The Expression of Emotion in Music

Abstract

In this paper I will attempt to analyse the expression of emotion in music.The field of interest is restricted in two ways.First by distinguishing between the expression of emotion in music and the expression of emotion through music.Here we are concerned only with the former; that is, with the emotions that music may be said to express in itself and not with the emotions that may be given expression through the act of composition, or through the performance of music, or through a dramatic context in which music plays a part.This distinction suggests a second restriction, this time on the type of music to be discussed.If there is a problem in claiming that emotions may be expressed in music then it is one which will be at its most obvious and acute in 'pure' music which is unencumbered by drama or words which may be expressive in themselves.For this reason opera, ballet, song, music with literary titles such as La Mer, and so on are specifically excluded from the discussion.The difficulty in claiming that emotions may be expressed in music consists in this: In the non-musical paradigmatic cases something that is sad feels sad.Since no-one who says that a particular musical work is sad believes (or knowingly imagines) that the music feels sad, how is it possible to claim that music is sad and, at the same time, maintain that the word 'sad' retains here a use which preserves its meaning?Clearly we cannot say, as in the views that purely musical emotions are expressed in music or that disembodied mental states are expressed in music, that in their application to musical works emotion words have a uniquely aesthetic secondary use.For then we would be unable to explain why it is that, say, musical sadness interests and moves us as it does.What is interesting about 'sadness' that is divorced from and in no way reflects upon the world of felt-emotions?Why does musical expressiveness compel from us emotional responses if that expressiveness is not related to the expression of human emotions?If the expression of emotion in music is seen as one of music's most important features then it can only be because we recognise a connection between the emotions expressed in music 67

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