the Theory of Musical Equilibration. It says that music can't convey any emotion at all, but merely volitional processes, with which the music listener identifies. Then in the process of identifying the volitional processes are colored with emotions. The same happens when we watch an exciting film and identify with the volitional processes of our favorite figures. Here, too, just the process of identification generates emotions.

Because this detour of emotions via volitional processes was not detected, also all music psychological and neurological experiments, to answer the question of the origin of the emotions in the music, failed.

But how music can convey volitional processes? These volitional processes have something to do with the phenomena which early music theorists called "lead", "leading tone" or "striving effects". If we reverse this musical phenomena in imagination into its opposite (not the sound wants to change - but the listener identifies with a will not to change the sound) we have found the contents of will, the music listener identifies with. In practice, everything becomes a bit more complicated, so that even more sophisticated volitional processes can be represented musically.

Further information is available via the free download of the e-book "Music and Emotion - the Research on Musical Equilibration:

www.willimekmusic.de/music-and-emotions.pdf

Enjoy reading

Bernd Willimek

[thedoc]

Well I haven't been able to access the article in the magazine, but I have downloaded the book and will read it in time. For now I would like to comment that the performance of a piece of music can be an emotional experience as well as an expression of the emotions of the performer. And this could be expanded into any of the performing arts and creative arts, though I believe that limiting it to music would be best for now. .

[duszek]

During a lecture it was said that high tones load you and low tones calm you. Anyone can try and see.

The tempo is crucial too. Largo or adagio have a calming effect. Vivace and Presto and Allegro have an enlivening effect.

Many rock and roll musical pieces are full of melancholy (as I heard on the radio yesterday). They express some truths about life and human nature and the like. They are in a minor key, probably, and not in a major key.

[thedoc]

I've been reading parts of the E-book and this piece came to mind of music that can convey different emotions in the same work. I would believe that most are familiar with the 1st and 3rd movement but you may not have heard the 2nd. 1st 0:00 to 3:00, then the 2nd to 5:50 and then the 3rd on this recording. 1st and 3rd are the same just a repeat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ido55uT5U0k

I've read that Chopin wrote the movements with different moods intentionally to express different concepts.

[thedoc]

Another song that may be misinterpreted by many,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tIsXLyZcWI

Most think of this as a song of joy, describing the celebration on the return of soldiers. The song is in a minor key and in reality is a dirge in memory of all the "Johnnys" that did not come marching home.

[jackles]

Is it the truth that music hightens awarness.the effect though more of a numbing of dross allowing a higher state of awareness to exist for that moment.alas the dross returns with a vengance.

[thedoc]

In college I played in the orchestra (trumpet section) and while preforming all the concerns about other things (and there were a lot) seemed to just go away. It's the same now with the piano, other concerns just don't come to mind while playing, partly because I need to concentrate on what I am doing to do it correctly.

[Impenitent]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNatwyAJ6dI

any music with cannons has got to grab you

-Imp

[thedoc]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNatwyAJ6dI

any music with cannons has got to grab you

-Imp

Damn-it I wish you people would stop doing that, every time someone posts a you-tube link I spend the next half hour to an hour chasing other performances. I ended up here,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY37l4PDsao

Don't ask me how I got there, but I've watched most of them before, and when I see something good that I remember, I've got to watch it again.

[thedoc]

Music and Emotions
Further information is available via the free download of the e-book "Music and Emotion - the Research on Musical Equilibration:

http://www.willimekmusic.de/music-and-emotions.pdf

Enjoy reading
Bernd Willimek

Interesting but it starts out with a faulty premise and that is that music consists of inanimate frequencies.
from the book,

"After all, for a long time the fact that music has an emotional impact upon us
was one of the greatest of enigmas, since fundamentally it only consists of inanimate
frequencies."

No music is inanimate as it is all preformed by human musicians and written by human composers, so the very first paragraph contains an incorrect statement.

Later they used the analogy of a person holding a car from rolling down a hill but, this too is invalid because the car is an inanimate object and any musical note is a dynamic event, not some static object. Music moves and even a single note is the process of something (string or column of air) that is in motion moved by a person. Even computer generated music is programmed by a human operator.