Sunday 13 April 2014

Music and Emotion

More from Professor Begbie.

This time on music and emotion:

"It would seem that, at the very least, two things are going on here, sometimes simultaneously. First, we can be moved directly by the aesthetic qualities of the musical sounds - by their arrangements. We hear a chord sequence, a guitar riff, an intricate elaboration, and its patterning, its formal arrangement generates emotion. But second, very commonly, music's emotional properties get directed toward and attached to objects that surround it...we always hear musical sounds in a context." (p.297)

Of course, that context is very commonly words. Emotions require an object. We don't just get angry/happy/sad; we get angry/happy/sad about some particular thing. In songs, the words provide the particular. In musical theatre, it's not just the words but the story and the staging and the performance that provide the context.

(There's also an interesting side issue about how context-free or "pure" music can generate emotion. An orchestral symphony performed in a concert hall, for example. Apparently it's something of a mystery. The current thinking is that emotion closely relates to certain body movements and music can trigger these movements, thus also triggering the emotion.)

All of which supports a favourite saying of mine by the lyricist EY Harburg:

"Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought."

Truly, he should have been a professor.

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