Posted in: Musicouching by balisunset on August 7, 2008 | 1 Comment
Much as with literature, it is often assumed that a major way in which music has its effect is through emotions. To those who listen to music, this effect is indisputable, an integral part of the experience. Moreover, from an observer’s perspective, the sight of rows of people with closed eyes rapt in a performance of classical music or of crowds of young people head banging at a heavy metal concert makes it obvious that the music is having an emotional impact.
The problem comes when the attempt is made to go further than this and to say how music has its effects. There are many supposed effects such as fast rhythms, consonant music and rising melodies leading to happiness and dissonant, descending music with drawn-out notes leading to sadness. But such statements seem often to be made almost ex cathedra, supporting research and theory being sadly lacking.
Gaver and Mandler (1987) make a constructivist analysis of emotional reactions to music. They base this on evaluative cognitions and arousal that comes mainly from discrepancies in perception and behaviour. Emotional reactions to music then occur when it is discrepant from expectations. Moreover, they suggest that “We recognise what is familiar and we like what we know (recognise).” Gaver and Mandler argue that this way of looking at things accounts for some of the emotional impact of music, but suggest that there are also three other possibilities:
There might, for example, be similarities in timing, or where music is regarded as a metaphor, or music might vary along dimensions that also characterize emotional experience. This might lead to a direct emotional communication. Panksepp (1995) deals with the particular emotional effect of “chills” in music. He points to a paradox, not unlike the paradox of fiction, that chills, although a positive emotional experience, are mostly induced by sad music. As a neuroscientist, Panksepp analyses the manner in which the grief and joy circuits interweave within the brain and suggests that chills occur when the deepest opposing emotional potentials are touched. He theorizes that chill-inducing music might resonate with ancient (in an evolutionary sense) emotional circuits that have to do with basic social values. These represent an infant’s separation call within the context of a potential reunion. Even more fundamentally, he argues that this all might have been based originally on warm and cold, with separation linked to cold.
Levinson (1997) puts it simply that emotional reactions to music come about through direct sensation (tempo, timbre, rhythm, dynamics, etc., as in chills) and through cognition (as Gaver & Mandler suggest). He likens music to representational art in that it can also be heard as a sort of expression of emotion by a generic person, rather than by a specific individual. Put these three possibilities together and there is the overall emotional response to music, but the question remains: at what is the emotion directed? The answer might be that music only induces (directionless) moods, or just the feeling part of emotion, or perhaps even imaginary emotion.
tonisan60 August 9th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Nice article, keep the good work, my claps, well done